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8-Bit 16-Bit 32-Bit Whats the difference? - Page 3 — Parallax Forums

8-Bit 16-Bit 32-Bit Whats the difference?

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  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,253
    edited 2013-02-04 10:54
    Yep.

    And this thread was 32, 64, what is the difference?

    Is ARM 64 bit yet like Intel is? Seems a lot like the DOS days in that the bulk of stuff is 32 but shipping 64 bit CPU might make sense to encourage bigger apps an not generally constrain expansion, unless power is a big deal? In any case the user cares very little, IMHO, unless they are programmers or technical in some way that would invoke it all.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-02-04 11:33
    It always looked to me like MicroSoft's only reason for progress and collecting more money from it's customers was that it followed the development of the hardware over the years.
    8 Bit machines - MS gives you 4K BASIC and up, wonderfull.
    16 Bit machines - MS gives you MSDOS
    Graphics hardware arrives - MS gives you Windows, takes off at Win 3.1
    32 Bit machines - MS gives you NT for business and Win 95 for home.
    64 Bit machines - MS gives you 64 bit versions of the same.

    You get the pattern, new hardware needs new software to take advantage of it. They don't have to invovate, just keep up.

    This hardware progression has stalled recently. So MS has nothing more that we "really have to have" to make use of the new hardware.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-02-04 11:39
    potatohead,

    Try to keep up:)

    ARM announced 64 bit back in 2011 http://www.arm.com/products/processors/instruction-set-architectures/armv8-architecture.php
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-02-04 11:41
  • RDL2004RDL2004 Posts: 2,554
    edited 2013-02-04 12:41
    Anybody notice the number of views this thread has gotten? I think the only thread in recent time with more is the one about Hostess Fruit Pies :)
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,253
    edited 2013-02-04 12:46
    Noted. :) I've only recently started to do anything with ARM. Seeing the Pi and various ARM related devices has me thinking about this stuff again. I kind of tuned out there for a while because I've got a ton of Windows professional things keeping me busy. I really don't like the next round of changes though. Might be time to return to Linux. When I dropped IRIX I just didn't do UNIX much at all. Missing it frankly. (Which is why I would be all over a cool ARM machine)
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,253
    edited 2013-02-04 12:47
    Wow. Yeah lots more than I realized. Didn't seem like that potent of a topic.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-02-04 12:49
    You are right. Not as if the difference between 8, 16, 32 or 64 bits is that interesting.
    I'd rather have the blueberry pies:)
  • Peter KG6LSEPeter KG6LSE Posts: 1,383
    edited 2013-02-04 14:02
    Potato
    Your Post on " good enough " is by far the best example of the Computer world I have ever read .

    I see this in consumer junk at my local Frys .
    You See things that are " good enough " AKA the 80% are happy .

    Same with all gadgets ...... take my Segway .. Its got more smarts in it then some Cars,,,,, Uses ZigBee for the Remote ... has 2 motors per wheel.
    2 independent Bat packs .. has non linear steering that De-rates at high speed !

    take a Arduino $ 600 home brew copy . I salute any one who can pull off a Seg with out Breaking a limb ... however It ( the clone ) has NO redundancy No Soft fail ..... Its not Safe ! . But It's Good enough ..


    take my 2 canon 1 D SLRs Yes they are 8 FPS and are Very Good ...... . My Cam in my smart phone that has a sensor the size of a > # < Shoots photos that with any good light can be Darn close to my ( what once was $6000) SLRs with a postage stamp sized sensor .

    Like you . I refuse to buy Consumer toys..... no Its not that I am more holy then thou ........Its that I expect more from what I buy ..


    For Years I have used high end Video SW for mostly fun stuff in HS. These programs are much more happy with a better and Wider Bus path .

    as a once owner of a SGI Octane O2 I can agree that you can do SO much on a MIPS its scary !
    My Old as the hills G4 mac was a power house with final cut pro.


    Peter
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,126
    edited 2013-02-04 16:25
    Heater. wrote: »
    That V8 video clearly shows they are munging JS numbers which are 64 bit floats down into native 32 bit ints so as to get a big speed boost.
    Floats as 64 bit are handled as good as they can be already. The FPU is a 64 bit coprocessor. The only speed up a 64 bit CPU might bring is the general bandwidth improvements you typically get with a newer chip.
    Ergo, I think that if you processor was 64 bits anyway all that optimization work, resizing, allocating and deallocating the arrays would not be necessary and you would fly all the time.
    No, it would make almost no difference because most of the time you are talking about actual floats. And, as it stands, floats are always going to be packaged into an object rather than the direct access integer the V8 optimiser creates. A 64 bit CPU doesn't change this.
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,126
    edited 2013-02-04 17:08
    potatohead wrote: »
    **Warning, scroll this if length is not your thing. Somebody asked me "why" lol (sorry guys, I do this sometimes)
    I'm not even going to try to argue everything in your post!

    I'll make a correction on your use of the term PC. It was coined by IBM as a name for branding their particular home computer. The term "home computer" just means it's affordable for individuals to own one. So, the Apple II and the PC are both home computers (HC if you like :)). The PC has evolved, for sure, but it is what sprung from the IBM PC, and nothing more. There is PC hardware, and one could say there is a distinct PC culture, or mono-culture as some would say. One that is constantly being nurtured, for sure.


