I came across this paragraph from the July 1981 Popular Science magazine 
edition in the article titled “Compute power - pro models at almost home-unit 
prices.” 

“ ‘Personal-computer buffs may buy a machine, bring it home, and then spend the 
rest of their time looking for things it can do’, said …. ‘In business, it’s 
the other way around. Here you know the job, you have to find a machine that 
will do it. More precisely, you have to find software that will do the job. 
Finding a computer to use the software you’ve selected becomes secondary.”. 

Do you guys* think that software drove hardware sales rather than the other way 
around for businesses in the early days? I recall that computer hardware 
salespeople would be knocking on businesses office doors rather than software 
salesmen.  Just seeking your opinion now that we are far ahead from 1981. 

 (*I do wish we have female gender engaged in the classic computing discussions 
threads as well. Maybe there is.) 

Regards,
Tarek Hoteit
AI Consultant, PhD
+1 360-838-3675

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