Rough Alternate Computing Sketch

Very rough. I do have background into how it all leads up, but this is more or less how it shakes out in a non-Windows/x86 dominated world. The key POD is further back, but butterflies result in no IBM clones and hence no MS-DOS dominance.

Commodore plays their hand better with a better CEO and merge with Sun. Apple plays their hand differently (sometimes better) with a different CEO. IBM chooses to build a larger non-Windows presence. Japanese companies get involved for various reasons: chip designers/fabrication, console systems, need for an OS that works with Kanji as Windows did but poorly, etc….

Feel free to tear it apart.

Company / OS / CPU

  • Sony & NeXT / NextStep / ENGINE & ElementEngine.
    Sony wants to develop computers, but considers Windows unacceptable in its Kanji performance. They therefore approach NeXT about semi-exclusively licensing NextStep for in the early '90s, and the struggling NeXT accepts as long as OpenStep remains independent. At the same time Sony has an idea for future advanced chip design, and approaches a number of Japanese companies, eventually lining up Toshiba and NEC to work on a new RISC design. Specifically built for media functions the ENGINE architecture is a high bandwidth streaming design with optional extended cache and coprocessor in order to better perform integer operations. It's similar to the Emotion Engine.
  • Toshiba / NextStep / ENGINE & ElementEngine.
    They join Sony in designing a new CPU architecture and also obtain a license for NextStep.
  • Hiatchi / NextStep / ENGINE & ElementEngine.
    Hitachi saw an opportunity to partner with Toshiba & Sony, save resources by not developing their planned SuperH design, and obtain an operating system.
  • Nintendo / none / ElementEngine.
    Nintendo is something of an outsider, relying on Sony technology for their consoles and returning the favour via the software needed for their games to run on NextStep/ElementEngine computers natively.


  • Apple / Pink / 68k --> PowerAlpha & x86
    Apple considers porting MacOS to Intel's x86, but decides against it. Instead they work with IBM, AMD, and Hitachi on the PowerAlpha architecture and port MacOS to that. Meanwhile they also develop Pink to run on both PowerAlpha and x86, as well as designing it to make it easy to switch to other chip architectures. As part of a wider strategic direction change they license Pink to their PowerAlpha partners as well as Compaq (via AMD). For use in the Newton they buy a controlling stake in ARM which also secures them a place at the chip design table.
  • IBM / Pink & Windows / x86 --> PowerAlpha & x86
    Bothered by their dependence on both Intel and Microsoft, IBM and Apple enter talks about licensing Apple's Pink to IBM and for IBM to develop a POWER derivative for the desktop/embedded market. IBM enters talks with several processor design companies in order to broaden the market for their new chip. AMD, having just bought DEC's chip design group to work on an internal x86 chip instead turns them towards IBM and POWER: AMD helps so much so it winds up being called PowerAlpha. NEC, in the early stages of working on their next-gen architecture, also joins in. In return both NEC and AMD get Apple Pink licences, although AMD (with Apple's permission) sells theirs to Compaq.
    Being a large diversified company IBM uses both Windows and Pink; POWER, PowerAlpha, and x86.
  • Panasonic / Pink / PowerAlpha
    With their purchase of Sega Panasonic becomes involved in this consortium, as part of a broader competition with Sony.
  • Sega / none / PowerAlpha
    Needing a CPU and with Hitachi moving closer with Nintendo & Sony essentially led Sega into relations with them. However at the beginning they are not otherwise involved and Sega console games do not natively play on Pink/PowerAlpha systems. With their purchase by Panasonic, Sega's games (in return for a Pink license) become playable on Pink PowerAlpha or x86 computers that can handle them. However Sega continues their porting tradition to Windows as it also uses x86.
  • AMD / none / Alpha & PowerAlpha & x86
    AMD is happy to have two different chips to work on, especially because they're close to IBM and (with ex-DEC designers) a major force in developing PowerAlpha. As with IBM and POWER, they retain the Alpha chip itself for servers and workstations.
  • Compaq / Windows & Pink / x86
    Compaq buys AMD's Pink license so they're not forced to rely on Microsoft's Windows. However they remain with Intel's x86, as Pink supports both x86 and PowerAlpha.
  • Sun Commodore / AmigaOS & SunOS --> Solaris / SPARC & 68k --> SPARC & SparcLite
    After buying Atari (to consolidate the low-end of the market) and Amiga (for their hardware design) in 1984 Commodore releases the highly successful Amiga computer in early '85, fighting the Apple Macintosh to a draw. With Jean-Louis Gassée taking over as CEO in 1985, Commodore aggressively moves on hardware and software—the Commodore 74 on the low-end and the Amiga on the higher end. By 1986, seeing the success of Nintendo, Gassée decides to release a new game console (the Atari 7800 having been cancelled) and make their computer line-up to run console games. The Atari 74 (1986), based on the C74 minus monitor and keyboard was quite successful, running a close third in America, and second in Europe (although non-existent in Japan). Commodore International, however, remained a fairly small company with uncertainity about their operating system and future CPU direction. Gassée entered into talks with Sun, who possess both a CPU in SPARC and an operating system in SunOS.
    Sun and Commodore merge, Jean-Louis Gassée takes over the Amiga, Solaris, and software development. Atari and Atari Studios operate in a fairly independent fashion, although they collabrate with the hardware teams of Sun Commodore as part of their work on the next-generation video game console. Sun works with Motorola on a desktop/embedded chip (SparcLite), they also put together a broader chip collaboration on the SPARC architecture with Fujitsu, Texas Instruments, and NEC.
    (Logo is the Commodore symbol with the word Sun in vertical letters in front of it.)
  • Atari / none / SparcLite
    Wholly owned subsidiary of Sun Commodore, Atari (like Nintendo) is basically at the periphery of the main grouping. All games for the Atari Panther (and later systems) run natively on Solaris/SparcLite computers that meet the performance requirements.
  • NEC / Solaris / SPARC & SparcLite
    They join in designing a new CPU architecture and also obtain a license for Solaris.
  • Fujitsu / Solaris / SPARC & SparcLite
    A long time SPARC user, Fujitsu secures a Solaris license in return for a formalized Sun-Fujitsu-TI-NEC partnership on the architecture.
  • Texas Instruments / Solaris / SPARC & SparcLite
    With a shorter price war between Atari and Commodore in '83, TI survives in the personal computer market with odds and ends. They languish without an OS and exit the market. However Sun Commodore offers them stake in SPARC (to join with Fujitsu & NEC on future design) in the early '90s as well as a license for Solaris.
  • Motorola / Solaris / 68k --> SparcLite
    Concerned about their own future CPU development, and with 68k hitting design limits, Motorola's close relationship with Commodore leads them to working with Sun when the two companies become Sun Commodore. Motorola also sees this as their opportunity to sell desktop computers, as Apple consistently refuses to license MacOS to them and by the time they change direction Motorola has jumped.
  • Others / Windows / x86
    Other computer manufactures use Windows and x86 from Intel or AMD. Dell and HP are the leading Windows-only vendors, with Compaq and IBM (both also using Pink) as the third and fourth of the big Windows vendors.


