How Sinclair's QL computer outshined Apple's Macintosh against all odds
- Reference: 1705402813
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/01/16/ql_legacy_at_40/
- Source link:
The QL remains a much-misunderstood computer. For its time, it was just as radical as the closely related machine that launched days later. Although it wasn't a smash hit, it wasn't the failure it's often deemed. A multinational licensed Sinclair's hardware, and several big-name companies sold versions of it around the world. The QL also inspired a dozen software-compatible successors, at least one of which is still manufactured today ... and not one but two versions of its unique operating system are still around as open source.
A Quantum Leap … to where?
Sinclair Research launched the QL on January 12, 1984, nearly two weeks before Apple Computer [1]launched its new Macintosh computer on the 24th. Both machines had Motorola 68000-family processors, a mere 128 kB of memory, and just a pair of serial ports for I/O. Both launched with powerful bundled applications. Both had brutally cut-down specifications to make them price competitive, and both were big technological gambles on unproven technology, previously only available in vastly more expensive computers.
Sinclair's bet was that multitasking would be the key differentiator. It was the first affordable personal computer to offer this. Today it's clear that Sinclair backed the wrong horse, but four decades ago, its mistake was understandable. Before the Macintosh, it was not at all clear that GUIs were the future. The Macintosh wasn't the first GUI-driven PC – one year earlier, [2]Apple launched the Lisa , and that really was a flop. A few years later, [3]2,500 Lisas went to landfill , and there never were any Lisa compatibles.
When the QL turned 30, The Reg [4]published a detailed history , but a decade on, we thought it would be more interesting to look at the legacy of this pioneering machine – the many models of QL-compatible machines that appeared after Sinclair Research moved on to other things, and the descendants of its remarkable OS and their continued existence in the 21st century.
[5]
The QL's original operating system was called QDOS, a pun on [6]kudos – and no, [7]not that QDOS . QDOS took the ideas of the early 1980s, but did them better. Like all Sinclair's earlier computers and their competitors, QDOS came in ROM, so the machine was immediately usable. It ran direct from ROM too, so bootup was almost instant and all the machine's RAM was available. Sinclair QDOS used a [8]second generation BASIC as its shell – also standard practice for the time – and SuperBASIC [9]was a good one too. You can read the [10]current version of the SuperBASIC manual [PDF] online, thanks to [11]Reg Retro Tech Week 2023 guest Rich Mellor .
[12]
[13]
At launch, the QL cost £399, equivalent to £1,600 ($2,000) today. A bargain compared to the $2,495 Macintosh, which would be $7,600 (£6,000) today. For four hundred quid, you got two [14]ZX Microdrives and an expansion bus. The Mac had just one single-sided floppy drive, from which it also had to boot, eating more precious memory – and little expansion potential.
What's more, four years before Redmond thought up Microsoft Office, the QL came with an entire application suite for free: [15]Psion Xchange , including the Quill word processor, Abacus spreadsheet, Archive database, and Easel graphics program. There was also a version of this for IBM compatibles, called [16]Psion PC Four .
[17]
For 1984, this was a lot of computer for a good price. In comparison, on the Macintosh, 128 kB was so inadequate that the "Fat Mac" [18]followed just eight months later . The Fat Mac had 512 kB and cost $2,795 – half the price of the [19]512 kB IBM PC/AT at a whopping $5,295 ($16,150 or £12,666 today). Without a screen or keyboard, obviously: they cost extra.
Send in the clones
The QL's value proposition looked pretty compelling in 1984, and other computer vendors wanted to get in on the action. British "hardware and services giant ICL" [20]as we called it licensed the hardware to create the [21]ICL One Per Desk . The OPD had an integrated telephone handset, and could work as an office phone and answering machine as well as a desktop computer, complete with a modem for email and online access. It came with a cut-down OS and SuperBASIC, a version of the Xchange suite, and Microdrives [22]re-engineered for greater reliability . Other companies in turn sub-licensed the OPD. BT sold it as [23]the Merlin Tonto , and down under, it was the [24]Telecom Australia ComputerPhone . They sold well enough that various [25]peripherals and expansions followed, including faster modems, IBM mainframe connectivity, [26]floppy drives , and more.
