Sir Clive & The QL Question

Exclusive Interview by Cyndy Miles

Sinclair says...

• We are a wealthy company... we are not in it to seize people's money
• We will provide unbeatable quality control and back-up service
• There are things to criticise but it has to be seen in perspective
• We are better at delivery dates than Acorn, IBM and Commodore

Sir Clive Sinclair has broken his silence to speak out against his QL critics.

Claiming that his company was better than any other in meeting its promises, he attacked complaints about QL delivery delays as unfair and damaging. As the first machines with the final, debugged software, go out to customers, he contacted PCN in a bid to set the record straight.

And he made a pledge to his customers. "We are not going to let you people down. We will make sure of that."

In response to a list of criticisms in PCN Issue 62, the man who launched Britain's micro industry said: "Criticism is inevitable I suppose; it is just that sometimes it is a bit less fair than others."

Why, he wondered, should Sinclair take all the stick when Acorn's Electron took a vast amount of time between announcement and production, but raised barely a grumble? The IBM PC was delivered three months after it was launched and Commodore still hasn't produced the machines it announced last June. "But we get all the flack," he complained.

Unfair or not, he was not trying to shed the blame for failing to meet the promises that set the UK market buzzing back in mid-January.

"There has been a delay. We are now shipping and I think it has been unfair - or unbalanced - in that everyone is suggesting that this is some colossal catastrophe. We are not proud of it and we don't like being in this position, but we are no worse and indeed are better than our competitors in the respect, despite the fact we are launching an enormously more radical machine."

But however innovative the machine, public response to the time lag has been enormous and damning. It was three months after the launch that the first machines were delivered. These few thousand temporary versions had part of the Operating System and SuperBasic programming language attached to the back of the machine in a cartridge, waiting for the software to be finalised and fitted on to ROMs. Last week Sir Clive told PCN that the software is finalised and finished versions would now be going out using EPROMS until the ROMs arrive in six weeks or so. So it could be mid-July before final ROM versions are shipped - more than three months after the promised date.

So how did Britain's No. 1 micro guru get it wrong?

Acknowledging fault, Sir Clive explains: "A launch date has to be set quite a while ahead, and obviously you think you are going to get everything ready on time but you can't always. You can't afford to veer too much to the side of caution because otherwise you have got no orders to ship against."

"But when we launched it, we gave delivery dates to customers, not too far away from what we actually achieved. These are very complicated machines and the QL being such an enormous change from what was available previously in terms of the Operating System, version of Basic, new version of Microdrives, that it would have been a miracle if there hadn't been hiccups."

Sadly, there was no help from saintly hands, and the problems mounted as the queues lengthened until temporary versions went out. "We have shipped them out in quite large numbers with intermediate software because we thought it better to do that than to wait until we got the final software, but from now on it will be the final software though still with the plug-in unit at the back."

No-one is pretending these unfinished machines are entirely satisfactory.

"The whole point about the software was that it wasn't final, and it wasn't final in the sense that it was crashable," said Sir Clive, while disagreeing with PCN that it was "ludicrously easy to crash".

"No new computer with new software is ever totally free of bugs. All you can hope is to be free of significant bugs. In a sense, by shipping the machines out to customers early, we are getting them to find those bugs for us, but we are not making any pretence that we are doing otherwise. We are telling them that by asking them to let us know if they find any bugs - we are not taking about major bugs here, but the detail."

"It doesn't crash now that the bugs have been found. We are not pleased it took us longer than we expected but even so it has been done in something close to record time."

That time is 14 months from conception until the software was debugged.

Orders flooded in from day one and despite there being no advertisements since March, have now topped 14,000. Of these about 4,000 paid the £400 by cheque. This money was put into a trust fund which pays Sinclair interest, prompting a second wave of criticism. Again, Sir Clive attacks this as unfair.

"We wrote to everybody who sent in an order when they sent it and told them when they were going to get the machine. If this wasn't satisfactory we said we would refund their money at any time. Some people asked for their money back, but very, very few."

