I want to rewrite my recollections below as a short chapter in my autobiography, which will indirectly also be a history of the computer era starting the PC era.

Analyze the text.

• Recount the historical events that I mention below in more detail.
• Recount the history of how IBM addressed the rise of PC clones. My understanding is that they both welcomed it but also were fearful. I need you to add significant detail here.
• Include my affectionate tribute to the BBC Micro.
• Recount some history of the internal IBM team that developed the PC
  • Please analyze my understanding: It is a testament to depth of the bench at IBM and their execution skills that they simply invented afresh the low-end technology needed for the PC.
  • The fact they didn’t move any of their high-tech end technology to the IBM PC is key to my belief that the claim that the IBM PC was scientifically-designed to kneecap Apple
• The big picture claim here is that this was a much bigger skirmish than “IBM PC vs. Apple II”, or “IBM playing catch up”
  • This was IBM coming in and vacating a threat in their core market.
• Provide some examples of other companies that likewise vacated threats through fair technological competition. Focus on the hardware space.

Provide your understanding of these turns of phrase which I hoped would be useful to guide your thinking:

• Application of the principle: “commoditize your opponent”.
• PC was scientifically-designed to kneecap Apple
  • reflects the hypothesis that the IBM PC was designed with a specific goal in mind: to prevent Apple from becoming a threat in the business market.
  • IBM used no proprietary themselves. They resisted the temptation to “act in panic”, “move fast” etc. They never moved any of their high-end mainframe technology to the PC.
• “technological arbitrage opportunity existed”: I’m trying to praise Steve Jobs for this far-sightedness in recognizing that there was existing technological capabilities were being under-exploited.

Provide a writing plan to flesh this into a book chapter.

There’s a story-within-a-story wrt PC vs. Mac.

It’s more accurate to call it IBM PC vs. Apple II. The original loss for Apple was the PC beating the Apple II.

I used to hear a lot of hype about the Apple II, but I was underwhelmed when I first used. So, even anecdotally, it rings true to me that Apple neglected the Apple II line.

Apple II was a huge seller, especially in the business market.

• I think they crossed $1 billion (in 1980 dollars!!!).
• The first spreadsheet appeared for the Apple II (Visicalc).

You’ll see the PC was scientifically-designed to kneecap Apple.

Application of the principle: “commoditize your opponent”.

Convention wisdom is that IBM foolishly didn’t capitalize on something they themselves invented, by observing the meteoric rise of Wintel.

But if their P0 goal was simply to kneecap Apple II in the business market, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Apple still hasn’t recovered from the shellacking they received 50 years ago wrt business market.

Rare example of a big company actually beating back a threat early fairly through proper competition.

Apple’s two answers to the PC, Lisa and Mac and both failed. Both were arrogant missteps by Jobs btw. He should have fast-followed with a faster Apple II [1] [2].

They limped along until, providentially, enough laziness had set in the market, and enough “technological arbitrage opportunity existed” that St. Jobs was able to create a second chance for Apple in the phone market.

Much later, Retina screens and their excellent touchpad was a game-changer that finally brought them back to the business market, but still only the US market and only at the very high end of business users.

[1] Jobs was central to Apple’s laziness wrt letting Apple II rot. He forced the company to go all-in on the leapfrogging Lisa project that was leading. He missed the price point he promised. After that they limped along with a cult following basically.

[2] He learned from that. See the continuous backward-compatible upgrade path they’ve provided for their laptops when they switched from Motorola 68K to PowerPC and then Intel and now ARM.

My affectionate homage to the BBC Micro:

I myself grew up on the BBC Micro, a British design based on the 6502 chip. When I finally saw the Apple II, I was utterly underwhelmed by both its physical design as well as its capabilities. For starters, tt was absolutely enormous by the BBC Micro’s standards. By contranst, the BBC Micro, with its iconic red function keys, was an elegantly designed machine. If memory serves, I was also extremely surprised by the slowness of the Apple II. I only used for a few minutes and never tried an Apple II again. I was in 9th grade at this time, and been using a BBC Micro from fifth grade through eight grade. So my memories of the BBC Micro were not too long ago in the past when I tried the Apple II in my new school.