The Early Days of Computer Retailing

Some of you may remember seeing one of the first personal computers at a Radio Shack store in the latter part of 1977. Although there were three competing “home computer” systems on the market, only the TRS-80 was widely available – it was on display at 3,500 Radio Shack stores throughout the United States!

The Amiga Story: Conceived at Atari, Born at Commodore

The Commodore Amiga began its life at Atari. Jay Miner, an engineer at the enormous video game company and the creator of the Atari 800 personal computer, wanted to create a console centered around a 16-bit processor and a floppy drive, which would make development for the new console very easy and inexpensive.

I Love a Good Deal

I love a good burger, a good pizza, a good beer, a good computer, a good TV show, and writing. One thing I find almost irresistible is a good bargain – which raises the question, What is a good bargain?

Benefits of a Beer or Two

October 2016 – Yes, in moderation, beer is good for you. It can help you sleep better, increase bone density, help prevent kidney stones, and help you avoid diabetes and dementia, among other health benefits.

Apple’s Flaming PowerBook Fiasco

If you’ve been following the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 nightmare, you know it’s given Samsung a serious black eye. Kudos to Samsung for doing the right thing and recalling the entire production just weeks after its introduction.

Apple vs. Samsung

Apple and Samsung have had an interesting relationship over the years. On the one hand, Apple buys a lot of components from Samsung Electronics. On the other, Samsung is a leading competitor in the mobile market. Some might call them frenemies, others see it as a symbiotic relationship.

CPUs: Motorola 6800 and 6809

The personal computing revolution started in 1974 with the 2 MHz Intel 8080, Intel’s first 8-bit CPU capable of addressing 64 KB of memory. (The earlier 8008 from 1972 could only address 16 KB.) But there was a parallel path, a new CPU family that Motorola launched in 1974.

Word Processing and Personal Computers

Believe it or not, word processing predated the personal computer revolution by over a decade. In 1964, IBM combined its Selectric typewriter (1961) with a magnetic tape drive in the IBM MT/ST, making it possible for the first time to edit text without having to retype everything.

The Serker Files

The following collection of articles is adapted from postings by Scott L. Barber, an all around Mac geek, on our Quadlist email list circa 1998. Although a few of these are specific to 68040-based Macs, most have much wider application (or, at times, much narrower), and in some cases these look at technologies long since […]

macOS Sierra on Low End Macs

With macOS Sierra, Apple has once again raised the bar on which Macs can install and run the newest version of the Mac OS. But as sometimes has happened in the past, there are workarounds that make it possible to install Sierra on some unsupported Macs.

macOS Sierra

For the first time since Apple released OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in July 2012, Apple has dropped support for a number of older Macs that had supported OS X 10.8 through 10.11 El Capitan. No MacBook and iMac models prior to Late 2009 and no MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and Mac Pro […]

9-11: The Day the World Stopped

Until 2001, September 11 was just another day on the calendar. The unexpected terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center shocked us and had us glued to the news throughout the day. Except for the heroes and newscasters, almost all of us stopped what we were doing, watching in shock and horror and […]

The Macintosh Clone Era

There are three different business models in the PC, smartphone, and tablet industries. The most widely used model is for one company to make the operating system and license it to a host of hardware manufacturers. This has given us the Windows market where no matter how badly PC makers do, Microsoft remains profitable.