After Sinclair stopped making new QLs, a supplier of QL add-ons called CST stepped in, bought the remaining motherboards and launched the [27]Thor range , as reviewed by [28]Reg co-founder John Lettice in [29]Personal Computer Weekly in May 1986 . The original Thor had a QL motherboard, its RAM maxed out at 640 kB, in a metal desktop case with a parallel port, one or two 3.5-inch floppies and an optional 20 MB SCSI hard disk, plus a PC-style keyboard. For 1986, this was a professional workstation-level specification, rather than Sinclair's budget version – although that meant it cost £599. Another similar machine was the [30]Sandy QXT-640 .
In 1987, CST launched the Thor 20, as reviewed on [31]page 12 of QL World [PDF] in July that year. It was twice the price, but with a CPU upgrade: a daughterboard containing a full 32-bit 68020 that ran at 12.5 MHz. The Thor 21 added a matching 68881 math co-processor, and there was a faster 16.66 MHz 68030 option, taking it up to a formidable £2,300. They were considerably faster, even though limited by the eight-bit data bus of the original 68008 CPU. This was resolved in 1988 with the final CST machine, the [32]CST Thor XVI , with a new, fully 16-bit motherboard holding an 8MHz 68000.
Alongside the standalone computers, there was also a [33]variety of go-faster boards which either supplemented the original QL or replaced it completely. Miracle Systems offered the [34]Gold Card , with a 16 MHz 68000 and 2 MB of RAM, and later the Super Gold Card, with a 68020 and 4 MB. Remarkably, you can [35]still buy modern clones of both: [36]Tetroid's Gold Card and [37]Super Gold Card .
[38]Eben Upton on Sinclair, Acorn, and the Raspberry Pi
[39]The New ROM Antics – building the ZX Spectrum 128
[40]The ZX81 finally gets the keyboard it deserves
[41]Apple releases Lisa source code on landmark machine's 40th birthday
Ron Dunnett's Qubbesoft sold the [42]Aurora motherboard , designed by Željko "Nasta" Nastasić. Although it was designed to go into an AT-style PC case, it was possible to fit an Aurora board into an original QL case. Either way, you needed a donor QL as the Aurora needed some of the chips from the original machine.
As supplies of original QL motherboards dwindled, Miracle Systems invented an ingenious alternative, the QXL Card, and later, the faster [43]QXL 2 card . The QXL cards put the core logic of a QL-compatible computer – a 68EC040 CPU, from one to four megabytes of RAM, and two QL network ports – onto a 16-bit ISA card to fit into a PC. A DOS application called QXL.EXE transferred control to the Motorola chip, with the PC providing disk storage, I/O, and display. These devices even made it around the world. The Reg FOSS desk last saw one installed into an [44]Amstrad ALT-386 at the [45]ByteFest retro computing show in Prague, and for Sinclair users stateside, [46]Update magazine carried the news in its [47]April 1993 issue .
[48]
Fast forward to 1999, and an entirely new family of QL-compatible motherboards appeared: the [49]Q40 and Q60 , designed by Peter Graf. The devices are standalone mini AT-form factor motherboards, with two SIMM slots and two ISA slots. The [50]Q40 motherboard has a 40 MHz 68040 and maxes out at 32 MB, while the latter [51]Q60 board offered a 66 MHz or 80 MHz 68060 and up to 128 MB of RAM. The [52]Q40 and Q60 homepage is still alive and has more info, although no new boards have been made in some years.
This is because Herr Graf moved on to a new project, the FPGA-based [53]Q68 computer , a simulated 68000 core running at 40 MHz, with 32 MB of RAM, QL-compatible graphics from 256 x 256 up to 1,024 x 768 in 16-bit color, serial, Ethernet and I2C interfaces, and twin SD card slots. It may not sound much by 2024 PC standards, but for a QL-compatible, this is formidable stuff, and it's only £150 ($190) plus shipping. The QL user group [54]Quanta – itself 40 years old as well – has [55]more info . The Q68 board is tiny and capable, however, the best news is that you can [56]still order new units today from long-term builder of QL-compatibles Derek Stewart.
By our reckoning, that's some 14 different models of QL-compatible hardware from the CST Thor in 1986 to the Q68 today – and that's excluding accelerator boards for the original machine. We reckon that is an impressive tally, and more than most 1980s computers can boast.