    There is really two key factors in why the home computer industry played out the way it has: 1) The clones (No not Luke's idols). 2) IBM made no apparent attempt to control the sales of clones in USA, or anywhere else for that matter.

    It could be argued it was inevitable and if it didn't happen to the PC it would have happened for some other computer design instead. I can't say much on this topic as I'm an outsider.


    ... work time, more to come ...
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,253
    edited 2013-02-04 18:18
    Please don't consider it an argument. Sharing of minds and observations is more like it.

    Yes. Clones really did everybody else in. Notably, Apple never authorized clones, but for the case of Bell and Howell who were authorized to make special Apple 2 computers. The others were unauthorized... Had Apple allowed them, that series of machines would have sold even more and potentially kept IBM at bay particularly had Apple updated them. (With Arm?)

    As it was, they didn't, kept margins high, which funded the Mac. Apple may have also lost control like IBM did too.

    Looking forward to reading your thoughts. :)
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-02-04 22:22
    evanh,
    No, it would make almost no difference because most of the time you are talking about actual floats. And, as it stands, floats are always going to be packaged into an object rather than the direct access integer the V8 optimiser creates. A 64 bit CPU doesn't change this.
    We are going around in circles here. Clearly if you are using floats there is no gain in that "squeezing to integer" trick described n the V8 video.
    Also clearly when you are working with "small" ints there is a lot to be gained, as the video shows, otherewise the V8 team would not have bothered to do it.

    I'm only proposing that on a machine with 64 bit ints that "squeezing" to 32 bit ints makes no sense, just use 64 bits you have and save all that mesing around with optimization.

    I can't help thinking that is a big win for JS. As you say "most of the time you are talking about actual floats". In JS all numbers are floats, on a 64 bit machine you don't need to treat "small" int's as special to get speed as they do on a 32 bit machine.
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,126
    edited 2013-02-05 06:38
    Yes, we are going around in circles. Yes, the V8 optimisation is for when the numbers do fit into small ints and this, importantly, is a common occurrence. There is no squeezing, it either fits in 31 bits or not.

    What I was saying about "most of the time" is when excluding the 31 bit ints, ie: just comparing 64 bit ints vs floats. Most of these times you'll be dealing with actual floats. The object gets created because the results are generating decimal places. Then a 64 bit CPU makes no diff over a 32 bit CPU.

    I'm hoping I've made it clear enough now.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-02-05 07:35
    When I said "squeezing" I meant that what I write in JS is "var x = 42;" and as far as JS the language is concerned that is a floating point number. I'm sure it was for many old interpreters as well. Before finding out about V8 I would never have guessed it is treated any way other than double float. But here we have V8 secretly "squeezing" things it sees as small ints at run time into 32 bit storage locations.

    I do agree of course that if your program is using big ints or floats then everything will be done with those "hidden classes" and floating point operations and then a 64 bit CPU probably does not help.

    Yeah, clear enough. For now:)
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,126
    edited 2013-02-05 09:09
    potatohead wrote: »
    Please don't consider it an argument. Sharing of minds and observations is more like it.
    Cool, thanks.

    I'll make a correction to my own comments first. I should have said microcomputer instead of home computer. All my HC references should be MC instead. :)


    Right, I'm gonna have to poke some holes in the common old folklore you've spouted:

    First up is expansion slots and the argument that that had a bearing on why the PC dominated. (I guess, my previous posting kind of covers it anyway - Bringing up such technical factors is ignoring the elephant in the room.) The smaller games oriented microcomputers generally did have a direct local bus expansion slot on their cases. It could, in theory, be treated not unlike a docking port on modern laptops. Making for a cheap initial purchase that had real potential for expansion if needed. But even if you just look at only the machines that did have a built-in line of card slots you still have, at least, a large number of CPM machines on top of the PET and Apple II that all pre-dated the PC. So, using the argument that the PC had an early technical advantage doesn't fly.

    This repeats pretty much for every technical point raised. Be it CPU speed, RAM bandwidth, address range, file handling (huge list of technicalities there), not using SCSI for example (SCSI was proposed before the PC even existed and yet it was shunned, how dumb was that?) ...

    Second up is the 8086 having "the basic features needed to carry computing forward". Well, sure, any microcomputer could make that claim. Whatever is needed to be improved later can be improved as the money rolls in. And the endless flow of money is the real key here. It's a perfect chicken and egg situation. But there were some serious flaws that took a long time to be eliminated from the x86 architecture! The little-endian mistake still hasn't been sorted. And when you bring in the early discussions about 68k vs x86 where the 68k's were just so much better for sooo long it was a joke. But, of course, as the money poured into Intel's pockets they were able to, by the Pentium 1, bring the x86 up to close to the 060, released within months of each other, and then the PC industry pundits had the cheek to say things like "Motorola is just coping Intel, how lame is that!"

