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Top 10 Personal Computers, Revised
rebelcool writes "Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle has revised his Top 10 PCs of all time, mainly as a result of this Slashdot story. He addresses many of the replies written to him wondering why X system wasn't on the list in Y position, but also chose to replace the Apple Newton with the Amiga A1000."
...trying to pigeonhole only a 'top 10'. Top 10 WHAT? It would be easy to ignore the contributions of 8-bit computers nowadays, but at one time there weren't many other options and each type had a specific advantage.
Hint to the writer: If you're going to do a list like this, try and be more specific.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Mr. Silverman seems very obliging, revising his original list to conform to certain external demands. The one question I have is why he didn't acknowledge his own poll (the one on the original top 10 page)? The largest number (34%) cleary chose the Apple Macintosh over every other computer, with a couple recieve close to no votes at all (0-1%)! I don't use a Macintosh, but if so many people feel that way, shouldn't Mr. Silverman think about it?
I'm not sure on what basis top 10 were chosen but I feel the iMac should be a definate candidate. Not only did it revitalize a company struggling at the time (Apple) but it's the first computer I can think of that was considered by the general public to be cool looking and since the iMac showed it could be done computers have really become alot more stylish in appearance (whether for good or evil). I feel that for its popularity and effect on the modern computer industry the iMac deserves a spot.
I stole this Sig
List looks pretty accurate to me now. I'm not an Amiga fan, but it was definitely a huge machine. If he wanted the Newton in, he should have chucked the Tandy Sensation, whatever the heck that was. I know every other machine, but not that one.
The "PCs Limited Turbo"? Yeah, that was another DOS machine, and helped revolutionize the turn toward mail-order PCs. Again, that wasn't about the OS.
So those people who complained that the Mac should be number 1 because its OS influenced Windows are missing the point. That doesn't seem to have been the focus of this columnist's article. Now if you want to have another article talking about the most influential OSes, well that's entirely different, and I doubt you'd find the "Tandy Sensation" on that list.
Still, I guess I will make my nits too. If you are going by ubiquity and influence in the marketplace, would you really put the Compaq Portable PC #1? Yeah, it revolutionized portability back when everybody and their uncle's dog were making nothing but desktop PCs. But I would think either the Apple II or the IBM PC would be the truly revolutionary boxes. Those were the boxes that told the world that you could have a computer of your very own, both at home and on your desk at work. That was a true paradigm shift that none of the others matched, IMO.
Some of these den't even belong on this list. I don't think adding a little more memory, hard disk, cdrom or sound card makes it on this list.
10. Osborne I;
This was the first luggable, dump compaq portable.
9. PCs Limited Turbo;
Who is PC limited, just another clone company, sure maybe its Dell, but Compaq and Gateway were there first.
8. Tandy Sensation;
Most everyone heard of the TRS-80, but Sensation? All Tandy did was add a CDROM and a sound card. SVGA was already common.
7. Commodore Amiga A1000;
Great Addition, the more/less utility to view files looked like a movie title production. And Aming had multitasking too.
6. Commodore 64;
5. MITS Altair 8800;
4. Apple II;
This should be first, this was the first mass market computer with expandable slots, floppy drive.
3. Apple Macintosh;
2. IBM PC 5150;
1. Compaq Portable PC.
Where is the first real portable with a LCD? It was the portability but the first clone. But this shouldn't have been so high, if there was Apple, then IBM, there wouldn't be anything to clone. Copycats shouldn't rate so high.
My list
1. Apple ][
2. IBM PC 5150
3. Compaq PC, this was the first clone which begat th entire clone industry
4. Apple Macintosh
5. Apple Newton
1st handheld
6. PC Laptop with LCD, very portable!!
Actually the Apple ][ c had a laptop profile but no LCD screen.
7. Commodore 64;
8. Commodore Amiga A1000;
9. Osborne I;
10. Tandy TRS-80
this was used alot in the 80s
WhatMeWorry
Mr. Silverman is really mischaracertizing his whole article, and statements such as above explemplify the distance between his knowledge and experience and the reality of the early computer industry.
