Let's face It: Apple invented personal computers, mp3 players and smart phones

[Jamin2112]

Computers were lame until Apple made them. Funny how Bill Gates says "[Microsoft and Apple] were the 2 companies that really got the graphics interface." yet he believes the future of a tablet computer will be "one where I can use the pen" ... That's what he said in 2010, 3 years after Apple introduced the iPhone, which truly revolutionized the phone industry, like Jobs predicted. We'd still be using MS Dos if it weren't for Jobs. Is it unfair to say that Apple's engineers are 5 years ahead of everyone else's?

I laughed when the first iPod came out. "An mp3 player where you scroll through the music by moving your thumb in a circle? What a joke!" Then "mp3 player" became synonymous with "iPod". Microsoft Zune? Didn't that have a bug in it's daylight savings time clock? I only know that because my Computer Science professor at the University of Washington made fun of it.

I shouldn't joke. I worked as a contract at Microsoft for about 7 months. All I did was work on their HTML Help files for Windows 9, which has, apparently, been renamed to Windows 10. Perhaps I'm jaded? I find this video to be epic: .

 

[SteamKing]

Computers were lame even after Apple started making them, especially Apples. There were more than a few dead ended Apple models made after the Apple II became obsolete. Neither Apple nor Microsoft first developed the GUI which is ubiquitous nowadays. That distinction goes to the Xerox Corp., which developed the Xerox Alto at their PARC facility even before Apple Corp. was founded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto

The Alto never made much headway in the computer market because it was developed by a copier company. Its design did lead not only to the development of PCs as we know them today, but also high-end workstations, like those produced by Sun Microsystems and others.

 

[chiro]

In addition to SteamKing's comments on The Xerox Research Facility you should know that the MP3 player was introduced way before the iPod but it didn not really arrive at the correct time to take advantage of familiarity and popularity.

What Apple did (and many other companies do), is release something at the right time when people are comfortable with it and ready to purchase and use it. When you bring something in too early and people are not ready for it then it can backfire for the company, and then others who are looking at this can decide whether the time is right or not for a release.

This kind of thing was quite common in the 20th century because change was a lot slower back then: however nowadays it is a lot quicker because technology changes so fast in addition to the expectation of people keeping up with it who are born into computers, smart phones, and all kinds of technology. Before the internet though, change was slow and people resisted it a lot more than they do now when it comes to technology.

In business schools they use a term called "crossing the chasm" that describes the point where familiarity and trust is developed for the masses to purchase and use a specific product and depending on the industry, product, and its uses it can take a long time or a short time to get past this chasm not only for a company, but for a specific product line as well regardless of who made it.

There are all sorts of reasons why otherwise good products don't make it as well. Zune did have some good features but it just faded away: just like the Beta-max tape did when VHS came out. There are all kinds of reasons why things become standard or popular and being the best product technically or functionally is not a pre-requisite for it to be the better accepted product for those who use it.

Just to help you understand why Microsoft was successful for software developers: they have done a lot of work on API's and technologies for their developers and this support is what tempts developers to write their programs on Windows as opposed to Mac or Linux (even though nowadays multi-platform development is standard within the bigger and more professional repositories that gain from these sales).

When Windows 95 came along with API's for windows, graphics (Direct X and OpenGL), network protocols and others, this was a huge thing for developers because in the DOS days, you would write your own device drivers and your code would interact with hardware directly unless you used some libraries that did this for you.

If you add on OLE, COM, COM+, .NET, and all these technologies in combination with a massive API and more importantly the support to developers like MSDN and other resources, you will find that the support developers got from Microsoft was quite vast in comparison to others at the time and this attracts developers to write code on the Windows Platform. It may be a lot different now with things like Java, CORBA, and other cross-platform technologies but understand that at the time it was a lot different.

I'm not saying that functionally or technically MS is better or worse than Apple, Linux, or anything else - but what I am saying is that you really have to consider the whole spectrum of activities before you make a judgement as generic as you have made.

 

[russ_watters]

In addition to SteamKing's comments on The Xerox Research Facility you should know that the MP3 player was introduced way before the iPod but it didn not really arrive at the correct time to take advantage of familiarity and popularity.

What Apple did (and many other companies do), is release something at the right time when people are comfortable with it and ready to purchase and use it.

I'll go a step further and say that in its rebirth as a consumer electronics company, Apple has had the branding and design "cool factor" that basically meant that you needed to buy an mp3 player when Steve Jobs said you needed one. But they don't have a technological edge and I'm not sure they ever have.

 

[rcgldr]

The functionality of the early home computers was limited. These include the Apple 2, Atari 400/800/65XE/130XE series, Commodore PET / Vic-20 64 series, with the Commodore 64 being the highest selling "home computer" (somewhere between 10 to 17 million units).

The next big thing were CP/M systems for both the office and for home. Wordstar was a popular text / document editor, and there were a few spreadsheet programs.

The next big thing was the IBM PC. In the meantime, the Apple III was considered a failure, but 3 years later the first Macintosh was released. The Mac was lacking in some features, such as DMA (instead it had a hardware assisted polling handshake for scsi devices like hard drives), and the Macintosh developer tools fell way behind what Microsoft was producing for the PC and windows.

The first popular MP3 player was the RIO PMP300. RIO won a lawsuit versus the recording industry which allowed MP3 players to be sold. I still have one, upgraded from 32 MB to 64 MB (which was a lot in those days).

 

[robphy]

Hey... don't forget the the TRS-80 I/II/III .

 

[rcgldr]

The next big thing were CP/M systems for both the office and for home.

Hey... don't forget the the TRS-80 I/II/III .

