It is very possible that Digital Research would be where Microsoft is now. Perhaps DR's GEM running on a 68K-based machine would have become the Big Thing. Xwindows on top of a BSD Unix could have won the Unix Wars. 86-DOS would likely still exist on Intel i86/88-based machines.
Not impossible, though i really think it unlikely for GEM to become the same massive standard when the CBM Amiga Workbench would be competing directly with it and being clearly better.
But, almost anything is plausible to some degree.
Intel itself would probably be a smaller company, and Motorola and Zilog bigger ones. I guess we'd still see the 80286, but this time running proper multi-tasking operating systems.
Zilog might have managed to take the place of the ARM cpus of today, they were better at "cheap&simple" than "best performance", so not impossible.
Motorola would very likely have become the primary CPU maker. They were simply put GOOD. Copies and variations of their 68000 series are still used and manufactured TODAY. Absolutely noone would, in comparison, bother making a direct 80286 derivative cpu today, just not worth the effort.
But there are dozens of 68000-series derivatives still made.
I am guessing the computing scene would be rather more diverse than it is here. 32-bitters might still be the high end of things.
Really hard to say. I wouldn't count on either though.
64-bit took a much longer time than needed mostly because Intel had such a dominant position and simply didn't want anything to compete with its Itanium failure, which spent an insane amount of time in development only to end up being mostly worthless in the end.
Epic fail to the degree that it is often called the Itanic(epic fail also because the name of the architechture was EPIC). It was supposed to be Intels next huge flagship and bring us 64-bit in 1998(though original launchdate was supposedly 1995), having started official development in 1989.
Intel still forced it into production and sales in 2001, but while it did fine in a few very niche markets(FP math focused), for general purpose computing it was a laughable piece of shit. And that's the big issue here, it started development to take over after Pentium, then when troubles came, it was moved to replace Pentium 2, then Pentium 3 then finally being launched long after the Pentium 4 and with absolutely zero chance of competing in the desktop market.
So, if Intel was not the only big boss on the market? That just had to focus their 64-bitness 100% on an epic stupid idea and doing their absolute best to keep anyone else from even considering 64-bits. Totally plausible that someone else could have released something in the 90s.
As for diverseness, maybe.
However, as Ellen mention, the thing that the PC brought was that of easier tinkering and upgrades. Something that was much less prominent on home computers, even if not absent. They were also generally closed systems, ie, connecting an Atari ST with an Amiga was a DIFFICULT thing, transferring files between them, similar.
So, there's a definite possibility that we could have seen a greater diversity in computers, but less so in how much "home fixer" options there would be. OTOH, the vast majority of users are NOT doing much of that anyway, so it might actually not make a huge difference.
The Internet would still be around in some form, and people would still be trying to sell you penny stocks, miracle drugs — and penis enlargemens.
Yup, guaranteed.
It's kinda funny though that there are thousands of people that today use the Amiga to use the Internet, using the 40-100Mhz turbo upgrade cpu addons, and performance is generally comparable to using a 3-4Ghz x86 system.
Really makes you appreciate how good the 68000 series CPUs were. Since at the time in the mid 80s, they were competing evenly on Mhz, yet being so superior in efficiency that when their development slowed down due to x86 taking over the mass market for nontechnical reasons they eventually end up being competitive at a clockrate 1/10th of the x86, or better.