    Third party expansions and apps just come as a result of popularity. That's normal growth on all platforms. As you pointed out, workstation market was quite different. It was just too expensive and controlled for a large population base. It suited the target market while the tech gap existed. Also, closing of the gap was always going to happen once mass production truly got under way.

    The big question here is: Would the microcomputer market have bought in enough growth to close the gap if the clones were forever shut out of USA? Would an expanding clone market (presumably more mixed) outside USA have forged ahead on it's own?

    Regarding niches, they are fine and dandy as long as Windoze can't reach them was pretty much the rule of thumb. Well, that has changed a little with the Internet and, importantly, the Web. The Web is neutral in terms of the computers/OSes it runs on but has had to fight to stay that way. It got close to losing it when IE dominated so completely around 2000. You do know MSN was originally intended to be a complete alternative to the Web? M$ didn't initially want the Web to succeed at all but, was turned internally and, changed tact toward controlling the Web instead.

    Hardware spec based buying only makes sense when the software is a fixed known. That is one of the chicken and egg dilemmas.

    That's enough for tonight ... happy pondering ...
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,253
    edited 2013-02-05 11:08
    Well I never did make the point that the PC was technically superior. It wasn't. I'll read the rest and comment later on, but just wanted to clarify that early.

    In fact, the crux of my post was technical superiority did not matter much then and it still doesn't now. Software and business models matter much more, both of which were well established for the PC.

    I am thinking about clones. There would have been some doors open for sure!
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-02-05 15:50
    As far as I remember the IBM PC at launch had two things going for it:
    1) It had an IBM logo on it so corporations could buy it with out any question. "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" right. It was not a "toy" it was a "business machine".
    2) It came with MS BASIC which everybody knew and loved from earlier 8 bit CP/M days.

    Technically it was a pile of Smile. As Evanh says, at the time we were looking forward to a 68000 or similar based machine without the awfull 64KB segmented memory for example. We had already done the 8 bit thing, this was obviously a cludge.

    Personally I was very depressed about the whole thing. We were used to new and interesting machines sprouting up all the time and then it descended into same, same, IBM clone and MSDOS/Windows land for a decade or more.

    If it were not for Linus Torvalds I might have jumped out of the whole computer scene back in 1996.

    @evanh,

    Interesting what you say about IE and MSN back in 2000. Some how I totally missed that whole manouver. Round here it was Linux and Netscape navigator and life was looking good.
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    edited 2013-02-05 18:21
    Interesting thread. It basically comes down to the conflict between two outlooks. On one side is the "I want my (computer, OS, car, house, etc) to be perfect, or at least as close to perfect or as possible" camp. On the other side is the "I want my (......etc.) right now, or very soon" camp.From a business point of view pleasing the latter camp makes a lot more sense. That is why Windows and the PC have been so successful while other companies have gone or been bought up. Apple is one of the very few that has managed to walk the tightrope between those opposing camps.
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,126
    edited 2013-02-05 18:26
    Heater. wrote: »
    When I said "squeezing" I meant that what I write in JS is "var x = 42;" and as far as JS the language is concerned that is a floating point number.

    It would be even more accurate to say var x=42 is an object containing a float and that V8 optimises it down to no object at all, replacing the object pointer with an integer. As far as V8 is concerned it knows perfectly well the number is not being used as a float.

    There will have to be bounds checking of some sort, but that would be true even if V8 optimised to a 64 bit sized integer, because the program could use the float nature at a later time.
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,126
    edited 2013-02-05 18:38
    kwinn wrote: »
    Interesting thread. It basically comes down to the conflict between two outlooks. On one side is the "I want my (computer, OS, car, house, etc) to be perfect, or at least as close to perfect or as possible" camp. On the other side is the "I want my (......etc.) right now, or very soon" camp.From a business point of view pleasing the latter camp makes a lot more sense. That is why Windows and the PC have been so successful while other companies have gone or been bought up. Apple is one of the very few that has managed to walk the tightrope between those opposing camps.

    That's the old "religious wars" angle the PC weanies love to roll out. Nothing but Smile. It was just blowing raspberries because nobody could stop the process. They loved throwing technical figures that were either biased or plain wrong, then when someone bit back they just called zealot.

    So, no, it wasn't about perfection, it was about being right. If one is called on technical grounds then responding on technical grounds is perfectly sensible.

    There is the phrase "History is written by the victors." It's a fallacy, but it certainly has teeth!


    EDIT: I should have said you are crossing two things here: One is the purchasing power of the masses and the nature of the clone PC market growth, the other is the above egging that went on. Two unrelated things that never touched.
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,126
    edited 2013-02-05 19:11
    Heater. wrote: »
    As far as I remember the IBM PC at launch had two things going for it:
    1) It had an IBM logo on it so corporations could buy it with out any question. "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" right. It was not a "toy" it was a "business machine".
    2) It came with MS BASIC which everybody knew and loved from earlier 8 bit CP/M days.
    That's fair as far as it goes but it again ignores the elephant. The clones flooding back into USA completely engulfed the market. It was a single blueprint and it was a free-for-all.

