The Osborne Effect: Death By Pre-Announcement
Adam Osbourne
The “Osborne Effect” refers to the unintended consequences of announcing a future product ahead of its availability — and its impact upon the sales of the current product. Here are the eight worst Osbornes we’ve ever seen.
While everyone knows that the Osborne Effect was named for Adam Osborne and the demise of the Osborne 1 computer, was it really the first example of “doing an Osborne”?
North Star Computers
A number of computer historians have pointed out that the first example of “doing an Osborne” probably originated with North Star Computers, Inc back in 1978, five years before Osborne shuffled off its mortal coil.
North Star was an early CP/M personal computer vendor. In 1978, North Star Computers announced a new version of its floppy disk controller at the same price, but with double the capacity of the old controller. When sales of the old controller decreased, the company nearly went out of business.
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