Somehow
the original Compaq Computers were more compatible with the IBMs they were
cloning than some IBMs. Big Blue never understood the personal computer market,
despite dominating it for years—and they really never got the portable
business. That opened the door for an upstart clone to slay the dragon. Jason
Cohen chronicles the rise, fall, and legacy of the Houston start-up that could
in Silicon Cowboys, which screens at
this year’s SXSW.
Ron
Canion, Jim Harris, and Bill Murto had been middle managers at Texas Instruments,
who found themselves at loose ends. Deciding to form a company, they kicked
around a few terrible ideas, like a Mexican restaurant, before settling on an
underserved niche of the IBM clone market. At the time, there was an allegedly
portable IBM clone selling considerably better than it deserved to. The Compaq
team came up with a sleeker design that included a revolutionary feature called
a “handle.”
What
really set the Compaq apart was its 100% compatibility with IBM software. That
was a feat of reverse engineering even IBM could not match with its own slapped
together portable. Yet, the corporate giant still refused to take the underdog
Houston-based competitor seriously, until it was too late.
On
one side of the coin, Cohen tells Compaq’s story (which inspired AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire), while on the
flipside he depicts the arrogance and inflexibility that ultimately made IBM
vulnerable to the disruptively scrappy upstart. Time and again, they made
face-palm worthy decisions and doubled-down because they were Big Blue. They
were practically the phone company. Perhaps this is most tellingly revealed by
the vintage television commercials that make Silicon such a blast-from-the-past time capsule. IBM featured a
Charlie Chaplin figure in their ads, because nothing expresses technological
innovation like a silent movie star. In contrast, Compaq enlisted the
unapologetic snark of John Cleese.
It
is also pretty mind-blowing to watch some of the public access looking computer
news broadcasts that were really the only media outlets reporting on the
formative years of the industry. Cohen’s interview subjects compelling argue breakthroughs
like the portability of iPods and the compatibility of the internet can be
traced back to Compaq. They were also the first to establish an indulgent
techie office culture. However, the doc could have also emphasized how longtime
chairman Ben Rosen’s relatively modest investment helped establish the
tradition of high-tech venture capitalism as we now know it.