Intel and Windows, of course, remain big dogs but in this timeline a) IBM is fighting it out in the desktop space with PowerAlpha and has more support than with PowerPC particularly with clones b) the Japanese staffed up with odds and ends put together a credible association, and c) Texas Instruments decided to get back in the OS arena and their fabs and new close relationship with Sun and Fujitsu have brought a number of top chip designers to Sun.


On the PDA/smartphone front:
Apple goes ahead with the Newton, Sony buys Palm (because they were using it for ATL Clié), and Commodore picks up General Magic.

As IOTL Microsoft makes a Windows Mobile operating system.


There. Three allied consortiums based around a common CPU and OS design, plus a software vendor Microsoft (who, incidentally, makes their other programs such as Office for all platforms, Office is roughly as dominant as IOTL), plus Windows/x86 hardware companies, and so forth.


Essentially this should drive OS development, as it didn't OTL once Windows 95 came out until OS X started picking up in 2003 or so.

It should also broadly drive CPU development, with Intel not facing just AMD and Motorola/IBM for desktops. Intel will probably develop both server and embedded chips earlier as well.

Finally Newton plus Palm & General Magic with major resources should drive the pocket computer (PDA) market and perhaps lead to earlier cellular data networks and WiFi as well as generally better developed cell networks and perhaps even earlier broadband.


My main concern, then, is plausibility. If Windows is not dominant and propping up/propped up by Intel x86 are three separate CPU/OS groupings workable?

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ETA:
I've also given some thought to alternatives. Perhaps Sony designs computers based on consoles (i.e. Nintendo) and audio decks—which does let me call computers "decks" in the ATL, cyberpunk style—and from a purchase of Palm develops your home "deck" which resembles a PS3 + keyboard, attached to an iPhone kinda device.

Or Sony buys Commodore. Or Sun & Apple merge. Or Or Or. I've given this lots of thought, actually, and I'm still not sure.

ETA2: Oh, and Sony owns with the Minidisc. It's in the Nintendo CD (for the SNES), the Minidisc-II in the Ultra Nintendo (née N64), they rapidly take over disks and cassettes, locks out Zip/CD-R/CD-RW, is the de facto portable audio standard all the way until flash memory gets big (portable HDD = failure), and is just basically awesome. So much so that HD-MD with a 4 GB capacity is the ATL version of DVD (VMD), and Blu-MDs are this TL's version of Blu-Ray. Why? Because MDs were cool.