In the early days, people purchased computers to "program" them. Part of the fun was taking a machine and teaching it to do new things. He should more-aptly rename his list to the, "Top 10 computer-controlled consumer devices of all time" because there is a difference.
Again, not listing the TRS-80 on the list is gross negligence. The TRS-80 was the most popular computer in the world for many more years than most of the other computer models were even around. Even if one panders to Mr. Silverman's goofball rationale of ignoring computers seemingly built for "nerds", more people used TRS-80s for business applications than Apple in most of the early years.
And what the hell is the MITS Altair doing on the list then? Make up your mind. Either you're going to give props to the computers that were most influential, or the ones who ran the most ads in Byte magazine that 7 people in Virginia actually purchased (namely the Tandy Sensation - a computer I still haven't ever seen even though I owned every other computer on his list, as well as dozens of others). But make up your mind. Your list isn't either.
It's amazing. I didn't think he could take his suck-ass list and make it even worse, but he did. If anything, this proves that dorks like this are yanking the chain of the tech community and laughing as they bask in their 15 minutes of attention.
Agree with that, and the Newton did show the way for a new type of computer - the hand-held that you could interact with in a more naturalistic manner - from it comes the Palm, the Pocket PC, the P800...
Whereas the Amiga's descendents are where? At the end of the day, the Amiga was a brilliant, quirky, fascinating dead end.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Although everyone can't ever be 100% satisfied with their own list - much less someone else's, it's good to see the Amiga got its appropriate level of respect.
Much more than Mac zealots, Amiga users have continued to utilize their 10-15 year old Amigas for things that matter in our modern world.
Sure, you can play text based games, use ssh/telnet, and "word process" on nearly any PC in existance, but old Amigas can (and still are) utilized for video work.
While I think the Newton deserved a spot in the historical review, the Amiga is truly - like the Mac - one of the forebearers of our modern Gnome, KDE, Mac OS X, and WinXP computing environments:
The Amiga was the more deserving of the two.
I think that's a very "fair and balanced" list (I'd take off the Tandy and replace it with the Newton or the original Graffiti Palm). The reason Amiga zealots persist is only due to it not receiving its historical recognition. This article will go along way to making them feel validated. I feel that Mac OS X shares much in spirit with the original Amiga, and I have long since switched to the new keeper of the flame - on the desktop. Linux and FreeBSD will (forever?) remain the server favorites.
Spiritual Leader of Green Bay Net
I know the whole article is a troll, but I can't resist commenting anyway:
10. Osborne I
No big deal. Not worthy of the list. It was neither the first portable (which was the IBM 5100) nor the best-selling. It has the distinction of being the goofiest portable with the most ridiculously-small display ever. The Kaypro II was more of a milestone, more useable and more practical and more widely available.
9. PCs Limited Turbo
If we're going to call attention to clone manufacturers, then Compaq should be here. And Compaq's 386 was the first 80386-based PC on the market. PC's limited was just one of the many clone manufacturers who's main distinction was that they didn't end up going out of business early on.
8. Tandy Sensation
It seems me and almost everyone else on the planet don't know what this computer is doing here. I have to assume Mr. Silverman has a warehouse full of these doorstops he's trying to inflate the value of.
7. Commodore Amiga A1000
Worthy of being on the list, mainly because, like many Apple models, what it lacked in large-scale consumer acceptance, it made up for in loyalty and user satisfaction. Computers like the Amiga (Apple Lisa, NeXT, Tandy 1000, etc.), if more widely accepted, might have set the industry in a different direction.
6. Commodore 64
Worthy of the list as well. This PC was many peoples' first introduction to the PC world.
5. MITS Altair 8800
No list would be complete without this computer, but the company with which it's included is inconsistent with whatever point Mr. Silverman is
trying to make (beyond getting attention by inciting the tech community with his ignorance).
4. Apple II; 3. Apple Macintosh; 2. IBM PC 5150;
All worthy.
