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Not sure what you are trying to say?! That Alan K. was wrong?
Take a look at Apple today or take a look at Microsoft inability to gain market share with Windows Mobile 7 or with tablets: they start to make their own hardware in order to compete with Apple.
Btw you have no clue what Alan work at Atari, right?
Edited 2012-06-16 12:41 UTC
It's like "and more the rule than the exception" just wasn't there ...but I guess it's again about salivating at the company you worship now (while curiously brushing aside the failure - just one among many such - of your past darling, judging from avatar), seeking out slogans fit for the purpose.
Have another one from the same speech of Kay BTW:
"Humans like fantasy and sharing:
Fantasy fulfills a need for a simpler, more controllable world." ...repels the uncomfortable concepts of chance, and so on.
Plus there's pretty much nothing special about Apple hardware in ways which influence their software - something Kay would likely have in mind, considering his then-employer and earlier experience with highly experimental machines, languages, and so on. He's not a pompous industrial designer or marketer.
But yeah, if that first '82 quote pretty much goes against even his own professional and overall market history, one might doubt its accuracy.
Edited 2012-06-16 16:15 UTC





Member since:
2005-07-06
Alan Kay, Atari's chief scientist in 1982 (1981-1984 http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/GASCH.KAY.HTML )
Atari's software, seen as a whole, wasn't particularly exquisite then & until the end of their hardware sales. Actually, it was often rubbish, greatly contributing to the video game crash a year later - during which Atari collapsed and nearly folded. They never really recovered, were essentially gone a decade later - not much more than old brands assets, worth (sold for) $5 million; the Atari brand adopted by unrelated company, Infogrames, soon after.
What a really serious success story... (and more the rule than the exception)
Also...
Group Leader, Principal Scientist, Xerox Fellow, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, 1971-1981 - Xerox Alto and Star didn't really go anywhere by themselves; the impractical hardware quite possibly had something to do with it.
Apple Fellow, Apple Computer, 1984-1996 - largely concurrent with the times of some questionable directions WRT to their hardware, increasingly troubled OS, and the resulting free fall during the first half of the 90s.
President, Viewpoints Research Institute, 2001-present - seems to be purely software-oriented, maybe two decades changed his mind.
Edited 2012-06-16 01:57 UTC