The Day After - Inventing the PC - page 148

on the technology side, and we've had problems reaching and
supporting the market.” 4 Williams further admitted that after
more than seven years from its incorporation, the company was
still looking for a market niche for its computers. “We intend
to find our own special niche within the APL segment of the
data processing market.” He defined that market niche as the
“Solution Market,” whose ideal customer was a businessperson
who wanted problems to be solved efficiently on his or her own
computer but wasn't particularly concerned about the software
and hardware technology employed to get it done. But in that
case, the main pillar of MCM marketing should not have been
APL but the superiority of MCM application software, competi-
tive pricing, and service support. Instead, resorting to the cor-
porate rhetoric worked out by his presidential predecessors at
MCM , Williams talked about APL 's simplicity and efficiency.
“ APL is a very concise language that lets you work quickly and
with fewer keystrokes required. It's probably from three to 20
times as efficient as various other programming languages. It's
because of such advantages that MCM has always had and con-
tinues to have such a strong dedication to the use of APL in our
products.” To the computer novice, APL , as characterized by
Williams, must have seemed like a programming tool of start-
ling simplicity and efficiency. That impression might not last
after a would-be APL er was exposed to the language's peculiar
character set and keyboard layout, or realized that the world of
APL was full of incompatible dialects offered by many vendors.
An experienced computer user might have pointed out deficien-
cies in APL 's traditionally oversimplified concept of the work-
space, or claimed that Williams' notion of program efficiency
was misleading and that some longer programs might perform
much better than short ones. But to Williams, “Drawbacks of
APL , such as … somewhat slower program-running time, are
not seen as being a problem for the types of end-user require-
ments MCM aims to satisfy.” It was clear that under Williams'