[Info-vax] Steve Jobes [was: Apple says ...]

[JF Mezei]

Michael Kraemer wrote:

> Of course there was, plenty of it.
> Neglect of "personal computing" (not necessarily PC),
> which allowed competitor's workstations and wintel
> to eat DEC's business.
> Neglect of Unix until it was (almost) too late.
> The VAX 9000 misstep which must have costed billions.
> The zigzag course as far as RISC was concerned.
> If that Alasir story is right, he even
> blew a potential deal with Apple,
> which would have given the Alpha the desperately
> needed chip sales numbers.
> It was Palmer who put emphasis on Alpha,
> of course too late and without clear direction.


By the time Palmer got the job, it was all in the past and paid for. He
inherited Alpha which was just about ready to launch, with a new Unix
for it, and a clear path ahead in terms of platform (Alpha).

Palmer didn't have to deal with VAX 9000 as a CEO. That was old news.

Paler did enter the PC market and was mildly succesful, and the assembly
plant in Kanata was one of the world's most efficient. That got canned
by Compaq.


So many of Olsen's errors about architectures had fixed themselves by
the time Palmer got the job. It was under Olsen that they realised that
the 9000 was a dud and that Alpha was needed. Yes, the 9000 was Olsen's
mistake originally, but by the time Palmer got in, it had long ago been
fixed.