Re: [Vo]:Financial Gurus and the Apple Effect
Ron Kita wrote: I read Woz and most recently I-Woz, and major corporations dismissed Apple on several accounts. I think it was an HP executive who said that there is no market for a personal computer. I think that was the head of DEC. Wozniak offered HP the IP to the apple, because he designed it while working for them. They said no thanks, you can have it. Woz had nothing but good things to say about HP is his autobiography. The company has a reputation for being nice to employees, and fair. Perhaps they underestimated the market but my guess is they also wanted to give a 20-something engineer a chance to succeed on his own. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Financial Gurus and the Apple Effect
I rather suspect that HP did not think that they could make a major profit in this new field. No one estimated the future potential of small computers at that time. Remember the IBM decision to not own their PC operating system due to low volume projections. The first cellular telephones were intended for vehicle operation but now the vast majority are handheld. Few people have the ability to see into the future far enough to put their careers on the line by suggesting that a major push be directed into the unknown. We are seeing the same process unfold in our LENR field. No one currently builds these types of devices so none of the big boys are willing to take an expensive chance. Once products become available openly and proven and purchase volumes accelerate they will jump in like a pack of wolves on a buffalo. We should see this action most likely within the next year by my estimate if we can get Rossi or DGT to cooperate. It might not be a bad idea to keep some investment funds available for the big ride that is surely coming. Dave -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Wed, Aug 8, 2012 2:54 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Financial Gurus and the Apple Effect Ron Kita wrote: I read Woz and most recently I-Woz, and major corporations dismissed Apple on several accounts. I think it was an HP executive who said thatthere is no market for a personal computer. I think that was the head of DEC. Wozniak offered HP the IP to the apple, because he designed it while working for them. They said no thanks, you can have it. Woz hadnothing but good things to say about HP is his autobiography. Thecompany has a reputation for being nice to employees, and fair.Perhaps they underestimated the market but my guess is they alsowanted to give a 20-something engineer a chance to succeed on hisown. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Financial Gurus and the Apple Effect
David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: I rather suspect that HP did not think that they could make a major profit in this new field. That is somewhat true . . . but they were not stupid. They later jumped in in plenty of time to make money. The early history of microcomputers is well documented. You can learn what they said, and did. No one estimated the future potential of small computers at that time. That is incorrect. I know of at least three people who did: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and me. Okay, there were thousands of others. Seriously, the rapid increase in sales did not surprise me a bit. Only two things have surprised me about the development of small computers: 1. The tremendous increase in the size of hard disks. The price/performance has improved much more than microprocessors or Internet bandwidth. NHK recently reported that there are now more bytes of data recorded than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of earth. That's astounding! 2. The lack of progress in operating system software. Windows is not much better than Data General RDOS, circa 1980. A modern laptop is nothing but at minicomputer with a bag on it, and I don't mean that in a good way. In the book I wrote: A personal computer is essentially a 1979 minicomputer with a flashy but unreliable operating system grafted onto it. Programmers in 1979 were able to master personal computers in a few hours, and to this day personal computers have no functions or capabilities that would baffle a programmer from that era. A programmer from that era meaning myself, obviously. That is not quite true. I am impressed by voice input. I am astounded by robotics such as Google's self-driving automobile, and the Mars Curiosity rover. That stuff, by golly, makes you realize this is the 21st century. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Financial Gurus and the Apple Effect
OK, so some engineers and technical people did expect a pretty large volume of PC sales. Too bad you did not act on your assumption or you might be another of the billionaires on record. I would guess that you may have thought that the volume would be enormous, but were not sure. Many of us are in that camp. I was in the radio communications world at the time and stood by watching as these machines took over. I would hate to make the same mistake when LENR takes off. We are both on record expecting these devices to become incredibly important and widespread in the near future. I hope to invest at the right time if I can only determine where. I agree, the wondrous advancement in hard drive technology as well as device speed and power consumption made a lot of difference. I still have an old ATT computer to stare at that had a hard drive that would not even hold one modern program. The darn thing cost twice as much as a new one today that is millions of times more powerful. But the old boy did some useful work. I used that old ATT upstairs to design the first practical EAS receiver device that now is seen everywhere (Ultramax). My model matched the actual operation to a remarkable degree and made the company I was working with very wealthy. I have noticed that large companies tend to suppress innovation, particularly when it involves significant risk of capital. The brave engineers are usually clamoring to move forward only to be punished by management that is afraid of change. I found myself in that position on many occasions and when we overcame the inertia we generated many successful products. I could go on for a long time on this subject, but will only mention one more. I was in technical charge of a large group that designed all of the receivers and synthesizers for a company that wanted to keep their second market position because it was safer and less expensive. The large company in the field designed a new radio that had very good specifications and performance. The internal product planning group