In November 1983, Tandy entered the world of PC compatibles with one of the most powerful MS-DOS computers to date, the 8 MHz 80186-based Tandy 2000. This was long before IBM released the 6 MHz IBM Personal Computer/AT in August 1994.
Category Archives: Tech History
Texas Instruments (TI) had been a pioneer in transistor, integrated circuit, and semiconductor design, and it was a major player in the calculator market. However, it took its time entering the home and business computer markets and fared poorly in both areas.
In 1977, Radio Shack became one of the first companies to sell personal computers, but it didn’t have a model with color graphics until 1980. This is the story of the Radio Shack Color Computer.
The Atari 2600 was once the king of gaming consoles, but Atari was a late entrant to the personal computing field.
In 1977, there were three home computers: The Apple II, the Commodore PET, and the TRS-80, which was sold at 3,500 Radio Shack stores across the United States. Apple and Commodore used the MOS Tech 6502 CPU in their computers, but Radio Shack chose the Zilog Z-80.
Best known for the Commodore 64, the best selling single model in the history of computing, Commodore International was one of the first companies to enter the personal computing market and the first with a million-selling computer. Its first model was the Commodore PET.
In the beginning, personal computers used cassette tape drives. Then came floppy drives, followed by hard drives. And then came removable media drives such as SyQuest, Bernoulli, and – perhaps best know of all – Zip.
Although it was invented by Doug Engelbart in 1963, the computer mouse wasn’t an instant success. That had to wait for the 1980s and the introduction of computers with graphical user interfaces (GUIs).
With the Motorola 680×0 architecture running out of steam and Motorola’s 88000 making haste slowly, Apple had to look a bit further afield for its next processor architecture. Here’s how IBM’s RISC project became the heart of the Mac.
Alex Schure founded the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in 1955 to take advantage of the wave of students studying under the GI Bill. NYIT was initially a correspondence school awarding technical certificates. It distinguished itself from the other technical schools by sending graduates a mess of electronics parts supposedly taken from Soviet warehouses […]
The inventor of the compact disc (CD), the most popular medium in the world for playing back and storing music, is often disputed, as one individual did not invent every part of the compact disc.
Adobe Photoshop™ was, for a time, the killer app for the Macintosh. During the mid-90s, publishing and graphic design had supplanted consumers as the most important market to target, at least in the eyes of former Apple CEOs Gil Amelio and Michael Spindler.
Steve Jobs’ career at Apple was unique. His unconventional leadership helped create Apple’s two most important products of the 70s and 80s: the Apple II and the Macintosh. Unfortunately for Jobs, the CEO he had recruited, John Sculley, was not happy with the risks Jobs was willing to take. After a short power struggle that […]
Personal computer history doesn’t begin with IBM or Microsoft, although Microsoft was an early participant in the fledgling PC industry.
Before 1995, search engines relied on databases of textual keywords to find relevant results. Whenever a user entered a search term, search engines such as AltaVista and Lycos would compare the search term to their databases of terms. The pages that had text most similar to the search term were considered to be more relevant […]
Pixar, a company that revolutionized the feature film industry, had an obscure origin. A group of researchers from the most elite research institutions in the US eventually gathered at a former diploma mill and later defected to Lucasfilm. Their division was purchased by Steve Jobs and became Pixar, which created Toy Story and is now […]
The world took a big step towards the iPod generation when Sony introduced the Walkman in 1979. The device was not particularly advanced – portable tape recorders had existed for decades – but it was an advance in marketing. The Walkman was not promoted to professional journalists, like most portable tape recorders were at the […]
In the US, the Apple II was considered the gold standard in the education market. The machine was more expensive than its contemporaries, such as the Commodore 64 and TI-99, but it had a very large software library and was heavily discounted to educators. Its position in the market was augmented by Apple’s Kids Can’t […]
VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet, was one of the key products that helped bring the microcomputer from the hobbyist’s desk into the office. Before the release of this groundbreaking software, microcomputers were thought of as toys; VisiCalc changed that.
Microsoft was deeply involved in the development of the Macintosh. Microsoft had been the first outside developer to get a Macintosh prototype. The prototype was promptly nicknamed SAND (Steve’s Amazing New Device) by Bill Gates and Charles Simonyi. Microsoft developed productivity software that the Macintosh desperately needed to make the Macintosh a contender in corporate […]
August 12, 1981 marks the birth of the IBM PC, the computer that single-handedly turned personal computing to the business market. IBM’s success forced Apple and others to change their focus, and most personal computer companies from the pre-IBM era have become historical footnotes. By 2006, even Apple Computer had followed IBM’s lead and adopted […]
Apple’s Lisa was first envisioned as a brand new business computer to succeed the very popular Apple II, and it was to be designed by Steve Wozniak. The project was quickly turned over to Ken Rothmuller, a former HP director, as Wozniak drifted away from Apple.