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<p>On 4/26/2017 4:17 PM, Thomas Haigh wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>The counterfactual version of
history would involve Apple sticking with Lisa, working to
boost performance and gradually broaden its base from higher
end niches to general business use, only pitching it for home
use when costs came down enough to offer a 1MB machine for a
few thousand dollars. That could presumably have yielded
something like an [Mac] II long before 1987, during the
crucial period in IBM compatible machines were locking up the
market. This would have given Apple an installed user base
earlier, and credibility in the mainstream business market
that the Mac never had. <o:p></o:p></p>
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I suspect that Apple never had a chance of overcoming the IBM
compatible PCs locking up the market. It seems to me that Apple was
flying in the face of a major trend at the time, i.e.,
hardware-vendor independence. The Internet was giving companies
independence of computer vendor proprietary architectures on the
communications side of things (and coppanies liked it), and
Microsoft was promoting its software as being independent of
hardware vendors. (Of course, Microsoft was not promoting
independence of operating system vendors.) <br>
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