[57]Youtube Video
Minerva, SMSQ/E and other offspring
As The Reg history of the QL at 30 covered, initial shipping suffered repeated delays and the early machines shipped with an add-on ROM cartridge in the rear to hold the OS. The official stated reason, although disputed, was that the machine contained 32 kB of ROM, but the OS needed 48 kB. What is a matter of record is that QDOS went through multiple revisions in the QL's first year or so, which is commonplace today, but in the 1980s meant replacing ROM chips.
Some of the early QL-compatibles were built around original motherboards, which meant that they inherited the 48 kB limitation. That led to the existence of one of the forks of QDOS that's still around: [58]Laurence Reeve's Minerva . As his partial [59]release history shows, there were many versions of this, but he made his final version, [60]release 1.98 , open source [61]under the GPL – although since then there have been [62]a couple of bug fixes .
The other continuing fork of QDOS started out from its original developer, Tony Tebby. With no more new QL hardware available, he ported the OS to the next cheapest 68000 box available, the Atari ST. He called the result SMS2, [63]Small Multitasking System 2 . This had a different interface from QDOS because the proprietary SMS2 OS didn't include the SuperBASIC interpreter written by [64]Jan Jones which formed the main UI for QDOS.
In time, QDOS compatibility was added back, along with a multitasking version of SuperBASIC called SBASIC, to make [65]SMSQ , and this was then gradually enhanced to create SMSQ/E, which also runs on later QL-compatible hardware. Tebby wrote an excellent brief history of the evolution of the system for its [66]Wikipedia page , but in their finite wisdom, the site administrators deleted it. Fortunately, you can still [67]read it in the page's history . The [68]SMSQ/E source code is still available, which is sadly more than we can say of Tebby's planned successor, which he called [69]Stella , although there is a [70]historical introduction .
After Tebby [71]retired , [72]Marcel Kilgus – developer of one of the leading QL emulators for Windows, the [73]now-freeware QPC2 – took over [74]development . There is also a Java-based emulator called [75]SMSQmulator for non-Windows types.
Closing words
For a machine widely derided as a failure, the QL platform survived in the form of well over a dozen clones, at least one of which is still on sale today. There are two forks of its OS that ended up becoming open source. One was for systems built around the original motherboard with its 48 kB of ROM space. The other runs on much less-constrained environments, and continued to evolve well into the 21st century. It can be run on Atari hardware, as well as QL-compatible hardware – and emulators of both, of course.
[76]
SMSQ/E's Pointer Environment, as found in The Distribution, is quite unlike anything else – a glimpse of an alternate universe
If you want to explore this unique OS and its software today, [77]Urs König curates a free 4 GB archive of software, emulators, magazines, videos, and more called The Distribution. If you just want a compilation of the software, that exists as a subset called the QL Environment. Both are available from [78]SinclairQL.net . There's an active community on the [79]QL Forum , which also hosts the comprehensive [80]Dilwyn Jones Sinclair QL Pages . ®
Get our [81]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2014/01/24/thirty_years_of_the_apple_macintosh_p1/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/01/18/feature_apple_lisa_is_30/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2019/01/21/apple_lisa_at_36/
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[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Zaa2NxEIf6kVi0iAxoOFcwAAAAo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kudos
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[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/20/retro_tech_week_rwap/
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[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zaa2NxEIf6kVi0iAxoOFcwAAAAo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2013/03/13/feature_the_sinclair_zx_microdrive_story/
[15] https://dilwyn.qlforum.co.uk/psions/index.html
[16] https://sites.google.com/site/martin2reid/psion-organiser-ii/manuals/pc-four
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zaa2NxEIf6kVi0iAxoOFcwAAAAo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2009/01/24/best_and_worst_macs/?page=3
[19] https://www.dosdays.co.uk/computers/IBM%20PC-AT%20(5170)/ibm5170.php
[20] https://www.theregister.com/1999/01/28/icl_issues_call_to_arms/
[21] http://rk.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/computers/clones/opd.htm
