At the start of the new year, William White was figuring out how to cheaply swallow up NBC and Disney. Silicon Valley was teeming with garage companies, and International Business Machines from Florida was one of the more unique ones.
This company, still operating from a garage, boldly called itself IBM.
IBM misjudged the personal PC market. Not only were they losing value on Wall Street, but they were also being mocked by a bunch of garage companies. Then there was annoying Apple, positioning itself as the industry leader, and the opportunistic White Software. Whenever new software launched, it was always on Apple first, boasting about their system's stability.
This was deliberately trying to undermine the "Big Blue." They couldn't understand how William White knew their system was unstable. It seemed designed to hit them where it hurt.
They actually knew that Motorola's 6700 was out. This was expected as it was a stripped-down version of the 6800. The 32-bit channel was removed, and the CPU frequency was lowered, making it much inferior to the 6800. But who cares? It was dirt cheap!
...
Now Mike Markkula was stressing about which chipset to use for the Lisa computer. As William White said, if you take too big a leap, you might end up hurting yourself.
The 6800 wasn't a true 32-bit processor. While it was more powerful than the 6700, with memory being so expensive, installing more than 1MB was impossible.
"Jobs, I think William White is right. Until large memory becomes common, 32-bit channels are meaningless."
"Markkula, that jerk is focused on his own interests. If we lower Lisa's specs, we won't stand a chance against IBM."
"But the current price is too high, this will cause problems."
"It should be fine, after all, performance has improved so much. Being a bit more expensive is reasonable."
...
A bit more expensive? William White was speechless when he heard the news. Over ten grand and they still called it "a bit more expensive."
"Tom, don't bother with Apple. They've succeeded in getting dizzy with their own success. It's time for a wake-up call. Focus on Commodore. Tell them anything over three grand would be disastrous."
"Got it, boss, we'll work on other systems first."
"Okay, is MSDOS out yet? Tell IBM we need at least six more months."
"Understood."
A 16-bit CPU was quite an improvement over an 8-bit one. But with memory development dragging behind, the advantage couldn't be realized with just 128KB. You needed at least 512KB.
The key issue was, even 256KB was considered high-tech, and 512KB was out of the question. Not for another couple of years, even if developed, the price would be hopeless.
16-bit CPUs didn't have a long life historically. Apple II was used into the 1990s despite the limited sales of Lisa computers, which were quite rare.
Even IBM didn't sell much, primarily due to mismatched price and performance.
Today's Apple II is 6600, far superior to its historical self. If IBM and Apple didn't change, their sales would definitely be lower than history.
This was an opportunity. Unfortunately, Apple didn't seize it, instead making a series of disastrous decisions. The Lisa was insanely expensive, and Steve's Macintosh was absurd. Without a hard drive, how did they plan to install a graphical interface?
In the end, the move was comical. Lisa became the upgraded version of the Macintosh.
Sure, the Lisa with a graphical interface was nice, but come on, Macintosh was a $3,000 item. Selling one meant at least a thousand-dollar loss. This wasn't sustainable.
Any business can be done, but not one that loses money.
William White initially wanted to prevent this from happening. But now it seemed impossible. The inertia of history was too strong; personal influence was limited.
William White wasn't being altruistic. This was about his own interests. Since this path was blocked, he couldn't abandon IBM.
...
Speaking of which, that knockoff IBM was quite amusing. Perhaps it was time to irk Big Blue. Those old guys were really infuriating.
Someone was planning to embarrass the Big Blue, so naturally, Florida's IBM became famous. A group of jokers, a bunch of college students, suddenly became media darlings.
These nonconformists made their feelings about Big Blue clear as day. To grab attention, Big Blue was mentioned again and again.
Shameless media even proclaimed that America might have two IBMs in the future, that Florida's IBM had great potential, and all.
Everyone in IT knew this was nonsense, but that didn't stop them from joining the fun. Envy, jealousy, and resentment toward the industry giant were bound to exist. If someone stirred the pot, everyone else was happy to join in.
[T/N: After losing the legal battle with the real IBM, the Florida-based company International Business Machines was forced to rename itself. It changed its name to Computer Systems Support Corporation (CSSC). Though it was later.]
Big Blue was in a bind. They were powerful enough, true, but hadn't invested much effort in personal PCs.
Without resources invested, big businesses were sometimes worse than small companies. Naming computers alone was a headache -- almost a fruit war.
Whether it was a banana or mango, neither seemed as catchy as Apple. Hearing the joke, William White felt like he got struck by lightning. Goodness, if compatible machines got called bananas, that'd be absurd.
This wasn't someone's intentional slip. PCs had already been called fruits. IBM was the first to use it, and the computers of this time were generally called fruit machines.
White Software had taken over the PC term, and people got used to it. Big Blue continued struggling with names.
MSDOS was as unreliable as could be, and Intel's CPU wasn't stable either. As for other software, it was nowhere to be found.
White Software? Don't be ridiculous. How could they be brought out now, just to let others copy them?
That's what White Software said. It almost choked the IBM folks.
If you think this was done just to stir trouble, William White didn't have free time for that. Lotus Software's alliance with Big Blue wasn't a secret to the industry.
*****
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