The TRS-80 (sometimes called trash 80) series were relatively popular CP/M systems. There were also CP/M systems based on the S-100 bus, the first one being the Altair 8800, and some later CP/M systems that used custom bus setups, released in 1981 like the Osborne 1, Kaypro II, but IBM released the first PC in the same year (1981).

 

[wukunlin]

The only great thing about apple is that they managed to get their customers to have these elitist attitudes. They made people think more of themselves when owning an apple product. I mean this marketing strategy isn't even new but few have been as successful as apple.

The actual products themselves, while useful in some situations (iMac's are good for audio/video editing I'll give them that), are laughable.

 

[enorbet]

In addition to SteamKing's comments on The Xerox Research Facility...

I'm glad you brought up Xerox. If readers watch the full video below you will plainly see that some advances have not been improved upon and even lost due to the vagaries of timing in the market place, and some companies have never received their proper recognition since they were eclipsed in that market place.

What Apple did (and many other companies do), is release something at the right time when people are comfortable with it and ready to purchase and use it. When you bring something in too early and people are not ready for it then it can backfire for the company, and then others who are looking at this can decide whether the time is right or not for a release.

There are a few more variables than just that which affect when "people are comfortable with it". An example is that Apple Lisa is widely considered an abject failure when most of it was a true quantum leap in computing power. In it's final version it could directly address 16MB or RAM, had a highly advanced RISC cpu (at that time orders of magnitude more powerful than Intel x86) and the operating system was unconstrained in numerous areas (such as segmentation barriers) that made DOS stone age by comparison.

Jobs was an enthusiast and visionary. Gates was and is a poker player businessman with keen insight in what people will respond to in a favorable way. Gates and his buddies were also self-confessed paranoids who sought to crush any competition by any means "necessary". Jobs assumed people understood like he did that Home/SOHO Computers had a very bright future. The boys at Microsoft correctly deduced that the rest of the world needed many years of convincing. Even up into the late 1980's the average consumer saw home computers as way too expensive devices (thousands of dollars) that "could balance your checkbook" when a pencil and paper could do that for a single dollar.

Apple, Microsoft, IBM, all of them, made system design and especially marketing mistakes on certain products. Some companies folded from such mistakes even if they had created a major breakthrough in a specific technological area. Much, but by no means all, of such breakthroughs were then "picked up" by the survivors.

This kind of thing was quite common in the 20th century because change was a lot slower back then: however nowadays it is a lot quicker because technology changes so fast in addition to the expectation of people keeping up with it who are born into computers, smart phones, and all kinds of technology. Before the internet though, change was slow and people resisted it a lot more than they do now when it comes to technology.

Very true. Even businesses whose job it is (or part of it) is to project and predict trends failed to see how important, even essential, PCs would become, failed to see like Jobs did that it would be worth it to invest in more power. Gates capitalized on this shortsightedness by advertising DOS as not requiring you buy any new software and is commonly quoted from this time as saying "Nobody is ever going to need more than 1MB or RAM".

It could be argued that games, Quicken (and Quickbooks) and Tax programs did more to change public perception, including small businesses, that translates into sales and especially for Microsoft than any other single area of development.

There are all sorts of reasons why otherwise good products don't make it as well. Zune did have some good features but it just faded away: just like the Beta-max tape did when VHS came out. There are all kinds of reasons why things become standard or popular and being the best product technically or functionally is not a pre-requisite for it to be the better accepted product for those who use it.

The above emboldened text is hugely important. A common analogy is as follows - Who makes the best hamburgers? Who sells the most hamburgers? Are they the same? - There is always a market for cheap.

When Windows 95 came along with API's for windows, graphics (Direct X and OpenGL), network protocols and others, this was a huge thing for developers because in the DOS days, you would write your own device drivers and your code would interact with hardware directly unless you used some libraries that did this for you.

This is a highly controversial area and another example of "best doesn't always win" especially when crap has momentum. Direct access to hardware is rarely an issue in a single user, single task environment like DOS. It really wasn't until Win2K (largely thanks to working with IBM on a truly serious OpSys) that Microsoft finally outgrew the legacy mindset from DOS that made General Protection Fault and BSOD household (and hated) words.

It is so far back in the seminal period that it is impossible to really credit Steve Jobs with how much he has changed the world, let alone tried to and failed, but there can be little doubt that he saved Apple from collapse many times and will go down in history as one of the most influential men of the 20th, and early 21st, centuries. Unfortunately, since Wintel is the clear winner (so far), it is likely that Bell Laboratories, TI, Motorola, IBM, Digital, and Xerox will be mere footnotes within the realm of "personal computing" , and they deserve so much more.

 

[256bits]

I am not seeing any direct comparison between Bill gates and Steve Jobs as being all that relevant.
IBM produced the first PC, and subcontracted the operating software to a relatively new company called Microsoft.
Microsoft produces mainly software, which other companies will use in its personal computers or imbed into a controller system.
Apple is a hardware company, and uses its own internal software to run the system.

The IBM PC and the Apple both started out with consumers receiving circuit diagrams and listings of the software with their purchase, which was ideal for tinkerers and developers, both hardware and software. The PC grabbed the business community as being the system of choice, simply most probably because the IBM name was known and respected. Home users were still attracted to the less expensive Atari's, Commodores, and all the others that had color, graphics, gaming, and a hookup to a television set if one withheld purchasing a monitor. Apple and some others such as Amiga computers eventually evolved to display "high end" graphics for use as raytracing and similar uses for the artistic and like minded. The break was really text versus graphics at the time, with the PC chesen by business who saw no need for fancy graphics when calculating numbers and typing in letters in a word processor, gaming computers for the home, and others some where in the middle between the two.

Jobs is just a guy like any other.

 

[D H]

No one has mentioned the "Mother of all demos" yet by Douglas Engelbart and Bill English in 1968.



