FUTURE IMPERFECT

PC hardware predictions that never came to pass

- Phil Iwaniuk

Before Pong arrived, some might wonder why anyone would want a home computer.

I think 640K ought to be enough for anybody.” Just one of many quotes tenuously attributed to Mr Bill Gates, along with “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it,” and “I wish people on the internet would stop making up quotes and claiming I said them”.

The jury’s out on whether the Microsoft founder ever actually made such a bold proclamation about the public’s requirement for usable RAM, and indeed Mr Gates himself firmly denies it. Thing is, whether he said it or not, back in 1981 when the quote emerged, he wouldn’t have been wrong.

640K of usable RAM was enough for users back at the dawn of the computer age. If it wasn’t—if people had all turned their noses up at the IBM PC and Apple II+ like r/pcmasterrace members discussing the new AMD card—then the software Gates’ team designed wouldn’t have led him to establish a global monopoly and become the kind of public figure that quotes are wrongly attributed to. That was not, in itself, a bad tech prediction. Not compared to some of the absolute clangers that followed, anyway.

SYSTEM SHOCK