Calling Gateway a tech company shows how meaningless that term is in 2022. Nobody would have called it that in 1995. A computer company, sure. But not a tech company.
What's the difference? They didn't develop any technology. They built computers out of components others developed. Those components were available elsewhere. What Gateway sold was the service of putting them together for you and offering support.
What made them special was the service. I knew several people that worked there when they were the king of the hill. When I started grad school at Texas A&M, Gateway was the sole supplier of computers, in spite of the fact that they were a state school just down the road from Dell. According to my friends that worked there, Gateway decided service was too expensive, so they killed off the single reason they were popular. (The move may have been forced by the market, but it nonetheless eliminated the reason anyone had to buy Gateway.) I tried to buy a Gateway in 2002 and there was no way to get it delivered, so I bought a Compaq at Best Buy.
Their service to institutions might have been good at one point, but their service to consumers was horrendous. I bought a PC from them at around their height and about 1 month later the hard disk died. It took a few customer service calls (each requiring a wait of 45 minutes to an hour to talk to someone) before they agreed the hard disk was bad. They send out an empty hard disk and I had to take the time to re-install all the software from a huge number of floppies. I also had to take time to package up the old drive, go to UPS and pay the postage to ship the broken drive back to them. (I remember they preemptively billed my credit card for the hard disk and later credited me. I guess they assumed their customers were scum bags like themselves.) I realized that when taking my time into account, I would have been much better off just paying for the hard drive myself and ignoring the warranty. Companies like they deservedly belong in the ash heap of history.
I remember trying to purchase a Gateway desktop PC in the late 90s or early 2000s since they offered a range of AMD processor options that other vendors did not. When the machine was delivered, it would keep trying to boot up and freeze. Their customer support was abysmal, and I was so disheartened by the experience that I returned it the same week and ordered a run of the mill Dell beige box that just worked. I never risked trying a Gateway again.
Certainly wasn't Apple but as a kid, until Dell started it's advertising blitz, Gateway definitely felt... authoritative?, functionally first party? in a way that none of the other DOS/Windows boxen did.
There weren’t that many large, direct-to-consumer clone makers. Gateway 2000 was basically a peer to Dell for > half a decade.
Dell made the jump to web-driven build-to-order, which put them in position to ride the Wintel wave into servers. Gateway doubled down on the increasingly commoditized consumer market.
They did have retail stores, which as a person younger than the average on here is something that differentiates Gateway from say Compaq or eMachines in my mind
My second computer was from Gateway 2000, this was before the whole retail store experiment, back when they had the awesome ads in Computer Shopper and the other mags (PC Magazine, etc). I think this was really their heyday. Awesome systems, cool accessories. Anyone remember the AnyKey keyboard? A (re)branded 124-key keyboard and you could program a macro of like 128 key strokes into any single key. It was awesome.
I think they were on the decline (at least mindshare-wise for techies) before the whole retail storefront thing, which seemed dumb to me from the get go - like a hail mary attempt to salvage the company at what must have been enormous expense and labor headaches.
Buy yeah, I'd hardly call them 'Apple of the Midwest'. They were a great clone builder/reseller in their day. Their computers were refreshingly free of proprietary crap as I recall. I'd call them more a "Dell of the Midwest".
I used the programmable AnyKey to write a macro that could grind a bunch of money in Wasteland by recruiting a new ranger, walking into town, selling their gun, and dismissing the ranger, in a loop (if I held the key down with a book).
I used that keyboard at work for a while. Programmed Ctrl+Alt+P to type my password + ENTER! The "easy button". Later I told the Unix guy, and he groaned. :-)
Gateway never really even manufactured computers = they assembled them from components built by real tech manufacturers. As clones went, they were high quality, and well-supported, but there was nothing else to differentiate them from any other clone. I reckon their demise was written into their business model from the outset.
There was a lot of consolidation in the space. Lots of mom-and-pop shops, IBM, HP, Compaq, Packard Bell, Dell, and many, many more (my first computer was an AST). They all did the same thing, and there wasn't space for that many players. The most telling bit was that IBM, the company that defined what all the others would clone, sold off that business to Lenovo.
I really hope the proof of the success of remote work and the reduction of the need to have people in giant corporate campuses in expensive corners of the world brings a revival of small towns.
Those small towns don't want y'all liberal types invading. So much brain drain, all that's left are angry unskilled locals wondering why their life sucks.
Clickbait title - Gateway never really…created products, just licensed and repackaged them. It was pretty ubiquitous for a few years, however it obviously can’t be compared to Apple.
[+] [-] greenthrow|3 years ago|reply
What's the difference? They didn't develop any technology. They built computers out of components others developed. Those components were available elsewhere. What Gateway sold was the service of putting them together for you and offering support.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sokoloff|3 years ago|reply
I’m not convinced that a maker of PC clones is a good analog to Apple though.
[+] [-] bachmeier|3 years ago|reply
An interesting side note. North Dakota's current governor also started a billion-dollar tech company, in Fargo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Burgum
[+] [-] onething|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supramouse|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] korginator|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digisign|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehrmann|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alar44|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Avshalom|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twoodfin|3 years ago|reply
Dell made the jump to web-driven build-to-order, which put them in position to ride the Wintel wave into servers. Gateway doubled down on the increasingly commoditized consumer market.
[+] [-] supramouse|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] longtimelistnr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aksss|3 years ago|reply
I think they were on the decline (at least mindshare-wise for techies) before the whole retail storefront thing, which seemed dumb to me from the get go - like a hail mary attempt to salvage the company at what must have been enormous expense and labor headaches.
Buy yeah, I'd hardly call them 'Apple of the Midwest'. They were a great clone builder/reseller in their day. Their computers were refreshingly free of proprietary crap as I recall. I'd call them more a "Dell of the Midwest".
[+] [-] jeffbee|3 years ago|reply
Great keyboard!
[+] [-] digisign|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walnutclosefarm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehrmann|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digisign|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boeingUH60|3 years ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/29/ghislaine-ma...
[+] [-] vel0city|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colechristensen|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alar44|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostgame|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickhalfasleep|3 years ago|reply