By MICHAEL SWAINE
( from
Developer2 magazine....September-2003)
*********************************************************
[ Adam Osborne was
great. No less great is the style and content of this brilliant tribute to
Osborne, by Michael Swaine. Scintillating prose!...
There is another reason why
this tribute should gladden the hearts of Indians(especially, the Tamils. Read
on to find out!}
...RSR
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“when we
were children ,we bumped into our rich neighbor one day. I asked him if he would
help him if he would help me with my stamp collection. He agreed. Our sister
Frania then asked for help with her matchbox label collection. He agreed. Adam
was quiet , so Mr.Bose asked him if he needed help with his collection and what
was it. Adam said he was collecting money”
--katya(Osborne)Dougles
Adam
Osborne died this
year, on Tuesday , March 18, at the home of his sister Katya in a southern Indian
village not far from where he’d spent his childhood years. He had been
living there for a decade, all but forgotten by the
personal computer industry he helped to shape.
Those of us who
remember Adam probably agree on the broad strokes of the
portrait:
·
the most flamboyant entrepreneur of
the personal computer
revolution;
·
a dignified , precise ,
and eloquent presence;
·
firm in his opinions;
fearless in his predictions;
boldly rolling the
dice and lavishly savouring and
sharing the bounty
when they fell his way.
If that is the portrait, the
frame is
of another material entirely. Adam Osborne spent his early years in the
quiet village of Tiruvannamalai, where
his parents, followers of the Hindu holy man Sri Ramana
Maharishi, embraced a life of poverty. Adam
and his sisters spoke Tamil and ran
barefoot and carefree in the hot valley and cool uplands of the
area.
..
Adam was “ a bright , mischievous little
boy, full of laughter and up to all the tricks and trouble that little boys
enjoy,” his sister recalls. It was to her home that Adam returned in the quiet
closing decade of his life.
As I interviewed those
who knew him, I was looking for the connection between the two worlds of Tiruvannamalai and Silicon Valley. Here is what I
found.
From the
fountainhead
“The popular press likes to identify
the present leaders in the microcomputer industry as farsighted geniuses who
either invented the microcomputer or designed the products. This is
rubbish.”
-----Adam
Osborne , “From the Fountainhead”
In 1981, the year I
began writing full time for computer magazines, Adam Osborne had just retired
his popular and influential column “From the Fountainhead”. Having made a reputation telling the players in the
fledgling industry how to do their jobs, he decided it
was time to show them what he meant. The April 13, 1981, issue of Info World carried his final “From the
Fountainhead” column as well as a front-page story on his new computer, the
Osborne 1, with a picture of
Adam in a three-piece suit showing off the curious beast.
“Curious beast” is
accurate. Closed up, the machine looked, everyone agreed, like a portable sewing
machine. Opened, no one could say what it looked like. The 5-inch monitor was
easy to miss, surrounded by the shock-absorbing padding, bulky cheap disk
drives, and shelves like glove compartments that gave the Osborne-1 its
inimitable look. Although it was so heavy that it was immediately dubbed a
‘luggable’ rather than a portable, it did meet Adam’s criterion of fitting under an
airplane seat, and introduced portable computing
before Compaq was a scribble on a napkin.
The most radical
feature of the Osborne 1, though, was the bundled software, combined with the
price. For 1,795 dollars you got the machine and $1,500 worth of software: CP/M,
CBASIC, Microsoft BASIC, WordStar, MailMerge, and SuperCalc. This was unheard of
at the time.
The bundled software
invited a question, the answer to which gives some insight into what made Adam
Osborne unique. Osborne Computer
Company(OCC) was a startup in an unpredictable industry, run by a
techpundit, taking big risks with
little capital. But in large part, Adam got the
software he needed not for cash but in exchange for stock in OCC. How did this mere writer get all those software company
presidents, including Bill Gates, to buy into his
vision?
“He had this ability to be charming, coupled with being good at
understanding things from a user’s stand point”.
----Thom Hogan
In point of
fact, he wasn’t a mere writer. Adam had already launched a successful
company.
While I was still
working at a computer store in the Midwest, my co-worker Thom Hogan had
written an instruction manual on the CP/M operating
system for our customers. Suddenly, Thom was getting pitches from someone
named Adam Osborne to let him publish the CP/M manual as a
book.
Osborne hadn’t made his
name yet, but he was working on it. After writing the Intel 4004 microprocessor documentation for
Intel, Adam had bootstrapped a microcomputer book company into existence. One
moment he was selling books out of a box at the back of the Homebrew computer
club meetings, where he talked Bruce Van Natta into packing a copy of his “An
introduction to Microcomputers” with every IMSAI computer shipped, and the next
moment he had seduced bookstore buyers into stocking his
books.
