Another weird thought...

[ffutures]

Imagine you're a time traveller from the recent past who arrives in the present day, can only stay for a few minutes before returning to the past, and hears people mentioning "ipads" and "iphones" but doesn't know anything else about them, apart from an idea that they're computers.

How far back does your origin have to be for your natural assumption to be that the "i" in those names stands for IBM? Early to mid eighties? Could lead to some very unwise investments, considering what happened to IBM and their PC monopoly...

Comments

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

IBM never had a PC monopoly, the ecosystem of rivals is what made it succeed. I don't think IBM ever used the i- prefix branding, so I'd just think Internet.

[ggreig]

Mid-90s or before, I would say. Although they'd already lost the hardware race by then, their OS/2 operating system still looked like it could be a player in the personal computing space for a little while before it became clear that Windows had already won.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

In the eighties IBM are a lot more prominent than internet, I think.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That late? Maybe, though the hardware thing wouldn't have made it my assumption at that point. 1998 puts an upper bound on it, because that's when the first iMacs were launched.

[ggreig]

I think so. PCs were still "IBM-compatible" in the first half of the 90s rather than just PCs, even though the description was already a bit redundant.

[davidbrider.livejournal.com]

Well, the absolute cut-off would be whenever the iMac first came out - 1997/98, IIRC...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

1998.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Not if you worked in education in the UK - Nimbus's horrible MS-Dos / Non PC compatible computers still had a big lock on that market then.

[eledonecirrhosa.livejournal.com]

Does that mean the time traveller will be desperately trying to think of a computer company beginning with "e" when someone mentions "e-books"?

Also, unless he/she sees it written down, it could be "eye-pad" or "eye-phone". The latter certainly sounds like some marketing spod's version of "video phone" or "phone that does visual stuff".

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Good points.