Mice, multiple display windows, hypertext, graphics, office productivity tools, video conferencing, the list goes on and on of what was demoed during that presentation. Xerox PARC took a lot of their ideas from SRI (and some people as well; Bill English moved from SRI to Xerox PARC). Engelbart in turn was highly influenced by a 1945 article by Vannevar Bush, As We May Think.

 

[SteamKing]

The IBM PC and the Apple both started out with consumers receiving circuit diagrams and listings of the software with their purchase, which was ideal for tinkerers and developers, both hardware and software.

This is not correct. While the Apple I was sold as just a main board, to which consumers had to hook up things like a keyboard or a monitor and storage, the Apple II was marketed with its own enclosure containing a power supply and keyboard. The owner had his choice of monitor or floppy disk drive (or even cassette tape storage!). The PC was never sold in hobbyist form: it always came in the PC enclosure with room for twin floppies and detached keyboard (albeit on a cord). This is not to say that others didn't make PC compatible main boards for hobbyists, which was still a thriving segment of micro users at the time.

Neither Apple nor IBM ever included listings for Apple DOS or PC-DOS to their consumers, although some unofficial listings may have circulated which were created by folks with disassemblers.

The PC grabbed the business community as being the system of choice, simply most probably because the IBM name was known and respected. Home users were still attracted to the less expensive Atari's, Commodores, and all the others that had color, graphics, gaming, and a hookup to a television set if one withheld purchasing a monitor. Apple and some others such as Amiga computers eventually evolved to display "high end" graphics for use as raytracing and similar uses for the artistic and like minded. The break was really text versus graphics at the time, with the PC chesen by business who saw no need for fancy graphics when calculating numbers and typing in letters in a word processor, gaming computers for the home, and others some where in the middle between the two.

The period from 1975 to 1990 was a time of rapid change in the micro industry. One company might be on the top one day, only to be toppled and replaced by another company the next. Even after it was introduced, the future of the IBM PC was not a sure thing, since the suits at Armonk were still locked into a mainframe outlook, while the PC Division in Boca Raton was operating relatively freely. After the PC was introduced, several other companies introduced models which catered to the business traveler (Osborne and Compaq), which neither Apple nor IBM thought were important enough to bother with. The Osborne was based on CP/M, while the Compaq shrewdly went IBM PC compatible from day one.

 

[f95toli]

Apple is a hardware company, and uses its own internal software to run the system.

I am not sure I agree with that. It used to be true, but nowadays I'd say they are (mostly) a company focused on design. Yes, they do some hardware engineering but most of the components are actually designed by other companies; and this is certainly true for all the core components such as the processors etc. Hence,. they are not that different from e.g. Dell.
Remember that modern Apple computers are nothing more than well designed PCs, and there is no technical reason why you can't run their OS on a normal (much cheaper) PC (of course they have made sure it is difficult to do so, but those barriers have nothing to do with the actual hardware).

 

[enorbet]

The only great thing about apple is that they managed to get their customers to have these elitist attitudes. They made people think more of themselves when owning an apple product. I mean this marketing strategy isn't even new but few have been as successful as apple.

The actual products themselves, while useful in some situations (iMac's are good for audio/video editing I'll give them that), are laughable.

To be clear I don't presently own any Apple products but I have logged in possibly 100 hours on a few. I prefer to build my own PCs, don't need nor want a smartphone, but I was one that bought a Creative mp3 player, thinking it would be almost as good as an iPod but discovered it wasn't even close. Although for practical reasons I tend to prefer devices with exposed nuts and bolts I did marvel at how small and monolithic it was for how powerful it was but that was just a footnote after I discovered how easily and quickly I could find one single song out of 1000+. That was simply elegant.

I see Mac hatred in many forms all over the internet and it is almost always that whole adolescent Ford vs/ Chevy mess, unworthy of any comment. However this being a Science forum where experience and especially citations are valued I have to ask you upon what basis can you broad brush Apple products as laughable?

Note: I am very specifically not desiring to even hint at some kind of immature flame bait, but rather wish to know if you have any basis whatsoever for voicing what seems to me to be mere anecdotal opinion lacking in any authority or experience. Could you please clear this up if possible?

 

[enorbet]

Jobs is just a guy like any other.

Yes much like a Saturn V is just like July 4th fireworks.

 

[wukunlin]

I have to ask you upon what basis can you broad brush Apple products as laughable?

Perhaps my brush may have been too broad and there will always be counter examples to generalizations. However, considering we both like to see the nuts and bolts of our devices, if you crack open an apple computer, you will see that the components are nothing special and definitely underwhelming for the prices they charge. There are (or were, I haven't looked at apple stuff in like past year to be quite honest) those components like RAM and harddrives which are the exact same as what you can buy from other computer stores with a fraction of the pricetag in a typical computer store. Except when your apple computer need a component sway you have to buy the replacements from apple because they have modified the connectors. Although what tends to happen is the loyal apple customer would have bought a newer computer before the warranty of the older one expires.

There are other things about apple products that amuses me. At least during the early years of my undergrad studies (4-5 years ago), those sleek looking apple laptops had very inefficient cooling system that overheating was common because apparently it was more important to hide the ugly vents that would keep the computer cool. It is okay though, because OMGITSAMAC. Remember the first time they put a sheet of glass on the iphone and claiming its strength is suitable? I lost count of how many spiderwebs I've seen on iphones since then. There are lots of others, antennae being blocked if you use your phone left-handed, updates that make your phone unable to make phone calls etc. Even some of the most loyal apple customers complain about the horribly frequent, resource hogging, and unavoidable updates they had to deal with when they connect an apple product to their computers.