1. Compaq Portable PC.
This might be a worthy addition to the list, but not as the top spot and not at the expense of listing many more important computers, specifically the TRS-80 (Models I and III), or many of Tandy's innovations in this field including the Pocket Computer, PC100 (Kyocera), and Color Computer. Many people have listed a lot of early clones, such as the Leading Edge. And IBM's XT was also a pioneer in taking computing to the next level with its 10MB hard drive. As for portables, the Compaq Portable III was more "important" and truly more portable than the monster that was the Model I.
I'm likely to talk about the Amiga in a bitter fashion, since I'm very bitter about Commodore, and a few other unrelated things going on in my life at the time. I actually swore off computers for 7 years and went and got a life. So I look back at my Amiga days and can't help but think "I wasted my time with that company?". First time a company wasted my time that it really mattered, and the only time I paid THEM for it.
I still love the Amigas as a line of computers, and they really were cutting edge (nevermind that Atari was able to do some of the things they did because of a lawsuit involving the Amiga technology :) ), and it really did take 10+ years for the rest of the computing industry to catch up. ANd if it weren't for the stupid patents and the fact that commodore went under the way they did, it would NOT have taken 10+ years for the rest of the industry to catch up. Moreover, the rest of the industry would be a LOT FARTHER ALONG than it is *now*, because Commodore was a big player in the desktop market before they fell apart (they were crushing APple left and right, and with Atari dropping out of business Commodore was poised to defeat Microsoft before the monopoly was even built).
I'd like to see what the world would be like today if Commodore had truly supported the Amiga and kept up R&D on it and remained competitive. I really and truly think the world would be better as a whole, and computing specifically would be tons better.
Like what I said? You might like my music
assuming you can find dialup service for $9.95/mo (and in many cities, you can), that's a $480 computer. still not a bad deal.
The list should be called top 10 US computers since it doesn't include a single non-US PC. And there PCs built in Europe (as well as Asia, I guess) that are worthy of inclusion to the list. The first computer that comes to my mind is the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
So he writes an article ... gets a bunch of pseudo-hate-mail from people that disagree, then goes back and "fixes" his list?
... would I haved bothered emailing him to say "jolly good job chap ... you've selected my favorite CPU". Nope. Not that I'd write him and complain if my machine of choice hadn't made the list either, but apparently some people did.
... especially as the end of the year, and bonus time, approaches? But if he's going to bend to the wishes of some nerds with an email account, maybe he should've taken the time to do a more thorough research job in the first place instead of congratulating himself for bringing more traffic to the site. All of that original traffic was coming to read a list that I guess was wrong. Way to go Dwight!
If my "system of choice" had made the original list
My point is that simply changing a list because he wants to address the concerns of those that had a reason to voice their disagreement doesn't seem like the right way to go about it. Sure, he'll bring more traffic to the site and to his column in particular. Who wouldn't want to single-handedly be responsible for that not once, but twice
The Newton was a short-lived market failure.
The marketplace didn't kill the Newton, Steve Jobs did. Apple spun off the Newton into its own profitable company, but when Jobs came back he gave it the axe.
People who think the Palm was a Newton copy are nuts.
Copied, no, but many of the laid off Newton engineers went to work at Palm.
The real problem with the list was that the Newton was on it
Bzzt! The only problem with the Newtons is that there wasn't a low cost, compact consumer model. They didn't have time to try to make one. But a used Newton is still one of the most powerful PDA's you can have.
The Palm Pilot wasn't truly a copy of the Newton, nor was it an improvement. It was a step down. The Newton was Apple's typical Icarus approach: it accepted human handwriting anywhere on the screen and tried to convert that to text. Some people had success with it, but in any case it became a target of ridicule for the mistakes it made in recognition. Palm attempted less and thus succeeded more: the Pilot accepted input only in a dedicated area of the screen, and only in a specific stylized form (Graffiti). There were many technical advantages to this approach: only one part of the screen needed a high resolution for input; you'd didn't have to deal with arbitrary handwriting; character recognition is easier than cursive recognition, especially on a weak CPU; and recognition errors happen only at the character scale instead of the word scale. Thus approach that was less technically ambitious worked better and dominated the PDA market for a few years.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.