ETA3 (lots of edit tonight. Chalk up to the late hour, and being somewhat drunk):
Yes. The Minidisc has reasons behind its success in the ATL. But, overall, I just love them.
 
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Very interesting! I find computer AH a very interesting topic that doesn't get enough attention, so I hope you don't mind if I try to ask some questions...

Where do Windows and x86 come into the game? I mean, if you don't have the IBM clones, why would x86 gain importance at all? Absent that, I'd expect Intel to try to move to a new architecture, as they attempted to several times OTL but couldn't because of the legacy. (Though you do seem to have Compaq existing, so I'm somewhat confused on this point)

How does the Apple situation work? I assume PowerAlpha is vaguely similar to OTL's PowerPC? Does Pink software have to be compiled twice for both processors, similar to a "Universal Binary" on Mac OS X today?

Sony buys Palm? Very interesting. I suppose the dreaded PalmSource/PalmOne split never occurs, which essentially led to the death of Palm OS as a viable platform... But what about smartphones? Does Sony Ericsson exist in TTL? Will Sony bring the Clie to the phone space? (For some reason they never did OTL as far as I know) Palm pre-Handspring did go into the phone space with the Tungsten W, though I would guess Sony probably bought Palm for the OS and dumped much of the hardware division in favor of the Clie?

In OTL Apple sued General Magic as it had begun as an Apple project and they wanted to push them out of the market in favor of the Newton- does this still occur with Sun Commodore (good idea merging those two, by the way) buying General Magic?

Also, does Handspring still exist in TTL? Do they still make the Treo?

What's Steve Jobs up to? Is he still at NeXT?
 
Why did I suspect you'd be one of the only people to respond? :)

Where do Windows and x86 come into the game? I mean, if you don't have the IBM clones, why would x86 gain importance at all? Absent that, I'd expect Intel to try to move to a new architecture, as they attempted to several times OTL but couldn't because of the legacy. (Though you do seem to have Compaq existing, so I'm somewhat confused on this point)

ITTL MS-DOS is tied to IBM through a better IBM contract team. However Microsoft isn't stupid, and they visited Xerox PARC as well. They get right to work on ATL Windows which is probably somewhat better than OTL Windows.

IBM is a natural customer, but so are the mid-level computer makers and the IBM-Windows connection is a big help in selling to businesses. Neither the Commodore Amiga (video/audio capabilities) or Mac OS (user interface + desktop publishing) will appeal to those groups and as Commodore doesn't let anybody else make Amiga computers until their early '90s merger with Sun; and as Apple does likewise until a shift in strategic direction also in the early '90s; and as NeXTSTEP comes out in the late '80s that leaves Windows a large gap from roughly 1985-1990 where they're the only GUI option to be had by people.

ATL Compaq simply finds a different DOS operating system (as others also do) until Windows comes out. That might be an interesting in-between time: a non IBM DOS system that does very well but never transitions to a GUI and so fades out. It might then be, Commodore 64, Apple II, IBM/MS-DOS, non-clones/other DOS with cross porting between MS-DOS and other DOS.

That would leave IBM in a business-dominant position, but also help out Commodore 64/74, Apple II, and the other DOS system in non-business areas. It would also make businesses very happy to have a non-IBM alternative when Windows comes out.

You might be right, however, about Intel. Did they have any next-generation successor to the x86 around 1985-6 that IBM and other Windows using companies would adopt?

How does the Apple situation work? I assume PowerAlpha is vaguely similar to OTL's PowerPC? Does Pink software have to be compiled twice for both processors, similar to a "Universal Binary" on Mac OS X today?

Ah. This is fun. OTL Copland Apple work included a hardware abstraction layer that would make the platform much more CPU agnostic than most systems. Alternatively, NeXTSTEP handled multiple operating systems fairly well and the Pink team might adopt a Universal Binary type approach. Either way two CPUs is not unreasonable: Windows used to support more than one CPU, Solaris supports multiple CPUs, current OS X does, etc…. It's additional work, yes, but Apple had a heck of a time getting over their attachment to a single type of Motorola chip and are somewhat more wary ITTL.

PowerAlpha comes out of Motorola's defection over Apple not letting make clones. Without Motorola Apple would like an additional company besides IBM. ITTL AMD is a little more ambitious and so scrapes up the cash to pick up the DEC Alpha team. PowerAlpha is a chip out of the best features of the DEC/AMD Alpha team and IBM's POWER minus server features.

