Bad news for IBM and Apple
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
It's still a bit of a mystery to me why Commodore failed to crack the business market with it. Maybe their success in the home computer space diminished the brand in the eyes of potential buyers, or maybe it was because Commodore's board decided to focus on profit-taking after ejecting Jack Tramiel, and failed to dominate against the Atari ST (which was what JT sold next after getting the boot from his own company).
Excuse the run-on nostalgia. When I was a teen, Jack Tramiel was a hero of mine, and he enjoyed the same kind of status that Bill Gates or Steve Jobs has - a ruthless businessman whose recipe for success was making technology affordable and accessible. Back when computers seemed like exotic and opaque toys (I grew up in Ireland, so in the 80s the computer revolution was just beginning), Jack Tramiel was pushing out fun and affordable machines, but they and he looked respectable enough to be part of the 'sell' to skeptical parents - 'the company is called Commodore Business Machines, Dad! It's not just for games, I'll have a career!' I knew little or nothing of business, but I knew Tramiel was a businessman who listened to his engineers and his customers, and that meant a lot to a young geek. He was really ahead of his time.
In general, market leaders will not reference competition to not give them credibility/free advertising, but the other way around is fair game and is often used quite effectively.
I agree with the sentiment, but a rule, really?
@gojomo regarding how your comments about us and "comment syndication" - why do you have to automatically go the ultra negative route?
Because you've breached important norms: that I decide where my name and writing appears, and that content contributed to one site isn't bulk-republished at another site for commercial gain.
If you wanted to take occasional hand-selected quotes -- "gojomo at Hacker News makes a good point when he says..." etc. -- that's fair and respectful, even flattering. But scraping and merging every HN comment into your own discussion threads is sleazy, barely a notch above the splogs that grab blocks of others' text unattributed for search-engine spamming.
Attribution is not enough to legitimize the tactic at this indiscriminate scale.
Also: Your presentation removes the threading and feedback mechanisms so important to HN discussions. You add 'nofollow' on the backlinks you do provide. Your iPhone interface includes a prominent YC commenter icon that (when it appears on 7-of-8-comments on your site) implies an affiliation or endorsement where none exists.
The whole thing reeks, and that you don't yet perceive the problem justifies an even more "ultra negative" tone than I've already adopted.