I found the Home Front article by Ralph Bancroft (issue 90) very interesting. He has a strong point about the need to make computers truly useful.
We have always insisted that the current generation of machines are excellent learning tools, as they are designed to be, and great for playing games, but that true functionality would depend on creative programming and possibly future generations of machine.
Why, though, does Ralph feel that the Japanese are going to grind us into the ground? MSX is only just appearing and it about where we were three years ago in technical terms. And there is certainly no MSX II next year because they would be working on it now. If anyone has got it wrong, it's the Japanese.
It is worth remembering that we, Sinclair Research, make more computers than *all* the Japanese manufacturers put together, despite the fact that they have been trying to flog MSX machines to their enormous home market for two years.
Meanwhile we in Britain have been taking the next step. Our QL is an example of this and the labs are not exactly idle, not that I am going to tell you what they are up to, of course.
Please don't imagine that we are complacent. We realise that we have to run very fact to stay ahead, but equally we are determined to do so and confident that we shall succeed.
15th December 1984
