It’s fun to remember that #Psion, the company famous for the #Organiser and the #EPOC OS, that became #Symbian, started life making games for the good old #Sinclair #Spectrum, such as #ChequeredFlag. They got into serious software by getting a contract with Sinclair to write a suite of business apps for the #QL.

Overall if #Sinclair had recognised that business and fun can be covered by the same computer, and don't contradict, the #QL could have been more successful. By de-emphasising the fun, and intentionally positioning it as a bit boring, that limited #QL's appeal. Also, productivity shouldn't mean stiff and dull either. #Apple was smart in realising productivity could be fun and creative. Whereas QL's productivity was very PC-like, despite having display hardware that surpassed the Mac.

It's interesting that #Bandersnatch was a megagame, targeted for launch on the #Sinclair #ZXSpectrum and then shifted over to the #QL, where it could have made quite a splash (the QL had very few games). It was never released, although some possible screenshots have been recovered. Yes, this is the same Bandersnatch that the #BlackMirror episode was influenced by.

https://qlwiki.qlforum.co.uk/doku.php?id=qlwiki:bandersnatch

I remember seeing ads for the #QL in #Spectrum magazines. I was curious. The hardware looks gorgeous! It seemed mysterious, intriguing. But also it was grown up, dull, for boring people (=adults). Imagine if, instead, it had been presented to a kid as the next level of coding, possibilities, and with some proper eye-opening graphics (I remember how my jaw dropped when I saw an #Amiga). I’d have been all over it! I mean it wasn’t even that much more expensive than a Speccy.

So while the unfortunate #Sinclair #C5 #EV definitely contributed to the company’s downfall, they didn’t go all-in on the next level of computing. Some sources claim lack of backwards compatibility with the Speccy hurt the #QL, but that didn’t bother #Commodore and the #Amiga. The penny pinching hurt reliability, important for business, while dismissing entertainment hurt consumer appeal. Ironically for a machine that took some radical approaches, it wasn’t bold enough.

I’ve been reading up on the #Sinclair #QL recently. I think the problem with Sinclair was, after the success of the #ZXSpectrum the company didn’t know what it wanted. #CliveSinclair seemed averse to the entertainment side of computing and so the QL was billed as serious, businessy. But in doing so it also became boring. Compare that to the #Amiga or even #Macintosh, which could do business, but were also fun. The QL wasn’t enough of an all round Quantum Leap.

Did you know that the #Sinclair #QL was the first mass market microcomputer with preemptive multitasking and a windowing system. Linus #Torvalds started coding on one. I guess he was a rich kid, I only had a Sinclair #Spectrum.

https://web.archive.org/web/20101220003729/http://www.sinclairzx.com/about-us.html#15

Playing around with the phantastic #QemuLator from Daniele Tertina. It's worth it's shareware fee. After our exhibition #Sinclair #QL runs with 640k memory it's time to make some useful floppies for it. I have no experience with SMSQ/E, but it's time to get it. Are there beginner friedly tutorials about it?
#RetroComputing #68k

Good morning my dears.
I hope I can delight your morning with a picture of our little #Sinclair collection. The picture was taken in 2019 at the #HNF (#HeinzNixdorfForum) exhibition in Paderborn at the #DoReCo retro event. The QL was used for bookkeeping in a tea shop in Berlin for many years and is originally labeled above the microdrives.
#RetroComputing #QL #Spectrum #ZX81 #MicroProfessor #ComputerMuseum

I should try and fix up the two Sinclair QLs I have in storage. I know they aren't far from serviceable, but they need membranes and new PSU circuitry (they were modded for PC PSUs).

#sinclair #QL

@grin @mkarliner No, 3½″ disks are literally flexible inside their plastic shell.

And considering #LinusTorvalds’ history, I’d more likely expect a #Sinclair #QL

My Sinclair QL

#Sinclair #QL #8Bits #TexasInstruments #lOldComputer

@EdS my first computer was a #QL. It was a great machine but you definitely needed to upgrade it. The microdrives in particular were kind of a joke and I'm glad my dad got an external 3.5" floppy drive so I never had to use them