30 Years of Personal Computer Market Share

chiagoo writes "Ars Technica has a fantastic article that looks back at the most popular personal computers from the last 30 years. It covers everything from the Altair to the 8- and 16-bit eras to where we are today. A bit of a downer that they barely mentioned Linux and gave no mention to other significant OSes such as OpenBSD, but still a great read nonetheless."

Remember when?

[ackthpt]

I can remember when you could measure a platform's popularity by the thickness of Computer Shopper.

Back in the early 80's it was with Apple ][ clones -- Peaches, Oranges and various other fruit. Slowed a bit when Apple bit back on the people copying their ROMs so the cloners simply bought a bunch of ROMs and kept going

In the late 80's and early 90's it was all PC's -- Once Columbia PC beat the blue giant of IBM it was open season and they approached 2 inches in thickness.

Now it's all but gone, or may be as I haven't seen one in a while. The web pretty much killed these publications, like Micro Times, a bay area staple for geeks until it vanished.

I'm surprised

[saskboy]

I'm kinda shocked that the PET outsold the TRS 80 by 1980. I never saw a PET before today, and I grew up with TRS-80s of all sorts, Model II, III, 4, Data Terminal [that was never hooked up even], Color Computer II, and Model 1000 laptop. The laptop is particularly popluar today, since it runs on AA batteries, and edits plain text which is still fine for web programmers with a Serial port.

Re:Fast... like turbo button!

[Ruff_ilb]

IIRC, the turbo button actually slowed things down - games and other applications ran as fast as possible, so when running an old DOS game for example, the turbo button would bring the game down to playable speeds.

market share

[EmbeddedJanitor]

When you're talking about market share then Linux is unfortunately just a blip and BSD even smaller, particulary if market share is being measured in terms of revenue. When it comes to personal computers (!= servers and embedded systems), then many/most Linux PCs probably got sold as Windows units anyway.

Anyone remember the RUN magazine (C=64) ?

[Spy der Mann]

where you could type your games... later it came with the Automatic Proofreader(TM), where you could verify each line's checksum, and it beeped with an error if the line you entered was wrong.

My dad had a huge collection of these magazines. But what interested me (at 6yo) was the ads, because they mostly were videogame ads, full of colors, etc.

Remember Summer Games? Summer Games II, Winter games? Pitfall II? H.E.R.O?

Ah... i feel so nostalgic about it :)

PC dominance an argument for open-source software?

[XAJIM]

The dominance of IBM PC's over the past few years is much greater than any dominance of Microsoft in the software market, yet the haters of this technology are few and far between (mostly Mac fanbois). I guess with multiple vendors making products for the platform, open-source junkies are satisfied that one company isn't making all the profits whilst the majority who follow the lead are happy that new innovations are constantly being made and they have the backing of an established, relatively stable platform. Is the success of the IBM platform an argument for open-source software? Obviously IBM doesn't make a heap of cash from every PC product sold, so there's not a great long-term monetary argument for a company developing an open-source standard per se, or is there?

Re:Think how different it might have been today..

[SimonInOz]

Actually I always felt DEC made a catastophic error. At the time PCs were just appearing they had a tough, industry tested 16 bit multi user, multi processing operating system - RSX/11M. It ran on a microprocessor (and bigger machines in a different form, notably on the VAX) and was really pretty good.

I don't think they could bring themselves to sell it at a low price - they charged maybe USD 1000 for it.

And now they are dead. So sad. They made good kit.

Re:Fast... like turbo button!

[MarkRose]

In a sense, yes. Actually, when the turbo button was disabled ("off"), it would cause the CPU to execute a bunch of no-ops, effectively making the CPU as slow as older models to allow games, etc., to be useable. The frequency at which the CPU ran never changed.

Kinda disappointed in the article...

[deathbyzen]

The bad guy wins in the end :(

Seriously though, I remember my first PC was a Packard Bell 486 running Windows 3.11

Ah, those were the days... when playing an mp3 at full quality was a system intensive task... when a 2gig hard drive was A LOT of space... when a 56k connection was FAST... when owning TWO computers was a big deal... when L.O.R.D was the king of BBS games...

*sigh* Those were the days.

Not So! Clarke was there first!

[Stan Chesnutt]

Quoth TFA:

"The idea of a personal computer, something small and light enough for someone to pick up and carry around, wasn't even on the radar." (referring to the mid- to early-eighties).

