this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
161 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
1454 readers
62 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In terms of money and business, my fav is how Xerox didn't know how to market/capitalize on what was effectively the first personal computer before personal computers were even a concept, which is estimated to be a $1.4 trillion mistake.
This Xerox Alto restoration series is a really interesting reflection on that. Here's the point in the series where they finally get it running. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OQMhvArI9g
Yeah, Xerox made revolutionary progress. But it appears that their proximity to a viable consumer product is a bit exaggerated. It really did still take another set of eyes and minds to wrangle it in. I think if they did release it sooner, and without the leaks, the next competitor still would have seen that and soon come along and done a better enough job to nullify their first-mover advantage.
Those days were chock full of companies that ended up just contributing to the zeitgeist of computing without themselves reaping in the glory.
I think Steve Jobs' comments about what Xerox could have been... Is largely him stroking his ego that he and Apple pulled off what they couldn't.
I don't think Xerox would be the Mac of today in most timelines.