What happened to IBM - PCs

[@Derpy1969]

It was said in the early 80s that it would take IBM nine months to ship an empty box. That’s how bad management was.

[@srinip]

It was said wrong. I was in IBM at the time, and things were shipped with caution - unlike Microsoft who let users do their beta testing for them.

[@Dxeus]

I am an IBMer, and I approve of this message. 😅

[@srinip]

@@Dxeus Maybe things have changed since I retired.

[@larryrunnels1190]

@@Derpy1969 I knew of pele in that time period that hot rich by ordering IBM mainframes and then selling their place in line before it was delivered. They never intended to actually receive the machine

[@SkylearJ]

​@@srinipcareful and negligently slow are different concepts

[@jeffj2495]

When i was in IBM in the mid 1990's, it was still full of hallways of people whose main job seemed to be "attending meetings". Low productivity and nepotism contributed to the decline. I was in software development (aka engineer), and many of us left to work with people....who were....well, actually working.

[@abebrock5559]

Same here. Can't complete the project at hand because a team leaders, manager's, manager decided they wanted to invest in a different pet project. Each IBM development and manufacturing location became a fifedom in the 90's, now most are gone or vanishing soon enough.

[@treojoe1077]

@jeffj2495 Yep. When I started there in 1990 they had to have a two hour meeting to decide what we were going to order for lunch.🤨

[@willatkins9686]

I got out after OS2 debacle!

[@LD-EconInsights]

They were too stagnant and everything fell apart.

[@apaitiadrivationo5628]

Corrupt always brings a Organisation down

[@MrJumper68]

In 1985 i had savede a lot of monny. I wanted a ibm pc. In Denmark there was 3 ibm shops. I went inside. A guy came in a suit. Ask me what i wanted. I was looking to buy a pc. But I could not get a demo. I could call the shop In copenhagen an buy one there. I got a colone... better and cheaper. Years after, i was working In a news paper as an it chef. With a big budget. We was looking for upgrading the server farm... 50 units. And 700 pc'es.. An ibm was knoking on the door.. looking forward to make a deal. Well we went with another company

[@dmora2309]

@@MrJumper68 🤣🤣🤣is even funnier because that is a perfect analogy of what happened to IBM as a whole, an arrogant super expensive company living in the past.

[@noth606]

So, you're either saying you went with a different supplier because of an experience years before when you could not get a demo from a suit wearing IBM salesguy? Um - okay, sounds like a brilliant way to go about things. When I worked in IT I ended up always buying Dell because they would listen to me and make an offer based on what I was asking for, and on the phone. HP always wanted to send some suit wearing dude who wanted to sell something else, not what I wanted. If I'm asking for a server with 256gb ram and a lot of cores to run VM's on, I do not want to talk to some guy who wants to sell desktop PC's. That was HP... HP sells servers, I know they do, I have one second hand. But HP never seemed to want to sell any servers to me when I needed them at work LOL. Dell instead listened first to what I wanted, then made an offer that was actually what I wanted and made some free upgrade or so on top. I was interested in IBM servers then, but we were a too small customer I think.. We just needed 2 servers for a total of 20-30k€. I'm typing this on my private Dell laptop, but I do have a HP ML350G10+ next to me, dell didn't and still doesn't really have a similar thing. AND the HP thing is not really working the way I want haha, so it may well be that I end up replacing it - for some Dell that actually works.

[@MrJumper68]

@@noth606 yes. If I dont get good service, then I find another solution.

[@robertbrand5408]

Your grammar and spelling is atrocious. Your sentence structure is worse .

[@CommentingOnTheFreakshow]

My Dad brought home the first IBM PC on the employee purchase plan for $6000! After he died I found the receipt in his stuff!

[@repatch43]

The scary bit for me is you take this story, go forward 20 years, replace 'IBM' with 'Intel', and you have almost the exact same set of events.

[@xBINARYGODx]

not really

[@Michel-r6m]

Intel for years were only selling assets instead of innovate. Apple and AMD are serious alternatives.

[@illumencouk]

​@@Michel-r6mThe excuses that form this explanation paint a Jekyll and Hyde Business acumen that is difficult to accept. Successful, intelligent groups of people don't usually turn into idiots - like the guy said about Intel, it's a strategy he's seen before.

[@arik2216]

Why is scary ? 😂 No one care to corpo. Intel goes down then another to replace it in capitalist hole.

[@dmora2309]

@@repatch43 Intel is victim of his own success, since x86 processors are so important and nobody can make them (besides one or two other licensees), caused they didn’t diversify his products, I know it was a very good run.

[@kaylemaclou]

Correction: During the early 1990s, the OS/2 operating system was far superior to Windows. OS/2 incorporated preemptive multitasking from its beginning. Preemptive multitasking was only introduced into Windows in 1995 with the release of Windows NT 3.51. Windows only won because it was much cheaper.

[@jfbeam]

OS/2 was a better Windows than Windows. Yet IBM did everything to ruin it.

[@normangiven6436]

I have a copy of OS2 warp. I figure its worthless.

[@EvilMaxWar]

I grew up on OS/2 in the early 90s, my dad was a fervent OS/2 power user but I did not like it as all my games ran like crap on it or not at all. OS/2's DOS compatibility was hit and miss and pretty bad for things like games. It also felt quite slow compared to what I was expecting so most of the time I would end up using a boot disc and go back to DOS

[@DemocritusX]

@@normangiven6436 Yeah I had one to... maybe still have it on the attic. Wrapped in the original plastic still. Maybe 50 years from now it's worth something...

[@buddyroeginocchio9105]

OS/2 missed a great opportunity to supply IBM, something went wrong with their negotiations. DOS and Bill Gates almost won out by pure luck.

[@martinschulz9381]

I remember well the IBM electric typewriters with the ball in typing class in high school, in that time they were very amazing. I also remember when "IBM compatible" was the big computer buzz term when buying a computer. Good video.

[@johnathonme]

As an ex IBMer this video is a fun run down memory lane but its totally missing what really went down especially in the 2000s, the PC hardware business simply wasnt core and it was only becoming more commoditized. IBM core income was big govt and big enterprise plus research with revenue licensing inventions. HP did a similar refocus, so did many other mainframe era tech giants. Comparing IBMs journey to Apple and others distracts from where IBM did and does its business today. And for recent innovations look at the z16 majnframe, IBM Watson AI, Cryptography, Cybersecurity and contribution to hundreds of industry standards each year that are critical to their customers . I'm an AWS cloud guy now but still a ton of love for Big Blue and their ongoing relevance!! 😊

[@luissalazar6960]

Internal bureaucracy kill IBM. Also there was not a leader to guide the company.

[@thavashgovender4345]

Agree ( also in Enterprise IT, Azure guy here ) but I think that they should have held onto Thinkpad. The reason for videos like this is because people have “forgotten” that IBM exist. If they held onto Thinkpad, that IBM logo would be in front of millions of people daily. Not to mention you would still have enterprise contracts with so many companies where you could sell other services, many customers are now AWS or Azure and buy nothing from IBM. The sale of ThinkPad was one of the biggest mistakes in IT history ……

[@srinip]

As a retired IBMer, thanks for saying that. The truth is, neither Apple nor Microsoft nor Google can ever be compared to IBM. I was around during the last Opel days, all of Akers and Gerstner and Palmisano. Yes, things changed, but back in the day it was a joy getting up in the morning and going to work.