Not so -- Arthur C. Clarke, in his mid-Seventies novel "Imperial Earth" described a device called the "Minisec", which sonds a lot like a modern PDA -- it could even "synch" to a larger console computer via infrared.

Re:Also no mention of BBC Micro, etc.

[BJH]

Yes. The BBC Micro was never really marketed in the US, and the Sinclair 8-bit computers were sold under the Timex-Sinclair label, but failed miserably in the market (unlike the UK where they were seen as the "working man's computer" because they were so cheap, in the States I think they were seen more as useless toys - unlike the more useful computers that were coming out at the time, in particluar the Trash-80).

Re:gah

[evilviper]

SMPS technology was in its infancy.

So? There's no reason PCs couldn't have operated with linear power supplies. They are even cheaper than SMPS. Effeciency and size wasn't much of an issue at the time.

Storage technology involved huge platters or huge tapes.

Although slow, cassette tapes were a real option back then. Large floppy disks from IBM were also starting to appear at the time, although expensive.

RAM was damn expensive.

Everything was expensive. That doesn't mean there wasn't a market for low-spec'd, expensive machines (still far smaller and far less expensive than minicomputers).

So what did they think Intel should have done? Released a "PC" in 1971 that [...] had 4k RAM

Sure, why not? Even with 4K of RAM, people would definately have found uses for them.

The technology indeed wasn't ready. The PC came when it did because technology allowed it to come, not because of lack of vision.

Only if you redefine "PC" in some very specific way. Practical PCs could have come about years before they did.

Poor Apple

[timeOday]

I thought Apple had something of a resurgence in the last couple years, but I don't see [arstechnica.com] much indication of that.

Re:Also no mention of BBC Micro, etc.

[LardBrattish]

I know someone who had a C64 in England. IIRC they were quite popular until the mid 80s when they were pushed out by the 16 bitters from the top + Amstrads from below. Sinclairs were always big in England - and they had some of the best games - Atic Attack, Ant Attack...

I had a BBC 'B' which put me in a bit of an Elite ;) for a while but relatively limited for games. Revs was good with it's great Silverstone implementation (pre emasculation with all of the chicanes) as was Elite of course...

Re: Asimov

[MZ80K]

I have read the first foundation book twice. In one version, the main character owned a rule calculator (the mechanical thing) which was so advanced it could do differential equations. In the second version, it was replaced by something which resembles the present day PDA.

Re:microsoft may have the BSOD

[GrahamCox]

Actually, though I'm a Mac guy myself and just don't use Windows, it amazes me looking back that Apple had such faith in their OS and more importantly in developers' abilities to write solid code that they had next to nothing protecting anything in the system. They even placed things in memory in such a way that crashes were likely to be even more catastrophic - like placing key system variables in very low memory, not far off location 0 - and we all know what writing to NULL does, don't we?

The system bomb only appeared if you were lucky - in fact most crashes hosed the machine so badly that even that couldn't be displayed (and in spite of appearances, the system bomb isn't drawn in a real window, or uses any of the high-level code - it's just faked out to look that way, drawn by some very low level code in ROM that in theory should always be runnable... though to be honest the BSOD is probably preferable, since the bomb always made YOU feel like an idiot...)

What is remarkable looking back is not that the original Mac OS was crude compared to what we expect today, but that it actually worked at all. Things have changed massively on OS X - not only is there no system bomb, but very littl elikelihood of needing one. Yes, crashes do happen - I've had perhaps 2 kernel panics in the last year - but they are so rare as to be easily ignored. If Apple had somehow put in some of the memory protection that we take for granted now into the original Mac - I know, I know, technology wasn't available, blah blah - then the history of computing might have turned out differently. But then you could say that about a lot of things.

ZX Spectrum

[rishistar]

The Sinclair ZX Spectrums were at the same time (1982) as the BBC and kicked off the idea of a computer in the UK home to me. If my experiences are reflective of the wider picture, The BBC Micros were more about school use - but at home a Speccy was the thing to have - mainly as it was cheaper and seemed to have better games.

Re:PC dominance an argument for open-source softwa

[Aim Here]

"yet the haters of this technology are few and far between (mostly Mac fanbois)."

Well for Mac weenies, vendor lock-in on the software is just not enough. They need the warm comforting feeling of vendor lock-in monopoly hardware too.

I think you use the phrase 'open source' here a lot more than you mean to, so I'll adjust the argument appropriately

"I guess with multiple vendors making products for the platform, open-source junkies are satisfied that one company isn't making all the profits"

For "open source junkies" you really mean anyone who objects to Microsoft-style monopoly business practices. Including the open source community, free marketeers, competitors to the monopolists in question, and consumers generally.

