It's funny because when I read something like this (and your pretty harsh replies) I feel attacked! I mean, there are a lot of reasons you might say this including but not limited to: you weren't alive (or were too young) in the 70s/80s, you were in a country that had a different culture, you grew up in your own bubble.
And maybe, just maybe, my memory is bad. But I really feel almost gaslit. Like where someone is telling me my lived experience wasn't my lived experience. I remember IBM as one of the most recognizable brands of the time. I recall in social studies class a teacher talking about how IBM sold calculating devices to Nazi Germany during the war. I remember another class where we discussed IBMs infamous "THINK" posters, which we discussed in relation to propaganda and subliminal messaging. I remember that THINK poster showing up as a gag in the early Simpsons TV show. When Apple made the famous super bowl commercial where the athlete throws a sledge-hammer at the George Orwell-esque Big Brother screen, every news outlet was going on-and-on about how it was a direct attack on IBM and the stodgy perception that PCs were only for business. And of course the whole Deep Blue chess match. Heck, even the Jeopardy Watson thing had IBM branding all over it. In all of those cases IBM had a cultural currency that anchored the discussion.
I would honestly be completely and genuinely surprised to find any people in my age group born and raised in North America wouldn't immediately recognize the IBM brand.
When I think of niche tech brands from that time I believe Oracle and Cisco fit that "you only know if you know" kind of niche. But IBM? It actually feels so completely unbelievable to me that it can't be true. But hey, maybe you're right and I'm wrong?