From: bwebster@pages.com (Bruce F. Webster)
Subject: Re:  Dropping bundled applications (was: Re: 3.0 and WriteNow) (long)
Reply-To: bwebster@pages.com
Organization: Banzai Research Institute
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 06:12:35 GMT

In article <1992Oct6.003304.2855@kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca>  
sherwood@fenris.space.ualberta.ca (Sherwood Botsford) writes:
> 
> Years ago, back in the Dark Ages, when I was but a pup, I  
> bought my first computer.  IBM's were awfully expensive,  
> brand new, and it wasn't clear at all they were worth the  
> powder it would take to blow them to hell....
> 
> I ended up with a Kaypro 10.  It came with WordStar,  
> CalcStar, ...  dBase II, SuperCalc...  The value of the  
> CP/M packages was at list almost twice what I paid for the  
> computer.  
> 
> Mr. Kay made a LOT of money with that line of machines at a  
> time when he came into the market late, and no-one had much  
> market share.  
> 

Actually, Kaypro was modestly (not enormously) successful because Osborne had  
already paved the way for both the concept of a portable computer *and* the  
concept of bundled software; Kaypro's advantage over Osborne wasn't software,  
it was having an 80-column display (the Osborne had an auto-scrolling  
52-character CRT), a better keyboard, and higher-capacity disk drives. 

I was VP R&D of Oasis Systems at the time Kaypro was hitting the market--we  
ended up licensing our spelling checker, The Word Plus, to them--and between  
that relationship, using a Kaypro (among other systems) at work, living in San  
Diego (where Kaypro was located) during that period, and having various friends  
work at Kaypro, I've got a good background in what went on out there.

> If Mr. Jobs wants this machine to sell, it should have  
> middle of the road capability in all the areas it claims to  
> excell in, right out of the box.  Thus it should have a  
> reasonable word processor, spreadsheet, bit image twidler,  
> drawing program,...
> 

There is a fundamental difference between the Osborne/Kaypro model and the  
Macintosh/NeXT model. With the former, there were lots of other platforms  
running CP/M software, so a bundled deal by Osborne or Kaypro did little to  
discourage CP/M developers. With the Mac and the NeXT, there's only that one  
hardware platform, so bundled applications raise a serious barrier to 3rd party  
developers. 

> By the way, Mr. Kay went bankrupt when he tried competing  
> for commodity market PC's.  I hope that part of the analogy  
> doesn't hold up.

Kaypro was in serious financial trouble long before it started "competing for  
commodity market PCs". The company had poor quality assurance, had a real lack  
of intelligent management, small margins (due in part to the licensing fees for  
all the bundled software), never had a great deal of cash on hand, had a high  
turnover rate, and was very slow in moving to the 8086/88 MS-DOS market. What's  
amazing about Kaypro is not that they failed, but how they stayed in business  
as long as they did. Having had prolonged and close contact with both Kaypro  
and NeXT, I see few parallels between the two. ..bruce..

Bruce F. Webster
CTO, Pages Software Inc.
bwebster@pages.com
#import <pages/disclaimer.h>