    This is where the comparing of hardware specs (for purchasing) actually makes sense, everyone has copies of the same software and it's all binary compatible.
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,126
    edited 2013-02-05 20:18
    potatohead wrote: »
    Apple is very well capitalized and the IPod / iPhone + App Store, etc.. .really kicked it off for them, but make no mistake, the Mac was making them plenty of money and it delivered much higher margins than any PC did, meaning they made more money at a fraction share than race to the bottom hardware value only companies like Dell did at several times that volume of machines.
    No, Apple was in it's death throws. Yes, the Mac had a niche or two, but that was about to blink out. Windoze was seen as the successor even in Apple's strongest niche of DTP.

    The Mac, it rapidly clawed back DTP which was cool, is still cornered but it now has a good public reputation and also the Web, again, is a key player here.

    In any case, throughout all of this, I never, ever saw the best tech win on anything, ever. It's not about that, never will be about that. It's about the business model and the overall value added and most importantly, whether or not the producers of that product or solution do the work to get people to see that value and pay for it. Those are the people that win. They will always win.

    And that comes down to "best tech" On which metric? Speed, power consumption, size, etc...? That's where adding value comes into play. An emphasis on one technical metric doesn't secure market share because it's about meeting demand and that's done by adding value around the tech as well as selecting optimal tech for the target markets. "Best Tech" really varies considerably.
    Bit of a contradiction there me thinks.

    Hardware specs only matter when the software is a fixed known.

    As for the slow appearance of iTunes + iPod, blame the music industry itself for that. They have fought everybody over distribution and they continue doing that. Had they not fought over all that stuff, they themselves could have aced Apple out, building on Napster of all things, who was the first to actually propose a bulk subscription model for trading music. Had the majors said "yes" then, it's very likely Apple would have played out very differently today.
    That's true, but I was talking about even earlier than Napster. There was a lot of years, throughout the 1990's, where the Web was begging for indexing of all music and ways of acquiring it. Why didn't the studios get together and spend some of their billions on themselves and support the distribution channels they had? I was really shaking my head in disbelief in the late 1990's, and after the Napster thing I stopped buying any music at all. I just walked away. Enya was the last.

    I'm just glad the local movie theatres are still going or I wouldn't be spending anything on movies either.

    Jobs had a saying: If you buy a 30 cent part from a surplus store and sell it to somebody for $6, it was worth $6 to them and they don't need to know what you paid for it.
    Classic scam artist talk. While one may be able to get away with thieving more than it's worth that doesn't make it worth that extra. That sort of behaviour usually comes under market manipulation and monopolistic practices.
    Things are worth what people will pay for them and when a lot of value is shown to people they will pay a lot of money.
    You've got two things crossed there. What people are willing to pay and what it is worth are not the same. What people are willing to pay is the scam artist's view. An auction, and only because it's not a production item, is about as close to making this idea fair and even that is rig-able.

    What it's worth is a much more complicated thing which you covered in your next sentences.
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,253
    edited 2013-02-05 23:13
    Actually, what people are willing to pay is the worth of things. Sorry. That's how it is, how it has always been and how it will always be.

    Coupla observations:

    Let's discuss "Scam artist" -- A scam artist is one who asks for value they didn't add.

    Say somebody makes a living sourcing parts from surplus houses. They get stuff insane cheap, sometimes they get stuff average too, and they get a lot of stuff overall. It costs money to live to scrounge to source that stuff. It costs money to sort it. It costs money to do the work to find buyers for it. It costs money to inventory it. It costs money to transact it. And it costs money to transport it. That's a lot of money.

    This person who sources the part needs a house, they need a place to store things, they need a car, phone and they need some money in the bank to operate on too. That's also a lot of money.

    Do they sell all the parts? Probably not.

    At the end of the day, the cheap part itself isn't worth too much. However, the person who has it cataloged and who can deliver it quickly has added a lot of value. The value they added has to do with the money they spent, but they could be foolish or greedy and perhaps spent too much, or might ask for too much. This is why they are required to show their value added. This is generally demonstrating they are working for it.

    The scam artist really doesn't work for it and they show value they did not add.

    The parts guy who sells from his inventory needs to make enough to exist, maintain that inventory, etc... and the prices of the parts reflect the cost of being there as a source for the parts.

    A buyer who pays several dollars for a 30 cent part is either a sucker, or sees the part as being worth the money. If the buyer doesn't like the price of the item, they can seek other sources, and that's a lot of work! Sources must be identified, time spent examining parts, travel, etc... and most importantly, time spent doing that is time not spent doing whatever it is that part would have enabled the buyer to do. Opportunity cost on that can be really high or really low. For the hobby person, who really just wants the part, they won't recognize the value the seller added to it and would consider that a rip-off price.

    Last time I bought a simple pot from Radio Shack, I paid $5 for it. I know darn well that pot is worth maybe ten cents. However, I had a task to get done, and sourcing a pot myself would have taken a few hours, and I would have had to go and find something with a workable pot, take it out, dispose of the item or manage it, store it, measure the pot, test that pot, then assemble it into the task at hand and potentially modify the task at hand due to not finding an ideal pot. Maybe also use a resistor.

    My time isn't cheap. Doing all of that is a coupla hundred dollars worth of time. Getting that pot quick, and getting the pot I wanted at only $5! That's a steal! I'll do it every single time.

