Comment by NeedMoreTea

And the first PC design was deliberately spec-reduced in order not to impact on sales of the dedicated word processor, the IBM Displaywriter.

The 8086 was thought too powerful and would compete against existing IBM products, so the 8088 was chosen. Other changes to expansion and bus architecture were on the same basis.

The PC was not supposed to be the benchmark design on which the entire future of computing was built. If you were looking for one of those better off starting with an Amiga. :)