I'm going to steal an argument that I recall was "proposed" by someone in the know in a discussion about IBM's decision to make a 64kb computer with a processor that could address 1mb.
64kb systems were what everybody else was selling.
I know it doesn't sound rational, but we're mostly technical people. Marketing folks think with a different part of their brain. So do the people in suits that the marketing people get to sign the bottom line on a purchase order. And as my one of my computer science professors once explained, IBM did not become the 800 pound gorilla of the IT world by building the most technically advanced computers. They got there by selling the computers that were the most successful in the marketplace.
One of their muckity mucks once opined that the world marketplace for computers would top out at 50 units. Fast forward a few years and the company that has more units sold than all other brands combined was Tandy with their TRS80 model I. That had to sting in Armonk. And I suspect that's who the boys in Boca Raton were told to beat. But the features they were told to compete with were determined by the marketing folks in IBM HQ.
Remember the people who buy this stuff often have no idea how it works. Polished presentations and glossy brochures sell hardware. As Computer Associates found, so do well built blondes with Georgia accents when it comes to software. When IBM was installing a new Z system mainframe at our county's IT center, my wife asked her CE why the cabinets were mostly empty space. The response was that although more modern hardware took up less space, the people who wrote the checks for new computers were not sufficiently impressed by smaller cabinets. So the computer's guts didn't get any bigger, but the check writers weren't going to look inside anyway, so the cabinets got bigger instead.
Try to think like a marketing guy. Some of this stuff (but not all) will start to make some sense.
Then go for the Advil.
64kb systems were what everybody else was selling.
I know it doesn't sound rational, but we're mostly technical people. Marketing folks think with a different part of their brain. So do the people in suits that the marketing people get to sign the bottom line on a purchase order. And as my one of my computer science professors once explained, IBM did not become the 800 pound gorilla of the IT world by building the most technically advanced computers. They got there by selling the computers that were the most successful in the marketplace.
One of their muckity mucks once opined that the world marketplace for computers would top out at 50 units. Fast forward a few years and the company that has more units sold than all other brands combined was Tandy with their TRS80 model I. That had to sting in Armonk. And I suspect that's who the boys in Boca Raton were told to beat. But the features they were told to compete with were determined by the marketing folks in IBM HQ.
Remember the people who buy this stuff often have no idea how it works. Polished presentations and glossy brochures sell hardware. As Computer Associates found, so do well built blondes with Georgia accents when it comes to software. When IBM was installing a new Z system mainframe at our county's IT center, my wife asked her CE why the cabinets were mostly empty space. The response was that although more modern hardware took up less space, the people who wrote the checks for new computers were not sufficiently impressed by smaller cabinets. So the computer's guts didn't get any bigger, but the check writers weren't going to look inside anyway, so the cabinets got bigger instead.
Try to think like a marketing guy. Some of this stuff (but not all) will start to make some sense.
Then go for the Advil.