    Radio Shack sold those pots at a huge markup. Probably that thing sat in a drawer for a few years, and it consumed retail space, had to be inventoried multiple times, priced, etc... Honestly, they made a small amount on that pot, and the whole mess is simply the cost of getting that pot to me from where ever that pot came from.

    This is the concept of value added. This is why buyers do not need to know what an enterprise actually pays for things, because the buyer is going to evaluate the value in front of them and they will either see it as worth it or not.

    Both sides see a burden here. Both sides always want to recognize as little value as possible to get costs down too. That's a market place and the way markets work is things are worth what other people will pay for them.

    The scam artist typically also exploits some understanding to employ a scam. In the case of that pot, they would have to know I want a pot and understand the value of it to me, then have a ready source for the pot and then sell it as if they had added all the value and incurred all the costs Radio Shack did.

    Jobs was not talking about just finding cheap parts and stupid people to make money. Jobs was expressing the idea that business runs best, margins are high, when ALL the value is recognized so that buyers evaluate on that basis and pay for all the activities related to the transaction. Both parties are happy and the business ends up capitalized well enough to innovate, pay it's people well, etc...

    Go to your local Wal*Mart some time. Pick something, like a set of 5 colored markers, or some trinket or other. Source it on Alibaba.com and you will be stunned. The markers are in the store for $2.99 and they are sourced direct for maybe half a dollar tops. Sounds bad right? That's murder! Who would pay such insane markup! Well, sourcing them direct means buying 1000 packages of markers up front, inventorying the ones you don't need, establishing retail accounts or locating a buyer for excess, and all the time it takes to recover the cost of that bulk buy of markers. At the end of the day, one could actually profit from the need to obtain markers, but now one is in the business of dealing with markers just to avoid Wal*Mart and their retail markup on the markers and of course that gets in the way of actually doing what we want to do, living a life, etc...

    So most people pay. Most people think that quickly obtaining markers for $3 is a good deal because they've got something they want to get done and to get it done they need markers to do it. Not getting it done means buying something, altering plans, using something like pencils, paints or some other thing that might just not meet the goal whatever it is.

    What is a package of markers worth? About three dollars.

    Some places source cheaper markers or they focus on them or whatever and they might sell markers for $2. What are markers worth now? About two dollars, assuming you want to make an extra trip to the marker store. Guess what? Everything costs something. Takes time, gas, and such to make that trip right? Now you know why Wal*Mart can charge three dollars for the marker. They add value by offering multiple kinds of things saving people time.

    You find those markers on ebay for one dollar! Sweet right? Well, shipping is another 50 cents, bringing those markers to $1.50. Half of Wal*Mart, but now you've got to wait three days for those markers! Want 'em tomorrow? That's $12 shipping for next day air, but in return for that $12, you don't have to get in your car, drive some period of time, enter the Wal*Mart, buy the markers, return home... Some people do this! Why? Because they value their time highly enough to queue the marker project, stay at home and be productive and when the package arrives, sign for it and complete their project then. They bought an hour worth of time for $12. Others see that and think, "what a rip off!", but then again they burned an hour of their time too. Young person might burn that time. Somebody who is 60? No way, ship it and let's get stuff done because it might not ever get done or there isn't much time to get all the stuff they want to do done.

    Now, I'm not sure you actually understood most of my post. I didn't say the PC was technically superior. You basically asked, "Why did the PC dominate when it was technically inferior?" and I attempted to answer, but truthfully mixed a few concepts together.

    I basically said this:

    1. A company known as International Business Machines produced a Personal Computer. That's different from Atari producing a Personal Computer. The big difference? Positioning. The IBM PC was positioned as a business machine. It was not positioned as a games machine, or a music machine, or even a fun machine really. Secondly, it was positioned as the "get stuff done" machine. This is important, hold the thought.

    2. Everybody and their brother could make IBM Compatible PC's and they did. This attracted software development.

    3. I will make only one technical observation about the PC. It was designed incomplete as sold. Buying just the PC kind of sucked. Really what people bought was a PC plus other stuff to get things done, whatever those things were. The PC was kept simple to add cards to, and the other machines for the most part were a lot more complex to add stuff to. Those expansion busses saw little use due to complexity and lack of demand and the lack of demand goes right back to a lot of people producing compatible PC's. Nobody doing home computing really needs a serious expansion bus, they are playing games, etc...

    Most importantly, those other machines were capable of the tasks businesses wanted, but were not positioned and or designed for a business environment, meaning no businesses were serious about them, meaning the software trended toward the PC, despite it being inferior in many ways. Didn't matter.

    Re: Clones.

    I don't know that there is any other scenario. Apple got away with not allowing clones on the Apple ][. Some happened anyway. Had the PC not been cloned, somebody somewhere would have produced something and allowed the clones and that would have grown to dominate. The idea that we have a basic computing platform is so economically compelling, I do not believe any other situation would have happened. The question really was who and what basic tech. First movers have a lot of advantage, and that was basically IBM. Had Apple committed to the Apple ][, put a business plan in place to expand the machine and carry it forward, they might have continued to do very well. Had they allowed clones? Who knows?

