Yes, perhaps it is. Eulogies and Obituaries are different things. I'm not here to eulogise him, for sure. He was a controversial figure in his own lifetime, a brilliant self promoter. Lord Alan Suger learned a lot of marketing tricks from him.
There's something quintessentially British about promoting tech wizards as heros for making remarkably average product, but making it mass market. Sinclair electronics and Amstrad unquestionably took computing to the masses, in all its buggy variety.
Sinclair's calculator made the V&A design gallery as an icon. It was pretty unusable, but stunningly beautiful. My dad refused to let me get one (he was a compsci professor) and I got a Texas instruments handheld instead.
It really irks me when someone is misrepresented when they drop dead. I’m personally fine with the parent poster’s comment because it’s exactly a fair representation of the guy’s products. They were mostly awful to some degree.
We've banned this account, not just for this egregious violation of the site rules, but because you've been doing it repeatedly for a long time and have ignored our requests to stop. Seriously not cool.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
