I live in a similar fantasy land, however I think Acorn had ample help from the UK government. After all, pretty much every secondary school in the UK purchased them. That and free national TV advertising from the BBC.
The problem was that platforms that were limited to a single nation were not viable, Acorn never really broke into the US market. I don't believe there was even much adoption in Europe. You can see the same story in Japan with MSX.
That said, I agree that RiscOS was far superior to many competitors. But as we still see, it is adoption and the ecosystem around the platform which is often the deciding factor in success than the superiority of the basic technology.
Still more than a little nostalgic though... and wish it was able to address international markets better. Anyone have some cash to buy the rights to RiscOS and open source it? I think it only take 30K GBP or so. :)
If just the cash were the problem I'd be happy to do it but I think RiscOS's time has past.
QnX now, that would be another matter but I suspect RIM will want more then 30 K for it. I already approached Quantum when they still owned it but there was absolutely no way to get them to even respond. Which is a pity because I think something like QnX in open source form would absolutely rock.
And hadn't the British government also already had a pretty serious go at building a national champion in computing with ICL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Computers_Limite... ? IIRC part of the problem was that when it came to building a global computer business on the foundation of a home-market advantage, US companies had by far the biggest and wealthiest home market.
The problem was that platforms that were limited to a single nation were not viable, Acorn never really broke into the US market. I don't believe there was even much adoption in Europe. You can see the same story in Japan with MSX.
That said, I agree that RiscOS was far superior to many competitors. But as we still see, it is adoption and the ecosystem around the platform which is often the deciding factor in success than the superiority of the basic technology.
Still more than a little nostalgic though... and wish it was able to address international markets better. Anyone have some cash to buy the rights to RiscOS and open source it? I think it only take 30K GBP or so. :)