Accidental Empires

From: Roger Ivie <IVIE_at_cc.usu.edu>
Date: Mon Aug 11 16:23:36 1997

On Mon, 11 Aug 1997, Marvin wrote:
> I just read the book "Accidental Empires" by Robert X. Cringely that was the
> basis for the PBS movie, "Triumph of the Nerds."

Sam Ismail wrote:
> I'll add that I thought the book to be extremely entertaining and a great
> read. I'll comment on the fact that not much mention was made of CP/M in
> that history seldom celebrates the losers.

I just recently saw "Triumph of the Nerds" (playing a lot lately on a PBS
station near you, no doubt) and was fascinated by the view of history
presented in it. Basically, if it did not involve Apple, Microsoft, or
IBM, it wasn't history; they only started talking about CP/M when it got
to the "and IBM needed an operating system" part of the story.

One curious bit. The statement that Apple had 50% of the PC market share
when IBM came out with its PC stuck in my mind. Going through my pile of
old BYTE magazines, I found a BYTE from that era (well, 1984 actually; which
is actually a match for era because they were building up the Macintosh
story) which gives 50% of the market share to Tandy...

Roger "cut my teeth on a TRS-80 Model I" Ivie
ivie_at_cc.usu.edu
Received on Mon Aug 11 1997 - 16:23:36 BST