Sony buys Palm? Very interesting. I suppose the dreaded PalmSource/PalmOne split never occurs, which essentially led to the death of Palm OS as a viable platform... But what about smartphones? Does Sony Ericsson exist in TTL? Will Sony bring the Clie to the phone space? (For some reason they never did OTL as far as I know) Palm pre-Handspring did go into the phone space with the Tungsten W, though I would guess Sony probably bought Palm for the OS and dumped much of the hardware division in favor of the Clie?

OTL Newton had plans for a slot-in phone module. A more successful Newton would certainly do that. Better phone networks in Japan would probably force Sony into something similar to start (a slot in card for their Palm pocket computers) and eventually smartphones.

Sony Ericsson may exist, as Sony would probably still want a phone company partner (Apple had long standing ties to the original AT&T, that probably suffices for the Newton) but there are other potential companies as well. I don't know exactly what Sony would do with Palm. They might leave them as an independent OS group and get to work on their own hardware (the ATL Clié presumably).

Nokia is interesting. Facing Newton, Sony/Palm and Sun Commodore/General Magic they probably get right to work on their own operating system and smartphone. (Oh, and Motorola would presumably but not necessarily get a license to the General Magic OS.) Windows Mobile is also a natural reaction, just as in desktops Microsoft is the hardware agnostic company while the other three are tied into less than a half a dozen companies—there will be plenty of smartphone hardware makers that go with Windows Mobile… Nokia are the only guys I see just writing their own (Linux based?).

In OTL Apple sued General Magic as it had begun as an Apple project and they wanted to push them out of the market in favor of the Newton- does this still occur with Sun Commodore (good idea merging those two, by the way) buying General Magic?

The Sun-Apple merger (Snapple) was always one of the most obvious pairing in corporate merger what-ifs, but a viable Commodore looking around for a post-Motorola CPU and a post-Amiga OS would find a lot to like in a Sun thinking of expanding beyond servers.

As for General Magic, perhaps being sued by Apple is their impetus to seek somebody to buy them. I'm quite certain Sun lawyers could match Apple lawyers on that front, and unlike General Magic themselves Sun Commodore could easily afford a settlement if need be.

Also, does Handspring still exist in TTL? Do they still make the Treo?

Handspring started because Palm people were unhappy with 3Com's handling of Palm. With Sony resources (and their need for a handheld with stylus that understands kanji) I imagine Handspring simply never starts up.

However there probably are equivalent companies that enter to shake up the major players.

What's Steve Jobs up to? Is he still at NeXT?

Now that is the million dollar question. I dunno, to be honest. He might stay at NeXT to help them. He might Pixar. He might do a lot of things. I could see him going off to come up with the ATL iPod using OpenStep to build a cross-platform iTunes. (Probably he convinces Sony to put their next-gen Walkman group under his control.)

Or maybe he re-enters as the Handspring equivalent to entirely shake up the smartphone market—something more similar to Palm's new WebOS (albeit with iPhone design) so it's not relying on iTunes.

Or or or. Jobs is a tricky question. Part of what's made him such a success is his Apple management team, and figuring out how to assemble them took him a decade and a half of failure.

So maybe Sony buys NeXTSTEP outright, he's left with NeXT, OpenStep & Pixar, and just goes on to make great software. He finds the iPod, Apple buys him (to compete with Sony Network Walkman), and he winds up Apple CEO once again after they fumble post-Newton post-Pink.

(ATL Apple is basically successful at their two long held dreams of OTL: a next generation operating system and the Newton. What it costs them, well, that's a different tale.)


NeXT ITTL is more successful because Sony basically wants an operating system (no MSX computer in Japan ITTL, for instance) and neither Apple or Commodore at the time will sell them one—while Windows sucks hard for kanji support.

TTL Sony has transitioned their audio decks into focussed computers (I personally like the Sony CyberDeck for that right bit of cyberpunk feel) and into consoles (Nintendo MD add-on for the SNES, Ultra Nintendo—hardware is all built by Sony). What they want is to take their Decks and make them a major force with a real operating system.

In that case Sony builds up from Palm and down from NeXTSTEP—something similar to the Newton eMate and modern netbooks running PalmOS, paired with an at-home CyberDeck (or even Ultra Nintendo, or whatever follows) for computing power running NeXTSTEP.

The question is OpenStep (can't remember how that one is capitalized). It might need to be spun off into a new company, but it succeeding would make cross-platform development easier which would help a split computing environment a lot.
 
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You might be right, however, about Intel. Did they have any next-generation successor to the x86 around 1985-6 that IBM and other Windows using companies would adopt?
Hm, well, there was the iAPX 432, but that wasn't particularly successful OTL due to poor performance more than legacy... the i860 may be too late here as well, so I suppose you may still end up with x86. Note that AMD was integral to the creation of the modern 64-bit x86 (as Intel wanted to move to Itanium), but I suppose that could still happen here.

