👆 I read the story of Don Estridge, the manager who led the development of the IBM PC. His decency is moving and long gone in the tech industry.
That story is worth reading not just for how Estridge pushed the boundaries of the computer industry, but also how he pushed the boundaries of humanity in business. Which these days is an oxymoron.
time for fairly obscure canadian retrocomputing history
IBM Home Computing seems to have been a canada-only chain of retail stores that sold IBM products. it didn't last long here - maybe 5-10 years - before it disappeared in the early 2000s. we had a single location in downtown Edmonton City Centre Mall in the mid-90s.
it wasn't the place to go for the best deals on hardware and software. everything was sold at retail prices, and i remember seeing very few sales. i remember buying my Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold at the downtown location as a first-year university student for the princely sum of $300.
as you can see in the last photo - buying an IBM in 1994 was a major investment. you could buy three used cars at the time for less than a pentium desktop. 😬
does anyone else remember these retail stores? did they exist in the US, or was it a canadian chain?
@vga256 Apparently their employees wore white lab coats...? Was this a necessity of the job, or a thematic element? IBM isn't exactly known for creative flourishes, but the lightning bolt in their logo makes me wonder if they were attempting some sort of science gimmick.
A "mad scientist bar" would have been an interesting precursor to Apple's Genius Bar.
@csilverman ahahaha i never saw the lab coat thing myself.
but i do remember employees wearing bright blue short sleeved dress shirts, pretty much like best buy
One day while picking my son up from day care, I noticed all the kids checking me out in a very particular manner. I asked him what they had done today, and apparently, they had been talking about what their parents did for work.
"I couldn't remember if you are with the FBI or the CIA, but the guys thought it was pretty cool" he said
While he had a few details wrong, it made for a good story at morning coffee with my IBM colleagues the next day.
Pour les francophones qui me suivent et qui ne sont pas effrayés à la perspective de me voir causer, ce soir à 21h30 j’interviendrai sur la chaîne #twitch de l’association MO5.COM
Au programme l’ascension du PC, comment il est devenu un standard incontournable et comment #IBM c’est retrouvé minoritaire sur son propre marché.