Back in 1987, wasn’t it, that IBM Corp introduced the PS/2 and everybody that thinks about these things wondered where the magic plus was – and couldn’t understand why the company wasn’t building in circuitry as standard that made the machine the answer to every 3270 user’s wildest dreams? What we were all forgetting is that if you trod on a dinosaur’s tale, it took about five years for the message to reach the creature’s minuscule brain – but now we hear it’s getting there, it’s getting there: even IBM in its sober moments realises that the 3270, the PS/2 as a premium product, and OS/2 are lost causes, and that there’s is a big AS/400 base out there to save, and our colleagues on IBM System User hear that the company – which has rights to market Macintosh System on PowerPC under its agreement with Apple Computer Inc – is working up a plan to build full 5150 emulation into a fully-fledged Macintosh to give AS/400 users the intelligent desktop terminal of their dreams; now if only IBM would bite the bullet and price the box competitively…
