A while back, my grandfather still used a CRT TV. He got his seven channels on it via antenna, and was always mad that he got a horrible signal. It didn’t help that the edges of the broadcast were cropped too…
Anyway, one day his TV finally died. So off he went to the store to buy a replacement. And he was particularly unhappy there: “Where are all the curved screens? I don’t want one of these expensive new flatscreen TVs!” This was less than five years. Either way, once we were able to convince him that his much-desired CRT TV was not only considered obsolete, but entirely unavailable, he did indeed buy an “expensive new flatscreen TV”. And he hated it. For one thing, it was apparently much too big. This was the smallest TV at the store; I think that it was a 24-inch. And then it was a Roku TV. And that *really* was the problem for him. Navigating the menus and such drove him nuts, and, worse, the antenna reception was no better. But now, he has to rescan for channels every time the antenna is adjusted… so that drives him mad too. And then one day the new TV quit working properly. Of course, turns out it needed updates. But my grandparents don’t get Internet through a router; they just have a hotspot that is turned on only to use the computer. And so the whole idea of having to *update* a TV was simply wrong to my grandfather. So, to say the least, he has a continually antagonistic relationship with that TV.
And then we tried to introduce him to streaming… that did not go well. “I don’t want to *choose* which show to watch, I just want to watch whatever is being shown now!” He is very attached to standard broadcasting…

In Osborne’s case, they funded a company that made a “VisiCalc” clone called “LogiCalc.” (Adam Osborne claimed he did this after the VisiCorp demanded $1 million upfront to license “VisiCalc” for the Osborne-1.) Similarly, Morrow designs loaned $3 million to a group of recently laid-off MicroPro International programs to create what amounted to an improved version of “WordStar” called “NewWord.”

While Scott Cook may have been a lovable guy, his co-founder Tom Proulx was much more of a Steve Jobs-Bill Gates type. He pushed Cook into bidding for MECA with an eye towards eventually acquiring both it and Chipsoft to create his own personal finance and tax juggernaut. The MECA board ended up accepting the Chipsoft bid, but it was vetoed by the Antitrust Division as it didn’t want one company effectively controlling the PC tax software market.

This left Cook and Proulx to decide whether they should try to acquire either Chipsoft or MECA. Proulx actually preferred MECA because he believed their tax software was better. But Cook ultimately went with Chipsoft since it had the better management and infrastructure to support what was then considered a fairly complicated product in tax software.

Cook ended up giving up the CEO’s chair not long after in favor of someone favored by their venture capital backer. It was that CEO who then basically provoked Gates into making a bid for Intuit by purchasing the company that made the checks used by “Microsoft Money.”

And the fact that Beta tapes were only 1 hour long doomed the system forever; to be successful it would have to at least cover the 90 minutes of a typical film.