"Is the success of the IBM platform an argument for open-source software?"

The IBM platform was a computer architecture that was opened up and became a de facto standard. "open source software" has little or nothing to do with it. Perhaps what you mean is that the lesson of the IBM PC could have some analagous lesson regarding the openness of software standards.

"Obviously IBM doesn't make a heap of cash from every PC product sold, so there's not a great long-term monetary argument for a company developing an open-source standard per se, or is there?"

s/open-source standard/open standard/j I assume

What you're trying to say is that developing an open standard is silly if a company wants to become a monopolist. Probably true.

But there's plenty of money to be made from the computer industry without necessarily becoming a monopolist (for example, IBM made heaps of cash from selling PCs, and then selling it's PC business, even if it couldn't charge rent on all the PC clones out there).

The only argument in favour of letting a company monopolise or close a standard is if the software that uses it wouldn't otherwise get made, not whether or not makes $100 million or $10 billion. With t'internet and it's terabytes of free or open source software swimming around, not to mention plenty of the proprietary stuff if that's your thing, that software does have a way of getting itself made these days, so I really don't see that as a viable argument.

Re:Nothing like the old days....

[fatphil]

Lousy article, 2/10 if I'm generous.

They've missed several very important PCs - ones from the equally keen, equally inventive, but smaller, UK market.

Where are Clive Sinclair's ZX80 (1st PC < #100), ZX81, ZX Spectrum, and QL (cheapest of the 4 68k machines)? TI rebranded some of those in the US, I know.

Where was the BBC Electron, Model A, and Model B. And the Acorn Archimedes with the ARM processor. A processor so well designed that pretty much every single other micorprocessor manufacturer has licensed its design (TI, Intel, Motorola, etc., etc.). I know the Beeb reached the US as my g/f had one when she was growing up.

It mentions Wing Commander, but has conveniently forgotten that WC was just /Elite/, the classic BBC game (and Spectrum and C64) on steroids.

And why is the era of the 20 address bit PC, and the 32-bit register 24-bit address space ST/Amiga/Mac/QL called the "16 bit era"? The 6502 and Z80 machines were the heyday of the 16-bit era. The fact that shitty PCs had a shitty OS was the "oh my god, 16-bit legacy refuses to die" era.

good book if you're into old computers

[dougiewright]

Pick up a copy of Digital Retro, The Evolution and Design of the Personal Computer by Gordon Laing. It's by Sybex ISBN: 0-7821-4330-X.

It's a fantasic book and it will bring back many good memories of that first computer. It covers about 44 computers/game consoles with colour photos, technical specs, company history and interesting trivia.

Includes lesser known (in my opinion) systems like the Tatung Einstein TC-01, Oric-1, Jupiter Ace and the Grundy NewBrain.

It isn't hardware or software

[texaport]

Instead of waxing nostalgic about product introductions, when is the last time you saw something and:

1) Told bosses that getting one of these would open great, new horizons?
2) Pleaded with teachers and administrators to make a historical decision?
3) Begged parents because something was revolutionary and not evolutionary?
4) Saw the future as wide-open because of a fantastic new tool for inventors?

Re:Growing up in the 90s

[el_womble]

I'm sorry I made you feel persecuted, but I think I'm on your side. My point, as badly worded as it was, was saying that the Amiga WAS a real computer, but that public perception was that it was a toy... and that public perception was wrong. With the benefit of hindsight, and a wider perception of the IT industry, I can see what a valuable platform the Amiga could have been, had it been widely told what it could do. I helped my father waste £1500 on a Pentium 90, when in reality we would probably have been better served by the significantly cheaper Amiga 500, or gotten a Mac instead. C'est la vie.

C64, Amiga, and INFO Magazine

[airship]

Ah, the computer wars of the mid-80's.
At INFO magazine, we were right in the middle, bashing IBM and Atari, giving grudging admiration to the Mac, and singing the praises of the Commodore 64 and Amiga.
Those were the days.
Anyone still interested in such things might be interested in visiting my INFO nostalgia page at: http://airship.home.mchsi.com/infomag.htm [mchsi.com]

- Mark R. Brown, former Managing Editor, INFO Magazine

PS Very nice article at Ars, by the way. Great research. Those numbers are almost impossible to find, and I think they did a great job. Love the graphs. :)

Re:I don't understand your post at all

[el_womble]

My point was that even though the XBox is sold as a games machine its really a fully fledged 'real' computer, just like the commodore amiga was in its day, its just crippled.

