Ah, nostalgia

OPINION: I don't know if you noticed it or not, but 12 August was the 25th anniversary of the IBM PC.

Many in the mainstream media treated it as if it was the 25th anniversary of 'the personal computer' but it was actually more significant than that.

It was the anniversary of IBM declaring that its personal computer, unlike everyone else's personal computer, was a personal computer.

Overnight, if your personal computer did not have capital letters in it, you were an also-ran in the personal computer market: 100 percent mindshare, in one fell swoop.

Even today, Apple (at one time the 800-pound gorilla of the personal computer market) runs ads drawing comparison and contrast between a Mac and a PC - as if they are two different things.

As if a Mac is not a personal computer. I presume someone in IBM's marketing department got a healthy bonus for thinking that one up.

For my money, that moment is more significant than the various other moments - the first sales of the Altair I, the launch of the Apple - that are counted as the birth of the personal computer.

Until 12 August 1981 there were personal computers, home computers, microcomputers and probably several other names I can't recall now. After that date there were PCs and everything else.

Of course, IBM is no longer in the PC game, having years ago given up competing against the clone industry it helped to found when it built its personal computer out of off-the-shelf components and software licensed from outside companies (where are they now?).

The open platform paved the way for smaller, more nimble companies to build identical and cheaper machines that rode Big Blue's coattails until they overtook it. There's irony in that - a parable perhaps - but this isn't the place for it.

No, this is the place for saying nostalgia just isn't what it used to be. In other industries - cars and music leap to mind - the past is looked upon with a kind of soft-focus glow.

Next year is the 40th anniversary of both the Shelby GT Mustang and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Expect both to be remembered with misty longing for better times. Expect to hear "they don't make them like that anymore" and "that's stood the test of time".

Expect none of that with the IBM PC. The 1981 model IBM PC was, frankly, butt ugly, underpowered and overpriced. A year later it had not stood the test of time, and within a couple of years it was a paperweight. A butt-ugly paperweight.

So, if you're feeling nostalgic for the old days, I suggest downloading some of the hits of 1981 off the worldwide web onto your multimedia-equipped computer via your high-speed broadband internet connection, streaming it to your hi-fi over the home wireless network, putting your feet up and saying to yourself: "They didn't build them like that then".

Matthew JC Powell sometimes misses his old Atari. Reminisce on mjcp@optusnet.com.au.

hardware ibm pc matthew powell