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Why was hardware diversification an asset for the IBM PC ecosystem?

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2024-12-22 08:00:02

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The IBM PC was cloned very early on, and many third parties made hardware peripherals. This required users to run an OS, install drivers, manage IRQs and hardware bus addresses, etc. Why was this a strength of the platform, instead of a weakness?

I'm thinking specifically of Commodore/Amiga where the hardware was less diverse and end users/programs didn't need to manage so much fragmentation. I'm also thinking of modern examples like Android where fragmentation is a big problem, and iOS where the hardware is less diverse and that is seen as an asset of the platform in ways.

It was an advantage because the IBM PC became an extensible computing platform. The most popular competitor to it previously was the Apple II, another open platform.

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