Very good point. Perhaps even more so. There weren't many companies
that went into the service bureau business with Altairs or IMSAIs
That's because there was no packaged software market. Well,
except for Microsoft's papertape basic. When BYTE Shop showed
up, small businesses starting buying finished units but then
suddenly discovered the lack of packaged application
software. (By that time, CP/M and some additional BASIC
interpreters existed.) An operating system and a language
doesn't help a small business much and instead forces them to
find a "custom" programmer. I made a lot of easy money at the
time because of it. Getting work just required letting BYTE
Shop know you existed so they could sell their hardware
without getting it thrown back at them through their front
window by disgruntled company buyers who couldn't use it.
The enabling application was Visicalc. Every single business
could use it, immediately. However, it was written for the
Apple II, at first (which was only being sold, prior
toVisicalc, as a very expensive game machine -- lowsy
resolution, only 40 characters per line using a standard TV
set for display.) So Apple IIs suddenly started selling like
hotcakes and the Altair and IMSAI soon disappeared from the
market (as also did TRS-80, which provided BASIC but not
Visicalc.) IBM's PC team (there were three internally
competing PC development teams within IBM at the time)
insisted on providing a ROM BASIC and a Visicalc application
because of that success, I think.
but I see that [service bureaus] coming with 3-D printing.
Agreed. People still use copy centers despite the fact that
home printing is also quite common. So even after some time
goes by, I think I fully agree with you. Service companies
will be able to afford higher quality, faster, and bigger
machines as well as some software and support in creating
realizable 3D objects that will print out well.
One of our layout engineers is
thinking of getting into 3-D printing as a side business.
It's crossed my mind, as well.
Sure will. CNC wood milling machines are commonplace now. I wonder
if the cost of CNC metal milling machines will plummet, too.
I think this is going to impact more than a few things. The
freely available software is actually pretty darned good, and
getting better. Commercial software will be still better. But
the main thing will be pre-packaged 3D files you can just
download for a specific purpose.
But there will also be a lot of new copyright and patent law
changes being pushed through Congress in the near future by
large corporations looking to protect their markets and also
protect themselves against other large companies. This is a
frontier, of sorts, and there will be a lot of new
gunslingers out there looking for a shoot-out.
This also happened in the late 1970's and early 1980's, when
rental businesses opened up and rented out software that was
then copied. Companies stood to lose a lot of money and
changed their licensing. But it was new licensing that had
never been tested in court before. Took years, but they
completely changed existing law and transformed what was
considered "normal" before.
Will happen here, too, I suspect. But I can't predict in what
ways.
Jon
