Oh wow, it turns out the QL hardware was reused in the ICL One Per Desk. We had one at home growing up (for some reason?!). Kind of funny to read that it's greatest success was in networking hundreds of bingo halls together across the UK.
I know that being PC-compatible would automatically make them commodity, but if they had positioned themselves as a value-added “PC+” platform and focused on competing in areas where PC clones at-the-time sucked and alternatives like Amiga reigned (e.g. Video Toaster), could they have succeeded? What if they merged with Quantel and made their Paintbox more affordable sooner? That would have taken the wind out of Adobe’s Photoshop sails.
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I feel the UK computing scene suffered from a lack-of-ambition. The world is too small for each medium-sized country to have their own computer-makers, so it’s important to go-big early and establish footholds in all the major markets - which isn’t something anyone in the UK except ARM (and to an extent: Sinclair) has done.
Sinclair and Acorn were extremely ambitious. Acorn even sold an NTSC conversion of the BBC Micro in the US for a short time. My theory is they were undercapitalized.
Yes, this. Very much so.
One example is the RF rules that hampered the Acorn Archimedes.
I argue that if Acorn designed the hardware ready-for-localisation then this would be a non-issue.
I remember at university writing a couple of little programmes that allowed the swanky BBC Model B (with no floppy drive) to use the Spectrum as a file server, over the serial interface.
But you're right-- it was too late to save the QL by then.
Of course, that wasn't the only problem with the machine, not by a longshot. I did my very first commercial hardware hacking in high school building/selling plug-in 'spiderboards' to protect the oh-so-fragile ZX8301 chips, and got my first oscilloscope in college to chase down all the ground bounce that was still occasionally killing the NMOS ROMs...
The only real hardware bit that we could rib him about was the serial port design, but I can't even remember what was wrong with it now (handshaking?)
I do wish I'd snaffled the QDOS listing that got thrown away during an office move.
The QLs problem was more the unreliable micro-drives the use of a cut down processor and the keyboard/build quality.