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.

The reason SGI failed, and eventually Sun too, isn't because the world "chose wrong", but because their performance simply did not keep up with x86.

When these RISC-based workstations were initially released their performance, especially at graphics, was well beyond what a PC could do, and justified their high prices. A "workstation" was in a class by itself, and helped establish the RISC mystique.

However, eventually Intel caught up with the performance, at a lower price, and that was pretty much the end. Sun lived on for a while based on their OS and software ecosystem, but eventually that was not enough especially with the advent of Linux, GCC, etc, as a free alternative.