My second point was that if it wasn't DRM encumbered, and was allowed to run a full OS, its share in the home market would probably make up a significant percentage, just like the commodore amiga did back in the 90s.

My final point, although it was probably the weakest, is that it doesn't matter what you are selling, if its not Intel/Windows its not a 'real' computer in the eyes of the public. It doesn't matter how fast, how well it works, or how much better it is than Wintel, people will always assume its a toy unless it got the wintel seal of approval.

For example devices you can send email from:

• mobile phone
• Sky/Cable Box
• PDA
• Mac/Linux
• Wintel Box

What do people buy when they want to send email regularly? A wintel box. Why? Because its a real computer, and everything else is just playing at email... at least thats the perception.

Its not really the publics fault. We might be used to the IT horizon changing every couple of months, but other social groups just arn't used the that rapid sense of change. It might be 5 years since you couldn't transfer a Mac floppy/usb stick to a PC, but its only now that this fundamental change is starting to sync with the public psyche.

Linux has gotten an even bigger mountain to climb. It may be getting some free advertising in the national press, but if you ran a vox pop on Linux asking "What do you know about Linux?" I'd bet you get more half truths, fud and outdated misconceptions than in a Microsoft marketing thinktank, and if you can find anyone who's even heard of *BSD out side of the IT industry I'd be very suprised.

As for your point about price tags. I understand that the machines are subsidised, and that they recoupe that cost through development licenses and game sales, I just don't remember asking for it. Nintendo sold their games on cartriges because it made the games load faster. I can respect that, especially as the console before that was a spectrum 48k. I can also see that from a business point fo view it entitled them to charge for game licences and development kits... cartridge fabricators arn't exactly standard on new PCs.

What annoyed the hell out of me was when Sony and Microsoft waded in with commodity hardware and decided to cripple the real functionality and decide that what the community wanted was cheaper, but restricted hardware, and then getting all pissy when people didn't want to play just the offical games. If you stick USB ports, firewire, CD/DVD drives on a box with a general purpose CPU in it, its going to be cracked. Release the development kit, and let nature create the greatest games on the planet.

I don't have a problem with copyright holders coming down hard on piracy rackets who are profiting at the expense of their expertise and genius. I don't have a problem with console builders suing the hell out of software companies that sell games without paying a licence. I do have a problem with publishing houses and hardware vendors who penalise people for wanting to get the most of hardware that they own, using free software. If you buy lost leader ink-jet paper from Costco are you restricted from using it in a printer your bought from Best Buy? Of course not.

No blitter in the Atari 800

[Anonymous Coward]

"Designer Jay Miner had fitted these machines with impressive technology, including a custom blitter chip that could blast large sections of graphics on the screen without involving the CPU."

This is incorrect - that was the Amiga. The Atari's custom graphics chips were the Antic, which could arbitrarily mix graphics modes on the screen and produce interrupts in-between designated scanlines, and the CTIA / GTIA, which could overlay sprites (player / missiles in Atari parlance) as well as doing general color processing.

Terrible.

Re:I don't understand your post at all

[WinterSolstice]

I think he's saying "Why can't you get OpenOffice (equiv) for XBOX?" Which is a good question. Why don't all computers come with a BASIC interpretor anymore?

I looked at this issue on a thread a long time ago, and I'll restate it here - people don't care about computers anymore. I don't know why. My kids have access to gaming and coding technology I would have killed for, and they don't even care. They don't even play computer games much anymore - they're simply not interested. What the heck happened?

Game Informer this month released the 'statistic' that 78% of teenagers were becoming "less interested" in gaming. Anyone know if this is an actual trend? I thought gaming was on the rise. Computer Science certainly doesn't seem to be.

-WS

Not True

[Johnny Mozzarella]

"Apple really topped out in the early 1990's, and has been on a long, (admittedly slow) downhill slide since then. They've managed to produce a couple of temporary upward bumps since then, but never anything very significant. Ultimately, it's just a bit of noise in a long, slow slide into oblivion. Recently, Apple's doing a bit better financially, but that's due to sales of iPods (and associated music, accessories, etc.) not Macs."

In 2001 Apple sold about 3 million Macs which generated about 4.5 billion in revenue.
In 2005 Apple sold over 5 million Macs which generated over 6 billion in revenue.

http://homepage.mac.com/jomy/.Pictures/APPL/Q4-05. 013.jpg [mac.com]