So, I laugh when I see these silliness on all those hyped up apple products, but do I recommend people to stay away from them? No, I ask people to compare and draw their own conclusions. If the brand has so much value to some people, that is their opinion. Apple does have upsides, a comprehensive audio and video editing software compatibility and support community, and I heard warranty claims are super easy and efficient (especially in New Zealand you could directly do that with apple instead of dealing with clueless retailers for other brands). I just find it disturbing (and admirable in a way) that apple has made so many people that will buy anything from them.

 

[rcgldr]

audio and video editting

For mid range video editting, Adobe's Windows products are nice. As for audio editting, what I see in music stores is mostly PC stuff. In the few recording studios I've seen, the software was running on Windows computers. Commercial video editting is normally done on workstations or main frame / super computer setups, some running Windows, some running some version of Unix with a windowing interface, or main frame type operating systems (for example IBM Z/OS supports Unix, in adition to support of legacy applications similar to a high end virtual machine (24 bit, 31 bit, or 64 bit addressing modes)).

An old video about using Mac in the the pre OS-X days:

 

[Jamin2112]

Any chance I could delete this thread? I made it when I was drunk a few nights ago.

 

[rcgldr]

Any chance I could delete this thread? I made it when I was drunk a few nights ago.

but it now has so much nostalgia, that it should be kept for historical reasons.

 

[Mark44]

but it now has so much nostalgia, that it should be kept for historical reasons.

Agreed

 

[rcgldr]

I missed this before:

Neither Apple nor IBM ever included listings for Apple DOS or PC-DOS to their consumers, although some unofficial listings may have circulated which were created by folks with disassemblers.

Not for DOS, but for the BIOS. One of the technical documents for the PC (these were released in 2 ring binders), included a complete assembly listing of the BIOS. I think the name of the one with a BIOS listing was a technical document, which also included information about the hardware. There was also a 2 ring binder programmers reference (or similar name) that documented all the BIOS and DOS int xx calls.

 

[SteamKing]

I missed this before:

Not for DOS, but for the BIOS. One of the technical documents for the PC (these were released in 2 ring binders), included a complete assembly listing of the BIOS.

BIOS listings were necessary so that those wishing to develop new hardware peripherals for the Apple or IBM PC could provide proper integration of their devices to the respective systems. IIRC, IBM sold a separate Technical Reference Manual for the PC which included a lot of system details not available with the standard documentation. I'm not sure how Apple distributed their BIOS, but there were a lot of Apple clubs operating then which attracted people looking to write software or develop hardware for the Apple II.

 

[OmCheeto]

but it now has so much nostalgia, that it should be kept for historical reasons.

Sifting through my nostalgia at PF, I find I've been surrounded by fellow old people...

The internet, Physics Forums, and Dr. Neutrino

1993 wow has it been that long? I have also had the same e-mail account since the beginning.​

I remember running a BBS on a “Tandy COCO 80” and a 300 baud modem in Madison Wisconsin and often getting help from Bob Mahoney (sic) from EXECPC BBS.
I and a friend would transmit data over the CB radio. That was probably one of the first wireless PC’s. Dam, I should have patented the idea.

Computers before operating systems

​

Computers were lame? Ever? I once read that "computers" were once humans. I think it was some "Manhattan Project" thread, where I read that.

 

[SteamKing]

Sifting through my nostalgia at PF, I find I've been surrounded by fellow old people...

The internet, Physics Forums, and Dr. Neutrino

1993 wow has it been that long? I have also had the same e-mail account since the beginning.​

I remember running a BBS on a “Tandy COCO 80” and a 300 baud modem in Madison Wisconsin and often getting help from Bob Mahoney (sic) from EXECPC BBS.
I and a friend would transmit data over the CB radio. That was probably one of the first wireless PC’s. Dam, I should have patented the idea.

Computers before operating systems

​

Computers were lame? Ever? I once read that "computers" were once humans. I think it was some "Manhattan Project" thread, where I read that.

Yes, before general purpose computers were developed, and complex scientific calculations had to be made, usually by astronomers, specially trained human 'calculators' were employed to do the number crunching. Of course, the only tools they had available were mechanical devices like adding machines and some slide rules, but that was then. Incidentally, more than a few of these 'calculators' were women.

* * * * * * * *​

Even in the early days, when there weren't that many micros around, there were some stinkers. Over time, we tend to forget some of the things these systems made us do to get software to run or some hardware to interface properly. The early Macs were limited to 128K RAM, big for the moment, but soon outclassed, and the Mac had a screen which displayed vibrant black-and-white. You could expand the memory to 512K, but you needed a soldering iron to do it. Compared to the Mac, its predecessor, the Apple II, was a wildly open system, which could be upgraded with expansion cards to do all sorts of things. There even was a card which converted the Apple II into a Z80-running CP/M machine.

And don't forget the prices of equipment. When introduced, the Mac was $2495 in 1984, equivalent to more than $5500 now.

 

[wukunlin]

For mid range video editting, Adobe's Windows products are nice. As for audio editting, what I see in music stores is mostly PC stuff. In the few recording studios I've seen, the software was running on Windows computers. Commercial video editting is normally done on workstations or main frame / super computer setups, some running Windows, some running some version of Unix with a windowing interface, or main frame type operating systems (for example IBM Z/OS supports Unix, in adition to support of legacy applications similar to a high end virtual machine (24 bit, 31 bit, or 64 bit addressing modes)).

That makes sense. I read that a lot of indie filmmakers find it easier to work on a Mac and I assumed they know what they are doing. On a lot of forums when I looked for help as I have started to learn about video editing, I feel like most people assume I am using Premiere Elements on an apple computer unless I explicitly say otherwise.

And that video is pretty amusing :w

Any chance I could delete this thread? I made it when I was drunk a few nights ago.

The funny thing is a large chunk of apple product users would say the same thing you wrote in the OP when they are sober

 

[rcgldr]

IBM sold a separate Technical Reference Manual for the PC which included a lot of system details not available with the standard documentation.