[@Tinman_56]

My father worked for IBM back in the day, repairing many of their mechanical equipment such as printers, copiers, typewriters, etc. However, his commendable improvised actions to repair high-end equipment for customers with minimum downtime led to his dismal thanks to management's nearsighted control of the industry and proprietary equipment, internal rules and regulations and demand strict compliance by the company. He was customer focused while IBM was more concerned with dominating customers' pocketbooks and industry pricing for products and services.

[@pederlettstroem980]

@@thavashgovender4345 I agree. It was a mistake to sell Think Pad. When IBM dominated the typewriter market, then almost all working people admired IBM with iits product. All people respected IBM depending very much depending on the fors class typewriter quality. IBM was so famous. When IBM sols the lap top segment, then IBM lost a remarkable important advertisement - the every body knowing the name IBM. And earilier, why try to sell stupid made copiers? It was becoming a too big company with a manadgement after manadgement who didn’t know what to do. Too many divisions who workers with bad goals. Anyway, good luck BIG BLUE. I wish IBM a great future.

[@elksalmon84]

Greed, corporate greed. But that's a good point - failing companies are where management are not using products they making, so they are not making those products for themselves.

[@jesdadotcom]

That's how GM was caught off guard by Lexus. Everyone had a free company Fleetwood Brougham. None were exposed to the competition.

[@jovetj]

I say "complacency" versus greed.

[@rwdplz1]

The IBM Thinkpad was THE best laptop you could buy. After the sale to Lenovo, they coasted along on a couple product generations that had obviously been in development at IBM before the sale. Starting around 2009, it just gradually declined.

[@jovetj]

I really liked my PCjr. I understand why it's a black-sheep and how, well, weird it was for its time, but it got me into computers!

[@ianedmonds9191]

Peak IBM Thinkpad was the T23. IIRC That was the one with the titanium top on it. Fantastic machine. They all were. Totally and completely bulletproof reliable.

[@maedero05]

80's IBM tried to dominate the market, OS2 and business PC total computer hardware, this failed with WI down and cheap compatibles. Network their core initial activity was the o ly viable business to conti ue their presence !

[@pharkasj]

Lenovo is still a top 3 (with HP and Dell) enterprise notebook vendor.

[@actng]

@@ianedmonds9191 except for the friggin HDD :D

[@mrpawpaw7023]

IBM died from mismanagement beginning just before Lou Gerstner who came in and finished it off. I worked there for 18 years back then. Saw it first hand.

[@joee7452]

You do realize that IBM is still in business and makes a lot of money? I am not saying they are the same company, but they are far from dead.

[@Ultimatebubs]

Sam Palmisano was the one who really killed off many of the hardware divisions of IBM, though, selling them to China. A lot of the outsourcing of software development to India happened on his watch as well.

[@thecollector6746]

@@joee7452 You do realize that IBM only makes money now from laying off workers, and from their consulting business which has been circuling the drain for years ? Their reputation at this point is trash and the only thing that is keeping them from completely going down the drain is their aquisitions like Redhat which they will likely find some way of screwing up also.

[@ByWire-yk8eh]

18 years? sounds like you were "surplussed"

[@bill01ng]

@@Ultimatebubs I believed the real culprit who killed IBM was Wall Street. It was Wall Street analysts who forced IBM management to pursue forever higher stock price and profit. That forced IBM management to sell assets, buy back stocks to jet up stock price instead of putting money in product research and improvement, to meet their expectation. Of course, IBM management also need to be blamed. I once heard that IBM considered to buy VMware but thought it was asking too much. Imagine a word if IBM owned VMware. But most of the software that IBM bought, will fall to the earth after "Blue washed".

[@RyanMcCarvill]

People seem to think this is a video about failure. But, although they made mistakes, it's also about successfully pivoting out of low margin markets and focusing on high margin. They're still one of the world's largest companies, they just don't operate in the consumer space but that doesn't mean they aren't successful.

[@SteveSteeleSoundSymphony]

Exactly. That’s what I said too. Don’t think too many people here realized that.

[@eddyr1041]

Yeah... but usually that doesn't go well with viewership KZbin.... It finished on lowest form of productivity I guess one people relate hence enforced... consumerism and consumer credit... Just like we never heard much about dutch asml etc( until recentky) since these things are the bases of civilization and b2b stuff mostly ... We all use it without realizing😅

[@CaptainQueue]

Well, that is true but define success. IBM was as ruthless and bloodless as they come, as seen by the hundreds of patents it accrued and army of lawyers to shake down other businesses for patent infringement. There are other publicized business lapses including embarrassing environmental issues, age discrimination, and WWII sales to unsavory governments.

[@waynechen1983]

Well I think they are mostly marketing and good at getting gov contracts. They are not the leaders in anything.

[@RyanMcCarvill]

@@waynechen1983 they are leaders in quantum computing, they are also (through acquisitions) leaders in cloudnative orchestration. Open shift holds a leadership position in kubernetes, terraform are leaders in infrastructure as code, ansible leaders in automation, etc

[@davedujour1]

Deep Blue is such a great story that is so very simplified by saying it "defeated Kasparov in chess." It was a series of games between Kasparov & Deep Blue, which Kasparov won at first. Between games the Deep Blue programming team would tweak the code. For the last game, that clip where Kasparov gets up in frustration, Deep Blue had been programmed not to go for the quick victory, but to keep the game going, frustrating Kasparov into resignation. It wasn't really Deep Blue that won the game, but the developers who played the very human Kasparov. Obviously the whole story is more complicated than that.

[@lolmao500]

Today supercomputers would wreck any human champion easy

[@-danR]

@@lolmao500 You don't need a supercomputer anymore. Stockfish on a cellphone would wreck Magnus Carlsen; so would several other engines.

[@kamakaziozzie3038]

I doubt it. Human brains still cannot be duplicated or bettered by silicone. We have something that computers will never achieve. The ability to be creative and think out of the box.

[@fredfinger7092]

@@kamakaziozzie3038 Silicon. SiliCONE has quite a different use, as many plastic surgeons could attest.

[@jamesgambony5870]

In 1992 the internal IT group took my functioning XT and replaced it with a PS2 running OS2. But there was no software i needed to do my job.

[@DanMorin007]

I wanted to work for IBM which was about 40 minutes from the place I was living. Unfortunately their bureaucracy and union never let me in because my parents were not IBM employees. As a teenager I ended up working as a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft in the mid 90s for a period of 5 years and then founded my own software company which I am still the CEO. In the end I am glad I never worked at IBM. Their thick bureaucracy would have been an impediment.

[@guysabol8743]

CEO with 5 employees , two of them family. rofl

[@john_in_phoenix]

Cheap clones killed the IBM PC. I worked in the factory in 1981 and watched it all happen.