Ah. This is fun. OTL Copland Apple work included a hardware abstraction layer that would make the platform much more CPU agnostic than most systems. Alternatively, NeXTSTEP handled multiple operating systems fairly well and the Pink team might adopt a Universal Binary type approach. Either way two CPUs is not unreasonable: Windows used to support more than one CPU, Solaris supports multiple CPUs, current OS X does, etc…. It's additional work, yes, but Apple had a heck of a time getting over their attachment to a single type of Motorola chip and are somewhat more wary ITTL.
Ah, that's interesting. That makes sense as well...

PowerAlpha comes out of Motorola's defection over Apple not letting make clones. Without Motorola Apple would like an additional company besides IBM. ITTL AMD is a little more ambitious and so scrapes up the cash to pick up the DEC Alpha team. PowerAlpha is a chip out of the best features of the DEC/AMD Alpha team and IBM's POWER minus server features.
So AMD picked up the remnants of DEC rather than Compaq...

OTL Newton had plans for a slot-in phone module. A more successful Newton would certainly do that. Better phone networks in Japan would probably force Sony into something similar to start (a slot in card for their Palm pocket computers) and eventually smartphones.
Makes sense to start with an add-on, Handspring did the same thing with the Visorphone attachment.

Sony Ericsson may exist, as Sony would probably still want a phone company partner (Apple had long standing ties to the original AT&T, that probably suffices for the Newton) but there are other potential companies as well. I don't know exactly what Sony would do with Palm. They might leave them as an independent OS group and get to work on their own hardware (the ATL Clié presumably).
Well Sony Ericsson seems to be a fairly coincidental affair, with Ericsson crippled by their decision to source all their chips from a single Philips facility which subsequently caught fire... Though butterflies come into play, Sony might still want a partner, and having a single source like that still puts Ericsson at major risk of a similar event, so maybe the same could happen.

Nokia is interesting. Facing Newton, Sony/Palm and Sun Commodore/General Magic they probably get right to work on their own operating system and smartphone. (Oh, and Motorola would presumably but not necessarily get a license to the General Magic OS.) Windows Mobile is also a natural reaction, just as in desktops Microsoft is the hardware agnostic company while the other three are tied into less than a half a dozen companies—there will be plenty of smartphone hardware makers that go with Windows Mobile… Nokia are the only guys I see just writing their own (Linux based?).
I don't know as much about Nokia, so I'll defer here... I agree with you about Microsoft being likely to make Windows Mobile here, it seems logical enough.

Handspring started because Palm people were unhappy with 3Com's handling of Palm. With Sony resources (and their need for a handheld with stylus that understands kanji) I imagine Handspring simply never starts up.
Ah, so the Sony-Palm merger occurs around the same time as the 3Com buyout of Palm OTL? I was placing it around 2000 or so for some reason- alright, that makes sense.

Along with Steve Jobs, another person to think about is Jack Tramiel, since here it seems he is still forced out of Commodore, but can't take over Atari since that has been bought out as well...

TTL Sony has transitioned their audio decks into focussed computers (I personally like the Sony CyberDeck for that right bit of cyberpunk feel) and into consoles (Nintendo MD add-on for the SNES, Ultra Nintendo—hardware is all built by Sony). What they want is to take their Decks and make them a major force with a real operating system.
This makes sense (I do like having "Deck" being used as a synonym for computer)- it seems like Nintendo will have a lot of success in the console realm here, since they'll have their OTL programming expertise and the analogue of the PlayStation (with a disc-based media!), without having to compete with Sony...

Speaking of video games, you put NEC in the Solaris camp- what does this mean for their collaboration with Hudson and the TurboGrafx 16/PC Engine?
 
I'm not following this well as most of the references seem to be Alts from an era before I followed computers so if this is a stupid question sorry.

I'm wondering how the lack of what effectively became the computer for most people (IBM-PC + Windows) will effect computer culture over the long term. Do closed architecture machines remain dominant? It seems that the computer world is broken up into a number of different consortia each with their own hardware, software and standards. Does this mean that the computer universe is going to be broken up into mutually incompatible "solar systems"? Will Sun-Commodore developers only develop for Sun-Commodore based machines? With such differences in equipment what is the fate of the Internet?

Bonus Question: OTL Sun is into open source in a big way. How is that effected by you TL? And what is the fate of Open Development in general?

Interesting Proto-TL by the way. I look forward to more.
 
(A quick note to remind myself, I call Apple's next-generation operating system "Pink" but it better resembles the IBM-Apple Taligent project with some Pink & Copland features as well as other random stuff like Apple's Open Collaboration Environment. Also, Pink is a placeholder name… I never did figure out what Apple might call it.)