    Now I want to discuss positioning just a little bit. Why do people buy computers? They want to get stuff done, that's why. (some people buy computers because they want cool computers, or they are technical, etc.. but the vast majority buy them to get stuff done and how the products are positioned seriously impacts that)

    When people pay to get stuff done, the primary metric is whether or not that stuff actually does get done and what getting that stuff done is worth to them. Many early PC buyers paid a lot of money to get a PC, monochrome text and they did it to run Lotus. Running Lotus was worth all of that money, period. Prior to that it was Visicalc on the Apple ][ and the same thing happened. People paid a lot of money for an Apple ][ that could run Visicalc and they paid it not because the Apple had any real technical advantage, but that it ran Visicalc and running that program was worth every penny they paid to do so. Some of those people not only bought the PC and the Lotus program, but they paid people to come and teach them how to do it making a mere PC + Lotus investment $7,000 to $10,000 when it all added up.

    They were going to save tens of hours per week computing business, and that's totally worth a ton of money. Somebody interested in games, or other tasks would look at that and think it's a huge rip-off, but then again they didn't need to get the stuff done that the Lotus user did either.

    The people who wrote Lotus didn't target non-business machines because the non-business machines were not attractive to the get stuff done business types. Atari, Commodore, Apple, others sold really spiffy machines that used neat technology that delivered superior compute, superior graphics, superior sound, and the list goes on and on... However fancy those machines were, they were not get stuff done computers. If somebody wanted to run some business application, that application was typically on the PC, not those other machines, and that meant that no matter how much they paid Atari for example, Atari was not offering to get stuff done. Atari and others were offering games, home education, music, programming and all kinds of other things, but they were not simply offering to get business stuff done.

    This the primary reason why the PC went the way it did. You can take two identical products. They can even look exactly the same and offer exactly the same features and do a little thought experiment. Let's say it's a business machine, like a phone. Two identical phones then. No differences at all but for how they are packaged and positioned.

    Phone A is sleek, black, and is packaged as a business telephony solution. It looks like a business phone. It's positioned as a business phone, and it's sold by the very serious business phone people, who back that phone. You buy it, they will make it work no matter what and they've got full telephony solutions to add on to that phone too, consultants, training, the works. You will get that stuff done, if you pay them.

    Phone B is identical but pink, cute and it's a great phone with fantastic audio quality, etc... It doesn't look like a business phone. It's not positioned as a business phone, but instead that perfect phone for teen girls looking to have their own phone, but it can also do business in a pinch too. It's not sold by the very serious business phone people (because serious business people simply do not buy pink, cute phones), but Macy's. You open the box, and that's it. You now have a phone, the rest is up to you. You might not get that stuff done no matter how much you pay them and interestingly, they aren't offering get stuff done, they are offering a cute phone. Big difference.

    Which phone do you think will take a lot of business share? It won't be the pink one.

    Worse, say Phone A, the serious phone costs nearly twice as much as phone B. It will still take a lot of share, because it's priced for business! Clearly a business phone costs more than a home phone, etc... (Now somebody would come along and buy Phone B, paint it black and market it to business, but that's beside the point here) Oh, and what's the source of that 2X cost? All the people who are on tap to get stuff done, that's what. They are selling the phone and a fraction of their people which is worth more than just the phone.

    These are the kinds of things that really established the PC. It wasn't superior tech. The PC was kind of crappy really. It was how they were designed, marketed, positioned, sold and it was the business backing them and the smart model of establishing common ground computing to which other vendors could add specific value to get stuff done, whatever that stuff happened to be.

    So yes, the fact that it had slots really did matter, but what mattered more was that the slots were mechanically solid, not some external, flimsy thing that could be stolen or lost, or whatever, and the system was simple so that those add on things were easy to build and deploy, etc...

    I'm going to end this with some agreement. Yes, what things are worth is complicated. I've outlined some of the basics above as to why they are complex. I've 20 years experience dealing with these matters in a technical way, marketing, sales, etc... People pay me to help show value for their products, and I evaluate products regularly to understand where value was added, what that value really is and who might benefit from that value. Worth has as much to do with how a product is packaged and positioned as it does the core technical features and functionality of the product itself.

    The people that pay more for an Apple product today recognize all of the value that Apple adds to their products and they find that worth it, end of story. I hear people say all the time, "why can't Apple be as cheap as product X?" and I ask, "why aren't you happy with Product X?" and they often answer, "But Apple..." and there is the added value right there, and the primary reason why Product X doesn't cost as much as the Apple product does.

    It's not just Apple either. And it's not everybody. Again, lots of people do not recognize all the value that suppliers provide them. We have suppliers who compete on cost, delivery, packaged features, support, superior technical merits of various kinds, service, warranty, etc... It's here that I must also write about design. I hinted at it with the phone, but it goes farther than that. Design can make or break a technical solution. Again, take two products that perform the same task, use the same components, etc... The only difference is the industrial design and packaging of the products. One is squarish and it comes in a blister pack, and you are on your own. The other is sleek, fits in your hand, is extremely appealing to carry, wear, use, and it comes packaged in a nice box that is in and of itself appealing enough to keep around.

