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0 pointsgumby3y ago0 comments

> When I first got Pacific Bell (now part of AT&T) DSL in California in the early 2000s, it was run by a seperate division of the company, "Emerging Products Division". i always assumed that was because the traditional side of PacBell just didn't get digital at all and the leadership kept them apart to avoid the innovator's dilemma.

This technique had previously been used by IBM to the the PC out: they built a whole division from scratch in Boca Raton away from the IBM mother ship in NY

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ianai3y ago

I definitely wish more recent tech had gone the standardized way similar to how IBM standardized computer building. We’re into four decades of being able to build PCs from customized/off the shelf parts because IBM didn’t go the “make it impossible”/proprietary route.

gumbyOP3y ago

Actually that credit goes to COMPAQ. IBM used commodity parts to save money but it was COMPAQ who famously cloned the BIOS a and made IBM-alikes against IBM’s wishes.

But by then the cat was out of the bag: IBM tried to achieve a proprietary beachhead with Micro Channel (and OS/2) but that added value for IBM, not the customer.

com2kid3y ago

Don't forget that Microsoft maintained momentum in this area. MS loved having open standards because it let MS pit OEMs against each other, causing hardware prices to drop while Windows license prices stayed the same.

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