04-03-2003, 09:08 PM
Hello, all,
Just today read an article about Osborne's demise, and a reminiscence about his career.
Probably a high percentage of the readers here have no idea who Osborne was, and I admit I hadn't thought of him or his computer in years, but just reading the name flashed me back to that time when personal computing was new and so exciting...
I never owned an Osborne, but I still remember drooling over the software package that he bundled with it - at that time, the software bundle probably cost more separately on the open market than the cost of the Osborne computer with bundle. So, even though the hardware was mediocre, it was a tantalizing possibility. I remember that there was a local Osborne Computer Users Group for several years (even for a few years after the company crashed - some of the users were very loyal to their beloved machines :) ).
I had saved the essay I read for my own purposes, but didn't keep the link, and it seems too much work to try to find it again, so I will cut and paste the essay here, for those who would like to read it (no text from me follows it).
Regards,
Dako-ta
==============================================================
Silicon Insider: A Laptop Pioneer Dies
Updated 11:15 AM ET April 3, 2003
- A name from the past briefly surfaces, then disappears, probably forever.
Because the world was busy watching the power of the computer at work on
the road to Baghdad, few people, even computer types, noticed the Reuters
wire announcement of the death of Adam Osborne. Osborne, who was the
appropriately binary age of 64, died at the home of his sister in the southern
Indian village of Kodiakanal, not far from where he spent his childhood.
Though the end was apparently merciful â he died in his sleep â the final
years were not. Osborne suffered a brain disorder that incapacitated him with
clusters of mini-strokes. It was a strange, exotic ending for one of the more
memorable figures in the story of digital revolution.
Here in the dot.com bust we often speak dismissively of the arrogance and
pomposity of the Internet entrepreneurs of three years ago as setting some
kind of high-water mark of megalomania. But that only underscores the
general amnesia and lack of history of those who spend their careers never
looking back.
In fact, the dot.commers were pikers compared to those who came before.
This is especially true of the entrepreneurs who led two legendary eras in
high-tech history: semiconductors and personal computers.
An Outrageous Pioneer
The chip guys were tough gunslingers and wildcatters who started out in
crewcuts and white shirts and ended up with sideburns, bespoke suits and
Lamborghinis. They were tough, ruthless and enjoyed nothing more than
ripping each other's guts out by day and getting drunk together at night.
The early personal computer guys were something else altogether. Today, we
really only remember two of them, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, with a tip of the
hat to their two partners, Paul Allen and Steve Wozniak. But in truth, the early
personal computer days, from the Altair to the IBM PC, to which Apple,
despite the revisionism, was a relative latecomer, featured an amazingly
complex and colorful group of men, young and old, eccentric and
mainstream, maniacs and geniuses.
There has never been anything quite like it. No other era in tech history has
produced, side by side, a figures as unforgettable as the Mozartian Wozniak,
Auschwitz survivor Jack Tramiel (Commodore) and slick media mogul Steve
Ross (Atari). It was weird, weird, weird â and I'm speaking as someone who
grew up in the middle of it. Looking back, I still can't quite believe it actually
happened.
And in this crazy industry, nobody was more compelling, outrageous, and
infuriating than Adam Osborne. Just imagine: in a world containing Steve
Jobs and Bill Gates, Osborne, it was agreed, had by far the biggest ego.
And, for a short time â less than two years â he deserved it. Nobody in tech
history, even including the dot.com era, has ever climbed so high and fallen
so fast as Adam Osborne.
Father of the Laptop
Like most people connected with the early personal computer industry, I first
heard of Adam Osborne in the late 1970s. Having come to the U.S. in 1961,
within a decade he had founded a technical writing and consulting firm called
Osborne and Associates. From this pulpit, Osborne proceeded to write a
series of books that predicted and then became the core texts of the early
personal computing revolution.
Like many pundits before and after, Osborne found his niche with an
opinionated column, modesty entitled "From the Fountainhead," that cut
through the usual PR baloney and called things as Adam saw them. To his
credit, Osborne wasn't afraid to slam poor products or belittle incompetent
CEOs. Needless to say, before long he was the most powerful man in the
industry, making or breaking reputations with a single word.
But that wasn't enough for Adam Osborne. His next move was breathtaking.