[@lucasrem]

john_in_phoenix IBM was never consumer oriented, that made them unable to sell PC's, but they opened their system by running it MS Dos on Open hardware. HP is still here, selling the best systems ! My OMEN is the best system on the market

[@john_in_phoenix]

@@lucasrem The group in IBM that gave us the PC was very consumer oriented and sold PCs out the wazoo. It had standards that any other company could "borrow" and make a reasonable copy that could run most software. The rest of IBM looked at the clones and didn't like "open architecture and standards" at all. This lead to the abomination of the P/S 2 and O/S 2. The consumers voted with their wallets against a closed proprietary system that was sole source (and expensive). For a significant amount of time there was a 6 month waiting list to buy an IBM PC, and at least 5 factories in the USA operating 24/7.

[@buddyroeginocchio9105]

Not all clones were cheap or shoddy. Gateway, Compaq, Dell and HP amongst others all had respectable products.

[@spicewood7790]

IBM influenced the market to their strengths. IBM did enough to garnish a large segment of the home PC market even without being number one in in the home PC market. Their dominance in the business world and corporate data centers was a part of their strategy to lead in the software market and providing “solutions”.

[@RadRat78]

Compaq was far from cheap, quality-wise. The Commodore 64 from 1982 dominated IBM and all competition 3-to-1. Tandy's 1000 series were superior in every way to the IBM PC.

[@the_kombinator]

No one ever got fired for buying IBM. True, but no one ever got promoted, either.

[@KarlHamilton]

Commodore saw the failure of the PCjr and thought, "I'll have some of that", and promptly committed seppuku.

[@lucasrem]

We, or my myself, did shutdown Amega, at Escom Germany, summer 1995 this is my real name already shipping Commodore PC systems after the Amega PC card got faced out.

[@dennisfahey2379]

Simple answer Wall Street. IBM had high margins in the mainframe business and when it entered the PC market it had very good margins for a fairly weak machine. The Wintel ubiquity quickly accelerated the evolution of the designs faster than IBM could keep up and margins were driven to the low teens thanks to Moore's Law, heavy competition and outsourcing. Wall Street did not like the low teens and punished IBM's stock valuation. They continued to make excellent product but the call from the Street was to exit the market regardless of its revenue stream. Wall Street has done this to many companies and it is despicable. It costs the US market competitiveness, loses jobs, hurts retirees, leaves it dependent upon foreign suppliers.

[@joee7452]

Pretty much. When IBM decided to exit the PC and then x86 server market most people don't realize that it was profitable. The issue was that the profit was around 3% and they couldn't figure out how to make it much more. That type of thing hurts you on Wall Street when their Z and software areas are in the 50% to 60% profit range. So they went down 2 Billion or so in revenue from fully exiting x86 hardware, but the profit margin went up something like 30% over all.

[@dennisfahey2379]

@@joee7452 - Sounds about right. There is a great business picking up these mature cash cows that Wall Street forces companies to sell off for literally pennies on the dollar as they are clearly "fire sales" before the next quarterly report. Yet more of the stupidity of managing a going for optimal Quarterly results. I think that was why Michael Dell went private for a while - to break the erroneous oversight long enough to right the ship. Pretty gutsy move.

[@guppy0112]

Wall Street don't run other companies; they run their own! Wall Street manage our pensions and investments for us. Lots of Wall Street firms are also publicly listed and receive the same treatment as others from their shareholders.

[@abebrock5559]

@@guppy0112 Let's not be totally naive here. The power brokers at the world's largest corporations are beholding to Wall Street for their jobs, their support and for their golden parachutes. Witness IBM contiued strong stock price and executive stock options where the real money gets paid (or stolen). Investment banks and large pension funds have a vested interested in propogating IBM's financtal success in the stock market, all at the expense of employees and customers alike. Not the TJ Watson way ... is it ?

[@peterm.eggers520]

Supercomputers and mainframes are NOT the same, not even close! The author of this video has a very remedial understanding of computer technology.

[@kayakMike1000]

Mainframes are large computers. Sure, they're largely optimized for transactions as opposed to supercomputers are optimized for parallel compute.... What's your point? Seems like a detail to me.

[@peterm.eggers520]

@@kayakMike1000 That's like saying a bulldozer and a Ferrari are both vehicles powered by internal combustion engines using fossil fuels. One using diesel and one using gasoline, just details. It would appear that your understanding of computer architecture is very shallow.

[@dewiz9596]

Remedial? I’d say he read a book about a book about a book. No first level knowledge.

[@peterm.eggers520]

@@dewiz9596 I was thinking he was a google scholar. 😀

[@SteveSteeleSoundSymphony]

@@dewiz9596Or he had ChatGPT write it for him. The free version.

[@gregmchale5011]

as an Ex-IBMer who worked through many of the years noted in the video, I found the company was not very open to new ideas, though later in my career I worked in Software Development and was responsible for many product improvements, but only after they had shipped the product. I learned a lot at IBM that has stilled me well over the years, other companies just did not have the management or technology and basic principles for employees. it was painful at times for me to suggest something that the management could not get their heads around. We were years ahead in some areas of the PC product but upper management was determined to kill the product, sad so much work, talent wasted... yet I have fond memories of many exciting times at IBM. good to see this video and remind me how much IBM contributed to my life. Near the end I was involved with bringing some AI software into the business.

[@mikenixon2401]

Thank you for the informative first-hand comment. It helps us who remember when our bosses were trying to buy IBM or Compaq. Ancient history in the world of tech.

[@Midgiemoon]

IBM is the leader in quantum computing…

[@CaptainQueue]

I worked in IBM Communications for my entire 18 years and during that time I was able to observe all levels of management. IMO, the management ranks mirrored that of any skilled group -- 80% quite good, 10% incompetent, 10% evil. One difference with executives, however, is that the incompetent ones did not keep their jobs long, but there were some who were pretty evil and kept their jobs. I totally relate to your comment about management not always being able to get their heads around things at times. IMO the hidden issue was fear of stepping out of line too much and appearing to take too much risk in the eyes of their management peers. Mostly however, line management greatly feared the wrath of top executives by missing any targets whatsoever, or worst of all causing a bad rap in the external news media which was guaranteed fatal to their careers.

[@bluesboyst]

I worked at Lotus/IBM for 22 years. It went to hell when they started outsourcing.

[@rb6342]

huge omission here: the midrange S/36 and AS/400 (now called the IBM i) still active in many businesses

[@CaptainQueue]

IBM i is a fantastic platform. It was so successful the other mainframe divisions hated it.

[@c128stuff]

As former IBM employee who saw much of this from 1987 to early 2000 (first as part of the 'PC company', later as part of the personal software products division, then for a while being solution architect for finance and government customers), this was fun and interesting to watch. Technically, I could say a few things about the OS/2 and WIndows story, as that is quite a bit more complex than presented here, somewhat understandable as it is more of a footnote in the PC history, and the end result is the same, in the desktop market it failed. Curiously, it is still being maintained, and you can still buy it. It has some (declining) use still in ATMs and similar devices. Anyway, nice video, quite a bit of a story to tell in 31 minutes, but imo you did touch on the most important parts. I have no love for Akers, I did at the time understand his line of thought, but didn't agree with it. Gerstner was like a breeze of fresh air, inspiring person, had the privilege to meet him a few times. But, he wasn't perfect, and like those before him, did not understand the PC market. The Thinkpad was somewhat of a happy accident, somehow the development of the laptop (L40sx, CL57sx) and notebook (n33) machines managed to escape the bureaucracy, and while those 3 are all flawed in their own way (and laptop technology still being in its infancy), they provided the experience needed for the first Thinkpad models. For IBM standards, that went really really fast.

