PalmOS no more? :(

[Jules Richardson]

Zane H. Healy wrote:
> As for the Acorn, did it ever get exported anywhere?  I know they never 
> really made it here to the US. 

Quite a few models, both 8 and 32 bit (Acorn moved to 32 bit at the time 
when everyone else was still making 16 bit machines) went to Australia 
and New Zealand. I'm not sure about "closer to home" though in terms of 
what was exported to the rest of Europe. The Acorn Atom seems to have 
had reasonable success in Holland in the form of the Prophet 2.

Far as I know, only the Acorn BBC B ever made it to the US though 
(http://www.nostalgia8.nl/banks/machinelst.htm is a good place to go for 
an idea of how many Acorn machines *other* than the familiar BBC B were 
  made). I believe the only reason it wasn't successful in the US was 
down to the following that the Apple 2 had, rather than there being any 
direct competition in terms of technical merit, performance, available 
software etc. (it was a fantastic machine, just rather expensive for 
home users where the educational discounts weren't available)

 > Another good example would be the
> Sinclair, except for the little Timex-Sinclair system that was out at 
> about the same time as the VIC-20, or a little before, I don't think any 
> Sinclair models made it to the US (I have one, but it came from a list 
> member a few years ago).

Didn't the ZX81 and the Spectrum make it to the US (both in the form of 
Timex-badged machines, model numbers of which I forget). You're right 
though, far as I know the Spectrum +, Spectrum 128, +2, +2A, +3, and the 
QL were never sold in the States.

I'm trying to think of other (reasonably) widespread (within the UK) 
UK-built machines of the time. I don't think the Dragon machines ever 
made it out to the US, nor did the Jupiter Ace, or any of Research 
Machines stuff.

As I remember it, pretty much all the home computers owned by people in 
the UK were either the Sinclair Spectrum, C64, or the BBC B. Later on, 
people moved to either the Atari ST or the Amiga (Macs and PCs were far 
too expensive here to justify purchase).

On the business scene, both Macs and Amiga hardware did well in the DTP 
/ broadcast industries I suppose, whilst PCs ruled in the larger 
companies. Smaller businesses were certainly happy doing their accounts 
and the like on some of the smaller micros though - maybe that's less 
true of the US?

I remember the train timetable / announcement systems still using BBC 
micros in the UK up until 5 years or so ago, and AFAIK the same was true 
in some areas of the telephone industry. Perhaps there was more of an 
attitude of "if it does the job, use it" in the UK compared to the US 
(where I get the impression that the philosophy was that you're nothing 
unless you have a Mac or a PC)

cheers

Jules