IBMWatson autobiographythoughts on 763

I always understood it more as an issue of the idea of a 'business' computer and a 'scientific' computer. i.e. the computers were so specialized for one purpose that they generally couldn't do other things as well. Everything i've heard always seemed to suggest that the thrust of the 360 was to make a good general purpose machine that could do various tasks equally well (even if it didn't excel at them all). Thus, a firm could have one computer instead of two.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was it too, but didn't the 1400 series linger on for a while after the 360 came out?

Maybe Univac?

Maybe the 360 happened more because technology finally allowed it to, as opposed to someone realizing it was a 'good idea'?

I wonder if this was a result of a big fight that was going on at IBM over the design?

Wasn't IBM's big strength their ability to help customers get up and running with their HW?

And of course, today, IBM's been going to great lengths to shake their stiff blue suit image. I wonder if that's really such a great idea in this age of come and go computer companies..

(I recall years ago a satire of an IBM ad that had the headline "Who else could lose 2 billion dollars and still be around...")