Several folks in the history of tech have gone from journalism to great
success in venture capital (Ben Rosen, Michael Moritz, Stewart Alsop), but no
one has ever gone from writing books and columns to high-tech
entrepreneurial tycoonship. Except Adam Osborne.
In September 1980, he founded his own computer company, called Osborne
Computer, of course, and set about building the first portable PC. With typical
humility, he would later say, "I told everybody what they should build and
nobody did. So I built it" and "Quite frankly, I was amazed afterward when
anyone said it was innovative or a mark of brilliance. It seemed utterly
obvious."
In truth, Adam Osborne was right. The Osborne 1, introduced in July 1981,
was brilliant. Osborne had understood, better than anyone, that Moore's Law
had made chips and circuitry so small that it was now possible to build a
personal computer that could be squeezed into a box the size of a small
suitcase. But there was more: Osborne also understood that PC owners didn't
like the hassle of buying and loading applications software into their new
machines. So he bundled a portfolio of programs into the Osborne I.
In other words, Osborne gave us the modern laptop computer. Road warriors
and people stuck on cross-country airline flights should observe a minute of
silence in his memory.
A Brilliant Idea Doomed to Failure
But if the Osborne 1 was as brilliant as Adam Osborne, it also shared his
flaws. It was carelessly built (the display was tiny, the wiring undependable)
and notoriously unreliable. The very first Osborne 1, in fact, arrived dead at
the Computerland store. A bad omen.
Still, at the then-amazing price of $1,795, the Osborne 1 sold like hotcakes,
and Osborne Computer was soon running at sales of $100 million, and Adam
was confidently predicting that it would reach $250 million in sales in its first
fiscal year, which at that time was the fastest first year in business history.
So obsessed was Osborne in achieving this historic goal that the company
soon began to go off the rails. Even as the company raced to produce a
follow-up product to accelerate its flattening sales, it tried to sell off its excess
inventory by slashing prices and bundling on more software.
The resulting spike in orders for the Osborne 1 pulled the company in
opposite directions. A new CEO brought into run the show while Osborne
played celebrity on 60 Minutes and in the press, quickly discovered that the
company was burdened with bad debt and missing $10 million in cash. Seeing
disaster, the new CEO called off the impending IPO that might have saved
the company in the months to come.
The news only got worse. Kaypro and Compaq, jumping into the portable
market Osborne pioneered, soon introduced superior products and began to
run away with the market.
Osborne had one last chance to save his company. It was called the
Executive, and it was designed to replace the Osborne 1 and regain market
leadership. Introduced in April, 1983, the Executive was met with tepid
applause. The problem was that, in the intervening two years, the personal
computing world had changed. IBM had introduced the PC and Microsoft's
DOS had quickly become the industry standard operating system. The
Executive was not IBM compatible.
Still, there remained enough of a non-IBM market out there that Osborne
Computer might have held on for another year as it quickly produced a
follow-up version. But that didn't fit with Adam Osborne's ego.
As I wrote 20 years ago, "Adam Osborne apparently could not live with the
idea that the industry he had smugly drubbed over the years was whispering
that he had made a mistake. So, a week after the introduction of the
Executive, the company's last chance of survival, Adam Osborne made it
obsolete by announcing he was at work on a new IBM-compatible model.
Sales instantly fell off." On Sept. 13, 1983, 26 months after it was founded,
Osborne Computer went bankrupt. Osborne would later write a memoir of his
experiences in which he blamed the new CEO, fate, inexperience â almost
everyone but his own judgment â another Valley precedent.
But for most of us, the last image of Adam Osborne, the one brought back to
my mind as I read his obituary, was from People magazine the week of the
Osborne bankruptcy, showing Adam coming out of his company's now-empty
building holding his briefcase in front of his face to escape the cameras he
once so loved.
Michael S. Malone , once called âthe Boswell of Silicon Valley,â most recently was
editor-at-large of Forbes ASAP magazine. His work as the nationâs first daily
high-tech reporter at the San Jose Mercury-News sparked the writing of his
critically acclaimed The Big Score: The Billion Dollar Story of Silicon Valley ,
which went on to become a public TV series. He has written several other highly
praised business books and a novel about Silicon Valley, where he was raised.
