What made the PC, Mac, and Linux so great (or not).

[securitybreach]

Volumes have been written about the computer industry and its various successes and failures. The following is my personal recollection and ramblings of some of the turning points in personal computing history.

 

What made Personal Computers great

 

The story of the "Personal Computer" started before the IBM PC. The earliest personal computers included machines such as the Altair, TRS-80, Commodore PET, and the Apple II.

 

Prior to the personal computing revolution, you would perform your computing tasks on a huge mainframe or multi-user minicomputer. This computer neither belonged to you nor was under your control. Computing time often cost money, and your tasks were subject to the whims of those in control. Only big companies owned these systems and it was often considered infeasible for an individual to own or care for a "computer". As computing hardware got smaller, it became apparent people could indeed own a microcomputer of one form or another.

 

Once a person no longer had to pay per CPU cycle, they could engage in a wider variety of computing tasks. Such as experimenting with figures in a spreadsheet, word processing, playing games, or communicating with other microcomputers. Some of these tasks made personal computing extremely desirable.

 

The term "personal computer" could be applied to any single-user microcomputer, but in practice a truly "personal" computer had certain characteristics..

 

A personal computer is:

 

User expandable

User programmable

Multipurpose

Not completely tied to one vendor

Not all microcomputers, such as game consoles or embedded devices, met these criteria.

S-100 bus systems like the Altair were all about expandability and configurability. In fact, a base system was often just an expansion bus with a front panel. You could chose from an incredibly diverse variety of CPU cards, memory cards, and I/O cards or build your own. Later machines, such as the Apple II provided you with a standard baseline CPU and video, but you could still add a huge variety of custom hardware. Systems that tie all add ons or upgrades to a single vendor generally have extremely limited expandability, and increases the risk of lock-in.

 

A personal computer must be user programmable. If it can only do things as defined by the manufacturer, then it is just an appliance. Furthermore, a user must be able to write and distribute programs freely. Some computer vendors required licensing fees from anyone who wished to distribute software for their platform.

 

 

In the early days, there were many computer manufacturers. Each with a different, incompatible, platform. Even different models from the same vendor were often incompatible.

 

This meant that if you wanted to buy a specific piece of software, you had to check that the software was available for your specific platform.

 

 

There was the strong, although often misguided desire for a single, standard, computing platform.....

 

http://toastytech.com/guis/macvspc.html

[ebrke]

I had a friend who worked for a company in the 1980's where the VP in charge of "Data Processing" was of the firm opinion that personal computers were a fad, a flash-in-the-pan that would never amount to anything for anyone other than hobbyists. He stated this opinion loudly and frequently--she quickly started looking for another job.

[abarbarian]

our world is headed towards the dark ages where the land baron has a behest from the king, has the castle, the wealth and enslaves the villagers around him.

 

I always knew it was a good idea to be old fashioned in my outlook and thinking. That is why I always try to live like a good old fashioned viking. Caus vikings just do not do knee bending and ass kissing, though with the right girl