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40 Years Ago: How Sinclair's QL Computer Outshined Apple's Macintosh

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Register: Two weeks before Apple launched the Macintosh, Sir Clive Sinclair launched his unprecedentedly powerful yet affordable Motorola-powered SOHO computer — starting a line of hardware and software that, remarkably, is still going. The Q...

The QL also inspired a dozen software-compatible successors, at least one of which is still manufactured today ... and not one but two versions of its unique operating system are still around as open source. Today it's clear that Sinclair backed the wrong horse, but four decades ago, its mistake was understandable. When the QL turned 30, The Reg published a detailed history, but a decade on, we thought it would be more interesting to look at the legacy of this pioneering machine — the many models of QL-compatible machines that appeared after Sinclair Research moved on to other things, and the descendants of its remarkable OS and their continued existence in the 21st century.

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