Slashdot Mirror
Portable Pioneer Adam Osborne dead at 64
douglips writes "Yahoo News has the story. He's best remembered for the blunder of announcing that his next version of the Osborne portable computer was so much better, that nobody bought the current version and the company died quickly. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon."
I have family photos with him back from the early 80s. I was just a tot when he and aunt Barb divorced, so I don't remember him. My mom has told me that I called him Uncle A-O (since my name is also Adam).
But a few of my extended family members still have Osborne 1s in their basements/attics/garages. I played with one last year at a family reunion. The article is correct, it's almost exactly like a portable sewing machine.
So long, Uncle A-O!
He came to my school while I was in the MBA program. He gave us a little speach on what it meant to be an entrepreneur.
He said, "An entrepreneur is the kind of guy that walks into a bar with friends, and notices the one woman that is too hot for anyone to consider making an approach. The entrepreneur is able to walk up to that woman, begin a conversation, and have her under his thumb before the evening's end."
He then went to speak of a lawsuit against is VP line of software. He had a spreadsheet and was in a lawsuit against Lotus.
He said something like, "Who care if I lose. Any publicity is good publicity. When I'm at the press conference after verdict, I'll announce my new line of Artificial Intelligence software."
Just thought I'd share with you.
RIP Adam.
I'm 40. Back in the day, I worked at the Tyson's Corner ComputerLand store, where they sold the Osborne I. It had a Z-80, it ran CP/M -- the precursor to what could have been DOS if only Kildall hadn't been out flying his airplane the on the day IBM knocked on his door. The bundled software with an Osborne I included PacMan, adapted for the 16x64 text display, and I played that on the floor demo a lot.
Looking back now, it seems to me that the Osborne books were the logical O'Reilly Associates of that era. I was particularly fond of "Introduction to Microprocessors" and their various assembly language introductions. My copies were majorly dogeared. The only one I hung onto was my 6502 Assembly Language Programming by Lance Leventhal.
About ten years ago, some friends of mine gave me an Osborne I, which they picked up for $7 at a garage sale in Colorado Springs. I turned it on a few years ago and it still worked... was thinking of Ebaying it but I think I might just hang on to it now. Osborne will be remembered by me mostly for the Osborne I and those great books he published.
never ask a question you don't want to know the answer to
I worked with Mr. Osborne during the late 1980s at Paperback Software (I was the Tech Support Manager). He was a brilliant, charismatic leader with enough ego for four people. A member of MENSA, he had a beautiful house in the Berkeley Hills (spared from the Oakland Hills fire by feet, IIRC), a lovely wife, and he threw marvelous parties.
Paperback Software was a great idea - cheap versions of popular software sold with paperback manuals for $99.00 or so (I think VP-Expert sold for more). VP-Planner was the Lotus clone, VP-Info was a dBase clone, VP-Graphics was a standalone graphics program, VP-Expert was an expert systems program, and there were a couple more I don't remember off the top of my head.
He was a good person to work for and with, and always knew how to make a splash and cause a ruckus. And it was fun to go out for Indian food with him, since he spoke Urdu and Hindi.
Rest in peace, sir.
The Osborne 1 was a such a cool machine.s borne/
http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/o
It was based on a Zilog Z80A processor (same as that used in the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the Colecovision console, and similar to that used in the original Gameboy), but curiously, used Motorola peripheral chips.
It came bundled with a wide selection of software - Supercalc, Wordstar, an operating system called CP/M (the blueprint for DOS), and a BASIC interpreter by a small software company called Microsoft.
One of the really cool things about the Osborne is that it was sold with a manual about 500 pages thick. There are chapters on each of the software packages, but also a great deal of technical information on the machine itself - memory maps, details on the types of peripherals and that kind of thing.
It was clearly the product of a man and a company who loved computing, released in a spirit of openness and innocence for a hobbyist culture. Sadly, that culture died soon after, and stayed that way for some time.
It was the first computer I ever had, which started me off down a road that eventually led to me earn a degree in Computer Engineering. When I first heard about Linux, it was that same hobbyist culture that immediately appealed to me.
I think I'll boot mine up tonight. Thanks, Adam.
garethw
I actullay met the guy several times during the early 80's. I was working for a distributor of Osborne computers in a rather obscure country :)
I really liked the guy, he had a lot of good ideas in the pioneer days of PC computing and he made the first portable computer that was actually usable.
Adam, you will be missed by many who knew you and admired the work you did.
Rest in peace!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!