[@saszab]

Yes, OS/2 was the best operating system of its time. Much better than Windows 3/95/98/2000. So it really kept up with its slogan: "a Windows better than Windows and a DOS better then DOS" (OS/2 could run Windows 3 and DOS programs). I used it for many years and really didn't understand why people struggle with Windows when there's such a good alternative.

[@jesdadotcom]

OS/2 was amazing. It totally transformed my Thinkpad. I could do so much.

[@CaptainQueue]

I heard Gerstner in person speak to 300 employees behind closed doors in a talk to set the stage for inevitable "cost cutting." I thought he was shrewd, curt, highly intelligent, and totally terrifying. No wonder what he wanted would happen very quickly. I survived three layoffs at my NY location, but not the fourth.

[@billjako340]

Gerstner was the biggest mistake; he not only destroyed the PC but the chip development as well all the while filling his pockets while we the employees lost the most.

[@mardus_ee]

​@@saszab From the consumer point of view, Windows was always cheaper, it came preinstalled everywhere, and did most of the same things anyway. - The same reason that PC-compatibles became popular due to the open architecture of the IBM PC, why Android is more popular worldwide for its openness relative to iOS, and why companies are gravitating towards the RISC-V CPU. - It's the openness of a standard, and not having to pay license fees. I'd read a comment on Slashdot once, 'that it doesn't matter too much, if something has lesser specifications, but that it's good enough to serve its purpose.' Then there were (are) the economies of scale in terms of hardware (drivers) and software support that greatly favoured Windows, which, as an example, had for it the market-capturing software suite in Microsoft Office, plus plenty of other Windows-only software.

[@semibiotic]

Don't forget Xerox. They invented/developed many things and gave them out to industry. Ethernet, mouse, Windowed GUI.

[@tobycortes]

Aker is the worst thing that happenned to the company NO DOUBT INDEED !!!!!!!!!!!!! he just cashed out, no improvement, no nothing !!!!

[@eddy2561]

I was selling PC's including the IBM personal computer. The PCjr was a joke!!! I couldn't give them away and sadly it died an agonizing death. IBM's OS2 was an excellent operating system but lacked compatibility with the rest of the world..

[@genelamb571]

You left out a major factor in IBM's downfall. Bill Gates got a non-exclusive contract to supply the OS. With an exclusive contract, clones would have had to pay IBM for a compatible OS but instead Microsoft got all the software money. This allowed MS to grow and other PC manufacturers to multiply and displace IBM.

[@jeffj2495]

Totally agree. And the IBM VP who blew that deal was Cannavino. He got the boot from IBM, but it was too late. I met him once, at a corporate set of presentations. Nice guy, but he was the lynchpin in the IBM PC and software downfall.

[@bcwbcw3741]

A factor in allowing Gates the contract he got was the very real anti-trust threat against IBM. The FTC came very close to trying to break-up the company on anti-trust monopoly grounds. IBM feared that if they made the operating system proprietary they would be opening another arena for anti-trust legal problems. They couldn't know that the Republicans would successfully gut anti-trust over the next ten years.

[@EarthStarz]

Exactly this, I haven't watched the video but this is what happened

[@jimsimpson1006]

Back in the late 1990s I remember reading the book "Big Blues, the unmaking of IBM" by Paul Carroll, which explained this in much detail.

[@PaulRandle-sc8qk]

Correct. Gates comes from a family of corporate lawyers, and knew how to do a deal where he would be the big winner.

[@sgee-vc1hz]

IBM is dead??? I've owned IBM for 4yrs and the dividends and cap gains have been fine, stock hitting new all time highs daily right now.

[@niv8880]

They are indeed still thriving with cloud, AI, especially quantum, they still have mainframe and sell consulting services. I used to visit one of their sites in the middle of the Jewish area near Manchester, UK - which I found creepy and disturbing given IBM's role in WW2. I've not read IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black yet

[@TheGariego]

Ditto

[@eugeneharry481]

I have been receiving monthly checks from IBM since I was hired in 1967. Also quarterly dividend checks. Not dead yet.

[@zimzam9166]

AI garbage. 386 is not pronounced with the word hundred in it

[@jeffrejr1]

Exactly reading a script but actually knows nothing about the subject

[@jovetj]

@@jeffrejr1 It's computer narration. Can't expect the effort to get things like that right.

[@SteveSteeleSoundSymphony]

ChatGPT probably wrote the script!

[@mardus_ee]

Mispronounced names, too.

[@fredfinger7092]

SO sick of videos with lazy, low-effort AI-generated content being misread by AI-generated voices. This is the future of KZbin. Low-effort, lazy, repetitive, superficial, mispronounced crap. Which will result in the next generation of humans walking around thinking that subsequent is pronounced "sub SEE kwent" and 386 was pronounced "three hundred and eighty six"...

[@TWCH]

Wow! IBM is dead? Your thumbnail startled me bc I bought 20 shares of IBM in Feb 24. I looked. Stock's up 24% plus dividends. Pretty good for a dead company. BTW I've been disincentivized to watch your video.

[@dewiz9596]

Yeah. But someone is making money from KZbin ads. . . “Just Saying”

[@SteveSteeleSoundSymphony]

People mistake IBM’s old PC division for IBM. The PC division was small potatoes inside of IBM, and other divisions didn’t care if they survived or not. When OS2 failed, many at IBM were happy. IBM has always been and always will be a mainframe and supercomputer company, including a future leader in quantum computing.

[@danf4447]

@@SteveSteeleSoundSymphony good point. ibm always hated itself and its internal divisions were at war with each other more than other competitors. stupid policy

[@80s_Gamr]

The "Andy" TRS-80? That's some great editing and accuracy checking right there. 🤨

[@scprotz8102]

They just had a bot read the script. It is so bad

[@TonyPombo]

​@@scprotz8102 Sad. This was a nice video that I *had* to give thumbs down because of the bot audio. Intel three hundred and eighty-six, seriously? Nobody says it like that.

[@Muller-s5f]

@@TonyPombo Thanks for the warning. I had saved this to watch later but won't bother now. I hate these bots reading scripts

[@jovetj]

@@Muller-s5f Me too, but I still watched it. But I'll avoid this channel in the future.

[@grepora]

@@scprotz8102 One thing I find annoying about AI speaking is reading numbers formally instead of conventionally. So 3800 becomes three thousand eight hundred, instead of thirty-eight hundred. That would make sense if it was written 3,800, but without a comma, it just sounds weird to me..

[@jerry3890]

Starting back in the early 60s IBM loaned schools Selectric typewriters for typing classes. Every secretary had learned to type on a Selectric. To get good a good secretary a firm needed to supply her with an IBM. Brilliant marketing!

[@NnNn-yr7mu]

Jerry that was due to the Selectrix self correcting error function .....

[@elbiggus]

I worked for IBM in the early 2000s and the amount of bureaucracy there was mind boggling - it doesn't feel like an exaggeration to say there were more "managers" there than people who actually did stuff.

[@LegIIAVGCA]

IBM stock last 6 months has been doing very well. $130 to today $235. Pays a small 2.3% dividend. They just do not do consumer items anymore.

