Why is IBM not a major computer company anymore?

[carlsson]

I suppose IBM didn't have many options, mostly because they were the big blue company that would lead the way with groundbreaking technology, not follow others. It probably was enough "losing face" to use a Japanesque term to have the original IBM PC manufactured with parts from other companies, much less settle as one of many PC manufacturers and together come up with a new, common bus standard after the 16-bit ISA was getting old.

[mr_me]

1 hour ago, Flojomojo said:

Yikes. That's like $19,000 today, for a 386. 
 

Of course the world is different today. Not every household (let alone every individual) wanted or needed a computer. IBM's middle name is literally "Business" and that's how most of these things were used. 

In 1988, $10k was not a lot of money for a computer.  A unix workstation would have cost $50k or more.  Business looks at it as how many salaries does this machine replace and realise they are saving money.

[Turbo-Torch]

Agreed that $10K wasn't much for a business computer.  I like thumbing through old catalogs and seeing how quickly a system can hit $50K after adding memory, hard drives, a few terminals and a fast printer.  The problem is when you get people who can't discern between the home market and the business world.  This just goes back to a similar thread from a while ago when someone inferred that 8088 systems were next to worthless by 1988 because the 386 was released in '87 and you really needed that kind of power to play current games.   This was at a time when you were lucky to have a disk drive for your C64 and were king of the school or neighborhood if you had a 8088 based system with 256K. 

Yup, the 386 systems were out there, but they sure weren't playing video games in people's homes.  

A Tandy 3000 was $4,300 back then and it was a 286 system.  If you wanted a top end Compaq 386, it would set you back about $13K after taxes...nobody was spending the equivalent of $30K in today's money to play Outrun. lol 

 

Also, when it came to a home computer's longevity of usefulness, the 80s seemed more like today...you could have a 5 year old XT, C64 or Atari 8 bit and the current software ran on it fine.  The fast paced PCs of the 90s sucked.  Buy or build a new system and 6 months later there's something with twice the speed, memory and storage for less money that can run programs you can't.  I'm glad those days are over.  The Toshiba laptop I'm using to type this still gets along fine at 9 years old.

 

[mr_me]

Another example is VGA which was introduced by IBM in 1987.  It probably took about five years before it became reasonably affordable.  Most business PCs and gaming at home were done with monochrone graphics throughout the 1980s.  I hadn't heard of anyone hooking up cga to a TV.

[wierd_w]

4 hours ago, Turbo-Torch said:

Agreed that $10K wasn't much for a business computer.  I like thumbing through old catalogs and seeing how quickly a system can hit $50K after adding memory, hard drives, a few terminals and a fast printer.  The problem is when you get people who can't discern between the home market and the business world.  This just goes back to a similar thread from a while ago when someone inferred that 8088 systems were next to worthless by 1988 because the 386 was released in '87 and you really needed that kind of power to play current games.   This was at a time when you were lucky to have a disk drive for your C64 and were king of the school or neighborhood if you had a 8088 based system with 256K. 

Yup, the 386 systems were out there, but they sure weren't playing video games in people's homes.  

A Tandy 3000 was $4,300 back then and it was a 286 system.  If you wanted a top end Compaq 386, it would set you back about $13K after taxes...nobody was spending the equivalent of $30K in today's money to play Outrun. lol 

 

Also, when it came to a home computer's longevity of usefulness, the 80s seemed more like today...you could have a 5 year old XT, C64 or Atari 8 bit and the current software ran on it fine.  The fast paced PCs of the 90s sucked.  Buy or build a new system and 6 months later there's something with twice the speed, memory and storage for less money that can run programs you can't.  I'm glad those days are over.  The Toshiba laptop I'm using to type this still gets along fine at 9 years old.

 

 

I just finished installing windows 10 (Because I wanted to see how well it ran on this thing) on a liberated chromebook.  It runs about like a computer from 2008 in all my other tests I have ran (2gb ram, 1.6ghz cpu, intel integrated gpu), but it holds up surprisingly well.  Sadly, windows 10 does not want to install onto anything but the teensyweensie eMMC. (Seriously MS, just stop being dorks and allow the option to install onto SDcards. Get over yourselves.)