Hm, well, there was the iAPX 432, but that wasn't particularly successful OTL due to poor performance more than legacy... the i860 may be too late here as well, so I suppose you may still end up with x86. Note that AMD was integral to the creation of the modern 64-bit x86 (as Intel wanted to move to Itanium), but I suppose that could still happen here.

Hmm. If Windows winds up ported to multiple CPUs then perhaps that would give Intel more freedom around the time of the i860/i960.

Overall the ATL probably has less problems with backwards compatibility due to multiple successful CPUs.

So AMD picked up the remnants of DEC rather than Compaq...

Pretty much. Without being a cloning company Compaq is naturally somewhat smaller.

Well Sony Ericsson seems to be a fairly coincidental affair, with Ericsson crippled by their decision to source all their chips from a single Philips facility which subsequently caught fire... Though butterflies come into play, Sony might still want a partner, and having a single source like that still puts Ericsson at major risk of a similar event, so maybe the same could happen.

I did not know that. Neat little fact.

Ah, so the Sony-Palm merger occurs around the same time as the 3Com buyout of Palm OTL? I was placing it around 2000 or so for some reason- alright, that makes sense.

Yeah, probably as the alt-Newton is picking up steam and the success of the Ultra Nintendo (née N64) is running high, their "decks" are doing well expanding outside out their original audio niche and so forth—Sony gets bigger horizons. Also, having a kanji writing slate from their decks would be helpful to them. That's the initial reason they get interested in Palm.

Along with Steve Jobs, another person to think about is Jack Tramiel, since here it seems he is still forced out of Commodore, but can't take over Atari since that has been bought out as well...

I was thinking about him. My original thought was that the board overrules him on the price war with Atari but that's as far as they manage to go, so he stays on for another year or two before the board can get a replacement CEO (Apple's Gassée) on. After that, I'm not sure what happens to him.

This makes sense (I do like having "Deck" being used as a synonym for computer)- it seems like Nintendo will have a lot of success in the console realm here, since they'll have their OTL programming expertise and the analogue of the PlayStation (with a disc-based media!), without having to compete with Sony...

True and not true. Nintendo remains the same arrogant SOB until their third parties get really upset.

ITTL there is no Sega CD or 32X…*but this results in a super-early Jupiter (née Saturn) with CDs but mostly as the last best 2D machine. It can't adapt to the 3D gaming brought in by the Ultra Nintendo and Atari Panther and dies.

Panasonic picks up Sega, and the Sega Mercury (née some combination of the M2 & the Dreamcast) is quite successful.

Japanese 2D focussed third parties jump ship to the Sega Jupiter and just when it looks like they might be forced to come crawling back to Nintendo the Atari Panther (as the Engine-FX) does well in Japan and they go there.

A couple years later the Mercury is out, and the remaining Nintendo only third parties go cross-platform to start.

However, Nintendo's use of a) minidiscs & b) better Sony built hardware (no N64 super-blur) does mean their relations with third parties stay better than OTL N64/Gamecube days.

(What do you think of Trip Hawkins running Atari Studios? He can't really build the 3DO, so I figure he might consider it a challenge to try and basically do EA all over from the beginning.)

Speaking of video games, you put NEC in the Solaris camp- what does this mean for their collaboration with Hudson and the TurboGrafx 16/PC Engine?

Heh. That's a fun one. Basically in the ATL the success of the Atari 74 (third in North American but only a little behind the Sega Master System & it came in a fairly close second in Europe to the SMS) leaves Atari in the videogame business. The Atari 74 is a Commodore 74, minus monitor and keyboard, and as such games are cross-compatible. This means the lack of Japanese games is compensated by having all the C64/74 games and by companies like EA.

Their Genesis/SNES competitor is the Atari Jaguar and like the Atari 74 it has basically no presence in Japan. Therefore they sign a deal with NEC & Hudson—Jaguar and Jaguar CD games go to Japan for play on the Engine-CD. The Engine-16 (née PC-Engine) is slightly more powerful than OTL, but ITTL the Engine-CD includes additional processing power that bumps it up to Jaguar/SNES levels (the Jaguar CD is purely a CD add-on that also works with Amiga computers).

This results in a whole bunch of Jaguar non-CD games being bundled into a CD and sold as an American bundle of games type thing (which introduces Western console & Western computer games to Japan for knock-on effects later) and results in the Engine-CD & Engine-Duo adding a niche of Japanese gamers that want to play Western games.

The TurboGrafx-16 having failed in North America due to the Sega Genesis (more so than OTL) has their games get ported to the Atari Jaguar and (if they're put on CD or disk) Amiga computers so Engine-CD/Duo games serve as Atari's source of Japanese games against the Genesis/SNES.

By the time the next generation rolls around NEC/Hudson partners up with Atari to make a single console—Atari Panther outside Japan, Engine-FX inside Japan. They split the license fees, make different cases for them, etc…*but the guts are the same.

