Re: In an alternative reality...
I guess Apple got the chance to have a second go at building the machine they intended to build (Mac vs Lisa) so it's a shame Sir Clive Sinclair didn't manage to *properly* fix the issues with the QL and build a successor. In particular, if ICL had managed to re-engineer the micro-drives to make them somewhat reliable, I am left wondering *WHY* Sinclair didn't do that themselves or at least licence back the fixes? I *can* see the logic of going with cheaper microdrives over floppy-drives since (going on other comments) that reduced costs considerably. Although the target business customers were likely slightly less price sensitive than regular consumers, so the QL probably could've been another £100 more (in 1984 money) without adversely affecting sales. I think Sinclair just needed another C-level person to sanity check products before they finalised stuff.