Date   : Thu, 08 Jan 2015 13:22:58 -0000
From   : blip@... (John)
Subject: Compromises or lack of

<The serial ROM support on the keyboard was a bit of a waste of time - if it
had been offered in the basic models, rather than as part of a rarely-fitted
speech upgrade, then it would have been useful and probably much more widely
used.  As it was, "the ashtray" became a bit of a white elephant and was
dropped totally for the Master.>

I used my ashtray for a volume control! Always puzzled why they didn't put
that in.

I can't help wondering if there was a little bit of snobbery with Acorn -
the games market was clearly exploding so putting more colours in, volume
control (home fripperies mainly let's be honest) would have made a
good/reasonable commercial choice, previous experience notwithstanding.

When I saw the spec for the Master it just looked like a very expensive BBC
B with some extra tech thrown in for good luck. There didn't seem much
attempt to make it popularist or provide some kind of solid backwards
compatibility for the expanding games market. Look at the way the PC market
has exploded - its mainly on the back of games and cheap productivity tools
which is where Acorn could have been. 

I was quite disappointed.  


John