"What else are we going to do with the money? We have got to put it somewhere. We do get interest on it... what else should we do? We are giving everybody a gift which more than compensates."

"We are not compelling anyone to tie the money up."

The gift is an RS232C serial printer cable worth about £15 which could be more valuable than mere monetary value would suggest, since the massive demand from Sinclair Research could leave shops in short supply for some months.

But the trust fund dilemma prompted wider criticisms than those related to individual consumers and Sir Clive took this opportunity to refute the suggestion that advance orders helped finance the machine's development.

"We can't afford to build thousands and thousands of machines and then launch six months later... on the other hand we are a wealthy company and we don't need to take the customers' money in advance. We are not in it to try and seize people's money."

Speaking from his Knightsbridge office, Sir Clive gave the impression he was not only concerned on behalf of his company by attacks in the British press, but also hurt personally by the tone of them. He is immensely proud of the QL - so much that he responds with vehemence to criticism of its design. Most notable was his anger at PCN, that the keyboard has classy keys but 'the same old membrane underneath'.

"The mechanism inside the keyboard is an immense investment in tooling and is a very precise system. We tested it on a lot of people without them knowing what was inside it, and it was very well accepted."

"We are very proud of the keyboard. There are all sorts of things to criticise at the moment; we don't deny that, but the thing has got to be seen in perspective."

Which begs the question, how should it be seen? It's no secret he's battling for a stronghold in schools, but the amateur enthusiast and professional user are in his sights too.

QL Heads For a Battle With the BBC

The chips are down. Sinclair is challenging Acron in a bid to take over the schools market.

"The time comes for something to be replaced and the BBC machine was an excellent machine in its time. It was designed some years ago and clearly we are able to offer an enormously more powerful machine, so it seems right for a change."

But how is he going to uproot the BBC? No problem, he says. It's just a case of working from the top down.

"I don't think it is any more of a problem than replacing one textbook with another. I think the QL will be used pretty swiftly and will become a standard in universities. They need the 68000 ... they need a much more powerful machine."

"It's a small step from that to see how the QL will grow. Universities will need the hard disk already promised and a series of languages among which Unix is certain to figure. And once more Universities have amassed QLs, schools will follow."

"They are not going to throw out the BBC machine overnight... but as they replace them, or buy new machines, they will go for the QL, partly because it will be the university standard and more so because it is so much better value."

MSX Spells Danger

MSX is bad for you; it will restrict development and hamper the micro industry.

Worse than that, says Sir Clive, it is definitely not what you want. And he blames retailers for promoting this Japanese micro standard, based on the Z80 and Microsoft Basic.

"MSX machines are freezing technology. Standardisation is not in the consumer's interest."

"I am very concerned at the fairly stupid attitude from some British retailers about MSX. They say it's marvellous because there is standardisation, but that's not so marvellous when what they are standardising on is so badly out of date."

"MSX might succeed despite being inadequate because retailers choose to stock it. But they won't be giving the public the best product for their money."

QL Takes On The World

Bouncing back from last year's failure to sell the Spectrum under the timex tag in the US, he is confident the QL will make its mark there - and everywhere.

"We are very much concerned to be a worldwide supplier. We are going back into the US with the QL and we are selling in all European markets."

With a presence in some 50 countries, Sinclair claims to be a major exporter, untouchable even by Japanese contenders with a record 40 per cent of his turnover in foreign markets. But America remains the plum.

"I think we are the only people who stand a hope in hell of getting into the American market. We are the only people outside America who have a lead over American technology."

Mention Apple's Macintosh to Sir Clive and he has a very keen response, claiming it is similar to the QL, but with vastly different technology. "Open up a QL and open up a Macintosh and they are just miles and miles apart... in the QL it's all in a few custom chips, whereas the Mac is vast tons of standard chips."

Which is why he sees the QL as a world leader. With what he claims will be unbeatable quality control and customer back-up, he is confident he will not let people down, while keeping Britain ahead.