 

It's really quite surprising how well old hardware still holds up these days. 

[Flojomojo]

@wierd_w with all the swapping Windows does, I would think it would toast an SDcard pretty quickly, no?

[wierd_w]

48 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

@wierd_w with all the swapping Windows does, I would think it would toast an SDcard pretty quickly, no?

 

True enough, but the eMMC isn't all that much more durable.  Being a chromebook, it was designed to use zram with it.  Linux is really the best option, this was just to see how well it would do.  It also lets me judge how good the linux Intel driver set is compared to the windows one.  3D performance is indeed better on win10, sadly.

 

A good deal of the problem with SDCard burnout is the erase block size VS the file system cluster size.  Windows will stupidly only let you use a swap file on an NTFS volume, which has a max cluster size of 64kb. Your typical erase unit size on a large SDCard is closer to 4mb.  (Which is why SDCards come formatted with exFAT, which allows cluster sizes that large.)  You can get the same atomicity with EXT3/4 by abusing the raid features of that file system, which is how I had it previously decked out. (that, and shameless use of tmpfs where appropriate, such as browser caches and pals.)

 

Still, running the host OS off the SDcard, and putting the pagefile on the eMMC might be an acceptable compromise.  Microsoft wont let you do that though.

[CaptainBreakout]

There is another more subtle factor in this question that should be explored... Public sentiment.

 

IBM in the 80's, Big Blue, was seen often as the suppressive enemy force that represented relentless industrialism.  I think they were often unfairly painted as such, but there's the old adage of the day "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM". The sentiment of the average non-businessman or casual non-conformist business-minded person was to hold IBM in contempt.

 

So, as a business, IBM was saddled with that negative popular image. This was perfectly exemplified in Macintosh's first big TV ad, the one where a worker flings a hammer at the grey industrial imagery on the big screen and starts a revolution, presumably.

 

This "IBM was the big mean business nerd" image carried on for decades. Apple milked it. Remember the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads?  (Of course, a decade earlier it would have been "I'm an Apple II, I'm an IBM" but the sentiment just morphed along with the product).

 

Its hard to gauge just how that affected the actual health of the brand year to year, but it's easy to do find anecdotes where it played into it...

 

OS/2. Some could say it's biggest flaw was that it was an IBM product and, therefore, subject to a higher level of scrutiny and even open distain. The big grab to regain control of its own OS was probably undermined by its own brand-name, but it's really hard to quantify exactly how much.  IBM was just not hip, at best... a wolf in sheep's clothing at worst. 

 

Perhaps if OS/2 was presented in a different way by a savvy company, who maybe somehow TAMED IBM,  and was the great peoples' solution we've all been waiting for...  If that theoretical image makeover was sold right, things could have played out differently.

 

Fun to consider. I always think of the Key Games gambit with stuff like this from Atari's history.

 

Some companies thrive in mass public distain, but weather it out pretty well (remember the big US anti-trust lawsuits on Microsoft 20 or so years ago?). Others somehow escape ever being labeled as  "Evil Corp." no matter how big they get.

 

Here's something fun to think about... What if Samsung in current times was seen in the same light as IBM was in the 80's?  What if Samsung WAS the Big Bad Master Control Program -?

 

Could they continue to operate in the same way? How 'bout Google?  Food for thought.

[wierd_w]

In the 70s and 80s, IBM really was "the very incarnation" of "Conform or be destroyed" though.  It was reflected at every level of their organization;  They even had regulations on how to wear your socks.

 

Being shown the error of that mindset is arguably one of the best things to ever happen to them.  In many respects, their lack of adaptability (due to a culture of rigid conformity) is why they lost control of the market, and why their efforts at damage control after that fact were futile.

 

It took a massive downturn in profitability for the company to wise up, and "lighten up Francis".  By then, the loss of market dominance was already a done deal.

