[Poser]

"I paid $3,400 for that first system, and that was in 1987 dollars. We’re talking real money, folks. There was not much software for the Macintosh, but Mac-Draw and MacPaint made ordinary people into (drum roll, please!) MacArtists. The word processing program was known as—what else?—MacWrite, and it set the standard for a decade."

At that time, I was building my own PC clones for under $1,000 and running Wordstar or Word Perfect (WP 5.0 for DOS was the best ever). They worked great. I didn't even try Windows until version 3.0. The DOS machines did the work they were designed to do for a third the price of a Mac. I think that pretty much explains the failure of Mac to gain market share.

[DB]

Mac failed in market share because it was a closed proprietary system compared to the open IBM PC platform.

Everybody and their brother was creating new programs and hardware for the PC platform because they could with the open system. There was specialized hardware coming out for everything anyone could think of. That drove new innovation and the demand for higher performance. Instead of being 'it does what it does' machine the PC was expanded to all kinds of specialized niche applications in many different fields. That gave the basic platform broad appeal.