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Comment by dekuNukem | Hacker News Reader

I really enjoy the brief period just after the release of IBM PC, where manufacturers could see where things were heading, but were still trying different things to set themselves apart.

Sirius 1 had the weird floppy drive and unusal high-res graphics. Apricot had Display-in-keyboard and compact form factors. Olivetti had charming italian design and the strange upside-down motherboard (when battery leaks it drips down instead of eating the PCB, talk about ahead of its time!)

All ran MS-DOS but not "PC compatible", so none of them really took off. Then everyone started to do 100% compatible clones, and it was a race to the bottom.

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> "Then everyone started to do 100% compatible clones, and it was a race to the bottom."

Maybe in the "who can make the cheapest clone" business. Because post-consolidation, plenty of outfits offered machines that set themselves apart. They had to.

I wouldn't even call it a "race" to the bottom. It took until maybe 1995 for prices to drop enough for some of the clone manufacturers to start going out of business. Radio Shack caught on around 1991 and got out early, but Zeos didn't go out of business until 1995 for instance.

Which is why nowadays vertical integration like everyone was doing back then is back.

As survivor of that era, Apple proved the point of higher margins, and the remaining OEMs want a piece of the pie, even better if it is ARM based instead of x86.

Is anyone doing vertical integration in the computer space besides Apple?

Most of the laptop vendors, with their pre-installed Windows, alongside OEMs differentiation customisations.

Android tablets with detachable keyboards.

Chromebooks as well.

The only PCs left with customisation are those aquariums full of rainbows, built by gamers.

In mainstream of course, then there all those little brands that only HN like audiences care that they exist.

The original Apricot was basically a luggable Sirius 1. ACT was the European distributor of the Sirius.

The Olivetti M24 was a PC compatible.

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