was lagging behind as usual before the new requirements were given to engineering. In my frustration, I just handed a manual of that new product to one of my new engineers who was ready to begin his work and told him to make one like that. To this day he teases me about this but the specifications were exactly the same. Working for startups has great rewards as well as risks. Working for established large companies has less of both. Dave -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Wed, Aug 8, 2012 4:55 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Financial Gurus and the Apple Effect David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: I rather suspect that HP did not think that they could make a major profit in this new field. That is somewhat true . . . but they were not stupid. They later jumped in in plenty of time to make money. The early history of microcomputers is well documented. You can learn what they said, and did. No one estimated the future potential of small computers at that time. That is incorrect. I know of at least three people who did: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and me. Okay, there were thousands of others. Seriously, the rapid increase in sales did not surprise me a bit. Only two things have surprised me about the development of small computers: 1. The tremendous increase in the size of hard disks. The price/performance has improved much more than microprocessors or Internet bandwidth. NHK recently reported that there are now more bytes of data recorded than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of earth. That's astounding! 2. The lack of progress in operating system software. Windows is not much better than Data General RDOS, circa 1980. A modern laptop is nothing but at minicomputer with a bag on it, and I don't mean that in a good way. In the book I wrote: A personal computer is essentially a 1979 minicomputer with a flashy but unreliable operating system grafted onto it. Programmers in 1979 were able to master personal computers in a few hours, and to this day personal computers have no functions or capabilities that would baffle a programmer from that era. A programmer from that era meaning myself, obviously. That is not quite true. I am impressed by voice input. I am astounded by robotics such as Google's self-driving automobile, and the Mars Curiosity rover. That stuff, by golly, makes you realize this is the 21st century. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Financial Gurus and the Apple Effect
David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: OK, so some engineers and technical people did expect a pretty large volume of PC sales. Yup. They made it happen. They risked inventing cheap printers, for example, hoping there would be a mass market for them. Too bad you did not act on your assumption or you might be another of the billionaires on record. I did the best I could! I did okay. In a boom like that, there are as many way to lose money as there are to make it. If cold fusion starts to boom, remember that. Look at solar cells now. I stayed clear of the dot-com boom because every time I looked a company I thought to myself, I could do that easily. If I can do it, any competent programmer can, so where is the competitive advantage? I was right about most of them, but way wrong about Amazon! I should have bought their stock. I know nothing about the stock market, so I steer clear of it. The thing is, I thought WordPerfect was a lot better than Microsoft Word. They are all but dead and gone so I guess product quality is not the right metric. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Financial Gurus and the Apple Effect
Those were exciting days. I was hesitant to become more deeply involved by similar logic as you Jed. The peak always appeared to be just over the horizon and I was sure that I would jump in too late! I guess that Apple almost went under at least once, to be rescued by their arch enemy. I suspect that was done to protect a certain unmentioned company from being declared a monopoly. Had Apple's OS disappeared, there would not be many good volume sources. We need to be prudent when investing in LENR companies. Perhaps members of the vortex can work together to determine the best opportunities. At least we should benefit from our organization! You know, I as you recall looking at the early generation OSs and realizing that they were not anything super special and that either of us could have matched or exceeded the performance of them in relatively short order. The most successful of them won the match by name recognition in my opinion. Things could have gone in other directions fairly easily. Just thinking with that logic kept me on the sidelines waiting for new developments which never materialized. The OSs improved enormously over the years and it became a major task to achieve that level of performance without a very large team of programmers. A small team had an almost zero chance of competing successfully once things got rolling. I got lazy fairly soon and began to program with visual aids which took a lot of the skill out of programming. I still occasionally use assembly with microcontrollers to enjoy total control over the devices. Dave P.S. Don't make me afraid to invest in the cold fusion companies Jed! The trick is to pick the best ones and I am counting upon our friends to assist us. -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Wed, Aug 8, 2012 7:54 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Financial Gurus and the Apple Effect David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: OK, so some engineers and technical people did expect a pretty large volume of PC sales. Yup. They made it happen. They risked inventing cheap printers, for example, hoping there would be a mass market for them. Too bad you did not act on your assumption or you might be another of the billionaires on record. I did the best I could! I did okay. In a boom like that, there are as many way to lose money as there are to make it. If cold fusion starts to boom, remember that. Look at solar cells now. I stayed clear of the dot-com boom because every time I looked a company I thought to myself, I could do that easily. If I can do it, any competent programmer can, so where is the competitive advantage? I was right about most of them, but way wrong about Amazon! I should have bought their stock. I know nothing about the stock market, so I steer clear of it. The thing is, I thought WordPerfect was a lot better than Microsoft Word. They are all but dead and gone so I guess product quality is not the right metric. - Jed
