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On Fri, 7 Aug 1998, Patrick Bond wrote:
> Does this make sense?
Yes it all makes sense. However, there were two basic resons why UNIX never made it to the PC:
1. In the late 80's, after workstations were recognised as part of the modern office, for architecture, engineering etc., the various vendors, especially Sun, HP(who bought Apollo), DEC and SGI were involved in Standards battles, (also with ATT, IBM and others). No one thought to extend the workstation to secretarial and clerical functions, expand the sales volume and lower the cost. All these different flavors of UNIX are still around, all slightly different. Linux appeared in '93 ( I think I told you I left a large partition on my new ('96) hard drive to install Linux, but haven't got around to it). Thus Unix for the masses didn't get the low-cost early start it could have, so never made it in the PC, till Linux (tho there were some early attempts that never went anywhere). With Apple's disorganization and loss of focus at the time, the way was clear for MS Windows and Intel to doominate the desktop. (I decided to leave the typo uncorrected, since it seems appropriate).
2. To this day, Unix is a specialized tool; you need to know what you're doing, to use it. Nobody ever developed a MAC-style GUI for it. It's too hard for most people to use. Also getting it to work across a broad range of processors, with different mixes of attached peripherals, often requires a lot of knowledge and experience.
Love,
Denis