[@OhMeadhbh]

IBM's market cap growth between 1997 and 2024 in real terms is about 10%. Recent gains in stock price come from analyst's (probably correct) assumptions about IBM's ability to deliver income from consulting services as well as (maybe correct???) anticipation of the value of quantum computing in the future. That's great, but they're exposed to the business cycle (more than other companies) and are selling a product without much leverage (consultant hours.)

[@TractorMonkeywithJL]

One time I walked into an IBM store and asked if they had any clones. The guy's face turned red, and you could just about see smoke coming from his ears he was so mad. He didn't say anything and walked away completely ignoring me.

[@AlwyneAvinash]

Microsoft became the company that is today because of IBM, a lot projects that were scrapped at IBM became billion dollar companies after the teams involved left and started their own, eg SAP

[@jovetj]

Sounds like Apple and Xerox.

[@lucasrem]

Oracle, HPE and IBM, that is SAP, all cloud based now.

[@Jasperforex]

Loved it - and loved working at IBM for 17 years too.

[@jesse2d]

So you're the one!

[@Frank-i5o5o]

I loved working for IBM too. From the mid 70s to the early 90s, unfortunately I got caught in that s$8:!$t storm on the IBM PC. Does anybody remember the IBM PC stores? That got ground up in the old guard must have meetings people and the young guns who really wanted to make it work. The old guard could not understand that we needed to sell that iron over-the-counter. They wanted the same procedure as was used in branch offices to order a main frame! And that was just one example during the decline

[@GetFitEatRight]

IBM very rarely made a bad pc or laptop. I tried so many of them and through they where all amazing. Their early tower pcs where literal tanks, I always called mine "the big blue dog".

[@jhonwask]

It's interesting to note that IBM started as a company which sold precise scales. Corporate bureaucracy is the downfall of many companies. I see that happening where I work now. Didn't they ever hear the saying, "too many cooks spoil the broth."?

[@davidlloyd7597]

Yes, companies start off as scrappy little innovators and gradually accrue more and more bureaucracy until it kills it off. This will also probably be the fate of Apple and Microsoft.

[@abebrock5559]

Nope, I think they missed that point completely. IBM never met a manager they didn't like. I had 7 bosses to explain my project probems to when I was there. If you wanted to progress through the position ranks at IBM the best and sometimes the only possibility was to become a manager. And up the promotion stairs you got launched.

[@JapanPop]

AI needs to learn that in US computer lingo, a 286 is a two-eighty-six; 386 is three-eighty-six.

[@TonyPombo]

Place the blame where it belongs - The crappy KZbinr who uses it. I *had* to downvote for this reason. Sad, because I genuinely liked the video otherwise.

[@jfbeam]

I have to say, I can't tell if this an AI reading a script or a human who just doesn't know what they're reading. (and who doesn't speak english) The odd pronunciations are _very_ distracting.

[@jovetj]

@@jfbeam If you _think_ it's computer-generated narration, it _is_ probably computer generated narration. (NOT the same as "AI")

[@ianedmonds9191]

@@jovetj The real question is did an AI write most of the script?

[@jovetj]

@@ianedmonds9191 Maybe, who knows. Some of the imagery is suspect.

[@bakerkawesa]

Technology companies should be run by technical people.

[@DumbledoreMcCracken]

Disagree. Technical people run companies into extinction. A company needs a visionary who can read the future, a sales and marketing type who can sexup the product (Steve Jobs type), and an independent technical crew who can independently execute the vision. Xerox has 2 of the 3.

[@martinschulz9381]

lol, until watching this, I thought they were.

[@billjako340]

100% agree and in my mind, John Kelly should have been CEO instead of Palmisano and Rometty.

[@billjako340]

@@DumbledoreMcCracken Who do you think the last 2 CEO's were? Neither one had a vision other than how rich they could get.

[@DumbledoreMcCracken]

@@billjako340 yup, I didn't say anyone will do. They have to be good.

[@hanshans6613]

I worked on the IBM PCD transaction - and we were blown away by the professionalism of the Lenovo team. Jack Welch handbook, all the way. Seriously competent.

[@danf4447]

neutron jack is everything that is wrong with american business and capitalism. workers are not sacrificial cows

[@stayfree6115]

I helped dismantle the pc plant in Boca Raton. It was kinda sad dismantling a factory. While jobs were going overseas.

[@egmccann]

I'll say this - I used OS/2. It was actually quite a good OS. It would have been better if IBM hadn't been involved. Things like wanting to charge for the service pack that would have added USB support, obvious internal fighting (for instance, over game support - which was promised, beta'd - at least joystick drivers as I recall - then dropped,) and the PC side which really didn't want to deal with OS/2 since Windows was selling so well - it was a mess. The forums, newsgroups and magazines that were full of OS/2 supporters just showed more and more frustration with the whole situation. Frankly, if better management (and less mismanagement/infighting) and a better vision and path forward for it could have been had instead of IBM's collosal ... IBM-ness, I'd probably be running OS/2 v12 or something today.

[@transplant-f3p]

There was an employee who tried to get IBM more involved in PC development and sales. He died in a plane crash in Dallas. The 360 was IBM's last "Hurrah". Management errors caused IBM's failure. Jobs was in sales. Woznaik developed the computer. Creation of the spreadsheet made Apple's computer popular. Jobs saw a demo about the "windows" concept and ran with the idea.

[@martinbynion1589]

IBM's PC division was sold to Chinese company Lenovo in the early 2000s.

[@peterm.eggers520]

Personal computers made the jump from computer hobbyists and then rudimentary computer gamers to the business world with Visicalc, the first computer spreadsheet.

[@brianrodgers4484]

Decent content, ruined by crappy AI narration

[@PaulLemars01]

Good video. There were two fundamental facts that you missed that laid the seeds of IBM's 'problems'. The first was 'the deal'. IBM was a hardware culture and software was just a necessary annoyance that was required to rent/sell hardware. Bill Gates, when he and Paul Allan founded Microsoft, correctly identified that the only thing of value in a computer was the software since without it the computer was so much scrap. So, when Gates sold Microsoft's* DOS to IBM, he had a small clause in the contract that that stated that Microsoft would retain the right to sell DOS as MSDOS exclusively in perpetuity without a royalty. While the DOS they were providing to IBM was called PCDOS. Microsoft at the time was something like eight guys in a small office while IBM was a titan. This is without a shadow of a doubt the worst business mistake that any corporation in the history of the world ever made and it made Bill Gates into the richest man in the world for a very long time. The second screwup that IBM made laid in the heart of the IBM PC itself. Everything in the IBM PC was commercially available from the local Radio Shack store just down the road from where the PC was being designed. The only thing that was owned by IBM was the copyright of the BIOS code sitting on the tiny EPROM on the motherboard. A team of engineers who had just left Texas Instruments (I think) realized very quickly that they could clone this tiny bit of code and succeed if they black boxed the BIOS. They had one team deeply investigate all of the published (and unpublished) function calls of the BIOS. Then document the requirements and a second team of system programmers came in with no (legally documented) experience or contact with the IBM bios and write their own. Compaq was the first PC clone company and they sold millions of machines. In fact the first portable PC was a Compaq. Almost as soon as the PC was released it's fate and IBM's fate was sealed.

