!pr1
!lm12
!rm75
It Was a Bad Dream, I Think................Bob Sander-Cederlof

For two hours two nights ago I tossed, turned, wrestled, and wrote a speech on trends in our favorite industry.  I think it went like this....


3-piece Suits

Woz likes blue jeans and jogging shoes.  Engineers and programmers tend to put their craft ahead of their tailors.  And the most productive rank skills before degrees.

But once an industry starts creating wealth, the business grads and 3-piece suiters quickly rise to the top.

Woz worked in a little cubicle at Hewlett-Packard.  With their blessing he left with the seeds of the most munificent Apple tree ever.  Now he is back to working in a cubicle.  Are other seeds incubating?  Will they stay in the same orchard?


Lawsuits

Another kind of action is drawn by the magnet of success:  legal.  Friends suing friends for more than they ever made.  Visicorp suing Software Arts for $50 million:  "You were too slow putting advanced Visicalc onto the IBM-PC."  Software Arts suing Visicorp for $87 million:  "You didn't promote Visicalc well enough."

United Computer Corporation (why buy when you can rent) being sued by MicroPro and others.  Maybe some people only rent so they can make their own copies.  In any case, UCC shouldn't remove the license agreements from the packages!

UCC has also earned some lawsuits over their advertising debts.  They prepay the first month, and ask for 30-day terms to run until further notice.  That was last April...we caught on in July.


Following Suit

The whole world seems to be going IBM.  Last year it was all CP/M.  Next year it may be all AT&T.  Remember back when everyone was copying Apple?

Businessmen buy those computers having the most on-going software and hardware development.  Developers, programmers, cloners, and other entrepreneurs gather around systems businessmen are buying.  The boys go where the girls are, which is where the boys are, which is where the girls are....  Being popular is so popular!

All of which slows down innovation in the marketplace.  Not that innovation is all good and popularity is all bad.  One secret of success is to stay the same long enough.  Apple II/Plus/e has presented a stable yet growing environment for developers...contrast with Commodore/OSI/Radio Shack and their strings of mutually incompatible environments.

But innovators brought us the computer.  And the supercomputer.  And the minicomputer.  And the microcomputer.  And the Apple.  And the....
