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  • This is a tricky one as it's similar to Amiga OS and Be OS where it's obviously so forward thinking but as other comments state that doesn't automatically lead to uptake.

    Of a similar ilk, I always felt the MSX base deserved a higher usage rate in the rest of the world, PC engine as a console too. Neither really took off elsewhere.

    by ktallett
  • One interesting thing is it's encoding system. Unlike Unicode that unified Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters, TRON had a different code points for characters that have the same root but are written differently in the different languages.

    Unicode claim it's the same character and you need to use different fonts for different languages.

    So TRON made it much easier to mix Japanese and Chinese, for example have a citation in Chinese in a book otherwise in Japanese.

    It also had a lot more characters. Unicode dropped some of the older or rare characters, meaning some people can't write their last name with the correct character on a computer with Unicode. They have to use a similar but different character. With TRON, they could.

    That said, this might be an example of why TRON didn't succeed (rather than this bullshit about the US government). They remade everything, which wasn't great for interoperability and compatibility with other systems.

    by eloisant
  • Of course. Why would the US allow what's essentially their colony in all but name to control that much stack for a critical tech?
    by skeledrew
  • The TRON house demo from 1989 was genuinely ahead of its time. Hard to compete on technology when your competitor has the US trade office backing them.
    by max979
  • I think this really overplays the "US intervening" angle for clickbait. The US mentioned it in an official document. That is all.

    It was a weird interesting OS that failed to take off largely because of how engrained systems already were. Did I mention it was weird and its benefits non-obvious particularly to businesses.

    by donatj
  • Great to see these screenshots. Thanks for posting! Nintendo joy cons run a version of micro TRON. And the software IntelligentPad used a lot of TRON concepts. https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/05/17/intelligentpad-co...
    by msephton
  • I think it is like most software, especially in the OS space. The technology doesn't have to be the best, it just needs to get lucky enough to become a standard and build a moat with that.

    And by the mid 80's the moats were already very deep.

    Amiga couldn't over come the PC. IBM couldn't over come the moat of Windows with OS2. Intel couldn't overcome x86 with the i432 or Itanium. Luck and market forces from said luck played a huge part in determining who won.

    by ColdStream
  • TRON wasn’t just an OS but a whole integrated system, it was meant to be used with different parts working together. There was a whole TRON house tech demo built in Tokyo back in 1989 https://youtu.be/7jPKEyM44GU

    If you want to try here is the BTRON 4.5 media, should work in modern VMs https://archive.org/details/chokanji

    https://youtu.be/yYfoCe6q28A

    https://social.tchncs.de/@nina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt/111885034...

    by haunter

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