>"1983 had seen an explosion of home computer models of varying capabilities "
I know, I lived through it. And the summary completely left out the most important one- the Tandy CoCo 2 (which yes, I bought, as an upgrade from the CoCo 1):)
A few years later and the CoCo 3, running OS-9 (level 2) from Microware, which blew the doors off anything around at the time (Commodore couldn't come close to that functionality). Much of the power of Unix, but on a tiny home computer
Man, Tandy + Radio Shack completely blew it. Today they would have been the perfect showroom for displaying all the capabilities of today's modern tech (IOT cameras/doorbells/light bulbs/etc), with locations on almost every corner. But no, they mismanaged themselves into a phone case showroom, then into oblivion. Of course Sears is the same way, it's just taken a few more years, and a corporate raider 'helping' the company.
Anyone still have their Radio Shack battery of the month card? Or those free black and yellow 4-C-cell flashlights every holiday season that would split under of the pressure of the internal battery spring?
>"Man, Tandy + Radio Shack completely blew it. Today they would have been the perfect showroom "
Indeed they did. I even worked for Radio Shack for a few years. I loved that place.... up to the point they turned into a cell phone store, which destroyed them. As if we needed more places to buy cell phones. Suddenly all the space for the unique and important stuff and parts and gadgets shrank and shrank and you had to wait 15 minutes to pay for something because every possible "cell" sale consumed all a
Man, Tandy + Radio Shack completely blew it. Today they would have been the perfect showroom for displaying all the capabilities of today's modern tech (IOT cameras/doorbells/light bulbs/etc), with locations on almost every corner.
You've pretty much described Best Buy.
RadioShack's problem was that big box (and later, online) stores sucked all the the profit out of consumer electronics sales, and there wasn't enough profit in selling locally to makers/tinkerers to keep their stores afloat. Hence, they became a cell phone store, and faced cutthroat competition in that market, too.
There's really nothing RadioShack could've done differently to prevent falling victim to the retail apocalypse (except, perhaps, becoming a tattoo parlor).
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Tandy (Score:2)
>"1983 had seen an explosion of home computer models of varying capabilities "
I know, I lived through it. And the summary completely left out the most important one- the Tandy CoCo 2 (which yes, I bought, as an upgrade from the CoCo 1) :)
A few years later and the CoCo 3, running OS-9 (level 2) from Microware, which blew the doors off anything around at the time (Commodore couldn't come close to that functionality). Much of the power of Unix, but on a tiny home computer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
T
Re:Tandy (Score:2)
Anyone still have their Radio Shack battery of the month card? Or those free black and yellow 4-C-cell flashlights every holiday season that would split under of the pressure of the internal battery spring?
Re: (Score:2)
>"Man, Tandy + Radio Shack completely blew it. Today they would have been the perfect showroom "
Indeed they did. I even worked for Radio Shack for a few years. I loved that place.... up to the point they turned into a cell phone store, which destroyed them. As if we needed more places to buy cell phones. Suddenly all the space for the unique and important stuff and parts and gadgets shrank and shrank and you had to wait 15 minutes to pay for something because every possible "cell" sale consumed all a
Re: (Score:1)
Man, Tandy + Radio Shack completely blew it. Today they would have been the perfect showroom for displaying all the capabilities of today's modern tech (IOT cameras/doorbells/light bulbs/etc), with locations on almost every corner.
You've pretty much described Best Buy.
RadioShack's problem was that big box (and later, online) stores sucked all the the profit out of consumer electronics sales, and there wasn't enough profit in selling locally to makers/tinkerers to keep their stores afloat. Hence, they became a cell phone store, and faced cutthroat competition in that market, too.
There's really nothing RadioShack could've done differently to prevent falling victim to the retail apocalypse (except, perhaps, becoming a tattoo parlor).