He did this by offering them a little
book that they had to have. Adam wrote Running Wild: The next Industrial
Revolution on two legs of a plane flight, turning it over to a researcher to
fill in the factual details. 'Running Wild' was a tiny book, but it predicted
the impact of microprocessors on society.
·
It was
visionary,
·
it was informed,
·
it was a
good read.
It was also
exactly the right book for the intended audience -bookstore buyers-and it got
his foot and his books in the door.
Thom’s CP/M book was a
big success, and there were many others. Some of the books were excellent, some
less so. Osborne books weren’t always best, but Adam had a seemingly unerring
talent for picking the right titles. The staff called it his “golden gut.” It
was an early proof of his exceptionable ability to see things from the
customer’s point of view.
Selling his
successful book company to McGraw-Hill(spawning Osborne/McGraw-Hill, a leading computer book publisher
to this day)gave Adam the money and the confidence-or perhaps he only needed the money-to launch a new
business.
“Adequacy is sufficient.
All else is superfluous.”
----Adam Osborne
In 1980, at the West
Coast Computer Faire, Adam recruited populist computer designer Lee Felsenstein
with a promise calculated to push
Lee’s buttons: Adam wanted him to build a kind
of ‘ Volkscomputer’ -portable,
inexpensive, and easy to use. Before long, Adam had launched the company,
delievered the computer, and incidentally hired three of my best
friends.
Thom Hogan was one of
them, and he tells a story one hears repeatedly. “He made six or seven offers. I
finally realized that he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.” Lee Felsenstein
characterized Adam as the kind of leader people would
follow off the edge of a cliff. Georgette Psaris, who worked more closely
with Adam than anyone else, vividly recalls her first interview with him. “He
was extraordinarily charismatic,” she told me. Slipping unconsciously between
present and past tense, she explained, “when he feels that someone doesn’t get
something, the whole dam of his charisma opens up. His passion was contagious;
and if he felt he could trust, you had unrestrained freedom.” “Adam was Don
Juan,” Thom summarizes, “the great seducer.” But he could also cut you down if
you fell out of favour.
These were the last weeks of
innocence of the personal computer market. The hobbyists who had made
or lost money building the machines
that they and their friends wanted were just waiting for the Big
Boys-Hewlett-Packard, DEC, and the biggest one of all, Big Blue- to come in and take it all away from
them. Some of these hobbyist entrepreneurs were not waiting: while Adam was
recruiting Lee Felsenstein, Bill Gates was being
recruited by IBM-or vice versa.
In this portentous atmosphere, Adam released his Volkscomputer, and it sold like crazy. Once again, Adam had read the consumer right.
The bundling of all the necessary software was a brilliant coup. Not only did it
give OCC a big price edge, but it simplified the purchasing process. Alone among
computer vendors of the day, Adam understood how important this was to the
consumer. As for the software, the programs weren’t necessarily the best
available, but they did the job. Adam freely admitted that the machine wasn’t the fastest, the most attractive,
or the most expandable computer on the market. But it did what users needed. The
whole package was-his term-adequate. And that was
sufficient.
60
Minutes
“The company grew from zilch to 100
million dollars in less than two years. Who do you hire who has experience with
growth like that? Nobody exists.”
-----John C.Dvorak
It was sufficient to make Osborne Computer Company the
fastest growing computer company in history. The executives, including
Georgette Psaris and Thom Hogan were interviewed on “60 Minutes,” where they
famously predicted how they would all
be millionaires. Why not? Within five months, OCC was booking a million
dollars a month in sales.
Meanwhile, other
companies were imitating the bundling idea, the $1,795 price and the luggable
form factor of the Osborne I. At the same time, IBM
had, as feared , entered
the industry and changed all expectations. The phrase “IBM compatibility”
was on lips of executives of every personal computer company. Osborne needed to
come out with a new model, and it needed to offer IBM
compatibility.
There were other,
internal, reasons for developing a new model as well. Production of
the Osborne machines took far too long given the
tidal wave of orders the company was getting. A new model could be
designed for faster assembly. Thom recalls doing crude studies to determine how
to speed up the process, until Adam simply asked the assemblers what make their
job easier. Their answer to reduce the number of screws we have to put in the
machine-was the solution. Thom thinks that Adam got
the solution because he looked on the assemblers as customers and tried
to determine what they needed.
A second and a third
machine were planned, as well as a way of building in IBM compatibility. But in
a very it was all over. On September 13, 1983, OCC
declared bankruptcy. A week earlier, photographer Sam Forenchich got the shot that told the story: against
the backdrop of the building with its bold Osborne logo, a nattily-dressed Adam
Osborne holds a briefcase in front
of his face to hide from the press as he hurries across the lot toward the
solitary Mercedes.
