> It's interesting to imagine what might have been if Radio Shack (or Commodore, etc.) had managed to be as successful as Apple as a computer company.
I used to half-joke that Radio Shack always tended to be either a few years too late or a few years too early with their products. For example, the TRS-80 Model 16 was a 68000-based multiuser Xenix (Microsoft's version of Unix) workstation in 1982. The 6809-based TRS-80 Color Computer also had a multiuser, multitasking operating system, OS-9, available for it. Meanwhile, over in the original Z80-based line of the TRS-80 Model I/III/4, they had a "luggable" computer, the Model 4P, that would have blown the Osborne 1 away...if it had come out two years earlier. And, their first MS-DOS machine, the Tandy 2000, zigged when the market zagged: it was MS-DOS compatible but not PC compatible. It was also possibly the only computer from a major company that used the 80186 CPU.
There are still some oddities about the Model 4 I remember fondly. The operating system for it was inspired by OS/360, I think, rather than whatever inspired CP/M and MS-DOS, so it had a different flavor -- "/" as the extension separator, JCL files instead of BAT files, and a very different way of handling devices. But it also had device redirection, which was kind of incredible for a machine of its time and capability. Going back and looking at what the last operating system shipped for it, LS-DOS 6.3, could do circa 1983 is pretty interesting -- and also speculating on what might have happened if Radio Shack had stuck with that path. (I can't find the specifics anymore, but there were a couple "SVC calls" -- the API that programs used to talk to the OS -- that were clearly meant to support a multitasking version of the OS that never came to be.)
Anyway, other than Mr. Roach, I don't think they were a very forward-looking company in most respects. It's fun to speculate what might have happened -- one of mine was, what if Radio Shack had bought the Amiga and built a new OS for it around the 68K version of OS-9? They were better managed than Commodore, surely, right? Well, yeah, probably, but that's a pretty low bar to clear. They could probably have kept a Tandy Computers division going as a PC clone maker if they'd played their cards right, but they sold all that off by the mid-1990s, IIRC, and kept missing every boat from that point on.
Ironic footnote: Tandy Leather, the craft company that birthed the once-giant Tandy Corporation, is actually still around.
Last time I was in the town I grew up in, I noticed one of the Radio Shack locations had been converted in a Tandy Leather. I remember as a kid being told that location had been a Tandy Leather store before it switched to Radio Shack. Fun to see it go full circle.
I used to half-joke that Radio Shack always tended to be either a few years too late or a few years too early with their products. For example, the TRS-80 Model 16 was a 68000-based multiuser Xenix (Microsoft's version of Unix) workstation in 1982. The 6809-based TRS-80 Color Computer also had a multiuser, multitasking operating system, OS-9, available for it. Meanwhile, over in the original Z80-based line of the TRS-80 Model I/III/4, they had a "luggable" computer, the Model 4P, that would have blown the Osborne 1 away...if it had come out two years earlier. And, their first MS-DOS machine, the Tandy 2000, zigged when the market zagged: it was MS-DOS compatible but not PC compatible. It was also possibly the only computer from a major company that used the 80186 CPU.
There are still some oddities about the Model 4 I remember fondly. The operating system for it was inspired by OS/360, I think, rather than whatever inspired CP/M and MS-DOS, so it had a different flavor -- "/" as the extension separator, JCL files instead of BAT files, and a very different way of handling devices. But it also had device redirection, which was kind of incredible for a machine of its time and capability. Going back and looking at what the last operating system shipped for it, LS-DOS 6.3, could do circa 1983 is pretty interesting -- and also speculating on what might have happened if Radio Shack had stuck with that path. (I can't find the specifics anymore, but there were a couple "SVC calls" -- the API that programs used to talk to the OS -- that were clearly meant to support a multitasking version of the OS that never came to be.)
Anyway, other than Mr. Roach, I don't think they were a very forward-looking company in most respects. It's fun to speculate what might have happened -- one of mine was, what if Radio Shack had bought the Amiga and built a new OS for it around the 68K version of OS-9? They were better managed than Commodore, surely, right? Well, yeah, probably, but that's a pretty low bar to clear. They could probably have kept a Tandy Computers division going as a PC clone maker if they'd played their cards right, but they sold all that off by the mid-1990s, IIRC, and kept missing every boat from that point on.
Ironic footnote: Tandy Leather, the craft company that birthed the once-giant Tandy Corporation, is actually still around.