I don't know what came with a PC, but anyone could buy both the Technical Reference Manual and the Programmers Reference Manual (they weren't cheap though). Although called a manual, they were 2 ring binders with a blue cloth like material on the covers. IBM made these for the PC and for the AT. From the wiki article: the IBM PC Technical Reference Manual included complete circuit schematics, commented ROM BIOS source code, and other engineering and programming information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer#Debut

I think IBM underestimated how popular clones would get. First was Compaq, then companies like PC Limited which later became Dell, ... . There was a time in the late 1980's that the top 20 PC makes accounted for less than 50% of the total market with all the "mom and pop" shop like clones where local stores would just assemble no-name components like motherboards, video cards, ... and sell them. Microsoft was apparently aware of the potential since they sold PC-DOS to IBM for a flat fee, but reserved the right to sell MS-DOS for PC clones.

 

[Mark44]

One of the members of another forum I belong to posted this image. I believe the ad appeared in the early 80's, back when hard drives for PCs just began to be available. I remember prices of around $2000 for 10MB drives.

My first actual computer was an Apple //e (yes, they used slashes for the model name). It came with a whopping 64KB of RAM which I later upgraded with another 128KB (if memory serves, no pun intended). I think that the extra RAM cost me around $100 or so. I recently bought a thumb drive with 32GB of RAM for about $30.
The differences in price per KB are staggering, with about $800/KB for the RAM I bought back in the early 80s versus, (1/1,000,000) dollar/KB more recently.

The Apple computer came with a 5 -1/2" floppy drive, but I bought another one so I could copy files from one disk to another. I think each floppy could hold something like 147KB of data.

Relative to the ad below, could that 28Amp figure for the power supply be a typo? It couldn't possibly be 120V since it takes 10 gauge wires to carry that much current at 120V. It could be reasonable for 5V, which would work out to 130W.

 

[SteamKing]

One of the members of another forum I belong to posted this image. I believe the ad appeared in the early 80's, back when hard drives for PCs just began to be available. I remember prices of around $2000 for 10MB drives.

My first actual computer was an Apple //e (yes, they used slashes for the model name). It came with a whopping 64KB of RAM which I later upgraded with another 128KB (if memory serves, no pun intended). I think that the extra RAM cost me around $100 or so. I recently bought a thumb drive with 32GB of RAM for about $30.
The differences in price per KB are staggering, with about $800/KB for the RAM I bought back in the early 80s versus, (1/1,000,000) dollar/KB more recently.

The Apple computer came with a 5 -1/2" floppy drive, but I bought another one so I could copy files from one disk to another. I think each floppy could hold something like 147KB of data.

Relative to the ad below, could that 28Amp figure for the power supply be a typo? It couldn't possibly be 120V since it takes 10 gauge wires to carry that much current at 120V. It could be reasonable for 5V, which would work out to 130W.
View attachment 75684

The 28 Amp is probably what DC current the PS output to the computer. Most standard wall sockets are good for about 20A of 120 V AC without blowing a fuse or requiring a special circuit.

We're used to laptops and tablets and phones which we can pick up and walk around with now. This early hardware was built to more rugged construction, which ensured it could last many times longer than the operating life of the device before it became obsolete technologically.

My office bought a custom configured Apple II w/64 Kbyte RAM (the Apple II came w/48 K on the main board; the extra 16K was provided by an Applesoft expansion card required to run the UCSD Pascal Operating System). This was in the days just before HDD became available, so to provide extra storage, the office got a special expansion controller to interface 2 DS/DD 8" floppy drives to the Apple. Each side of the 8" floppy held a whopping 256 K of storage, and access times could be gauged using a clock. The whole system cost about $10 K delivered, and when we did some particularly complex calculations on it (which required intermediate results to be written to the 8" drives), often the machine would run overnight, patiently calculating and writing away.

About 1987, the office finally bit the bullet and bought a custom built 386 PC clone, which had a 130 Mbyte HDD installed. This HDD was about the same size and weight as a brick, even though it was an internal unit.

 

[OmCheeto]

One of the members of another forum I belong to posted this image. I believe the ad appeared in the early 80's...

It had to have been way earlier than that. I bought my first pc in about 1980. (My brother and I pitched in together to buy one a few years earlier, but it was "his")
That ad must have been published around 1976.

Relative to the ad below, could that 28Amp figure for the power supply be a typo? It couldn't possibly be 120V since it takes 10 gauge wires to carry that much current at 120V. It could be reasonable for 5V, which would work out to 130W.
View attachment 75684

From the January 1975 Popular Electronics article on the Altair 8800:

Power Supply. Four power
sources are required to operate the
computer: +5 volts at 2 amperes, -5
volts at 500 mA, -12 volts at 500 mA,
and +8 volts at 6 amperes.

ref = page 38

4 x 2+1/2+1/2+6 = 28! (maybe!)

I'm not saying it was me that added up those amps, as a 15 year old, I'm just implying: Aliens!

 

[Mark44]

It had to have been way earlier than that. I bought my first pc in about 1980. (My brother and I pitched in together to buy one a few years earlier, but it was "his")
That ad must have been published around 1976.

I don't believe so. I bought my Apple in '81 I think, and I remember reading ads in '82 in programmer magazines for hard drives - 10 MB for $2000. I don't believe hard drives were available on the consumer market until well after 1980.

From the January 1975 Popular Electronics article on the Altair 8800:

ref = page 38

4 x 2+1/2+1/2+6 = 28! (maybe!)

I'm not saying it was me that added up those amps, as a 15 year old, I'm just implying: Aliens!

 

[SteamKing]

I don't believe so. I bought my Apple in '81 I think, and I remember reading ads in '82 in programmer magazines for hard drives - 10 MB for $2000. I don't believe hard drives were available on the consumer market until well after 1980.