[@AlanTheBeast100]

The MS BIOS code was openly published from the get go when the PC came out. We had a copy of the source code at our co. all provided by IBM. All assembler (not the best...) with Bill Gates comments strewn here and there. Trivial to make a "3rd party" version. And of course it wasn't long until there were other BIOS vendors.

[@ElNeroDiablo]

@@AlanTheBeast100 Thing is; those that made a direct clone of the PC BIOS using the source code got struck with Copyright Infringement lawsuits and *lost*. It was the Clean Room Reverse Engineering of the BIOS (one team documenting the functions without looking at source, giving the documented functions to another team to implement from scratch) that allowed for legal PC Clones to flourish without IBM waiting to slam the clone makers with a lawsuit over the BIOS. As it is; every PC BIOS for the past 30-35 years that is still around has been a licensed copy of that RE's BIOS Clone by American Megatrends (the classic AMI BIOS), and it's only been in the past decade or so that UEFI has managed to replace the classic BIOS on most x86-64 computers from Intel & AMD.

[@lloyd3404]

Well, indicating how old I am, I used to program a CDC3200 and IBM360. I used to program microcomputers in machine language, and my MBA project (portfolio optimisation) was written on an early IBMPC. But what caused me to avoid the IBMPC was Windows - I couldn't get under it, so I favoured the Apple II, Cromemco, Commodore 8032, and other micros. Nowadays I use a Framework modular laptop with an AMD Ryzen GPU chip. [I'm approaching age 78]

[@billjako340]

I use the AMD as well and I worked with Lisa Su the CEO now. She was a partner Project Manager when I worked with her, such a nice person and brilliant.

[@rahithahsan188]

26:16 The IBM ThinkPad was released in October 1992, not October 1991.

[@lucasrem]

ThinkPad 300-IBM's second entry in their ThinkPad line of notebook computers

[@rahithahsan188]

@@lucasremOh, I see

[@Joseph-il5yc]

Bulk of IBM's revenue has always been the mainframe (enterprise sector). The actual stagnation of IBM is the trend in downsizing of mainframes to mid range/cloud computing.

[@abebrock5559]

Not true. Big Iron always been profitable but not always the most profitable. Got a big requirements for big computing solution from IBM today, then you have blade servers, Red Hat software, Oracle database clusters, with 3rd party development tools.

[@dmora2309]

We can blame Microsoft, Apple, Sun, etc, but the real guilty for IBM fall is IBM, they had a great run, I mean we don’t know if any of the current IT titans will last as long as IBM, but the truth is tech is a rapid change world where only the best fitted survives and there’s no place for weakness, sorry for the people that work at IBM, but is a company from the past that didn’t know how to keep itself relevant.

[@jovetj]

IBM is still a titan, you just don't hear about it. IBM still files the most patents in the United States each year, by far.

[@dmora2309]

@@jovetj Yes I know, the truth is I don’t like IBM, I mean companies are created to make money, not to be ethical or anything, but for long time IBM abused his monopoly, they make a lot of damage, and you cannot deny despite they are the company with most patents every year and having huge innovations (I remember they showed the first smartphone called Simon that ran Linux by example), despite his patents, his innovations, his financial power, despite all of that right now IBM is a dwarf compared to the new comers Microsoft, Apple, or any new tech giant, IBM is a fraction of the company it should be, and is actually kind of deserved.

[@bertnijhof5413]

I was present on: "What happened to Philips, the Dutch Electronic multinational". At an age of 50, just surviving another reorganization, I decided that it was too insecure to stay at Philips for another 15 years. So, I started working freelance for 15 years, old customers were happy to hire me. My best customer was Eurocontrol (European FAA). I was only 2 weeks without work and my income from 1995 to 2010 almost doubled, despite the 2x 3 weeks of holidays I took :)

[@nathanielenochs1843]

You have completely forgotten to talk about their computer speech synthesis and the 7090 line of IBM computers

[@MrGeocidal]

True but at least the entire video was a demonstration of computer speech synthesis.

[@toby9999]

How do you know it wasn't an intentional omission?

[@douglasmckinley-sr1507]

Or the 1401s?

[@michaelelder3945]

The IBM PC was built by the Entry Systems Division (ESD), with a philosophy that has not been used before or since at IBM: "Let them do what they want." They took off the shelf technology and wrapped it up in one package. They went with the intel chip because there was a waiting list for the Motorola 6800 chips. I got my info from one of the former members of the ESD team when I was working on RISC/6000 as a contractor. I was in and out of IBM as a contractors for many years. (... And I was working there during John Akers tenure.)

[@SabreLeonheart]

"I predict that within 10 years, computers will be twice as powerful, ten thousand times larger, and so expensive that only the 5 richest kings of Europe will own them.....!" -IBM- Professor Frink

[@The.Man.WithAPlan]

😅😅😅😅😂😂😂😊😊

[@valtervarend]

@@The.Man.WithAPlan😂

[@yolamontalvan9502]

​@@valtervarend- The Convicted Felon with a concept of a plan.

[@TheRetroGuy2000]

A decade ago, I was tasked to revise my organization's software licensing. We had more than 50 companies' software on our computers. Out of those 50 companies, only IBM required their clients to send renewal paperwork through fax. Everyone else would accept email attachments, cloud uploads, or a document uploaded through their web portal. this tells you how out of touch IBM was.

[@kitko33]

Mainframes still rule the word - every time you make a card payment, you trigger a mainframe operation. But I had to track my time sheets in 3 tools...

[@Redrogue4711]

Thank you very much for a well researched, thorough, yet concise and enjoyable documentation.

[@josecisne7997]

Forgot to mention that IBM's PowerPC arquitecture was used in millions of Apple computers and game consoles, like the Microsoft Xbox360, Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii.

[@josephtaranta4251]

The PowerPC Alliance in the early 90s. Apple - IBM - Motorola (AIM) developed a superscalar chip 31bit/64bit RISC processor. It was used in the Mac until 2006. It is still in use in IBMs Power platform that runs iSeries, AIX and Linux. We have a Power10 and a z16. It is also used in various real time applications and game consoles. IBM is doing just fine. In spite of Sam and Ginny.

[@douglasmckinley-sr1507]

In 1990/1991 I was part of an outside consulting firm tasked with, “What to do with OS/2 ?” We had a long repot with lots of longer term suggestions , but the main one was to immediately drop the price to $99 to dominate the marketplace. Never knew what happened to the final report. Probably got trash canned.

[@AlanTheBeast100]

Nothing killed the "IBM" PC. IBM has for 50+ years quietly exited any business that it was not making any money in.

[@TonyPombo]

I guess more accurately, IBM killed the "IBM PC"

[@AlanTheBeast100]

@@TonyPombo Quite right - for good business reasons.

[@Tedmader-fp3vb]

@@TonyPombothe jr part says it all - IBM dominated biz market long after the Mac was introduced

[@dancoffey8412]

I thought that IBM's biggest error had to do with seeking out the software to run their PC. They tried to get CPM as an OS, which was a fantastic piece of software that could support multiple processors, but the professor at Stanford who wrote it did not want to license it, or so I understand. That led them to Gates, who provided an OS, but the agreement did not include all subsequent variations, which meant that IBM did not control the software of the future, Gates did. And the story continues.

[@Bullwinkle056]

What? No mention of Xerox inventing the PC with a mouse and keyboard for inputs?

