ManTech Proj 01 - How were PC's Mass Marketed?

GUIDE QUESTION: What did IBM do so that the pc became a common household appliance?
"August 12, 1981 marks the birth of the IBM PC, the computer that single-handedly turned personal computing to the business market. IBM's success forced Apple and others to change their focus, and most personal computer companies from the pre-IBM era have become historical footnotes. By 2006, even Apple Computer had followed IBM's lead and adopted Intel CPUs and built Macs that can boot Microsoft Windows."

Back then, a Personal Computer commonly known as the PC was much expensive to be a common household but was in demand for businesses. William Lowe of IBM, wrote a detailed market analysis outlining the possibility of an IBM microcomputer aimed towards small businesses and even consumers. He has two proposals: The first was to buy a microcomputer company outright (he mentioned Atari by name); the other was to create a brand new microcomputer.

Microsoft, the market leader in programming languages, suppported IBM. In order to hide its true intentions from the outside world, a code name was adopted for the IBU, Project Chess, and the computer was named Acorn. Unlike any other IBM project, Chess adopted outside software. Besides the BIOS chips, almost every other component and piece of software was from an outside company.
Project Chess worked with Personal Software to bundle VisiCalc and John Draper and to include EasyWriter with Acorn. VisiCalc would be ready in the summer of 1981, though EasyWriter was not.
The version of EasyWriter that shipped with the IBM PC was still very buggy. IBM eventually distributed a free upgrade for the software.The final IBM PC was released on August 12, 1981, and it changed the world. Computers with the power of mainframes of the 1960s were now available to small businesses and consumers.
The marketers predicted they would sell 250,000 units over five years, a huge success by IBM standards. By the end of 1983, IBM had sold 750,000 units, and by 1984 Chess had swollen to over 9,000 employees. After that, the incident with Bill Gates and the other guy made Microsoft and many applications such as games, mp3s etc are born and the demand for PC's grew exponentially up to now.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC

Management of Technology

Management of Technology, my first impression is how one
manages technology. For example, when do people switch to one
technology to the other. Some of my classmates cited new
technology that is not often advisable to adapt to because of
some issues like practicality. My example to that is the media
used in viewing movies. Not so long time ago, we use betamax,
then it evolved to vhs then laser discs, vcd's, and finally
dvd's.


Now, Sony introduced a new addition to the formats -- Blu
Ray. "Blu-ray Disc (also called BD) is a high-density optical
disc format for the storage of digital media, including
high-definition video".





Media type: High-density optical disc Encoding: MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), and VC-1 Capacity: 25 GB (single layer), 50 GB (dual layer) Read mechanism: 1x@36 Mbit/s & 2x@72 Mbit/s Developed by: Blu-ray Disc Association Usage: Data storage, High-definition video and PlayStation 3
Games


For me, its not practical to use Blu Ray discs for storage
of files even though its features are impressive. Its quiite
expensive and it synchronizes with High Definition Devices which
are very costly. When storage of data is concern, Flash
disks are more practical because its compatible with almost all
computers, compact and much more affordable. While in
media formats, dvd9 is still better because its compatible and
more affordable. Maybe when the time comes, we can adapt to Blu
Ray technology when its more practical for us.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc