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When Apple went public in June 2005 that it would abandon the PowerPC architecture to switch to Intel was discussed for some time Osborne effect, that is, with the announcement of new equipment for months or even years before they Many users expect to be ready for new equipment so that current sales would suffer considerably.

Why is this called Osborne effect? The legend says that a company named Osborne Computer Corporation market had a fairly successful computer called a Oborne released in April 1981, but when it was announced in 1983 a new sales model Osborne 1 almost froze, causing the bankruptcy of Osborne Computer Corporation . Why call it legend? Do not you? Well ... no.

is, like every legend has some truth. Sales of the Osborne 1 suffered from the announcement of the new computer but ... Well, not anticipate events and study a little history of this curious company.

Adam Osborne, the founder of it, there was certainly no stranger to the world of microcomputers. Not for nothing was there from the beginning, from the output of Intel 4004 (the first microprocessor in history) and the heroic days of the Homebrew Computer Club they came from so many companies (the most popular of them all was Apple Computer). The

Homebrew Computer Club was the place of meeting in California of the first microcomputer enthusiasts, people whose dream (and whose hobby) was building his own personal computer. Consider that until the birth of the microcomputer industry with Altair 8800, computers were large pots designed for companies and, at best, tertiary education, where if you were lucky you could access some kind of system timeshare as a PDP-6 or similar and buy process time to a company that rented computer.

However, after the invention of the microprocessor by Intel (the aforementioned Intel 4004) in the first half of the 70 was already enough technology to build one's own computer. With great difficulty, yes, but it could. By today's standards were ugly and coarse pottery, although by the time were extremely sophisticated devices, almost, almost science fiction. Until at least the second half of the 70, the first personal computers were built, as the aforementioned MITS Altair 8800 or Apple I eran básicamente kits destinados a los aficionados, los cuales tenían que montar y en muchos casos soldar a mano siguiendo unas instrucciones hasta, muchas horas y sudores después, tener algo que pudiera funcionar (y no digamos ya que sirvieran realmente para algo, aparte del didáctico ejercicio de montaje en sí).

En este escenario, Adam Osborne fue dándose a conocer gracias a su empresa fundada en 1972 Osborne & Associates , la cual se dedicaba a la publicación de libros para los aficionados a la informática. Estos libros se caracterizaban por ser manuales de gran calidad didáctica, muy fáciles de leer y seguir, por lo que eran casi de consultation required.

Of course, the Homebrew Computer Club was not the only place where fans had microcomputers, but say that if we could return to the 70's and we could choose a place to stay to watch in class the birth of the sector, the ideal would be the meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club .

However, as the world of microcomputers was developing and with it their market, so the company was making Adam Osborne. In 1977 drew the attention of publishing giant McGraw-Hill , which acquired Osborne & Associates and created a new label within the same where to accommodate computer-related books.

in 1980 is said to Adam Osborne visited the laboratories, which if not, Xerox PARC, where he saw the Xerox Notetaker , a computer "portable", not portable, and the idea was so impressed he decided to create their own company to manufacture and market a computer-based Notetaker.

Whether true story of the visit to Xerox or not, Adam Osborne made contact with Lee Felsenstein, designer of logic circuits that had worked with him in the review of some of his books and also in the design of Sol-20 computer. After studying two different ideas for your new computer, finally announced the final: a compact and portable computer in one piece, powered by batteries and small enough to function in an airplane seat. He was born on Osborne 1, and to manufacture and market founded the Osborne Computer Corporation cited above.

The final computer had a 5-inch monitor, two floppy drives, 5 1 / 4, a Z80 processor to 4 MHz, 64 kbytes of RAM, operating system CP / M and 15 kilillos weight in a compact design that resembled a briefcase, all at the price $ 1795, about half of any similar computer at the time.


Of course, by its very design, Osborne 1 computer was not targeted to fans of Homebrew Computer Club but their target was in the corporate market. Not surprisingly, Adam Osborne contacted major software manufacturers time to make your Osborne 1 was well wrapped useful applications for this sector, such as word processor Wordstar , the leader in the sector to who was ousted in mid 80's by Wordperfect , or upon the refusal of creadores de la hoja de cálculo VisiCalc contrató a Richard Frank para que creara SuperCalc , una hoja de cálculo inspirada en el líder del momento en el sector.

El ordenador fue todo un éxito, llegándose a vender unas 10.000 unidades mensuales (pensemos que muchos fabricantes de la época ni siquiera vendieron esa cantidad en toda su vida).

Sin embargo, tras la salida del IBM PC en agosto de 1981 (sólo 4 meses después del Osborne 1 ) las ventas se estancaron e incluso llegaron a reducirse. No demasiado, claro, pero no dejaba de ser significativo que en vez de aumentar bajen. Hay que hacer algo.

And something did. Osborne Computer Corporation announced in 1983 that they were working on a new and more advanced computer. Of course, this caused sales to suffer even more. Finally, in September 1983 the company declared bankruptcy and had to close its doors forever. What did happen? The

announce a new product months (or years?) Before final marketing can actually slow down current sales, since customers do not need to already existing product can be expected to leave the new model. However, this is not true. Reduced own sales and competition. Microsoft and IBM are adept at using this tactic, and IBM has been sued (and lost his mind) for abusing it.

That is, when Osborne announced a new computer not only makes the thought buying a Osborne 1 think if you need it now or wait to see the new model, but thought that the customer purchased a , say, IBM PC was also raised wait to see how advanced is the new Osborne computer to see if it is worth this or not.

Consider, for example, in the current situation. Microsoft has problems with Windows Vista. There are even people who are going to Microsoft and it's going to Macintosh or Linux. What What is Microsoft doing? Announces Windows 7, which is not available in at least one year. And just in case lets you use the beta for free until 2010. What Microsoft stops selling Windows Vista with this? For sure. What it is better that people go to other platforms? Absolutely. Perhaps even then they can hold these people end up changing the platform, but at least going to give you a second chance, and you pass the competition also have fewer sales. When the ad is able to reduce the number of "defections" above the number of lost sales for the company can be a good bet.

So basically, that's the idea that there behind the movement of Osborne Computer Corporation. He knew what would cause and effect were already steps to counter it. At first I had a hard time, but soon recovered and came back to win money. So, why the company bankrupt a few months later?

Well the reason was a miscalculation. In 1983, following the announcement of the new model, a vice president of the company suggested to Adam Osborne that the lot of motherboards from the old model they had in storage, worth $ 150,000, were completed and sold, and make money with them instead of wasting the $ 150,000 for stock obsolescence.
Adam Osborne
was okay and started to work. The problem is that the cost of completing these motherboards meant an expenditure of $ 2,000,000 to the treasury of the company was not far from cover, and to the hole created and the inability to find emergency financing, the company found absolutely no liquidity, and that was what made it fail.

If not finished we will see clearly to take another example. Picture yourself in the following situation. You have your work (ie, a steady income), you live in an apartment of your property, you have your car ... etc. And then you decide you're going to go travel on your holiday month for the world. Among expenditures, changes currency, contingencies, the memories ... not calculate well and spend too much.

When they finally come back and you get to do math, you realize you've spent much more money than you had saved, and by this I mean not money set aside for the trip but in general. Not all your savings together (the treasury of the company) to cover expenses. And next month you get the mortgage, electricity, water ... and you have to live apart, that is, you have to eat, going to work ... if your income is still insufficient to cover all your bills, you have a serious problem. You can try to refinance your debt if you can not or it takes too long to sell the car, sell the house and buy a cheaper, and benefits to pay part of the debt ... You can do many things, but these solutions require time and creditors may not be very patient and you end up seizing (by the way, delays in payments also generate interest, so every day that passes without paying you more.) Well, basically, this is the situation that confronted Osborne Computer Corporation.

So when you talk about the effect Osborne, you know that in reality, Osborne broke for other reasons and not for the announcement of a new computer ...

What Do French Basque People Look Like

The rich neighbor: Xerox PARC

Following the comments in the comment of ocell and my subsequent response , I would like to dedicate this fourth pill at one of the most important myths and legends in the history of microcomputers: Apple's visit to the offices of Xerox PARC.

This legend is well exemplified in the film Pirates of Silicon Valley , which indeed has already been mentioned here on other occasions. Basically, the legend said that Xerox had a good development team that created something so revolutionary that the board of the company was unable to see any value. Then came (why magic?) Jobs and his team and made a visit, they copied what they saw and what would the Macintosh (LISA it is not clear how it fits into all this.) According to the film, Bill Gates is the LISA and decides he likes while having to have it, so go to Apple (again, why would I?) And deceive Jobs for they are assigned a few prototypes of the Mac to copy Windows interface and out. But that is another story to be told at another time, now let's focus on the visit of Jobs and his Xerox PARC.

Again, to understand why decisions were taken, and things were done that made you have to understand first what is the background and what moved each.

For starters, who was Xerox? Why enters our computer history? Xerox was the owner of a technology by which it was possible to make multiple copies of documents at high speed. This two crude words, did photocopiers.