 

 

In terms of OS/2, the killer was really MS renegging on a joint-partnership agreement on its development, and their leaving IBM holding the bag as MS switched to their wholly owned NT operating system. (Which had many IBM OS/2 trappings.  NTFS is a descendent of OS/2's HPFS, for instance.)  Had MS not done this (or had they not gotten away with it) we would probably have OS/2 installed all over the place today.

[mr_me]

Ibm shirt and tie culture was common in the 1980s.  There was more disdain for microsoft than ibm.  OS/2 looked like the future compared to what microsoft was offering.  NT came years after OS/2 and wasn't near as good.  Desktop PCs became a commodity but IBM Thinkpads were successfull and very popular up until it was sold to lenovo.

Edited December 31, 2019 by mr_me

[wierd_w]

1 hour ago, mr_me said:

Ibm shirt and tie culture was common in the 1980s.  There was more disdain for microsoft than ibm.  OS/2 looked like the future compared to what microsoft was offering.  NT came years after OS/2 and wasn't near as good.  Desktop PCs became a commodity but IBM Thinkpads were successfull and very popular up until it was sold to lenovo.

 

I agree that OS/2 was significantly better than the early NT OSes.  By the time of NT4 though, OS/2 needed a fork stuck in it.  MS abused its market position with Windows to basically shear what they could out of OS/2, brand it as their own flavor of new operating system and then effectively shove IBM out the door.

 

It was initially a joint project, with the combined resources of both companies.  MS terminated their mutual relations, leaving IBM holding the bag.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2#1985–1989:_Joint_development

 

If that had not occurred, we would probably see OS/2 dominance everywhere.

[Flojomojo]

That's an interesting point about the IBM culture and image. The old Apple rainbow logo was chromatically incorrect, but Steve Jobs wanted the color blue at the bottom as a middle finger to IBM. IBM has the resources and mindshare to the point that it didn't much matter to industry what Apple thought or did, but their revolution was in schools (Incl higher ed) and homes. 
 

There's an undercurrent of disdain for all the top 5 tech companies nowadays (Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft) but I don't see the detractors gaining sufficient traction to make a difference, especially in a world with few popular alternatives. 

[+GoldLeader]

As others have said,  IBM really doesn't do hardware anymore...Servers, the Cloud, Analytics...Well, let me just quote their company profile:

 

International Business Machines Corporation operates as an integrated technology and services company worldwide. Its Cognitive Solutions segment offers a portfolio of enterprise artificial intelligence platforms, such as analytics and data management platforms, cloud data services, talent management, and industry solutions primarily under the Watson Platform, Watson Health, and Watson Internet of Things names. This segment also offers transaction processing software for use in banking, airlines, and retail industries. The company's Global Business Services segment offers business consulting services; delivers system integration, application management, maintenance, and support services for packaged software applications; and finance, procurement, talent and engagement, and industry-specific business process outsourcing services. Its Technology Services & Cloud Platforms segment provides project, managed, outsourcing, and cloud-delivered services for enterprise IT infrastructure environments; technical, and software and solution support services; and integration software solutions. The company's Systems segment offers servers for businesses, cloud service providers, and scientific computing organizations; data storage products and solutions; and z/OS, an enterprise operating system. Its Global Financing segment provides lease, installment payment plans, and loan financing services; short-term working capital financing to suppliers, distributors, and resellers; and remanufacturing and remarketing services. The company serves financial services institutions, airlines, manufacturers, and consumer goods and retail companies. International Business Machines Corporation has a strategic partnership with Cloudera to develop joint go-to-market programs. The company was formerly known as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. and changed its name to International Business Machines Corporation in 1924. The company was incorporated in 1911 and is headquartered in Armonk, New York.

 

That's why.

[ChildOfCv]

11 hours ago, CaptainBreakout said:

There is another more subtle factor in this question that should be explored... Public sentiment.

 

IBM in the 80's, Big Blue, was seen often as the suppressive enemy force that represented relentless industrialism.  I think they were often unfairly painted as such, but there's the old adage of the day "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM". The sentiment of the average non-businessman or casual non-conformist business-minded person was to hold IBM in contempt.

I don't remember any groundswell of public hatred over IBM.  If people considered them at all, they just thought of typewriters, mainframe computers, etc.