For more, go to Forbes.com.
Just today read an article about Osborne's demise, and a reminiscence about his career.
Probably a high percentage of the readers here have no idea who Osborne was, and I admit I hadn't thought of him or his computer in years, but just reading the name flashed me back to that time when personal computing was new and so exciting...
I never owned an Osborne, but I still remember drooling over the software package that he bundled with it - at that time, the software bundle probably cost more separately on the open market than the cost of the Osborne computer with bundle. So, even though the hardware was mediocre, it was a tantalizing possibility. I remember that there was a local Osborne Computer Users Group for several years (even for a few years after the company crashed - some of the users were very loyal to their beloved machines :) ).
I had saved the essay I read for my own purposes, but didn't keep the link, and it seems too much work to try to find it again, so I will cut and paste the essay here, for those who would like to read it (no text from me follows it).
Regards,
Dako-ta
==============================================================
Silicon Insider: A Laptop Pioneer Dies
Updated 11:15 AM ET April 3, 2003
- A name from the past briefly surfaces, then disappears, probably forever.
Because the world was busy watching the power of the computer at work on
the road to Baghdad, few people, even computer types, noticed the Reuters
wire announcement of the death of Adam Osborne. Osborne, who was the
appropriately binary age of 64, died at the home of his sister in the southern
Indian village of Kodiakanal, not far from where he spent his childhood.
Though the end was apparently merciful â he died in his sleep â the final
years were not. Osborne suffered a brain disorder that incapacitated him with
clusters of mini-strokes. It was a strange, exotic ending for one of the more
memorable figures in the story of digital revolution.
Here in the dot.com bust we often speak dismissively of the arrogance and
pomposity of the Internet entrepreneurs of three years ago as setting some
kind of high-water mark of megalomania. But that only underscores the
general amnesia and lack of history of those who spend their careers never
looking back.
In fact, the dot.commers were pikers compared to those who came before.
This is especially true of the entrepreneurs who led two legendary eras in
high-tech history: semiconductors and personal computers.
An Outrageous Pioneer
The chip guys were tough gunslingers and wildcatters who started out in
crewcuts and white shirts and ended up with sideburns, bespoke suits and
Lamborghinis. They were tough, ruthless and enjoyed nothing more than
ripping each other's guts out by day and getting drunk together at night.
The early personal computer guys were something else altogether. Today, we
really only remember two of them, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, with a tip of the
hat to their two partners, Paul Allen and Steve Wozniak. But in truth, the early
personal computer days, from the Altair to the IBM PC, to which Apple,
despite the revisionism, was a relative latecomer, featured an amazingly
complex and colorful group of men, young and old, eccentric and
mainstream, maniacs and geniuses.
There has never been anything quite like it. No other era in tech history has
produced, side by side, a figures as unforgettable as the Mozartian Wozniak,
Auschwitz survivor Jack Tramiel (Commodore) and slick media mogul Steve
Ross (Atari). It was weird, weird, weird â and I'm speaking as someone who
grew up in the middle of it. Looking back, I still can't quite believe it actually
happened.
And in this crazy industry, nobody was more compelling, outrageous, and
infuriating than Adam Osborne. Just imagine: in a world containing Steve
Jobs and Bill Gates, Osborne, it was agreed, had by far the biggest ego.
And, for a short time â less than two years â he deserved it. Nobody in tech
history, even including the dot.com era, has ever climbed so high and fallen
so fast as Adam Osborne.
Father of the Laptop
Like most people connected with the early personal computer industry, I first
heard of Adam Osborne in the late 1970s. Having come to the U.S. in 1961,
within a decade he had founded a technical writing and consulting firm called
Osborne and Associates. From this pulpit, Osborne proceeded to write a
series of books that predicted and then became the core texts of the early
personal computing revolution.
Like many pundits before and after, Osborne found his niche with an
opinionated column, modesty entitled "From the Fountainhead," that cut
through the usual PR baloney and called things as Adam saw them. To his
credit, Osborne wasn't afraid to slam poor products or belittle incompetent
CEOs. Needless to say, before long he was the most powerful man in the
industry, making or breaking reputations with a single word.
But that wasn't enough for Adam Osborne. His next move was breathtaking.
