What caused the rise of the PC platform? Undoubtedly, it was the clones. No other platform was ever cloned to the extent that the PC was. (The Apple ][ was cloned by Franklin computers and others before Apple sued them out of existence, and Apple did briefly flirt with licensed Macintosh clones from 1995 until 1997). If IBM hadn’t come late to the personal computer party, and hadn’t rushed its first PC from off-the-shelf parts and a third-party operating system, this story might have read very differently today.
The only person who predicted the Attack of the Clones was Bill Gates, who recalled that many mainframe computers had spawned work-alike clones in the past. It was this foresight that enabled him to get IBM to agree to a contract whereby Microsoft could license MS-DOS to third parties. IBM, thinking in mainframe timelines and assuming that clones would be perpetually years behind the originals, thought nothing of this stipulation. They were only concerned with getting the lowest possible flat rate for MS-DOS (which they mistakenly called PC-DOS) in the first place.
Thirty years later, computers had firmly cemented themselves in the public imagination. They were huge boxes, covered with blinking lights and whirring reels of tape. Banks and big corporations all had computer rooms, closely guarded by a priesthood of programmers and administrators. Science fiction novels and movies imagined impossibly brilliant supercomputers that guided spaceships and controlled societies, yet they were still room-sized behemoths. The idea of a personal computer, something small and light enough for someone to pick up and carry around, wasn’t even on the radar.
Total share: 30 years of personal computer market share figures: Page 1
Tags: microsoft, apple, ibm, pc
