>Appliance style smart tvs?

Vernor Vinge's smart settop box as the computing center of the home never made sense. People connect video game consoles to the family TV because they play video games in lieu of watching TV. General-purpose computing can be and often is done in conjunction with the TV.

>LCD screen based landlines?

Only makes sense in the context of Minitel-style mass distribution of free terminals and centralized networks. The French state had economic and, more important, geopolitical reasons for pushing this; private US telcos did not.

>Maybe a world of GRiD or GO computing tablets with Penpoint os running on the AT&T hobbit processor?

Newton proved that it wasn't practical in 1995 to deliver accurate handwriting parsing in a consumer-level computing device, and that was by a company with enormous experience with consumer-level computing devices.

>Canon and Brother having smarter word processors that take on the role of family computer?

Only if they are ever willing to go the extra mile and develop OSes that support third-party applications, while providing developer kits. (Yes, yes, Brother did release a couple of PC-compatibles, but all it had to do was to license MS-DOS like every other clone maker.) There's no reason to think that the Canon Cat would be any less of a bomb in a PC-less world.

>Everything run by Apple?

In offices, yes. The IBM PC singlehandedly pushed Apple IIs out of corporate America. Desktop CP/M only worked in the SMB market because of VARs and SIs; Fortune 500 needed, if not a brand name it trusted (IBM), a company that seemed professional (Apple). Cromemco, Vector, IMSAI, and such never had the professionalism or market share to get themselves into boardrooms.

A possibility is prepackaged CP/M boxes filtering upward from Osborn and Kaypro once they get beachheads into businesses via their sewing machines. But even were that to happen I suspect that the lack of a single 5.25" disk format is alone enough to prevent widespread CP/M adoption.

>Nolan Bushnell never selling Atari and starting Chuck E Cheese?

Happened before 1981. The best outcome for Atari, really, is Armonk deciding in summer 1980 that Boca Raton and all other IBM facilities are too hidebound to develop a successful inexpensive PC, and instead going ahead and full-fledged buying Atari from Warner Communications. IBM decides to follow the System 360 model and uses the 8-bit computer line as the center of an entire line of products, everything from a next-generation videogame console (the 5200, except in 1982 and 100% compatible with existing 8-bit software) to dumb terminals for businesses to the high-end 1450XLD mini-workstation.

>The 1982 video game crash never happening?

Only if Atari (whether IBM-run or not) puts out a Nintendo-style licensing system enforced by lockout chip. The problem is that third-party publishers would just focus on Intellivision and ColecoVision instead. The model only works if everyone does it.

>Acorn flooding the American market with their Arm machines running RiscOS and then getting their ass kicked by Amiga?

Acorn was completely inept at marketing in its home market. Even with government subsidies and status as quasi-official "British home computer" the BBC Micro's market share was far smaller than Sinclair and Commodore, and comparable to Amstrad despite its late entry, and as you indicate the Amiga and ST crushed the RiscOS boxes in the UK too. Commodore UK may have start to finish been better marketers than the US parent, but there's no reason to think that Acorn US would have been any better than in its UK parent; the brief attempt to market the BBC Micro in the US is evidence of that.

>Quarterdeck DESQview taking off and being eaten up by Digital Research's GEM?

No IBM PC = No DESQview.

We might have, however, seen Concurrent CP/M and MP/M continue CP/M-80's co-dominance of the business market outside Apple.

>RadioShack being the world's most valuable tech corporation with a stranglehold on every vertical in the industry?

Absolutely not. Radio Shack almost willfully throwing away a natural monopoly in the US personal computer market is among the biggest missed opportunities in history. One Tandy Tower got lucky with the TRS-80, then did everything possible to ruin it. It got lucky again with the Tandy 1000 then got run over by the rush to zero margins that hit everyone else in the US industry outside Dell, Compaq, and HP.

Even without the PC, by 1981 Apple had surpassed Tandy by encouraging third-party developers despite the latter's huge early lead and massive proven supply and retail chains.

>Microsoft continuing to focus on video games and releasing an 8 bit competitor to the NES that could be used on Control Video Corporation's network who never pivots and changes their name to AOL?

I know you especially don't mean this to be serious, but ... this isn't completely crazy. Without the PC, Microsoft remains focused on programming languages with small consumer (Adventure, Decathlon) and hardware (Z80 SoftCard) businesses. I know I said that the settop box model doesn't work for general-purpose computing, but I can see ex-P&G marketer Ballmer convincing Gates and Allen that a locked-down videogame console with a razor-and-blades model is both a good moneymaker and a way of getting the Microsoft brand into homes.

>The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder movie actually getting made?

I'd like to see on the big screen that unnamed developer toiling away in the background, subtly getting more and more stressed, until sometime in act 5 he suddenly quits leaving that resignation letter on Tom West's desk. Maybe Netflix will do a miniseries.