    Despite even the circuit board and code in the products being exactly the same, the company that did the design will earn much higher margins on their product and will make as much money on a single sale as the company blister packaging something that had little design investment will make on a handful of sales. Again, value added, and margins made if that value is positioned and asked for. Many companies do this, and those that do enjoy higher revenue on fewer sales and generally capitalize very well.

    Every single thing costs something. When I say it's about margin and not share, I'm saying that all of those things add value and it's best when customers recognize and pay for that value because then all the activities of the organization get paid for the value added for an optimal revenue scenario.

    All that said, there is no way I would buy an Apple phone. I don't recognize the value of their design. Doesn't work for me. I'm a Droid guy, and I actually bought the Moto phone with the slide out keyboard and added the rugged rubberized casing so I don't have to protect the phone all the time. Mine has a fast CPU and a good battery, but it's got an average camera and it doesn't have Siri. (who cares? Some do!)

    I do own a great Mac, and I love it. It's design is off the charts good, power management insane good, OS solid, and it's a great machine. My Lenovo kicks it's Smile when it comes to raw compute and graphics, but the Lenovo looks like a tank. Why did I buy these two machines when I could have gotten a cheaper Dell that performs darn near as good?

    Got the Mac so I could get stuff done. I've an application to support on it, and that support funds the machine for me and I don't care what it costs because that cost is something I charge for in the support I do. They pay for the support because the support is worth it, not because I used some cheap 'o hackentosh. I started with that. Hacked my old thinkpad to run Mac OS, and started doing the work. Spent a lot of my time dealing with the thinkpad, and guess what? That's too expensive. I want to play on Propellers, write code, walk the dog, wash the car, etc... Buying the Mac means I save that time, done, next. This is how the majority of people value computers. They want to get stuff done and that wins the day, not the tech.

    (bought the Lenovo because I travel, IBM / Lenovo has a killer warranty and I can do *anything* to this machine and I get another one, next day, no questions asked. Again, I want to get stuff done, not tinker with broken machines, etc...)

    Worth is in the eyes of the buyer then. It always is, always will be. Some buyers do not value their time and will pay for really cheap stuff and spend days tinkering with it. Others do, and buy up, because they just want to get stuff done quicker. Still others want a cool looking one, or pink, or whatever.

    And so we come back to Jobs. Here's the thing. When you market to the rock bottom buyers, you do a volume business and it's difficult to make money and it takes a lot of transactions to do so. Market to higher end buyers and that same pool of resources can make more money, do fewer transactions, etc... That's all the guy is saying, and he's right about it.

    In any market, at any time, there are the low ball people who will pay very little, the majority who will pay a reasonable margin and niches of various kinds who pay a lot. What a thing is worth depends on how it's positioned and the value added and whether or not the buyer recognizes said value.

    Frankly, people paid a lot for a PC, because it was backed by IBM, and if they paid enough, cards and add ons could be stuffed in there to get whatever it is they want done. Think of ACME in the old cartoons. ACME does anything. You call 'em, they supply it, next. They are never the cheapest, but if you pay them, you get your stuff done consistently. That's the PC, that's what IBM was really selling and it had exactly zero to do with technology and everything to do with establishing a market and adding value within that market.

    For a great analogy, look at commercial Unix. SGI sold "get stuff done" UNIX boxes. Ever watch "Jurassic Park?" done on SGI. If it was cool graphically, SGI would sell you a machine to get that cool thing done, whatever it is. Never cheap though. Down right expensive compared to a SUN or HP, but those machines did not offer the same thing! Apple today is a lot like SGI then, if you ask me. Not a good fit for everybody, but for those that match up with what Apple adds to their products, it's a great fit, in fact, so good they pay easily and repeatedly, because they see a lot of value in that.

    Those that don't? They see over priced stuff and shake their heads in wonder...
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,126
    edited 2013-02-05 23:43
    potatohead wrote: »
    Actually, what people are willing to pay is the worth of things. Sorry. That's how it is, how it has always been and how it will always be.
    Let's just say it is what you want it to be. Too far off topic for the moment.

    The idea that we have a basic computing platform is so economically compelling, I do not believe any other situation would have happened. The question really was who and what basic tech. First movers have a lot of advantage, and that was basically IBM.
    No, IBM were far from first with a suitable design. They were, however, first to make no attempt to stop the clones.
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,253
    edited 2013-02-05 23:47
    Re: Why didn't the studios get together and spend some of their billions on themselves and support the distribution channels they had?

    Simple. They wanted to own culture and were playing a very long game. As long as they distribute music, they could bundle and sell albums and manage risks to profit from super stars. Takes a lot of risks to generate a Madonna. They want a lot of money for those risks.

    It's also about the back catalog and regions and competition.

    Indie labels selling directly to people devalues them. (and rightfully so, IMHO) Preventing individual track sales and preventing cross region sales means they can define things in ways that favor their style of business. Early on, they made a lot of sense. Somebody had to take the risks, publish, etc... Once we could do that on our own, the whole thing flips and we buy music we find valuable, and we take the risks of selecting bad music and or using other filters besides their coarse filters.

