Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple.
The seeds of Apple were planted in the early 1970s by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, two young guys with uncommon talent and vision. Wozniak, a brilliant engineer called Woz by his friends, worked days as a calculator technician at Hewlett-Packard (HP); he was refused an engineer’s job because he lacked a college degree. At night he designed and constructed a scaled down computer system that would fit the home hobbyist’s budget. When he completed it in 1975, he offered it to HP, but the company turned it down. The Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, where it caught the imagination of another college dropout, Steve Jobs. A freethinking visionary,
Jobs persuaded Wozniak to quit his job in 1976 to form a company born in Jobs’s garage. They marketed the machine as the Apple I. Steve Jobs' company Apple has created many of the devices that are used today, ranging from the Apple II Personal Computer, The Apple Lisa, The Apple Macintosh which was a huge success, the Apple Newton and the Ipod and now we have many touch screen devices such as the IPAD, IPAD mini etc. Apple was the first to sell a computer with GUI after the company got the Idea from PARC when Steve Jobs struck a deal with Xerox. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak announce the Apple I personal computer, for only $666.66! A price high but affordable for someone really wanting to buy his own computer.Apple Computer is formed with the introduction of the Apple I on April Fool's day 1976. Out of the garage and into the history books, Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak build the first single circuit board PC complete with video interface and 8K of RAM and a keyboard. The system incorporated some cost saving components including the MOS Technologies 6502 processor and dynamic RAM. Various potential investors were shown the prototype Apple I which was mounted on a piece of plywood with all components visible. A computer hobbyist group; the Homebrew Computer Club based in Palo Alto, California previewed one of the prototypes and its innovative features. A local computer dealer owner who agreed to sell the units required that they were assembled which was not the norm for customers buying computers at the time. Once displayed in his store, almost all the Apple I systems sold in the next ten months. 200 Apple I systems were built before the introduction of the Apple II. Jobs and Wozniak continued building systems out of their garage for two years before the move to the current Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California. IBM (International Business Machines Corp)IBM also known as "BIG BLUE" was very instrumental in the evolution of computing. They were the ones who sparked the revolution due to the fact they wanted a share of the computer market. Non-IBM personal computers were available as early as the mid-1970s, first as do-it-yourself kits and then as off-the-shelf products. They offered a few applications but none that justified widespread use.Drawing on its pioneering SCAMP (Special Computer, APL Machine Portable) prototype of 1973, IBM's General Systems Division announced the IBM 5100 Portable Computer in September 1975. Weighing approximately 50 pounds, the 5100 desktop computer was comparable to the IBM 1130 in storage capacity and performance but almost as small and easy to use as an IBM Selectric Typewriter. It was followed by similar small computers such as the IBM 5110 and 5120.
IBM's own Personal Computer (IBM 5150) was introduced in August 1981, only a year after corporate executives gave the go-ahead to Bill Lowe. Persons gravitated quickly to IBM'S Personal Computer due to their reputation and it was very efficient and many big businesses bought their products and used it for their benefits. The IBM 8086 brings up to date with modern computers. It had a CPU and a large monitor but worked on transistors and complex ALU. Those types of models were called desktops as one would use them on desks and use keyboards to operate them. XEROXXerox Corporation Ltd. is an American multinational document management corporation that produces and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunctional systems, photocopiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies.They had a vast impact in the creation of GUI, hypertext and networked computers through PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre). They were responsible for many of the prototypes of many of the developments that make up the Personal Computer Era. For Example:
- Laser printing (1971) - Ethernet (1973) -the graphical user interface/desktop (1973) -PC workstation – The Alto (1973) -Object Oriented Programming (OOP) – Smalltalk (1972) Paul Allen and Bill Gates of MicrosoftBill Gates and Paul Allen were great contributors to the evolution as well. They were Hobbyists who became entrepreneurs. Personal computers proliferated, with no standards and no preconceived notions of what these new machines could be or could do. It was an adventure shared by a virtual handful of enthusiasts. The MITS Altair inspired a new generation of technology enthusiasts, including Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who were among the first of these early hobbyists to realize that the key to the future of personal computing lay in the unlimited potential of software.
Paul Allen and Bill Gates were two of these early entrepreneurs that took the computer business seriously enough to grow a sustainable business.Gates and Allen create a microcomputer version of BASIC that allows the Altair 8800 to be programmed for games and other applications. Microsoft refines and enhances BASIC to sell to other customers including DTC, General Electric, NCR, and Citibank. The tradename "Microsoft" was registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico "to identify computer programs for use in automatic data processing systems; pre-programming processing systems; and data processing services including computer programming services." The application says that the name has been in continuous use since November 12, 1975. On December 1,1983, Microsoft announces that MSX-DOS, an 8-bit disk operating system for MSX microcomputers, will be available to 14 Japanese and one U.S. micro manufacturers next January. MSX-DOS is CP/M-80 2.2 compatible and runs all Microsoft's 8-bit software including the languages BASIC, COBOL-80, and FORTRAN-80, and Multiplan. GUI, or graphical user interface, enables users to connect with their computers in an interactive, intuitive way. Seeing early the limitations of character-based interfaces and recognizing that advances in hardware performance would make possible a shift in the computing paradigm to a graphical user interface, Microsoft began development of Windows in the early 1980's. The result? The most popular user interface in the history of computing, now running on more than 75 million machines worldwide. And still growing by millions of new users every month. A wide selection of mini-applications shipped as part of the original Windows package, including:
"Windows will instantly deliver you a more productive present. And a leap into the future." INTELIntel was a massive contributor to the Evolution of Computing through their development of the microprocessor which started the movement and enabled PCs development.
Intel purchased the rights from Nippon Calculating Machine Corporation and launched the Intel®4004 processor and its chipset with an advertisement in the November 15, 1971 issue of Electronic News ”Announcing A New Era In Integrated Electronics.” That’s when the Intel® 4004 became the first general-purpose programmable processor on the market—a "building block" that engineers could purchase and then customize with software to perform different functions in a wide variety of electronic devices. Intel created the 8080 chip but missed the boat on creating the first personal computer MITSThe MITS Altair was the first 8080 based kit microcomputer. It was first introduced in the January, 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine as a construction project. The reaction to the Altair was un-expected by either the magazine or by MITS who designed it. Although not the first available microcomputer , it was the start of the industry.
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