How things got to this
state is a matter of some controversy.
There is, of course,
the well-known story of the Osborne Executive leak. Adam loved to give the press
something hot, and it is true that he leaked the news of the new machine, the
Osborne Executive , before it was ready to ship and at a time when the
announcement would do damage to sales of the existing product line. This became
the official reason for the fall of OCC. Adam later claimed that he deliberately
planted this story to distract the press
from the true depth of OCC’s problems. Thom and Georgette maintain that
the preannouncement of the Executive , while unfortunate, was not enough to sink
the company. Other mistakes by the ‘professional’ management-which Adam brought
in to prepare for the IPO that was going to make them all
millionaires-accomplished that.
The
principals all look for reasons for the failure. They feel confident that they
could have ridden the whirlwind if only this or that mistake had not been made.
While their confidence is understandable, I incline to John Dvorak’s view.
Osborne Computer Company flew so high and fast that
no one could control it any longer.
“Each
company made history. The book company basically started the microcomputer book
industry.[OCC’s software] bundling was a brilliant insight. The packaging for Paperback Software was really
clever”.
--Georgette “Jett” Psaris
Adam Osborne, the darling of the press, had become an icon of
failure. “Adam was forever iconified when he held the briefcase in
front of his face as he walked to the parking lot,”John Markoff told me. John was right. And
yet….
Adam bounced back. A few years later he founded
Paperback Software on another dead-on user-centred idea-sell computer software
like paperback books. No shrinkwrap license, no
nonsense, and a price point that made the
decision to buy
easy.
The business took off.
But although it was doing well, the company wasn’t meeting schedules of
budgets on anything from documentation to warehousing, and soon Adam was
looking for another manager to handle the follow-through.
The
candidate Adam went after this time
was Jonathan Erickson, today DDJ’s
editor-in-chief, but then (coincidentally)an editor at Osborne/McGraw-Hill
books.
Jonathan
initially accepted, as most people did when approached by Adam, but then changed
his mind-and saw the flip side of the charisma: “He wasn’t rude, it was just
that I didn’t exist beyond that moment.”
Evidently, Paperback
Software found competent follow-through management. Once again, Adam’s golden gut led to making the right
choices of titles, and company was doing well. When it went under, it did
so not for any weakness in the product line of in the business model or in the
management, but because of a
lawsuit. This was the heyday of software look-and-feel litigation, and Lotus
thought that the order of menu commands in one of Paperback Software’s titles
looked and felt too much like those in Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus was at the same time
also suing Silicon Graphics, Mosaic, and Borland.
Icon of failure, did I say? I don’t think so. All of Adam’s companies embodied successful ideas. One
was sold at a nice profit. One was a casualty
of its own success. The third fell victim to a climate of
litigiousness. But all of them dramatically changed the industries of
which they were a part. However things worked out, there was a lot of success along the
way.
Paperback Software,
though, was to be the last of the dramatic Adam Osborne
ventures.
Homeland
“He
never forgave his parents for, as he saw it, abandoning him, and he resented it
for the rest of his life.”
--Katya(Osborne)Dougles
After
Paperback Software, Adam’s health began to fail and his thoughts turned to
Sri Ramana and country of his
youth.
Those early years in
India had, in many ways, been idyllic. Then , at age 11, Adam was sent to live
with relatives in England in order to get a proper British education. With scant
money for flights halfway around the world, Adam and his family saw little of
one another for many years. He
later told friends that he felt like a neglected Cinderella amongst the favoured
stepbrothers. He never forgave his
parents for sending him away. He grew up fast in England and grew away from his
family.
The connection between
Tiruvannamalai and Silicon Valley was meditated by the years in
England.
When he came to United
States to earn a doctorate in
Chemical Engineering, he was an ambitious and driven man. Most
of his time was spent thinking about business, and the rest was spent in
pleasures of which his parents would have disapproved. Both the business focus
and the sybaritic pleasures were probably a reaction against his upbringing. Was
he also driven to prove himself worthy of his parents’ love? And at the same
time to reject them and their values by achieving success in the way of life
that they had rejected? And were his charisma and his ability to read customers both
aspects of one trait-a tremendous need to be
loved?
Whatever his demons,
Adam seemed somehow to have conquered them in his last years. He returned to
India , to his sister’s home. Even as his health
worsened, he was a model of grace and courtesy. His consideration and
endurance touched his sister deeply. “Not at all what I would have expected
from the old rambunctious Adam,” she told me. And his sense of play remained.
Although his mental and physical powers both declined, early on he loved to play
Scrabble. His sister recalls one game: “He came up with word “gnathic.” I asked
him where he had unearthed a word like that. ‘It came from a poem,’ he replied.
There was a long pause, then:’ I wrote the poem.’”