The copier business is not that you were wrong, in contrast, were international leaders and earned money to baskets, but for the entry of the 70, with the boom in data centers of enterprises and the dream of paperless office (yes, that dream is as old), at Xerox was thought that if all company documents were no longer on paper to move to an electronic format, then Xerox Technology would be useless, so I decided to anticipate events and create a center focused on the development of the digital office. The center was founded in 1971 and was called Xerox Palo Alto Research Center , better known as Xerox PARC.

result of this research and development center was the Xerox Alto , a computer developed between 1972 and 1974 which had now completely everyday items but at the time were unique in the world, such as a graphical interface controlled by a curious device called a mouse, a word processor WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get , ie what you see on the screen is what you get for your printer), a programming language called object-oriented Smalltalk or a networking technology called Ethernet, all built within the company. The computer was clearly focused on the office world, as evidenced by the monitor in vertical position, so that we can work more easily in writing of printed documents. Here in the video below you have a small summary of what was the Xerox Alto.



And it is not, of course, that Xerox policy not see any value in these accomplishments. They were aware that what in their hands was very valuable, though perhaps not everything was really valuable. However, despite the High was completed in 1974, two years before the founding of Apple and a year before they develop the MITS Altair and start the microcomputer industry, the Alto was just a prototype, very nearly an experiment laboratory that had done spectacularly well, but now Xerox was a problem. How to benefit from all this wonderful technology? And here is where Apple.

There are numerous stories about the deal reached by Xerox and Apple. One of them says that Jobs offered $ 1,000,000 in shares of Apple in exchange for opening their labs Xerox Xerox PARC, in that movie (Pirates of Silicon Valley ) what is shown is that Jobs and Apple employees a few more just go to Xerox, and you're coming, they begin to show the jewel in the crown because other (and not be eager to do so).

The truth is a bit more complicated. At that time (1979) Apple was not yet a publicly traded company, which meant that if you wanted a portion of the company had to speak directly with the owners to sell it to you (if they wanted and the price you got trading) instead of going to market and pay the price that shares are listed. Why

a company will want to sell portions of itself? This really is a complicated issue and this is not the place to explain, but basically say that to get funding. If you go to a bank and ask a loan you must return it with some interest, apart from that first the bank has to consider whether your project is viable and so on. But if you can convince someone to buy a percentage of your company, say 10%, for $ 1,000,000 that someone owns the copyright of 10% of your company, yes, but your company will have $ 1,000,000 of free cash. And it also means that the purchaser has reviewed your company at $ 10,000,000 (if 10% is worth a million ...).

Also, of course, the major shareholders can sell their shares in a personal capacity to earn money. That's how Jobs got his first million $, selling in 1979 a (small) part of its shares of Apple.

But about the history of Apple and Xerox. In 1979 Apple began a program to sell shares to large groups of investors as a way of financing and one of these big investors who were contacted was Xerox. The Apple II was in full swing, especially after the release of Visicalc and some software packages that justified the companies to purchase personal computers for their employees. Besides, the educational market had operate and the Apple II computer was the star with special campaigns for educational institutions.

Therefore, thanks to the skill and charisma of Jobs, Apple managed to put company stock worth $ 7,273,801, of which, as I said, $ 1,050,000 were acquired by Xerox. For Xerox, Jobs gave the impression that Apple was the future and become a giant Xerox whether you entered it or not, so it seemed smart and not very risky to invest $ 1,050,000 in it. Besides, Apple was already working to make an IPO, that is, to go bag, so that the potential of that million $ could be enormous, and indeed it was. But

is, there was no agreement. Xerox did not undertake to teach anything. And Jobs, at least for the moment, did not request anything more than money to Xerox.

So why there is the famous visit? And how is that Jobs knew it was a good idea to go see what they did at Xerox PARC?

Well, in the 70's, when Apple was growing exponentially, so did its employees. Many of them came after having worked in large companies like HP or, as in the case of Jeff Raskin, Xerox.

Jeff Raskin, pictured with Steve Jobs after he was hired by Apple to perform manual BASIC programming for the Apple II, and after good work finally came on staff as manager of the company's publications. However, Jeff was a visionary in his own way of computing also had very clear ideas of how it should be a microcomputer and in 1979 got permission from the first CEO of Apple, Mike Scott, popularly known as Scotty on Apple to explore their ideas by designing a new computer model, which is named Macintosh .

Anyway, Jeff, having also worked at Xerox, he knew what had been developed at Xerox PARC. Raskin repeatedly tried to convince both Jobs and Wozniak for a that since they had good relationships with Xerox, they did try that a demonstration of the technology Alto. However, neither case did much to Steve, because both believed that a company the size of Xerox lacked the ability to compete in the fast and dynamic world of microcomputers.

Macintosh project at that time was quite small, with very few people working 100% on it. I think at that time, only Jeff Raskin himself and Burrell Smith, the designer of circuits Mac, however, occasionally other people could work on specific things for the project, and so Jeff was talking to Bill Atkinson, the software wizard interface behind Lisa, telling Xerox designs, all of that mouse, icons, dropdown menus ...