[22] https://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/icl/murraywriteup.php
[23] https://vintagecomputers.sdfeu.org/tonto/index.html
[24] https://www.theregister.com/2013/11/28/telecom_australia_computerphone/
[25] https://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/oneperdesk.html
[26] https://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/oneperdesk/opd_storage.html
[27] https://web.archive.org/web/20160324094836/http://old.quanta.org.uk/theql/ql-systems/thor/index.html
[28] https://cpcrulez.fr/people-cpc-amstrad_blocks_plans_for_ql.htm
[29] https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1986-05-22/page/n9/mode/2up
[30] https://qlwiki.qlforum.co.uk/doku.php?id=qlwiki:sandy_qxt640
[31] https://dilwyn.qlforum.co.uk/mags/qluserworld/QL%20World%20July%201987.pdf
[32] https://simon.mooli.org.uk/QL/ThorXVI.html
[33] http://sinclairql.emuunlim.com/hardware.html
[34] https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/36057/Miracle-Systems-Gold-Card/
[35] https://www.sellmyretro.com/user/unsoldItems/tetroid
[36] http://oldmachinery.blogspot.com/2018/04/ql-tetroid-gold-card-clone.html
[37] http://oldmachinery.blogspot.com/2019/03/ql-tetroid-super-gold-card-clone.html
[38] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/15/eben_upton_on_sinclair_acorn/
[39] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/15/opinion_column_zxspectrum_128/
[40] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/15/zx_81_mechanical_keyboard/
[41] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/21/apple_lisa_source_code_release/
[42] https://web.archive.org/web/20160324120721/http://old.quanta.org.uk/theql/ql-systems/aurorapandora/index.html
[43] https://qxl.win/qxlii_isa_card.htm
[44] https://oldcrap.org/2020/08/24/amstrad-alt-386sx/
[45] http://www.bytefest.cz/english
[46] https://www.timexsinclair.com/periodical/update-magazine/
[47] https://archive.org/details/ts-2068-update/Update%20Apr%201993/page/n40/mode/1up
[48] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zaa2NxEIf6kVi0iAxoOFcwAAAAo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[49] https://web.archive.org/web/20140417180909/http://old.quanta.org.uk/theql/ql-systems/q40q60/
[50] https://qxl.win/q40_mainboard.htm
[51] https://morloch.hd.free.fr/qdos/images/Q60.jpg
[52] http://q40.de/index.html
[53] https://dilwyn.qlforum.co.uk/q68/index.html
[54] https://quanta.org.uk/
[55] https://quanta.org.uk/blog/2017/02/23/q68/
[56] https://qlforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2203
[57] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IrtdUJ5t10
[58] https://web.archive.org/web/20100620084834/http://www.bergbland.info/
[59] https://www.dilwyn.qlforum.co.uk/qlrom/min_versions.txt
[60] https://www.dilwyn.qlforum.co.uk/qlrom/index.html#Disassemblies__Sources
[61] https://www.dilwyn.qlforum.co.uk/qlrom/min_copyright.txt
[62] https://www.kilgus.net/ql/minerva/
[63] https://retrocomputingforum.com/t/sms2-an-operating-system-for-sinclair-ql-and-atari-st/1794
[64] http://www.jan-jones.co.uk/about-me.html
[65] https://morloch.hd.free.fr/qdos/QDOS.html
[66] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMSQ/E
[67] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SMSQ/E&direction=prev&oldid=7823417
[68] https://www.wlenerz.com/smsqe/
[69] https://web.archive.org/web/20051110162551/http://thgodef.nerim.net/qdos/stella/index.html
[70] https://web.archive.org/web/20050914114333/http://thgodef.nerim.net/qdos/stella/intro.html
[71] http://t-t-web.com/
[72] https://www.kilgus.net/about/
[73] https://www.kilgus.net/qpc/what/
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Love/Hate
I remember my Dad's QL with equal doses of love and hate. I loved the fact that it was so fast and allowed me to do so much more than my much upgraded 64Kb ZX81, but I hated those infernal pieces of sh!t,... the Microdrives. After I left home Dad replaced them with external 3½" floppy drives which worked much better and could store 360Kb each. We both migrated to X86 machines in the late 80s and never looked back, but the QL was a very capable machine in it's day and 18 months earlier than the Atari/Amiga that killed the QL off.
Re: Love/Hate
"those infernal pieces of sh!t,... the Microdrives"
Fitting something so far from wat was already a standard storage technology was one example of what I think of as the 90% approach ot the UK PC vendors at the time. It's not a variation on the 80/20 rule, it's that they included 90% of what was needed to make the kit worth buying.
Why? Was it really cheaper to design and build the drive and its media rather than just buy in something that already existed?
My Dad got one in Dixons' fire sale when Amstrad was sold to Sinclair. I think the Psion office software tipped the balance otherwise he would have bought an Amstrad PCW.
