If IBM made toasters...
They would want one big toaster where people bring bread to be submitted for overnight toasting. IBM would claim a worldwide market for five, maybe six toasters.

If Microsoft made toasters...
Every time you bought a loaf of bread, you would have to buy a toaster. You wouldn't have to take the toaster, but you'd still have to pay for it anyway. Toaster'95 would weigh 15000 pounds (hence requiring a reinforced steel countertop), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up 95% of the space in your kitchen, would claim to be the first toaster that let's you control how light or dark you want your toast to be, and would secretly interrogate your other appliances to find out who made them. Everyone would hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy them since most of the good bread only works with their toasters.

If Apple made toasters...
It would do everything the Microsoft toaster does, but 5 years earlier. The toast would make a little smiley face at you when it popped up, or else it would get stuck and there would be a little picture of a bomb burned onto it. If they break, these toasters would require a special set of MacToaster Tools to even open up. Worldwide market share would only be 5%, but all the bread in school lunches would be exclusively toasted on the MacToaster.

If The NeXT Corporation made toasters...
It would be a large, perfectly smooth and seamless black cube. Every morning there would be a piece of toast on top of it. Their service department would have an unlisted phone number, and the blueprints for the box would be highly classified government documents. The X-Files would have an episode about it.

If the NSA made toasters...
Your toaster would have a secret trap door that only the NSA could access in case they needed to get at your toast for reasons of national security.

Does DEC still make toasters?...
They made good toasters in the '70s, didn't they?

If Hewlett-Packard made toasters...
They would market the Reverse Polish Toaster, which takes in toast and gives you regular bread.

If Sony made toasters...
Their Sony Toastman, which would be barely larger than the single piece of bread it is meant to toast, can be conveniently attached to your belt.

If the Franklin Mint made toasters...
Every month, you would receive another lovely hand-crafted piece of your authentic Civil War pewter toaster.

If Cray made toasters...
They would cost $16 million but would be faster than any other single-slice toaster in the world, at least for a couple of years.

If Thinking Machines made toasters...
You would be able to toast 64,000 thousand pieces of bread at the same time.

If Timex made toasters...
They would be cheap and small quartz-crystal wrist toasters that take a licking and keep on toasting.

If Radio Shack made toasters...
The staff would sell you a toaster, but not know anything about it. You would be able to buy all the parts to build your own toaster.

If K-Tel sold toasters...
They would not be available in stores, and you would get a free set of Ginsu knives.

If Wang made toasters...
Marketing would never agree upon what customers really want or need in a toaster so millions of dollars would be spent in development and the toaster would be several years late. Just after release Wang would buy another company whose toaster ran on NT but would find that they got more orders for the original.

1999 Nick Boice