The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics

There's a few cases in the history of computers where it feels like the world just "chose wrong". One example is the Amiga; the Amiga really was better than anything Apple or Microsoft/IBM was doing at the time, but for market-force reasons that depress me, Commodore isn't the "Apple" of today.

Similarly, it feels like Silicon Graphics is a case where they really should have become more standard. Now, unlike Amiga, they were too expensive to catch on with regular consumers, but I feel like they should have become and stayed the "standard" for workstation computers.

Irix was a really cool OS, and 4Dwm was pretty nice to use and play with. It makes me sad that they beaten by Apple.

SGI dug their own grave. Not only were the workstations expensive, but they demanded outrageously priced support contracts. This behavior drives people nuts and will insure that the switch to a competitor the instant it becomes an option. Despite the high cost, the support contracts had a pretty lousy reputation as well, with long wait times for repairs from a handful of overworked techs. Even worse is the company turned away from its core competencies to focus on being an also-ran in the PC workstation market.

There was a window in the mid-90s where it would have been possible for SGI to develop a PC 3D accelerator for the consumer market using their GE technology, but nobody in the C-Suite had the stomach to make a new product that would undercut the enormous profit margins on their core product. It's the classic corporate trap. Missing out on the next big thing because you can't see past next quarter's numbers. Imagine basically an N64 on a PCI card for $150 in 1996. The launch versions could be bundled with a fully accelerated version of Quake. The market would have exploded.

> The market would have exploded

Absolutely, they could have been where Nvidia is now!