[@paulkrzyz2159]

Don't forget, Xerox also invented the windowing gui desktop and ethernet networking. But the managers didn't know the value of what they had, and then they allowed Steve Jobs in to see what they created and this then gave Steve the insight in how to develop the MAC with the mouse and gui desktop.

[@markbrad123]

I remember Dbase with a GUI came out in 1986. Makes you wonder why GUI Operating Systems took so long took so long after that. Other popular packages were Lotus 123 and Wordstar.

[@notneb82]

$100M in net profit each year for IBM's PC division in the early 1980's? I very seriously doubt that, $100M in revenue? That's more likely. Remember revenue is not profit. Revenue is money earned on sales before any costs for producing, distributing, and marketing are factored in at all. Profit comes after all those expenses are factored in.

[@oldmanvinny]

In 1983, total revenue was just over 40 Billion and net earnings were well over 4 billion. When I started working for them in 89, we would get shared earnings checks at the end of the year. That year I received 14% of my yearly salary as the bonus. It started going down from the highs of the 80s but it sure was cool until while it lasted.

[@palirvin1871]

All in all perhaps one of the most fair and level headed 30 min videos on the history of IBM post 70s. I began my career in IT on the new PC platform when everyone called it a toy , a mistake. Ten years later the PC was literally taking over computing. IBM made many good moves that allowed the industry to begin and prosper to create what we have today [no disrespect to Apple] but it was also IBM's own size, warts and aged management that eventually caused it's loss of the PC biz etc. People have no idea how much the world has prospered because of IBM's inventions. Please don't start throwing bombs if you are an Apple lover, Apple has also made great contributions and deserves accolades but this video was not about Apple. I lived and breathed and barely slept in the 10 years from the invention of the IBM PC in 1981 [by shipping date] until the 90s. I can tell you the truth, IBM made personal computing a success, without their stewardship it would have take ten years longer IMHO.

[@Yayoi.Hyakume]

00:17 I do NOT expect seeing her here💀

[@unhingedgears]

I mean, she has her moments... sometimes it takes one to express such... eccentric reactions

[@luisespineira9882]

I had work as an IBM Mainframe and midrange operator for a Financial Investment company in the 90s. IBM fault in my experience was it’s not comparable with other computer systems. Expensive to order upgrades and hardware. By the 2000s, the IBM Mainframe was being replaced by Servers made by HP, Dell, Cisco and others.

[@looneyburgmusic]

Steve Jobs never designed/built a single computer, and sure didnt write any code of worth. Jobs was a salesman.

[@dewiz9596]

Indeed. Steve Wozniak was “Jesus”. Steve Jobs was “Paul”, who, for 2000 years, has sold “Jesus”

[@hurri7720]

Not bad at all but very US centric regarding history. Talking about personal computers you should start by mentioning Olivetti Programma 101 for instance.

[@johnp139]

There’s no such thing as 100x CHEAPER!!! It is 1/100 the cost!!! If something cost $100, then 100x CHEAPER would be $10000 LESS THAN $100!!!!

[@freddan6fly]

At my first company they had bought IBM PC and AT to all employees. When I started the made the MCA PS/2, so I luckily got an IBM clone with 386 that was the fastest computer at the office to a fraction of the price of an PS/2. Our company only bought 2 PS/2 because a customer required OS/2 as a base on their project and at that time it only ran on PS/2 according to the IBM salesman, not sure that claim was true though. We kept one machine so that we could develop and validate the project ourselves. After that it was an expensive door stop.

[@mr_obscure_universe]

AU Contraire, mon frere. I was there, in Big Blue in the late 1970s-early 1980s. What Killed IBM was their decision to set the personal computer industry back TEN YEARS in order to protect the family jewels - the mainframe business. The IBM-PC was deliberately chosen to ratchet backward. And that decision really killed IBM. 'Cause if they had gone with the Motorola 68000 microchip, and had it microcoded with IBM's opcodes, native IBM software and OS would run. Of course, they knew this because some perky engineers at the Glendale Lab, in Endicott, NY built one. They presented the "mainframe on a desk" running VM370, DASD, Channels, Printers, etc, etc. And it was faster than their current midframes, the 4341 and 4381. To be fair, it didn't have memory management overhead, but still, for a PC, we all thought THAT was what the IBM PC was to be. Two years later, the Piece o'Crap 8 / 16 bit computer was foisted on America. Designed by their typewriter division in Boca Raton, it was a turkey. Ironically, the most advanced PC was the Commodore 64, with its MOS6510, running 1 MHz. But since it completed one instruction per clock cycle, it was faster than the 4.77 MHz IBM-PC. And its level of chip design was far more advanced (some consider it a cross between RISC and CISC). There were more chips in the IBM-PC graphics adapter than what was in the whole C64, thanks to in house custom chip designers of MOS Technology. But Commodore also committed company suicide, due to infighting with Jack Tramiel (and honking off their MOS tech employees). Long story short, IBM, Commodore, TI, and Atari microcomputers all committed corporate suicide. The IBM CLONES won the PC battle, and now dominate the field. If IBM had released the most powerful desktop computer, based on a 16/32 bit M68000 (DTACK grounded no less), able to run VM370, CMS, Script, APL, Fortran, Cobol, PL/1, CADAM, etc, etc, we'd never have heard of Micro$oft other than a small software house peddling BASIC. The downside - microcomputers would still be around $2000 a pop - and IBM would have lost its mainframe dominance. But it would "own" the OS, and most of the "big" applications running on the "mainframe on a desk." (FYI- check out the history of Commodore AMIGA and Atari 520/1040ST, and their legal battle that killed both off. If they hadn't fought, but shared the Amiga chipset, we might have seen the Motorola 68k family dominate PCs. Best of all, the advanced graphics capability would have boosted AV production. See: Video Toaster, used in the generation of CGI on shows like BABYLON 5... done on an Amiga. ) ((Bizarro World - if the PC wars hadn't happened - imagine Commodore as the #1 PC computer company, with in house MOS Tech (Bill Mensch), and Jay Miner (Atari), making products based on the MOS65xx and Amiga custom chips. ))

[@dewiz9596]

Wow! You should do your own video on this. I’m not kidding! Fascinating stuff. I say this as someone whose career was built on the xx86 architecture.

[@mardus_ee]

This is enough information for you to copy into a good blog.

[@douglaswilkinson5700]

Don't forget that our mainframes keep getting better & better. Thus fewer are needed. Check out what the z16 can do.

[@eugeneharry481]

Google just announced a new Quantum Computer chip whose performance is hard to believe. It should be IBM announcing such advances in Quantum Computing.

[@bjre.wa.8681]

It looks like they hired the entire cast of MASH for the advertisement section

[@jovetj]

Because they did!

[@BatkoNashBandera774]

"They only understood presentations with slides.." hits so much harder than it should.

[@ablanuza76]

They way IBM's management style is described is exactly the way how governments work. 😅

[@laurentdavid2147]

I worked for an IBM's partner from 1983 to 1989 and for an IBM subsidiary from 1989 to 1993. IBM used to have excellent managers who understood technology and who were able to manage very good techies better than a company run by techies. This dynamic was broken in the mid 80', I guess due to John R. Opel complacency toward incompetent managers. I'm not convinced that they are out of that mess....

