Micro Men
in [UK Mac]
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From: Steve Firth on 11 Oct 2009 07:19 Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: > It depicts the battle between Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry in the > early 80's. It spans the time from just before Chris left Sinclair, to > the point that Sinclair Computers are bought by Amstrad. I rather > enjoyed it. I was pleasantly surprised. There seemed to have been considerable effort expended on getting things right as far as characterisation, costume and set dressing were concerned. Quite often (as in "Life on Mars" and its sequels) directors seem to get portrayal of that period horribly wrong. Well, not just that period, any decade of which I have living memory. This one felt right and the performances were very good throughout.
From: Tim Gowen on 11 Oct 2009 07:31 Ian Piper <ianpiper(a)mac.com> wrote: > Alexander Armstrong's portrayal of Sinclair seemed unusually off the > mark for him: there was another program on just before Micro Men that > had a clip of Sinclair being interviewed so it was easy to compare the > voice, and it was a surprisingly poor rendition. In the story itself > Sinclair came out of this very badly I thought, while Curry came across > as a nice guy. I know which company I'd rather have been working in - I > rather liked the Acorns and for a long time lusted after an Archimedes > A3000. Well yeah, it was a fictionalisation of the whole thing. What I took from it, which was most surprising, was that Sinclair was fixated on the cars and didn't really think home computing would take off. It'll be the C5 that's mentioned in his obituary not the millions of computers he sold to people of my generation. And he was sort of right because a whole lot of programmers didn't emerge from that period. People of that generation may be more computer literate than any generation before them but I know a lot of people who're younger than me who don't like computers. And the BBC was the superior machine with the decent keyboard, but it was less 'fun'. It's what I had before the PCW then the PC, then the Mac! Tim -- Tim Gowen
From: Peter Ceresole on 11 Oct 2009 07:48 Tim Gowen <tim(a)nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote: > And the BBC was the superior machine with the decent keyboard, but it > was less 'fun'. It's what I had before the PCW then the PC, then the > Mac! It would be. It was intended as a complement to an educational TV series on computing- never for people to use out in the wild. The Beeb had to shoose a partner to make it, and they chose Acorn (didn't they?). Bill Cotton, who was the head of TV then, told us much later that they expected to sell maybe 5-10,000 of them, so it was priced for those volumes with the BBC getting a royalty on each. Eventually they sold over a million. Bill said that they were competely taken by surprise. -- Peter
From: T i m on 11 Oct 2009 07:56 On Sun, 11 Oct 2009 12:31:03 +0100, tim(a)nospam.demon.co.uk (Tim Gowen) wrote: >Well yeah, it was a fictionalisation of the whole thing. What I took >from it, which was most surprising, was that Sinclair was fixated on the >cars and didn't really think home computing would take off. It'll be >the C5 that's mentioned in his obituary not the millions of computers he >sold to people of my generation. Seeing him trundling along in the C5 reminded me of when I was using mine fairly regularly and for the purpose I believe it was intended, cheap comfortable local transport [1]. T i m [1] Cheap compared with say even a moped (if you also consider the TAX, Insurance, MOT etc), comfortable (compared with a bicycle) and local (with 5 miles or so). I used to use mine to 'pop up the shops' when away racing my electrically propelled endurance machine (motorbike format).
From: Ian McCall on 11 Oct 2009 09:21
On 2009-10-11 10:15:49 +0100, jim(a)magrathea.plus.com (Jim) said: > One of the things that continues to frustrate me is that there doesn't > seem to be a written history of the UK computer timeframe, unlike the > many, many books available for the American computer histories. Digital Retro? <http://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Retro-Evolution-Personal-Computer/dp/1904705391/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255267150&sr=1-1> Not a timeline as such but very informative about the Sinclair/Acorn thing. Haven't seen the programme yet but if they're depicting Acorn as the winner then that's a rather drastic rewrite of history. The Spectrum won the 1982 wars easily - people could afford Spectrums, they couldn't afford Beebs (you bourgeoisie splitter, you...). Quality of engineering clearly sits with the Beeb, but then that's why the daft price difference too. Cheers, Ian |