[parineum]

It doesn't really need this much explanation.

People take these quotes out of context all the time. Said in a business context, there was no need, at that time, for someone to have a personal computer.

There's no business justification in 1977 for a personal computer department at a business. It's similar to the gates quote about RAM (I think it was 64KB?).

These statements aren't meant to be forever quotes. Their business plan quotes.

[michaelcampbell]

> It's similar to the gates quote about RAM (I think it was 64KB?)

640, and Bill Gates said he either never said that, or at least never remembered having said it. I think there is no evidence anywhere that he did.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1563853/the-640k-quote...

[Shorel]

That exact quote? No, never. He said something like: current computers at the time had 64kb of RAM, so the OS was designed with a limit of 640kb, and he believed this would give them 10 years of future proofing. As it happened, that limit was reached much faster, in about 6 years.

[valleyer]

MS-DOS didn't create that limit; the physical memory map of the 5150 did. So Microsoft (and Gates) would not have made that decision.

[Shorel]

You are right. The quote must have been slightly different then. I'm sure about the 10 years part.

[glimshe]

Or maybe he simply made a mistake. Big deal. This doesn't speak negatively of his other achievements.

[shermantanktop]

He had a long career and presumably many successes, and is fallible like the rest of us. But a half-remembered zinger with no context makes for zippier posts I guess.

The early popularity of Minitel, the continued popularity of ssh/tmux, and the web browser itself indicates that bespoke client applications are not the only way. He wasn’t directionally wrong.