Here is a copy of the press release from IMSAI announcing the introduction of the HDD on their systems:

http://classictech.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/1978-imsai-announces-hard-disk-cdc-hawk-9427h.pdf

Deliveries were announced to start in Q1 1979.

There were two versions of mass storage offered: a 10 Mbyte HDD or a unit with 5 Mbyte fixed and a removable 5Mbyte cartridge.

IIRC, there were a few HDD systems offered as add ons to the popular systems of the times in the early 80s. The name Corvus seems to stand out in my recollection.

The really big news was when IBM announced the PC-XT in the spring of 1983. The PC-XT was essentially a PC with a 10Mbyte Seagate HDD integrated with the system:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_XT

Once the XT hit the streets, floppy-only systems were outdated and a lot of makers, especially Apple, had to scramble to catch up. When the Mac was introduced a few months after the XT in Jan. '84, people were distinctly underwhelmed because there was no HDD included.

 

[OmCheeto]

I don't believe so. I bought my Apple in '81 I think, and I remember reading ads in '82 in programmer magazines for hard drives - 10 MB for $2000. I don't believe hard drives were available on the consumer market until well after 1980.

Ouch!

I'll hopefully verify this after my nap. There is an 86.7% probability that I still have my Nov 1982 issue of Byte on my shelf.

And yes, the hard-drive was probably accounting for a third of this list price. And, OMG, I seem to recall paying $800 for a DMP around 1981.

Ha! Probably one of the few times we'll be able to use an acronym that the kids don't know...

"What the heck is a "DMP""? :D

 

[SteamKing]

Ouch!

I'll hopefully verify this after my nap. There is an 86.7% probability that I still have my Nov 1982 issue of Byte on my shelf.

And yes, the hard-drive was probably accounting for a third of this list price. And, OMG, I seem to recall paying $800 for a DMP around 1981.

Ha! Probably one of the few times we'll be able to use an acronym that the kids don't know...

"What the heck is a "DMP""? :D

There's a scanned collection of Byte Magazines available on the Internet Archive:

http://archive.org/search.php?query=collection:byte-magazine&sort=-publicdate&page=1

The Oct. 82 issue is there, but I didn't scan all five pages to see if Nov. 82 is in this collection.

 

[OmCheeto]

There's a scanned collection of Byte Magazines available on the Internet Archive:

http://archive.org/search.php?query=collection:byte-magazine&sort=-publicdate&page=1

The Oct. 82 issue is there, but I didn't scan all five pages to see if Nov. 82 is in this collection.

Sweet! It would have taken me hours. Yup. Page 266 in the Oct. 82 issue. (Volume 7 No. 10)
Good grief! 528 pages? In a monthly magazine?

Anyways, on page 518, they list a 16 VAC 24 amp power supply. $29.95
Transformers not included?

This is kind of fun, thumbing through this old stuff.
NEC 7730 Parallel Printer: $2395
Intel just announced the 80186! (page 482)

 

[SteamKing]

Sweet! It would have taken me hours. Yup. Page 266 in the Oct. 82 issue. (Volume 7 No. 10)
Good grief! 528 pages? In a monthly magazine?

Yep, issues of Byte could be pretty hefty. Even heftier were issues of PC Magazine when that publication got going. It was like picking up a new Sears catalog just for PCs and PC clones every month. I'm sure more than a few postal carriers got hernias delivering issues to subscribers. Eventually, the costs must have got too much, and there was much more competition in the computer magazine market. Byte slimmed down to a rather skinny shadow of itself before it ceased printing altogether in the late 90s, although it tried to maintain a web presence for a while. The same thing happened a little later to PC Magazine once the net exploded.

One gargantuan publication was a full tabloid size (Computer Shopper), and it featured a few review-type articles but was otherwise crammed with ads for everything from complete systems to discrete components. Each issue seemed to be at least an inch thick, with hardly any of the pages inside which were not covered in ads of some sort. Eventually, CS too ceased print publication, but I believe it lives on on the web.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Shopper_(US_magazine)

 

[enorbet]

Actually, despite what you may see in stores which tend to be PC-centric since Macs and their products are primarily sold in Apple stores, for professional audio recording and editing Macs still dominate but probably for one reason - ProTools. ProTools, originally Sound Designer, was invented by Mac users for Macs and was the basis for most high level audio work including the ground breaking Pixar and Industrial Light and Magic.

FWIW I am a dedicated PC user but I can't let that push me into a "Mine r0x, Urs sux" state of mind. Unfortunately I am more fluent in Apple/Mac history than current hardware, There was a time when the price difference was laughable but the joke was on PC users. Macs had server grade, 5 year warranty SCSI drives from the beginning and all the while PCers got crappy, consumer grade IDE drives with 1 year warranty. Mac users got FireWire, a true self-aware bus like SCSI, and we got USB which at 1.0 was a bad joke. Thankfully it has improved. These are but a few examples of why Macs were worth it.

Frankly I don't know why they are still priced higher than PCs these days, but I do know they are no joke. They work.

 

[OmCheeto]

Yep, issues of Byte could be pretty hefty. Even heftier were issues of PC Magazine when that publication got going. It was like picking up a new Sears catalog just for PCs and PC clones every month. I'm sure more than a few postal carriers got hernias delivering issues to subscribers. Eventually, the costs must have got too much, and there was much more competition in the computer magazine market. Byte slimmed down to a rather skinny shadow of itself before it ceased printing altogether in the late 90s, although it tried to maintain a web presence for a while. The same thing happened a little later to PC Magazine once the net exploded.

