The Apple Macintosh

While the IBM PC definitely took off, not only for consumers, but small and medium businesses, Apple computers still continued to be dominant in the market. In 1984, the Apple Macintosh was released. The Apple Macintosh while not an immediate success in sales as the company hoped for, did have one of the first GUI (graphical user interfaces) that made computing much more attractive and easy to use. In addition, the Apple Macintosh also had an 8 MHZ processor, 128K of RAM, a floppy disk drive and a monitor, it went into production from January of 1984 to October of 1985 and cost around $2,500. However, it lacked in memory and was difficult to use with its one single floppy disk drive.

Microsoft Windows- Software Sells Computers

With the personal computer market starting to build up steam in the early and mid 80′s many companies realized that a graphical user interface was the best way to operate and perform tasks on a computer easily. While several companies created operating systems for PC’s, none stuck, because there was no support. However, Microsoft had the backing of the computer makers specifically IBM which helped them legitimize their product and sell their OS Windows. It should be noted that Apple did not license out either its hardware or software to third parties reducing the growth of their computer market share. Windows was originally announced late in 1983, but didn’t come to market until two years later with Windows 1.0.

With the later editions of Windows, 2.0 and 3.0 Microsoft included desktop icons and many of the features that are now a staple of home computing today. During the late 80′s WISYWIG programs (what you see is what you get) were introduced including updates of word processing software and updated spreadsheet programs to make these computer programs for home and small businesses easier and more powerful to use.

The Computers of Today

A lot has changed since IBM introduced its first PC. Today, computers have infiltrated into practically every aspect of our lives. Today, computers are extremely powerful, extremely small and more affordable than ever. With the advent of the internet in the late 60′s and the growth of the world wide web decades later, the computer is used as a powerful tool to communicate and conduct commerce.

In fact, the computer has been a tremendous engine in world wide growth and has helped raise the quality of life for potentially billions of people. As the computer becomes more and more sophisticated and morphs with a wide variety of other aspects of our lives, where and how the computer will continue to evolve is still unimaginable.