I'm wondering how the lack of what effectively became the computer for most people (IBM-PC + Windows) will effect computer culture over the long term. Do closed architecture machines remain dominant? It seems that the computer world is broken up into a number of different consortia each with their own hardware, software and standards. Does this mean that the computer universe is going to be broken up into mutually incompatible "solar systems"? Will Sun-Commodore developers only develop for Sun-Commodore based machines? With such differences in equipment what is the fate of the Internet?

Two mitigating factors. The first is that (not mentioned above) Apple and Microsoft collaborate on common file standards in order to break Adobe's monopoly as regards displaying fonts. Therefore there is a set standard for reading files at 100% compatibility across different programs by the mid 1990s.

The second is that NeXT's OpenStep platform is more popular (as are other, similar platforms), which allows for fairly easy cross platform development for the big companies. So stuff like Microsoft Office, non-console games (that's complicated), Adobe software, and so forth are on all platforms but the smaller applications usually are on one platform unless it becomes worth it to port.

Related, operating systems are rather less hardware dependent which makes cross-platform development easier as well.


Finally the Internet is different. All major companies have a Microsoft Exchange analogue to handle trading email and other files (at Apple, it's the similar to OTL Open Collaboration Environment) which are of course compatible with each other. This gives everybody a global address type feature not tied to a BBS or an ISP or their corporate network. This gives early peer-to-peer email, and in later years you can still go peer-to-peer although of course mail servers are much more common. Internet mail (like Hotmail) will be seen as a way to get a cheap/free server to store mail, not a new email address.

Browsers adapt to an agreed upon standard much earlier, and progress is much faster than OTL (HTML 5 would be way earlier) as all major players have a vested stake in browsers rendering content equally between them

Probably some other stuff as well :).

Bonus Question: OTL Sun is into open source in a big way. How is that effected by your TL? And what is the fate of Open Development in general?

NeXTSTEP is built on BSD & Solaris is built on Unix, their wider popularity makes it hard for Linux to gain traction on the desktop space.

However in the server space various forms of BSD (including NeXTSTEP Server), Solaris, Linux, Unix itself and so forth are the main guys. IBM's z/OS (or whatever it ends up being called) remains the leading mainframe OS, and Apple's Pink Server as well as Windows Server remain niche products.

As for Sun their Solaris server capabilities and the legacy of video/audio capabilities of the old WorkBench AmigaOS mean they retain a very large share of any place that does video or audio work, primarily in competition with Sony and NeXTSTEP. They are not that open source friendly, with the exception of server related software.

Open Source Software remains a niche, primarily because of it's inability to compete on the user interface front against the established players (think of all four major operating systems investing the same amount of resources as Mac OS X into user interface & usability).
 
(A quick note to remind myself, I call Apple's next-generation operating system "Pink" but it better resembles the IBM-Apple Taligent project with some Pink & Copland features as well as other random stuff like Apple's Open Collaboration Environment. Also, Pink is a placeholder name… I never did figure out what Apple might call it.)
Probably released too early to call it "OS X"... and "OS IX" (or "OS VIII" or whatever) just doesn't have the same ring to it ;)

Yeah, probably as the alt-Newton is picking up steam and the success of the Ultra Nintendo (née N64) is running high, their "decks" are doing well expanding outside out their original audio niche and so forth—Sony gets bigger horizons. Also, having a kanji writing slate from their decks would be helpful to them. That's the initial reason they get interested in Palm.
How is Palm OS's kanji recognition, anyway? I honestly have no idea... though the classic Palm form factor (sans keyboard and with "graffiti area") does seem decently suited to Japanese writing.

(What do you think of Trip Hawkins running Atari Studios? He can't really build the 3DO, so I figure he might consider it a challenge to try and basically do EA all over from the beginning.)
It's an interesting idea, I suppose there's really not much room in the market for the 3DO in TTL, with Panasonic/Matsushita firmly in the Sega camp (assuming the merger happens in that timeframe, anyway)... certainly he's going to do something in the video game market.

Does Atari Studios include the arcade division of Atari, or did Warner Communications hold on to that? (I think they only held on to it in OTL because Tramiel only wanted the home division for the computers, so if Commodore is buying Atari for the video games, then maybe they'll take the whole thing)

By the time the next generation rolls around NEC/Hudson partners up with Atari to make a single console—Atari Panther outside Japan, Engine-FX inside Japan. They split the license fees, make different cases for them, etc…*but the guts are the same.
I suppose with the Engine-FX's greater success, it will not have to turn to hentai like the PC-FX did...

