We’re Gunning For IBM

[seebart]

The minicomputer maker Wang Laboratories ran an ad on the Super Bowl long before Apple did. So why did the company and its minicomputers become a footnote?

http://tedium.co/2017/02/14/wang-comput ... %3A+tedium

[vivalarevolución]

Wild guess without reading the article: they should have made better keyboards for their computers.

[vivalarevolución]

Interesting article, though. I would like to know why Wang is compared to Dell, because Dell still exists and has been able to innovate over the past few years.

[seebart]

Wild guess without reading the article: they should have made better keyboards for their computers.

No, I don't think that would have helped.

Interesting article, though. I would like to know why Wang is compared to Dell, because Dell still exists and has been able to innovate over the past few years.

Not sure either, no one said this was great journalism.

[Mr.Nobody]

At the time, the second biggest company was DIGITAL(later incorporated by Compaq), anybody has any memory about this company? I doubt it; many companies failed along the way due to all sorts of "flaws"; IBM was founded in 1911 if I remember right, and it's still there, still functioning well, still being innovative, we have to admit IBM does have something that other giants don't.

[Hak Foo]

I always had the feeling that Wang never really pivoted well to the microcomputer. Importantly, the mindset of "you're selling a commoditized device" aspect.

Just think of those old 725 keyboards... even though they were full-scale into the PC era then, they were still shipping hardware with a distinct "we expect you to use it with our specific integrated package" mindset.

I suppose it was fundamentally a big shift from the calculator/wordprocessor and even minicomputer market, where you were usually selling a package deal, not "does it boot DOS? I'm bringing my own software".

I once saw an early Wang PC clone. -- something like http://home.total.net/hrothgar/museum/W ... index.html -- and it was clear they didn't get the memo everyone in the 1980s PC industry did-- if you're not building something like a luggable/portable/laptop, the right way to make a 5150 clone is to slavishly mimic the appearance, feature set and connectors and slots of the real deal.

[seebart]

I always had the feeling that Wang never really pivoted well to the microcomputer. Importantly, the mindset of "you're selling a commoditized device" aspect.

Yeah it seems Wang had their own approach and failed pretty quickly at some point.