The Lisa project was directed at that time still Steve Jobs. As a principal software engineer, Bill Atkinson was heard and respected by Jobs, so that on waking Bill Jeff's curiosity Jobs asking this over to try to manage a visit to Xerox PARC labs. Jobs finally agreed and began negotiations with Xerox.

Why Xerox agreed in turn to teach the jewel in the crown to a potential competitor like Apple? At first glance, it seems very smart, right? Well, as we have said, Xerox was able to build the Alto is a completely revolutionary computer and most advanced in the world for years. However, he had not found out how to return to their achievements. Who could be interested in a computer as well? In its traditional customers, the corporate market, certainly not, they demanded large mainframes and would not know take advantage of the tremendous sophistication of Alto.

Ultimately, the High, how it was conceived, was a personal computer. Was intended to be a single person to sit in front of him and interacted with the computer. It was not the best option of course, for large batch systems, but it was so expensive to produce than anyone would pay thousands of $ to put that computer to a secretary and that she could use only. The Xerox solution would be an alliance as a company like Apple and together build a computer powerful enough to hold all the advances of the High but inexpensive enough to be sold to individuals.

For Xerox, this operation was to give ideas or technology to competitors, their intentions were to work with Apple to get a computer inexpensive enough to be sold as personal computer. So she was willing to teach High Apple people. The visit was Apple going to make no commitment, because what happened was not the head of Xerox people who signed the agreement is that Apple, if I was interested in what they have seen, passed from them to implement their own version from scratch instead of working with Xerox PARC.

Thus, after several days of intense talks, finally reached an agreement and Jobs, Scotty, Bill Atkinson of Apple engineers and four more went to Xerox PARC facilities where Larry Tessler Upper and showed them where it has the legend, he was profoundly shocked by the attitude and questions that made them the people at Apple, the most intelligent that no one, even Xerox's own people, had ever done.

Steve Jobs For the Alto was a revelation. That was another world, had nothing to do with computers that he had known. He kept saying things like "Why did not you doing something with this? Is the greatest thing I've ever seen! Is revolutionary!", Unable to sit still in his seat overcome with emotion. "How much can you take to do all this," Jobs in Atkinson asked that day. "Six months," he said. It was, as I say, 1979. The Apple Lisa, the first attempt, was released in 1983. The Apple Macintosh in January 1984 ...

Bill also was a revelation. I knew the theory, after all Jeff Raskin had often talked of Smalltalk, the graphical interfaces and all that, but it was not to hear or read about something before him there, see it work, play with him. It would be unfair to say that the later designs of Bill Atkinson was a crude copy of the Xerox Alto. Since then, there are apparently inspired by that day at Xerox PARC, but no need to detract from Bill.

In any case, both Xerox and Apple followed different paths. Apple made its own graphical interface implementation would be in the Apple Lisa, 1983 and Apple Macintosh in January 1984.

Xerox, meanwhile, finally built himself a personal computer with high technology. This computer was the Xerox Star, which you can see an image on the right, released in 1981 and being the first personal computer for sale with graphical interface, mouse, Ethernet and laser printer, one of the greatest inventions of Xerox . It cost a whopping $ 16,000 in 1981 compared with $ 10,000 of the Apple Lisa and Macintosh $ 2,495, and was targeted as the next evolution in smart office. But, unfortunately for Xerox, said computer, the first of "his kind" was a resounding commercial failure, reaching to sell only 25,000 units worldwide.

Invitation For Lohri Of Son

"tu me away"

remember a couple of days ago I sat in a park Despite being surrounded by a large crowd, I felt deeply lonely, as if all these people had something in common, they all walk to somewhere in particular, had a purpose for being there at the time and I did not know I was there not expecting anyone, he was not going somewhere in particular, felt excluded, strange.

Suddenly I notice that I'm not the only one who feels well, on the other end of the bench was a young man about 17 years ago, I felt I had the same feeling that I, despite only being around people; We stared for a while, our eyes distilled sadness love, fear, hope ... then I could see how, Zahir was at that time asked me why we were so far away? maybe it was the best. At one point he lowered his head and said, "look at us ... you I walked away, just have to have you back" and left me there, lost and insecure.

But it was only a dream, so real ... Every night before I fell asleep I remember, I wonder if I really wanted to say that I do not know and I have a fear of knowing ... I have a lifetime to discover, but perhaps in time we do change, and take paths very different, and if at any moment I regret not having done nothing when I could ... then I'll know what to do.

Someone once said: Someone once said, are good girls who write diaries, poor never have time, I ... just want to live a life that you will remember, even if not put in writing.