The cross-platform things (OpenStep, greater web standards) all make a lot of sense- in OTL Microsoft with it's dominance was more focused on "locking in" people with proprietary systems, while here with a far more competitive market interoperability becomes a benefit. (The OTL example is Apple, I suppose)
 
Probably released too early to call it "OS X"... and "OS IX" (or "OS VIII" or whatever) just doesn't have the same ring to it ;)

True, dat. They could however add a name: Mac OS 8 "Turbine" or something.

How is Palm OS's kanji recognition, anyway? I honestly have no idea... though the classic Palm form factor (sans keyboard and with "graffiti area") does seem decently suited to Japanese writing.

Shrug. No idea. But a few butterflies should make them wind up with good kanji support (and if not, NeXTSTEP has it).

It's an interesting idea, I suppose there's really not much room in the market for the 3DO in TTL, with Panasonic/Matsushita firmly in the Sega camp (assuming the merger happens in that timeframe, anyway)... certainly he's going to do something in the video game market.

Not really. Sega probably gets bought by Panasonic in 1996-7, with their new system coming out '97-98.

The 3DO could still happen, but the existence (and popularity) of the Atari Jaguar makes it much harder.

Does Atari Studios include the arcade division of Atari, or did Warner Communications hold on to that? (I think they only held on to it in OTL because Tramiel only wanted the home division for the computers, so if Commodore is buying Atari for the video games, then maybe they'll take the whole thing)

Good question. Commodore is buying Atari to consolidate the low end computer market, lacking a price war. I'm going to assume that the video game crash (although perhaps shallower) still goes forward.

They cancel the Atari 7800, but Nintendo's success sees them resurrect the Atari video game business. Now as for the arcade division of Atari, if it's profitable I don't see Commodore mind winding up with it. After all Commodore 64 is very popular in computer games, and I'm sure there's some back and forth that could happen.

I suppose with the Engine-FX's greater success, it will not have to turn to hentai like the PC-FX did...

Indeed. Basically the Engine-FX is "what if the PC-Engine was more successful and had Western games, and then the PC-FX even more so".

One thing to note is that the success of the Commodore 64/74, the Atari 74/Jaguar, and the Amiga computers will all serve to make European developers more mainstream as they mostly missed the console wars in favour of home computers until the Playstation.

The cross-platform things (OpenStep, greater web standards) all make a lot of sense- in OTL Microsoft with it's dominance was more focused on "locking in" people with proprietary systems, while here with a far more competitive market interoperability becomes a benefit. (The OTL example is Apple, I suppose)

Yep. Microsoft is perfectly happy selling Windows, and also selling Microsoft Office for Windows for every other operating system. Now, to be fair, it certainly comes out first on Windows (just as Adobe stuff probably comes out first on Pink, and Avid probably comes out first on NeXTSTEP and Solaris) but it gets to all of them.

As for standards, they're originally just an attempt to screw over Adobe but the obvious usefulness of standards and the fairly even marketshare (all within +-10% of each other by the late '90s) lead to a couple standard boards: one for files, one for the internet, probably some others.


(Random linguistics aside, which is something rarely covered by timelines—that I read—not named Decades of Darkness:

The Japanese cultural surge of OTL '80s lasts a little longer without a major Bubble collapse there, and so Sony's cultural cachet—primarily resting on the Walkman—suffices to make their deck=computer quirk popular in the USA, which of course causes US computer makers to start calling their computers "decks".

The lack of IBM clones and the rise of multiple operating system also does much to remove the word "PC", which (amusingly) leaves the English language weaker. While the word "PC" probably could have staved off being replaced by "deck", desktop/home/personal/terminal/etc… computer is somewhat weaker linguistically speaking. (Combing desktop and deck into decktop becomes a weird oddity of let's say… Dell, methinks)

This slight weakening of acronyms—on the marketing side—also kills "PDA" in favour of (random guesswork ahoy!) palmtop or palmdeck and eventually smartphone and phonedeck, and sees lapdeck/notedeck compete with laptop/notebook. "Netbooks" don't really exist. Instead of using a desktop operating system, Palm/General Magic/Newton/Windows Mobile OS's are scaled up Newton eMate style—mobile decks, minibooks)
 
Bump.

Just ran across the Fujitsu FM Towns computing system. Basically it was the Japan only Amiga analogue—a multimedia computer (Amiga) against the NEC PC-9801 (not an IBM PC clone, but similar in success).

My timeline has Fujitsu & NEC winding up together which may be…*slightly harder than I thought, given this. However it also appears the NEC PC-9801 was out of steam so NEC might be agreeable and Fujitsu would be having troubles getting anywhere with the FM Towns.

It also represents an interesting fight in Japan, if NEC & Fujitsu team up and begin to transition their programs to Solaris/SparcLite just as Sony enters the market with NeXTSTEP computers followed shortly by Panasonic and Pink computers. I think the proper wording is: crazy mess :).
 
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