What are the most important factors that allowed the market to take off the way it did?
I think it's been the flexibility of the machine, the fact that it's not a dedicated, hardwired, hard-programmed machine. It started off as the spreadsheet machine and a word processor and went from that into different forms of media, and then it went from that into current substantiations with music and video and the Internet. So the fact that the machine has this ability to transform itself and evolve with time, as opposed to just being a single-function machine, I think that's been the primary value of the PC.
"Maybe the dang thing will be flexible and you'll roll it up; it won't be a solid metal-encased entity."
It's simple to think of it from the standpoint that when PCs started, it was basically a word processor and spreadsheet and everybody was looking for the killer app to supersede those two applications. The killer app happened to be 101 or 1,001 different applications, not a specific application. And the fact that it was 1,001 was made possible by the reprogrammable nature of the machine, its adaptability.
Around this time in the mid-'80s, Intel obviously made a huge bet on this market, switching production away from memory chips to processors. Tell us about some of the things that convinced you that was going to be the right decision for the company. Barrett: There is a lot of folklore about that decision. In reality, if you look at the time in the mid-1980s when we really made that final decision, it was one of those decisions that had already been made for you. Our market share in the DRAM market--the memory market--had declined substantially; we were a single-digit percent player. I think the company was realistic in where its future was going to be: We could either continue to play in a business where we were not doing well, or we could cast our lot with a new and potentially very exciting business which was just starting.
If you look at the history of Intel, which has been (an) innovator in bringing new technology to market, I think it made sense for us to pursue the new technology and to see what opportunities it would bring rather than aim to slog it out with a whole series of very competent Japanese DRAM manufacturers.
"Maybe the dang thing will be flexible and you'll roll it up; it won't be a solid metal-encased entity."
It's simple to think of it from the standpoint that when PCs started, it was basically a word processor and spreadsheet and everybody was looking for the killer app to supersede those two applications. The killer app happened to be 101 or 1,001 different applications, not a specific application. And the fact that it was 1,001 was made possible by the reprogrammable nature of the machine, its adaptability.
Around this time in the mid-'80s, Intel obviously made a huge bet on this market, switching production away from memory chips to processors. Tell us about some of the things that convinced you that was going to be the right decision for the company. Barrett: There is a lot of folklore about that decision. In reality, if you look at the time in the mid-1980s when we really made that final decision, it was one of those decisions that had already been made for you. Our market share in the DRAM market--the memory market--had declined substantially; we were a single-digit percent player. I think the company was realistic in where its future was going to be: We could either continue to play in a business where we were not doing well, or we could cast our lot with a new and potentially very exciting business which was just starting.
If you look at the history of Intel, which has been (an) innovator in bringing new technology to market, I think it made sense for us to pursue the new technology and to see what opportunities it would bring rather than aim to slog it out with a whole series of very competent Japanese DRAM manufacturers.
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