I built my first computer in 1980 with a lot of help from my friends and yes we did it in a garage and yes I went on to sell them. It was an S-100 bus(1), Z80 processor, 16kB memory, 5.25” 90kB Shugart floppy(2), Televideo 950 terminal running CP/M (3) (the forerunner to DOS). It took a few hundred hours of frustration and experimentation and cost around $15,000 in parts alone to get to the A:\ prompt! Consider that a family Commodore (Car not computer) cost about $3K and you must think me mad but that computer opened the doors to help me build Australia’s premier meeting and event management company (Event Planners Australia) and by 1982 grow to 15 staff and win the prestigious Australian Small Business Award. I sold my event company to the world’s largest event agency; Swiss based multi-national MCI Group in 2010.
But an A:\ prompt is pretty useless without software and so I set about writing some to help my business. I am credited with authoring and developing the world’s first commercial meeting and events software called EVENTS Pro now owned by US based Certain Software and it is still the gold standard. To support my hardware habit/hobby (is that a hobbit?) I opened Techmart - Queensland’s oldest computer superstore which until its eventual demise in 2010 was an iconic importer, distributor, white box manufacturer and retailer. Alas there is no money any more in hardware!
In 1994 ABC radio wanted someone to do a weekly segment on computers and that grew into a top rating, hour long IT news and talkback segment that continued until 2004 when I needed to take time out for another venture.
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So that brings me to my editorial slant.
I respect Microsoft (MS) for GOD (Bill Gates) gave us DOS, Windows and Office that are the mainstay of business. Ironically I consider MS a supporter of open standards as it really does not make the hardware and that allows for differentiation, competition and innovation. I am excited at the design philosophy behind Windows 8 which essentially crosses most boundaries between x86 and ARM computing devices regardless of form factor. My computing and communications environment is MS based.
I like and support Android, Linux, Chrome and all the variants of the open source ecosystem - human endeavour must be encouraged. I have been in awk of, and grep Xenix and its variants since 1980 (bit of nerd humourJ) but abandoned it when MS NT server came out in 1993.
I admire Apple for Steve Jobs’s marketing and design savvy – sexy looking devices dumbed down for the general populace (no blond jokes please). I don’t like their walled garden, closed ecosystem hardware and OS approach but it has been unbelievably successful for its shareholders and I give credit where it is due. I don’t own any Apple devices although my highly intelligent wife covets an iPhone and iPad because of all the nice covers and apps... (my point precisely).
I used to be pro Intel but these days hardware is not as important and I love my Acer W501, AMD X86, Windows 7 (soon to be 8) tablet. I think that ARM architecture processors are a necessary evil only because it’s a shame the x86 standard has been abandoned and now requires five or more OS platforms to cover the market.
Remember that there is no money in hardware so the greatest innovation from here on in is not about the OS or hardware platform but what you can do on a wide range of devices from a smart phone to a 100” TV. Advances in HTML5, ubiquitous and cheap internet access (with apologies to Telstra who have the best 3/4G networks but need to cut the price substantially) and the future of behemoths like Apple, MS, Google, Facebook and Twitter is not necessarily guaranteed.
I like to know my audience so my email door ray@im.com.au is always open for comment, commendation or condemnation.
Nostalgic references
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-100_bus
2. https://www.swtpc.com/mholley/SA400/Northstar_May77_200.jpg
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M