    Today the business model is crappy, inefficient, etc... and lots of music gets sold by the track, and the back catalog has gotten really interesting. When the Internet really took off, the "eras" of music began to die. Young people pre-Internet tuned into whatever era they grew up in. 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, etc... Now young people select from eras and build up style. There isn't really an era today as much as there are scenes. It's common to hear a young guy jamming on hair metal from the 80's and sharing with friends. This blunts the block buster and dilutes the overall impact of those risks the majors take, and that dilutes their value and profit.

    The other thing comes down to fear of the flood of music. When there is so much music that nobody can even hope to listen to it all, music gets really cheap! It's so cheap now that it's often given away where before it was valued much higher. None of the majors wanted that because it's classic competition. Some indie guy somewere can make a good living doing shows and selling tracks and they are out of the picture entirely.

    They just didn't want any of it and balked until they were forced not to, and they are still balking, fighting, claiming huge losses over sharing while denying huge sales for the same sharing!! People used to tune the top 100 on FM. That's old news now. The in thing is to share tunes and that's how tastes build and they have little control over that where they had a lot of control over that top 100, which dilutes the pay out from their risks, etc...

    I still don't think they get it, but they are moving slowly in the right direction. Lots of fights left though. Royalty battles are everywhere. Lots of ugly. I stay nearly completely out of it, either straight up buying CD's that I can rip and archive forever, or I buy tracks right from the artists. My favorite is buying a CD direct that I burn at home!

    The movie companies appear to be much smarter. They are doing digital in a lot of creative ways and many of those are perfectly reasonable things. They won't see the value loss that the music majors have and their smarter approach is part of it and the fact that it's still really hard to make movies is the other part. With music, some kids can jam where ever they are, maybe score studio time, maybe do it at home, whatever, mail all the tracks to somebody for production, release and move on, never even missing a day of school or their day job. That's the biggest impact IMHO. There is simply lots of music now and that means music is cheaper, particularly given we value only that music we value. Somebody produces a song and if we like it, maybe that is worth a buck, but if we don't, it's worthless! If we like it a lot, maybe that's worth two bucks. Ugly world they live in now.

    (and a great example of a case where things are worth what people will pay for them, BTW)
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,253
    edited 2013-02-05 23:50
    Yes, that's my point. Whoever did the clones was going to win the game. I don't think there is a no clone scenario. First mover advantage IBM.

    Who else had a suitable design, and how did they position it in the market place and what backing did they have for that design to be successful in basic "pay to get stuff done" terms?

    As for things being worth what people will pay for them, no. It's not just how I want them to be. That is actually how it is. If you want to rebut that, you are going to have to put some info here, or honestly, that's just some denial. Sorry. Hard lesson for me. I've learned it though. Don't like it, but I've learned it. I don't even want it to be that way, but it is.

    And what people will pay for them is directly related to how much value they are shown. Value for dollar. If there is a lot of value, there are more dollars involved. It's that simple.

    Let's hear that rebuttal. In fact, show me an example. Please.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-02-06 00:00
    potatohead,

    I am finding it harder and harder to "get stuff done". Every morning I wake up to another record breaking length potatohead post, next thing I know I'm very late for work:)

    This one is a classic at it contains "I'm going to end this...." somwhere around about the middle.

    Not getting at you potatohead, I do like to hear different perspectives when they come with more substance than "PC's sucks, Mac rulz" or vice versa or whatever.
  • GadgetmanGadgetman Posts: 2,436
    edited 2013-02-06 00:09
    Back in the 80s, soon after VisiCalc was announced, a lot of businesspeople entered computer stores and said "I want VisiCalc".
    They didn't ask for a Macintosh, they asked for VisiCalc.

    It could have been lime green with polkadots, it could have filled a room. What the computer VisiCalc ran on didn't matter.

    That is also the reason why Osborne sold 10.000+/month of their luggable.
    They included not just CP/M, but DBase II(and a training package for it), WordStar, SuperCalc, CBASIC2, MBasic, Ledger Software...
    You got EVERYTHING you needed to set up a modern office system, all in one luggable package.
    (Osborne introduced 'bundling' and got it right)
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,126
    edited 2013-02-06 00:36
    potatohead wrote: »
    Yes, that's my point. Whoever did the clones was going to win the game. I don't think there is a no clone scenario. First mover advantage IBM.
    It wasn't IBM's advantage at all. If IBM controlled the software, sure then there was a possible advantage. But M$ ended up being the benefactor on that front. Twice in the case of IBM.

    Apple, on the other hand, had complete control of the software and could have farmed the hardware out from the get go.

    CPM was an interesting case in that it was nurtured as purely a software ABI that hardware designs could be fit to. It's the one part I don't have enough info on. I think I saw a total of only one actual computer built for CPM, it was a multi-processor design with multiple terminals attached. Not unlike a small mini-computer and obviously in a different price range to your typical micro of the time. I guess that's it, CPM was too diverse, the software was too customised to the hardware variants even with the common CPU and ABI. The ecosystem never got big enough before the PC turned up.
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