The journey to make PC more user-friendly began at the Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC), where under funding by Xerox, engineers had developed the precursor to the modern, user-friendly PC, which is the Graphic User Interface (GUI). Unfortunately Xerox did not appreciate the benefits of the GUI, and Steve Jobs soon snatched the opportunity by copying the idea and further developing it into the Apple PC. The IBM PC was hurting Apple’s sales, and this was due to the software in the IBM PC. Steve Jobs then recruited Microsoft to write the applications for the new Apple PC. Initially, Apple tried to produce LISA, a PC utilizing GUI, but there was a problem. LISA didn’t work properly, and it had an extremely high price tag, which in the end turned the LISA into a flop. Then came the Macintosh, Apple’s second effort to introduce the user-friendly PC, and it proved to be a hit.
Although the Macintosh, or “Mac” was “insanely great” and despite the hype due to intense advertising, the sales of the Mac were disastrous. The applications in the Mac was still scarce, having only the “Mac Paint” and “Mac Write”, as compared to the IBM PC, which on the other hand, contained applications that people could really use, such as the spreadsheet etc. Another problem is the dot-matrix printer. GUI just couldn’t “express” its fullest potential due to limitation in printing. Then, developments were done on the printer by Adobe which introduced laser-printing, bringing salvation to the Mac, creating a whole new business― word processing.
Nevertheless, Mac sales were still flat, and Steve Jobs left Apple after a sharp contention arose between him and John Scully. The years after Steve Jobs were the most profitable for Apple. Sales rose to millions a year. In the background, Microsoft was plotting to unleash its own version of the GUI, as it saw the Mac as a competitor to the MS-DOS. Out came Windows…
Apple sued Microsoft as it felt that it was copying the Mac, but it lost. Then came Windows 95, which sealed the fate of Apple, pushing it into a niche in the PC industry. Although Microsoft was a success, Bill Gates wasn’t resting on his laurels. He invested in the animation company, Dreamworks and many other ventures. But competitors were starting to rear their heads, one of them being Larry Ellison, who believed the PC will be replaced by an “information device”.
The future is the internet. Everyone knows it. And Bill Gates, Larry Ellison agrees on that.
“Triumph of the Nerds: Riding the Bear” is deal with the initial introduction of the Personal Computer (PC), and the rise of Microsoft as a major company the produces the world’s most widely use Operating System (OS).
IBM dominated the PC market in short term, but soon it returned to become a mainframe producing company. Microsoft on the other hand, while “riding the bear”, and rose to the top in the end.
IBM fought back by creating the OS2, which was planned to overcome the clone issue. Microsoft’s business is being threaten, and they responded by creating Windows. A disagreement arose which soon caused the partnership between IBM and Microsoft to disintegrate.
IBM was losing ground in the now rapidly expanding PC market. But Microsoft was still doing great since most of the rival company’s of IBM bought their OS from them.
When Apple marketed one of the world’s first PCs, IBM also intended to enter the newly expanding PC market.On the other hand, IBM also planned to used “Open Architecture” to come up with a PC within a year.The good news is, IBM have almost everything, the keyboard, monitor etc, but they lack 1 thing, the OS and the computer language. Then two candidates came to mind, Bill Gates’ Microsoft and Gary Kildall’s Inter-galactic Digital Research.At last, IBM turned away from Gary Kildall and instead choose Microsoft. It didn’t matter that Microsoft didn’t have an OS, but with only $50000, Microsoft bought an OS from an obscure small company and the rest was history. Microsoft was on the way to success…
“Triumph of the Nerds: Impressing their Friends”, it is about the emergence of the Personal Computer (PC), stimulating the “PC Revolution”.
Almost heaven, West Virginia,
day by day..
what a small relief~~ finally can take a break after chemistry exam!!
做女人。。。一定要
经得起考验，
受得了欺骗，
听得了谎言，
忍得了敷衍，
忘得了承诺，
放得下一切，
最后要用笑来掩饰掉下的眼泪.
simple.. this is wat i like to be..
订阅
博文 [Atom]