 

11 hours ago, CaptainBreakout said:

 

So, as a business, IBM was saddled with that negative popular image. This was perfectly exemplified in Macintosh's first big TV ad, the one where a worker flings a hammer at the grey industrial imagery on the big screen and starts a revolution, presumably.

 

This "IBM was the big mean business nerd" image carried on for decades. Apple milked it. Remember the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads?  (Of course, a decade earlier it would have been "I'm an Apple II, I'm an IBM" but the sentiment just morphed along with the product).

Well, that was also a parody of Orwell's 1984, and it was also run in 1984.  But I don't think it was directed at IBM specifically, but at all PCdom with its boring and confining text-based stuff vs Macintosh's awesome graphical stuff.  The one thing Apple has always been better at, was presenting their products as hip and fun rather than just as appliances.  The newer campaign especially was cool guy vs nerd, not freedom vs oppression.

 

Contrast that with IBM's advertising.  Of course the PC was obvious:  If you need spreadsheets, word processing, book keeping, etc:  Here's your product!  Basically, the same things you'd try to sell a business, except that they were trying to sell the home user on it.  Even with PCJr, they brought in their Charlie Chaplin lookalike to tell you about this new home computer and give it a friendly spin, but they kind of biffed it on the messaging.  "It plays games.  And when you're not doing that, it can also do all this productivity stuff!  See?  It's not a total waste!  Please?"

 

The business market clones knew that their best bet was to sell for less.  Simple enough:  Just don't be so choosy about parts.  IBM had strict quality control and made sure their machines were rock solid.  The competitors were willing to take a quality hit in order to gain the cost-competitive edge.  The business market decided that the price difference was worth the risk.  As long as it wasn't a Packard Bell, at least.  So let IBM trumpet the PC line, but advertise yourself as a cheaper alternative.

 

In the home market, the competitors realized that you need ooh and ahh to sell a computer, so Tandy, for example, created their game-playing clones and always demonstrated them at the store with games playing.  When compatibility turned into an issue, they worked on a compatible PC clone but with PCJr's best qualities.  From that point on, IBM had pretty much lost the home market too.

 

11 hours ago, CaptainBreakout said:

OS/2. Some could say it's biggest flaw was that it was an IBM product and, therefore, subject to a higher level of scrutiny and even open distain. The big grab to regain control of its own OS was probably undermined by its own brand-name, but it's really hard to quantify exactly how much.  IBM was just not hip, at best... a wolf in sheep's clothing at worst. 

I don't think that was the problem either.  Microsoft just played nastier hardball.  They convinced IBM that they were a good support company that could help them establish the PC as a standard, but undercut them at every turn.  The clones were always shipped with MS DOS not PC DOS.  Later they were shipped with Windows 3.1 instead of OS/2.  Microsoft played licensing games to make sure their stuff always looked like the more attractive bundled software, and long before the integrated web browser, they had already caught the attention of the FTC for their tactics.  By the time IBM had a good OS/2 to offer, the average user already had Windows baked in and would have thought "Why should I spend extra for that?"  The software infrastructure for Windows was already strong too, so switching to OS/2 meant giving up a lot of choices there.  Later they added Win3.1 compatibility, but it was too late.

 

11 hours ago, CaptainBreakout said:

Here's something fun to think about... What if Samsung in current times was seen in the same light as IBM was in the 80's?  What if Samsung WAS the Big Bad Master Control Program -?

 

Could they continue to operate in the same way? How 'bout Google?  Food for thought.

Savvy people already think of Samsung, Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft as domineering companies.  But Youtube is still the most popular streaming program, Amazon is still the biggest retailer, and all the major cell phones, tablets, and computers are following Apple's lead of becoming less repairable and more breakable, and they're still the biggest sellers in the market.  Microsoft is still the most installed OS despite how ugly they've made it look, and despite how much they juggle every single #@$# setting around in every single release.  So, yeah they're all doing just fine.

 

[MrMaddog]

IBM's downfall was the PS/2 line in order to "take back" the PC maket from the clone makers. First they made the Micro Channel bus so propertary that would not only make any clone maker pay to license the design but also makers of add on cards for it.