The BASIC was nice and I managed to mess around in BASIC creating windows, but I couldn't find the rumoured multitasking anywhere. As it's Sinclair I guess he cut development short before the release and the programmer had to finish off the job themselves in 68K assembly language. :)
As for the microdrives... well, they taught me the importance of keeping backups.
[Author here]
> but I couldn't find the rumoured multitasking anywhere
SuperBASIC on QDOS couldn't and didn't multitask.
SBASIC on SMSQ/E does.
Amstrad was sold to Sinclair
I think Lord Yer-Fired might have something to say about that?
Oops.
If he does I'll ask him what on earth he was thinking when decided the PC200 was a good idea.
outSHONE
..."shined" is for shoes!
Otherwise fascinating article. I got the impression when the Mac was transitioning from 68k that the Motorola processors were "running out of steam" and that there wasn't room for a CISC competitor to x86, the competition was going RISCy (PowerPC, ARM, MIPS, Sparc...), and this rather cramped the potential of 68k successors.
Re: outSHONE
Sadly, the US lack of spelling and grammaer is becoming ever more present in the English language. At times I wonder if I'm the only one left who knows how to conjugate verbs..
Re: outSHONE
I conjugate
You conjugate
He is American...
But still, it's better to conjugate than never!
Re: outSHONE
But still, it's better to conjugate than never!
Oo-er missus!
Re: outSHONE
Already by then the CISC/RISC distinction was less and less clear. Intel was moving everything that wasn't x86 legacy away from pure CISC but had to keep the core. The PowerPCs were by far the better chips, but Intel simply had better process engineers and money for fabs, and with Andy Grove ("only the paranoid survive"), the right boss to drive for success using all means necessary, legal or otherwise.
Re: outSHONE
Those irregular verbs are a bitch.
Sirius
I thought the QL looked such fun, I sold my Sirius and bought one. When someone eventually brought out a floppy interface, it became usable - sort of. There was also a rom add-on called ICE which gave a primitive gui. Eventually, I gave up the struggle and bought an Atari ST with a 20mb hard disk.
"outshined"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNh-iw7gsuI
QL was more than a failure. It was a total joke.
Back in 1984 I had a few 128K Macs and a Lisa on my desk. For software development. On a large table at the other side of the office was a heap of QL internals that had been cannibalized to make a few QLs that actually worked long enough to test software on. It was nt just the Stringy Floppy that was garbage. QA was basically non-existent at Sinclair.
As for software by late 1984 there was already a wide selection of MacOS software available once the 512K Mac was shipped. Word-processors. Spreadsheets. Databases. You name it. By the time of the first MacWorld at the Moscone in San Francisco in early 1985 there was already a rich and deep MacOS software ecosystem. And that included both MS Word and MS Multiplan. And the single best word-processor at the time, WriteNow, had no problems running on even a 128K Mac. A quick look at a MacWorld from late 1984 / early 1985 will give some idea of just how mature the MacOS software ecosystem already was. By 1986 (my first show) it was fully evolved to the form it kept for the next decade.
And in QL land? Crickets.Dead in the water even before the official (very rushed) launch.
I can go out and buy an old 128K Mac and as long as the capacitors and the fly back transformer are checked carefully before I turn it on ( capacitors are a problem with all 40 year old electronics) the Mac will work. And all the software written for it at the time will work. With QL's turning one on even in 1984 was always Russian roulette. With the one in the chamber being the QL actual would power up and work without obvious problems. At least for a while.
Those who had the bad luck to work on QL's back then always considered them a joke. Which is what they were. And by the time the QA issues was mostly addressed it was - who cares. You only get one chance to make a good impression.
Does n't time fly. It was almost 40 years ago exactly when I got to use a Mac for the very first time. At an official Apple launch party. There was an open bar so I had the two Macs on site pretty much to myself. But after the first few minutes I knew this was going to be the future. My future. And so it proved for the next 15 years. Although I did ship my last product that ran on a Mac 27 years later. A fine innings on a fun platform.. Or at least for the first 13 years it was fun. As were the Apple people. Then it became no fun at all in Cupertino. And the party ended.
Oh well.
Fantastic article - this kind of content is one of the main reasons I still read El Reg. Another reason is that you rarely (never?) switch commenting off on articles, and the signal to noise ratio remains remarkably high. I dislike the DevClass sister site, as although it has some interesting articles I feel that the lack of a comment section means the opportunity for more insights is lost.
