Henry Baker wrote:
>
> In article <5jg060$q3f$1@news.utdallas.edu>, mharriso@utdallas.edu (Mark A
> Harrison) wrote:
> > Lisp machines died because their
> > functionality was supplanted by other more general purpose machines.
> >
> > Example: My former roomate (mid-80's) was a chip designer. He had
> > two giant systems on his desk, a lisp machine (TI Explorer?) and
> > an Apollo. He was always complaining about how inconvenient it
> > was that part of his work was done on the lisp machine (chip design)
> > and that the rest was done on the Apollo (word processing, email,
> > manufacturing apps). When their software group was able to port
> > their applications to the same box their other applications ran
> > on, they dropped the lisp machine without hesitation.
>
> This is complete BS. The lisp machines had fabulous email systems,
If this experience is BS, what is the truth? Why _did_
the Lisp machines die? People keep blaming "marketing", but
did LMI/Symbolics founders not have enough smarts or the money
to hire some good marketing people? I would doubt either
of these two was the case.
Or maybe the machines were just too expensive to produce,
to be able to sell them successfully.
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