[@thomasrobinson182]

OS/2 Warp helped kill IBM. For example, having to name a printer as an object was unnecessarily complicated. A lack of 3rd party support also helped.

[@sd30001]

Microsoft back stabbed IBM well on that joint venture. Nothing to do with objects or naming printers. Most modern operating systems incl Linux and OSX (Apple) work in a similar way from an object design perspective. MS was getting licensing fees from deals done with most major PC makers and it was cheaper and marketed better. No one else was going to get a look in at that point. It was too late by the time the DoJ stepped in.

[@charlieb.5760]

IBM 35-year employee here, I remember it being a big announcement out of the Boca Raton site when I was still in high school, many years since then. Nothing is perfect, but they have adapted and re-invented themselves and still going. I am in main-frame software development and also happy to see growth in other newer areas such as Redhat and AI.

[@MacCrafter707]

The IBM juggernaut is a case study in why it's easier to turn a bicycle compared to turning a train.

[@We_All_Seek_Truth]

What about that movie "The Pirates of Silicon Valley"? Is it ALSO true? Did Gates steal DOS from Xerox? Wasn't that what was in the final scene? And that he said Xerox stole it from somebody else before that, err sumpthin. Or is that just the software part of it? (It's been so long since ive seen it.)

[@davedemo8229]

I hate AI commentators

[@jovetj]

It doesn't take "artificial intelligence" for a computer to "speak." The blind have been using screen-readers on computers for over 50 years. Computer narration is janky, but it is not AI.

[@mardus_ee]

​@@jovetj Chances are high, that the script was also generated by an LLM-based system.

[@LegIIAVGCA]

Delete! DELETE! You will now get a free upgrade! Upgrades are manditory! (Dr. Who Cybermen)

[@jovetj]

@@mardus_ee That very well could be, but that wasn't the point of the original comment.

[@mardus_ee]

@@jovetj Both of these sins of machine learning complement one another. Google should have an algorithm to detect any video that uses artificial speech, clearly mark them as such, and downrank them all in Google and KZbin search results.

[@paulb2092]

I went for an employment interview at IBM in Ottawa, Canada in 1968, where they demonstrated the IBM 360 producing one of those digital illustrations of the Mona Lisa.

[@CousinSteve]

Don't forget what else IBM helped do back in the '40s

[@DrBuddah]

nazis

[@TonyPombo]

Nothing has changed with capitalism. Make a profit by any means necessary.

[@nedelwre]

counting oven supply?

[@jonb5493]

Somewhere I read that IBM were selling counting technologies to the Nazis well into the 1940s. These could have been used in concentration camps. IBM's sales people were confounded when their clients wanted to terminate the contract.

[@zjrt02]

I worked for a Fortune 10 company in mainframe development and support. In a meeting with an IBM VP I mentioned how IBM needed to respond to the rise in PC presence in corporate America. He dismissed the idea with a flip of his hand saying there would always be mainframes and PCs were a toy and a passing fad. I explained to him how corporate operating divisions were tired of being beholden to corporate IT departments and would find a way to meet their computing needs without "big iron". I wonder whatever happened to that guy.

[@grahamcook9289]

I worked with IBM machines and software, and directly for IBM from 1976 to 2016 and I can vouch for the drone mentality bureaucracy that still exists today. Awful company that truly do deserve to go out of business.

[@KU84dh37]

Hay there youz guys, what about ATARI computers???????????

[@NnNn-yr7mu]

KU you forgot to mention Osbourne .

[@edwardmoes1617]

IBM made the mistake of thinking computers are hardware rather than software.

[@kevinhealey6540]

What may have was this. In 1941 when the war started, officers over the age of 55 were thanked for their service and placed in retirement. It was because in WW 1 there were serious mistakes made because older officers did not understand the new conceptions of warfare. I was in the Army. I once asked a retired colonel that if he were called back to active duty would he go. He said, "Yes but it would not be a good sign. If they took me they would be taking from the bottom of the barrel. War is a young man's game." I get the idea that the people in charge of IBM were older and could not see and refused to understand what was happening. 26:05

[@garywidom]

what’s with the crap AI voice?

[@8RmaN8]

My "Three hundred and eighty six" computertron!

[@SansNeural]

And with the crap script. Yes, IBM was a stuffy bureaucracy, but the PC was rockstar stuff and everyone else cloned it and beat IBM's head with it. There are many things wrong with this script, like saying "you could buy a box of parts, and with some programming knowledge, assemble you own computer." I lived through those times and absolutely zero "programming knowledge" was required to build your own computer. Hey History of Gadgets person: Historians have to actually study their subject in-depth before presenting it as knowledge to others.

[@LegIIAVGCA]

Maybe this is AI generated but us guys who grew up in the 70’s, “386” chips are called back then “3-86”. Not this fast speaking AI “3 hundred 86” Most AI take videos in 3 to 5 second video clips… hurts my “2-86” brain.

[@ThePeterCorne]

Jobs didn’t write software

[@wut6922]

Jobs was just an overpaid sales representative

[@Mayangone]

I once worked for a small PA energy support company, which head office was in MD. We were a service company relying on government contracts. IBM bought our company and laid off all PA employees. A couple of years later, I heard that the IBM division, working for that same govt. agency lost that contract.

[@raven4k998]

What happened to IBM - PCs IBM happened to IBM pc's just like IBM happened to IBM ai and IBM PowerPC processors IBM is IBM's worst enemy🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@johnbennett757]

I couldn't tell you exactly what IBM does today. However, I started to invest in IBM about two years ago. At the time the consensus said to hold or sell. I did not heed that advice and bought at $130. It is now at $225 and they have paid hefty dividend in the interim. I had a very good run on this. Not sure what the future will bring. though.

[@yolamontalvan9502]

You forgot to mention that, due to their monopoly, IBM was forced to split into several small companies, and then they couldn't recover. It almost happened to Microsoft, too. Now they are after Google.

[@joerhodes658]

Split was forced on AT&T, so it was a creditable threat......but that NEVER happened to IBM. Agreee the head count plunged in the 90's from 330k to 100k and they are in a different market, but this was never due to FTC action.

[@lucasrem]

yolamontalvan9502 monopoly, IBM ?? it was all open market components, running MS DOS We only needed to clone the BIOS legit legal, we did ! Tulip computers, EU law. only BELL was pitted , but a big fail...

[@joerhodes658]

@@lucasrem Yes, clones where a thing, but IBM was never broken up (threatened, yes, but FTC never happened). And horrible management, they mentioned, but it really was awful.

[@archholder185]

Having even there during much of the time the PC was being developed and worked to come to market there as some comments there errors in timelines and obstacles that are omitted. The greatest problems were generated by legal dominance and overriding good business systems, too much influence by marketing on technologies they had on understanding. Both Akers and Gerstner were saddled and tried to brake up the stranglehold by legal and marketing.

[@taxidude]

Ask them about their involvement in the Holocaust.

[@TonyPombo]

Nothing has changed with capitalism. Make a profit by any means necessary.

[@jovetj]

@@TonyPombo Still the best economic system ever invented.

[@TonyPombo]

@@jovetj Debatable. *very* debatable.

[@jovetj]

@@TonyPombo Hardly debatable. Which one would you recommend instead?