The right stuff; the wrong side of history - never made sense to me
Even by the time of the fire sales (and it was tempting then), the QL never made sense to me*. It was clear it was never going to get the software (especially games). It was all a bit too grown-up at the time! My move to 16-bit didn't come until the Amiga 500, which ended up making a great deal of sense given the many similarities to the grown-up OSs we used at University. That said, I'm rather surprised at the following the QL has to this day.
* I'm the classic 80s child. Got a ZX Spectrum for "homework".
"Outshined" ?
Really?
Fatal flaw?
A friend got a QL and one evening he attempted to show it off to me.
Let down by the [1]awful stringy-drive If only it had been even like the 3″ PCW drive, which was actually better than an Apple II floppy.
Almost every Sinclair product (Audio IC and Radio kits, Black Watch, calculator, ZX expansion) had some near fatal flaw due to overly optimistic cost cutting and adverts that were of dubious accuracy, The IC10 and IC12 appeared to have better specs than the Plessey and Texas parts. but were in fact re-badged sub-spec but functional parts. The two TVs and C5 trike overly ambitious. He did start by reselling failed functional transistors with his opwn code by mail order.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2013/03/13/feature_the_sinclair_zx_microdrive_story/
This is a great article. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I love a bit of revisionist fiction, I do.
The truth is that the QL was rubbish, and comparisons with the Mac - and particularly its GUI - are irrelevant. But okay, let’s compare.
In many ways, the Mac was a statement of intent - and, for all that the original was very limited and more than a bit rubbish, and despite Steve Jobs wishes, expansion was built in. Or, at least, anticipated.
Networking was standard, albeit using LocalTalk - and whilst LocalTalk is derided as slow now, it wasn’t slow by the standards of the time. And it paved the way for Ethernet to be included easily later, and with a large library of software already available.
Expansion cards were anticipated - effectively stubbed in the memory map as virtual slots. Sure, nothing could be done with them until later iterations of the machine appeared - but it made it easy to include them when they did.
Even support for multiple monitors was included from the start, with a virtual desktop which spanned all of them, and third parties took advantage of it within a couple of years of the Mac’s launch. Polyphonic sound, similarly, was catered for - as, indeed was cooperative multi-tasking (although, for the first few versions of the OS, this was limited to support for desk accessories)
So yes, the original Mac was rubbish - but without the foresight of its developers, without that eye on the future, it would have been nothing more than a footnote in the history of computing.
The developers of the QL may have had foresight as well, but there’s nothing in the QL to persuade me that they were able to deliver on it. For all the fine words written here about the QL, it was still very much a yesterdays machine - and many other machines of the time were including similar functionalities - Commodores Plus/4, the Elan Enterprise and so forth.
A better comparison to the QL might be the Amiga or the ST. Those machines show exactly what the QL could have been.
The QL was interesting. The jingoist in me would love to praise it. But the best I can say about it was that it was interesting, and Linus developed fledgling versions of Linux on it. But that isn’t enough to say that it was a good machine in its own right, or anything more than a technological cul-de-sac.
Engineered down to a price
Sinclair was a clever guy but a poor businessman and this was obvious in all the products: they were too obviously designed down to a price, as you might expect in what was "the Far East" (Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea) at the time but not possible in the UK any more. In the absence of sufficient investment capital, time-to-market and refinancing via cashflow were key and this meant that corners had to be cut at almost every opportunity. But at the same time, production could never be really scaled up for worldwide demand, because cashflow was being funnelled directly back into production.
The sweetspot was probably with the Spectrum, which ironed out most of the awfulness of the ZX80 and ZX81 predecessors and, for a while, became the dominant small computer, at least in the UK. And the competition wasn't really with Apple: both Commdore and Atari used the 68000 but produced machines and software that didn't look like it had been knocked up over the weekend, which the Sinclairs always did: great for hobbyists but a real killer for business. They were also keen in getting as much out of the 68000's ISA advantage over the crippled x86 ISA and, by doing so, like Apple, were able to address markets that the PCs at the time simply couldn't serve, such as video production. For business, by 1984 the PC was becoming established and the sunk invesment of the "platform" meant that alternatives to MS-Intel would always have it hard. Even now, 40 years on, the Wintel still dominates business computing.
Overheating
Lets not forget the heat issues and he numbers of us that replaced the heat sink and dropped in a larger transisor