In 1981, IBM released the IBM model 5150 or the "Personal Computer" with the sole-intent from day 1 to create an open standard, embrace third party software, use only off-the-shelf components, and to be fully serviceable by third party repair shops. Going as far as to including fully commented source code for the BIOS in the technical manuals just to aid in peripheral development. Even going as far as to using an inferior Intel 8088 over their own IBM 801 RISC because the Intel was more familiar with more developers (the Intel 8086 was superior to the IBM 801 but was more expensive than the 8088). John Dvorak of InfoWorld by 1982 was already calling it a de-facto standard. By 1983 sales had surpasses the Apple II, by 1984 IBM PC revenue was greater than Apple, Commodore, and HP combined with Forbes estimating 56% of American companies relying on the IBM PC. By the turn of the decade hundreds of IBM PC compatible computer models were on the market
Lads, today we are ever reaching a difficult crossroad in computing. There are still a couple billion PCs out there, but with Smartphones quickly eating the market and the reputation of Intel/AMD hanging by a thread, I fear for the future. It seems as though everyone wants to openly kill open computing standards, Google, Apple, and fuck even Intel themselves have been trying to kill it by slowly over the last couple of decades turning the standard into a more Intel-controlled standard using their own specifications. I don't want to see the PC die lads. I want more companies supporting it like the good old days.