 

Then they stuck with the 16-bit 286 processor instead of the 32-bit 386.  The 286 can switch between "real" mode for DOS and protected mode for other operating systems like OS/2, but only with a reboot.  And even with something like OS/2, you can only run one DOS program at a time which makes the whole multitasking idea moot.  The 386 would have been better since it can run multiple DOS programs in their own virtual mode sandbox, but IBM was too late for that party.

 

So the clone makers stuck with the AT bus standard, now called ISA, and went with the 386 which was faster even though it was stuck running with the same memory limitations of the IBM PC.  Of course Microsoft took full advantage of it, especially when IBM had their "designed by a commitee" OS/2, to promote their Windows.

[bluejay]

Were people happy to switch from BASIC to DOS? Did a lot of (dumb)people wonder why the BASIC programs that they typed on a 5150 not working? Were you?(wish I could have witnessed the BASIC to DOS evolution lol)

[mr_me]

IBM made 80386 based computers, they just weren't first.  All that did was give some more credibility to Compaq.

 

OS/2 could multitask dos programs better than microsoft windows 3.  But organisations weren't going to switch to an OS without OS specific programs.  That's where microsoft leveraged their unique and unfair position to build and promote their new windows office applications and operating system.

 

I bought a motherboard with an IBM 486slc2 to upgrade my computer.  It was cheap and I was very happy with it.  That's my only experience with ibm and is probably more than most people.  Did anyone here have any negative ideas about IBM?

 

I doubt many bought an IBM PC that booted to BASIC.  MS-DOS came with a BASIC interpreter.  It was more or less the same basic I learned on a commodore PET.

Edited January 1, 2020 by mr_me

[MrMaddog]

On 12/31/2019 at 9:20 PM, mr_me said:

OS/2 could multitask dos programs better than microsoft windows 3.  But organisations weren't going to switch to an OS without OS specific programs.  That's where microsoft leveraged their unique and unfair position to build and promote their new windows office applications and operating system.

Don't forget at the time businesses still needed to run their DOS based applications like Lotus & WordPerfect, so that's why both OS/2 & Windows had to run DOS programs.  Only with the 386 processor they can run more than one DOS program in each of their own "conventional" memory space.

 

Of course once that happened, then Microsoft came in with their Windows native replacements bundled with Windows PC's...which were compatible with Lotus & WordPerfect files.  That's how M$ nailed the other companies, which sucked...

 

[Turbo-Torch]

On 12/31/2019 at 7:09 PM, bluejay said:

Were people happy to switch from BASIC to DOS? Did a lot of (dumb)people wonder why the BASIC programs that they typed on a 5150 not working? Were you?(wish I could have witnessed the BASIC to DOS evolution lol)

 

Not quite sure what you're asking.  BASIC is a programming language and DOS is a Disk Operating System.  Pretty much any DOS had its own enhanced version of BASIC to take advantage of the disk drives (disk BASIC).  As far as a 16K 5150 with built in cassette BASIC being upgraded to a disk system...were there major language incompatibilities?  I'm guessing finding someone who owned a cassette based IBM would be difficult, let alone finding someone who was angry over BASIC programs needing to be tweaked to their new disk system. 

 

For my Model III, I can boot to TRSDOS, type BASIC and still run most programs that were typed in and saved to cassette.  I can also copy them to a disk and run them that way.

For something that's really finicky, I can boot to cassette BASIC (internal ROM) by holding the break key while turning on the power and it's like the disk drives were never installed.  Heck, I have a further enhanced version of BASIC that takes advantage of the optional hi-res graphics board.

 

 

[bluejay]

2 hours ago, Turbo-Torch said:

 

Not quite sure what you're asking.  BASIC is a programming language and DOS is a Disk Operating System.  Pretty much any DOS had its own enhanced version of BASIC to take advantage of the disk drives (disk BASIC).  As far as a 16K 5150 with built in cassette BASIC being upgraded to a disk system...were there major language incompatibilities?  I'm guessing finding someone who owned a cassette based IBM would be difficult, let alone finding someone who was angry over BASIC programs needing to be tweaked to their new disk system. 

