The ZX Spectrum is 30 today .. fans celebrate what was and mourn what should have been

Sinclair , Sir Clive that is before the knighthood in the 80s was to us Brits what Steve Jobs post iOS was/is to the US . It was Clive who gave us the ZX Spectrum , and sold it to us in a manner that would make Steve proud , and this in a time where the CEO keynote was 20 years off into the future... not counting a certain hungry and foolish barefooted Cupertino computer salesmen who of course was totally ahead of his time ... 


The cult of Sinclair got us to buy the ZX80 , 81 and the most impressive ZX Spectrum .. mostly without even stepping into a store or having to resort to a genius bar . In them days Clive was the only genius you needed to listen to .. 


Dominating the home computer industry did not sit well with Sinclair , and in the best of English Cricketing tradition , we soon saw our hero clutching defeat from the jaws of victory 


Now consider Sir Clive and Sinclair were ahead of the curve on many many things  , including an obsession with miniaturisation that impressed our Japanese cousins , the pursuit of electric vehicles (!) , and an avid obsessive fan base that still expects the coming of the next ZX computer even today , including yours truly. The unique nature of this fan base was that it was made up of people who did dabble with coding , these guys and girls did not need a genius bar  they were their own genii. Like Rasberry Pi but 30 years ago ,and with more rubber....


Just like Apple , Sinclair had an audience raring to go for the next update of the ZX series . 


Unlike Apple , Sinclair could never manage to do the one thing that made Steve Jobs , and that one thing was to rise phoenix like from the ashes of disaster .....


If Sinclair had done that , then today we would quite possibly be using our ZX pods to listen to music , making calls on our ZX phones and downloading apps on our ZX Pads , because Sinclair had the talent and the vision , but just not the most amazing of things   all  successful US companies like Apple are born with, the ability to take feedback , set backs , totally collapse and get up again ...


And this fellow ZX Spectrum fans is why we are celebrating what was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and simultaneously mourning what we all know could have been ...


Not sent from my iPad as a mark of respect....

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