One gargantuan publication was a full tabloid size (Computer Shopper), and it featured a few review-type articles but was otherwise crammed with ads for everything from complete systems to discrete components. Each issue seemed to be at least an inch thick, with hardly any of the pages inside which were not covered in ads of some sort. Eventually, CS too ceased print publication, but I believe it lives on on the web.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Shopper_(US_magazine)

I remember those. Fortunately, I never got into the IBM clone market frenzy until the Pentium 1 came out(≈1993). My 8 bit toy(≈1981) could do pretty much anything I wanted. I already knew BASIC from high school, and quickly learned machine language. Interpreted languages kind of sucked when your computer operated in the kilohertz range. I think I mentioned somewhere, that it took 24 hours to render a full color* image of the classic Mandelbrot set. (@196x256 resolution. woo!)

I only upgraded once, to a Pentium 3. Which, in the end, taking 15 minutes to boot up, and 15 minutes to shut down, prompted me to go Mac laptop in 2007. I replaced that this year with a newer model, which can render the Mandelbrot set, pretty much instantly.

*By full color, I mean, it wasn't black and white.

 

[OmCheeto]

..."Mine r0x, Urs sux" state of mind. ...

Don't even get me going on that topic...
Wait.
I think that is the topic.
hmmmm...
Ok.

[Rant!]
About the only person that ever agreed with me that computer languages were all the same was my first semester "C" language instructor. By the time I'd arrived, I'd already learned a half a dozen languages. Everyone else I'd ever talked to was of the, as you said; "Your computer language sucks".

The most frustrating thing, was that it was the "IT" guys who were always going on about it.
I started out with BASIC. They told me it sucked. So I learned another 10 languages. 15 years later, I asked them what they were now programming in;
"BASIC. It r0x"

Hence, I hate IT people. Always have, always will.
[/Rant!]

They work.

Yes they do.

ps. A program I wrote for that class I mentioned above, developed into a database management & search engine where I worked. That was about 20 years ago. About 3 months before I retired, a new version of windows ixnayed it. Fortunately, a non-IT acquaintance was able to develop a fix before I left. It wasn't perfect. But, then again, neither was mine.

 

[SteamKing]

Macs had server grade, 5 year warranty SCSI drives from the beginning and all the while PCers got crappy, consumer grade IDE drives with 1 year warranty. Mac users got FireWire, a true self-aware bus like SCSI, and we got USB which at 1.0 was a bad joke.

Your memory on the early Macs is a bit faulty. The first Mac had 128 K of RAM and a single built in floppy. There was no FireWire, no SCSI bus, no HDD, no nothin' except what was in the box. None of these things was available until the Mac Plus was introduced in 1986, about two years after the initial Macs went on sale. The original Mac design was so closed that upgrading the RAM required the removal of the main board from the system and physically soldering in higher capacity RAM chips.

Frankly I don't know why they are still priced higher than PCs these days, but I do know they are no joke. They work.

When your only choice to buy a Mac is the Apple Store or the Apple Store, you have to pay what the Apple Store charges. In the PC world, there is intense price competition, with everybody and his brother trying to get a leg up on the next guy. In getting a leg up, if you can't beat them on price, then you introduce new features and new hardware.

The striking contrast in the 1980s was that IBM introduced an open design for their PC which stimulated a lot of third-party development, in contrast to their philosophy with their mainframes and minicomputers, which were closed off from the competition. On the other hand, Apple did an about face, dumping the philosophy of the Apple II with its open design and instead adopting the closed design of the Mac, which cost Apple the support and loyalty of a lot of companies which had made the Apple II a success. This attitude almost drove Apple as a corporation into the ground.

 

[rcgldr]

Macs had server grade, 5 year warranty SCSI drives from the beginning and all the while PCers got crappy, consumer grade IDE drives with 1 year warranty.

PC's had SCSI adapter boards that included bus mastering. The early Mac's (through at least the early 1990's) native support for SCSI required software polling for the first byte, then software transfer one byte at a time relying on a hardware handshake called blind transfer (which locked up the bus until the transfer completed or up to 16 micoseconds for a bus time out). There were third party SCSI adapter boards made for the Mac that had bus mastering, bit Apple didn't include this in the Mac, while the very first PC's included DMA (memory refresh, sound card, floppy disk, hard disk). The AT added a second DMA chip, but with one of the channels cascaded to the first chip, the end result was 7 channels, but they were 16 bit instead of 8 bit. By the time of the 386 clones, the controllers used a 32 bit width bus mastering scheme (including scatter / gather for paged virtual memory support).

 

[enorbet]

@SteamKing No my memory wasn't (in this case) faulty it was my unclear language, choosing a phrase like "from the beginning" Doh!
There was a period of over 10 years and iirc between ~1993 - 2004 in which the hardware of Macs was considerably superior to most PCs. They directly addressed vast amounts of RAM, had more Instructions per Clock, RISC instructions set and peripherals plugged in while running (early PnP) most often just worked. However I was most impressed by (and jealous of my Mac friends) for the default inclusion of SCSI drives around that timeframe.

One of the reasons I distinctly recall this is that in 1993 I purchased my first GUI which was IBM's OS/2 v2.1 and I desperately wanted SCSI drives having read that OS/2 could access multiple SCSI's simultaneously which would have been a huge advantage when, which was common back then on most OpSys/Hardware that a mere enthusiast could afford, in that if you didn't own an actual server system, swapfile usage was quite high and brought the system to a crawl.

Long story short I was appalled when I discovered the cost of SCSI so in a few years I just bought a SuperMicro server motherboard with beaucoup ram. This actually worked out well because I learned how to admin and got employment as a small business sysadmin. I deployed one system of just over 100 clients that remained up for 5 years without one single unscheduled reboot. Then I could afford SCSI but was a bit "late to the game" as IDEs "got good" and then of course Serial took over everything.