Several folks in the history of tech have gone from journalism to great
success in venture capital (Ben Rosen, Michael Moritz, Stewart Alsop), but no
one has ever gone from writing books and columns to high-tech
entrepreneurial tycoonship. Except Adam Osborne.
In September 1980, he founded his own computer company, called Osborne
Computer, of course, and set about building the first portable PC. With typical
humility, he would later say, "I told everybody what they should build and
nobody did. So I built it" and "Quite frankly, I was amazed afterward when
anyone said it was innovative or a mark of brilliance. It seemed utterly
obvious."
In truth, Adam Osborne was right. The Osborne 1, introduced in July 1981,
was brilliant. Osborne had understood, better than anyone, that Moore's Law
had made chips and circuitry so small that it was now possible to build a
personal computer that could be squeezed into a box the size of a small
suitcase. But there was more: Osborne also understood that PC owners didn't
like the hassle of buying and loading applications software into their new
machines. So he bundled a portfolio of programs into the Osborne I.
In other words, Osborne gave us the modern laptop computer. Road warriors
and people stuck on cross-country airline flights should observe a minute of
silence in his memory.
A Brilliant Idea Doomed to Failure
But if the Osborne 1 was as brilliant as Adam Osborne, it also shared his
flaws. It was carelessly built (the display was tiny, the wiring undependable)
and notoriously unreliable. The very first Osborne 1, in fact, arrived dead at
the Computerland store. A bad omen.
Still, at the then-amazing price of $1,795, the Osborne 1 sold like hotcakes,
and Osborne Computer was soon running at sales of $100 million, and Adam
was confidently predicting that it would reach $250 million in sales in its first
fiscal year, which at that time was the fastest first year in business history.
So obsessed was Osborne in achieving this historic goal that the company
soon began to go off the rails. Even as the company raced to produce a
follow-up product to accelerate its flattening sales, it tried to sell off its excess
inventory by slashing prices and bundling on more software.
The resulting spike in orders for the Osborne 1 pulled the company in
opposite directions. A new CEO brought into run the show while Osborne
played celebrity on 60 Minutes and in the press, quickly discovered that the
company was burdened with bad debt and missing $10 million in cash. Seeing
disaster, the new CEO called off the impending IPO that might have saved
the company in the months to come.
The news only got worse. Kaypro and Compaq, jumping into the portable
market Osborne pioneered, soon introduced superior products and began to
run away with the market.
Osborne had one last chance to save his company. It was called the
Executive, and it was designed to replace the Osborne 1 and regain market
leadership. Introduced in April, 1983, the Executive was met with tepid
applause. The problem was that, in the intervening two years, the personal
computing world had changed. IBM had introduced the PC and Microsoft's
DOS had quickly become the industry standard operating system. The
Executive was not IBM compatible.
Still, there remained enough of a non-IBM market out there that Osborne
Computer might have held on for another year as it quickly produced a
follow-up version. But that didn't fit with Adam Osborne's ego.
As I wrote 20 years ago, "Adam Osborne apparently could not live with the
idea that the industry he had smugly drubbed over the years was whispering
that he had made a mistake. So, a week after the introduction of the
Executive, the company's last chance of survival, Adam Osborne made it
obsolete by announcing he was at work on a new IBM-compatible model.
Sales instantly fell off." On Sept. 13, 1983, 26 months after it was founded,
Osborne Computer went bankrupt. Osborne would later write a memoir of his
experiences in which he blamed the new CEO, fate, inexperience â almost
everyone but his own judgment â another Valley precedent.
But for most of us, the last image of Adam Osborne, the one brought back to
my mind as I read his obituary, was from People magazine the week of the
Osborne bankruptcy, showing Adam coming out of his company's now-empty
building holding his briefcase in front of his face to escape the cameras he
once so loved.
Michael S. Malone , once called âthe Boswell of Silicon Valley,â most recently was
editor-at-large of Forbes ASAP magazine. His work as the nationâs first daily
high-tech reporter at the San Jose Mercury-News sparked the writing of his
critically acclaimed The Big Score: The Billion Dollar Story of Silicon Valley ,
which went on to become a public TV series. He has written several other highly
praised business books and a novel about Silicon Valley, where he was raised.
For more, go to Forbes.com.