 

For my Model III, I can boot to TRSDOS, type BASIC and still run most programs that were typed in and saved to cassette.  I can also copy them to a disk and run them that way.

For something that's really finicky, I can boot to cassette BASIC (internal ROM) by holding the break key while turning on the power and it's like the disk drives were never installed.  Heck, I have a further enhanced version of BASIC that takes advantage of the optional hi-res graphics board.

 

 

Well, before the IBM PC, all major computers had BASIC in ROM and some had CP/M. Then the IBM PC appeared, and it didn't have BASIC, but it had DOS with it. I was presuming dumb people could have tried to typed in BASIC programs in a C:\ prompt.

[Turbo-Torch]

34 minutes ago, bluejay said:

Well, before the IBM PC, all major computers had BASIC in ROM and some had CP/M. Then the IBM PC appeared, and it didn't have BASIC, but it had DOS with it. I was presuming dumb people could have tried to typed in BASIC programs in a C:\ prompt.

 

The PC and XT had built in BASIC contained in a ROM.  If you had a disk drive and used IBM PC DOS, the disk BASIC contained on the DOS disk still made use of the ROM.  Disk BASIC would not work on clones/compatibles because they didn't contain that ROM.

 

The early Atari 8 bit line did not have built in BASIC.  When you turned on the computer, all you had was a useless notepad screen.  BASIC was available on a cartridge that you plugged in.

 

CP/M was an OS on disk which contained MBASIC. 

 

 

[mr_me]

Ms-dos came with gw-basic.  Was it possible a pc compatible would be sold with pc-dos rather than ms-dos?  Eventually ibm stopped putting basic on built-in rom.  Either way if you wanted to use basic you had to know to start the interpreter.  There were lots of instruction books that came with the computer for the dumb people.  And ms/pc-dos was based on cp/m which was influenced by the pdp-10 os.

 

Did the atari 800 come with the atari basic cartridge or was it sold separately?  The XL models had basic on rom built-in to the computer.

[ChildOfCv]

3 hours ago, bluejay said:

Well, before the IBM PC, all major computers had BASIC in ROM and some had CP/M. Then the IBM PC appeared, and it didn't have BASIC, but it had DOS with it. I was presuming dumb people could have tried to typed in BASIC programs in a C:\ prompt.

As others have said, PC and XT came with ROM BASIC.  If you didn't have a disk in the drive, or if you had no drives, you ended up in cassette BASIC.  PC's, at least, also had a cassette port.

 

My PC came with the PC manual which covered basic usage and adding expansion cards, etc; the DOS manual which documented every program on the PC-DOS disk; and the BASIC manual with extensive documentation of the BASIC language (including which versions each command was available in), as well as its internals so that you could write machine language subroutines.  All written by IBM and all nicely documenting just about anything you'd want to do.  There was even an "Exploring the IBM PC" disk that guided you through many simple tasks as a tutorial.  In BASIC, there was a sample disk that contained various example programs.  There was a cheezy game called Donkey, where you were driving down a road and had to hit the space bar to change lanes and avoid donkeys that were in the road, for instance.

 

So as far as that goes, the PC was quite nicely documented.

[carlsson]

Regarding killer apps, was it IBM or Microsoft which contacted all the major software vendors ahead of lauch of the PC to ensure they would have all the popular programs already available for Apple II, sometimes also TRS-80 or PET? I remember reading about that but don't bother researching it at the moment. A rather progressive move to take as many market shares as possible, but perhaps also fully understandable.

[Turbo-Torch]

6 hours ago, mr_me said:

Did the atari 800 come with the atari basic cartridge or was it sold separately?  The XL models had basic on rom built-in to the computer.

I believe it was always included on the 800 but I'm not sure that was always the case for the 400.  At one point there seemed to be a base model 400 and then you could buy starter packs called The Entertainer, The Communicator, The Programmer and The Educator.

 

If you look at The Programmer, it included the BASIC cartridge which makes me think that model of 400 didn't include it.