My memory of the "advantages" of DMA is however even more skewed by the many wasted hours manually setting IRQs, DMAs, and I/Os. It's truly a wonder I am not manually bald from all the "yanking" (and not I'm not referring to a city in China). I do recognize that they were an important step and that it was rather brilliant to serially lock two 8237s but man! they were a pita. It is a very good thing those days of "wonking" are gone, though even the pains are sometimes remembered with a little smile.

 

[rcgldr]

There was a period of over 10 years and iirc between ~1993 - 2004 in which the hardware of Macs was considerably superior to most PCs. They directly addressed vast amounts of RAM.

Windows NT 3.1 was released in 1993 (4GB flat virtual address space). NT 3.5.1 in 1995, then NT 4.0 in 1996, which switched from the Win 3.1 style GUI to the Win 95 GUI, and also when NT started to become popular. Win 2000 was released in late 1999. XP was released in 2001, but XP SP3 wasn't released until 2008, which spans the period from 1993 to 2004.

In the meantime, Windows 95 / 98 / ME were based on what was mostly a 16 bit kernel, but with 32 bit support. I don't recall the maximum memory size alllowed for a 32 bit application.

Win 3.11 had a winmem 32 bit interface, but only Watcom's C / C++ tool set (version 10.0 I think) included full support for it. I don't recall the max memory size for this either.

 

[enorbet]

Windows 95/98/Me were still 16bit and DOS-based therefore only addressed memory above 1MB virtually. Windows NT up to and including 3.5 was OS/2 rebranded with only a few minor variations. In fact MS OS/2 v3 NewTechnology became Windows NT v 3 with some load of nonsense about having come largely from a DEC employee, completely disregarding non-disclosure, but any bs story would have sufficed since IBM knew they could do nothing about it. Once again David kicked Goliath in the nether sector and all IBM could do was wince and grin. Even the NTFS was essentially the HPFS and is still to this day indistinguishable by many partitioning apps. IMHO Win2K was the first truly solid, advanced OpSys that while still owing a high percentage of code to their work on OS/2 was definitively a MS product and a very good one at that.

Obviously not each of all the superior items of both hardware and software lasted the full time I listed but the fact remains that during that period a number of very important hardware and software issues were superior on a Mac. Again, I am no Mac fanboi, but then I'm not a fanboi for anyone and certainly not Microsoft. I do try to "give the devil his due" regardless the source or name of that particular demon.

As regards this thread, Steve Jobs and Apple are extremely important in the development of modern computational technology but he and his company does not even begin to stand alone. He was just more visible and charismatic than most.

 

[vela]

When your only choice to buy a Mac is the Apple Store or the Apple Store, you have to pay what the Apple Store charges. In the PC world, there is intense price competition, with everybody and his brother trying to get a leg up on the next guy. In getting a leg up, if you can't beat them on price, then you introduce new features and new hardware.

Those aren't the only choices for buying a Mac, but the real question is, why do Macs sell at all given their higher prices? Your take on the market is simplistic, and you're comparing apples to oranges. Apple doesn't participate in the low end of the market, so comparing a $1000 MacBook to the $400 laptop you can pick up at Best Buy is misleading at best. When compared to PCs offered in the high end of the market, Macs are competitively priced.

 

[SteamKing]

Windows 95/98/Me were still 16bit and DOS-based therefore only addressed memory above 1MB virtually. Windows NT up to and including 3.5 was OS/2 rebranded with only a few minor variations. In fact MS OS/2 v3 NewTechnology became Windows NT v 3 with some load of nonsense about having come largely from a DEC employee, completely disregarding non-disclosure, but any bs story would have sufficed since IBM knew they could do nothing about it. Once again David kicked Goliath in the nether sector and all IBM could do was wince and grin. Even the NTFS was essentially the HPFS and is still to this day indistinguishable by many partitioning apps. IMHO Win2K was the first truly solid, advanced OpSys that while still owing a high percentage of code to their work on OS/2 was definitively a MS product and a very good one at that.

This is a highly imaginative recounting of the development of OS/2 and early Windows platforms, which doesn't seem to have any other sources of support.

OS/2 was a separate development project contracted to MS by IBM:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2

Development of OS/2 started Aug. 1985 and was released in Dec. 1987. The original OS/2 releases lacked a GUI which was only supplied later. Windows 3.0 and later 3.1 were initially released in 1990, both with a GUI right out of the box. Both of these versions of Windows acted on top of the underlying MS-DOS operating system to give computers with 286 and 386 chips access to extended memory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Windows

The collaboration between MS and IBM on OS/2 collapsed in 1990, several months after MS had started to develop what would become Windows NT. Win NT was targeted at high-end computers like work stations rather than the more common consumer-oriented PCs. Win NT, unlike MS-DOS and Windows 3.x, was developed to run on other processors in addition to the Intel 80x86 family:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT

Windows 3.x was replaced by Win95 on consumer PCs, while Win NT was developed in parallel with the newer Windows. The various Windows families were finally merged when Win XP was introduced in 2001.

Dave Cutler and his team from DEC were instrumental in getting the original Windows NT off the ground in the late 1980s and early 1990s. There might have been some overlap between OS/2 and Windows/WindowsNT, but after the big breakup in 1990, OS/2 development was handled by IBM without any input from MS.

 

[SteamKing]

Those aren't the only choices for buying a Mac, but the real question is, why do Macs sell at all given their higher prices? Your take on the market is simplistic, and you're comparing apples to oranges. Apple doesn't participate in the low end of the market, so comparing a $1000 MacBook to the $400 laptop you can pick up at Best Buy is misleading at best. When compared to PCs offered in the high end of the market, Macs are competitively priced.

Since Apple is the sole supplier of Mac products, they also control the wholesale price at which any retail outlet can purchase systems. Apple long ago quashed any Macclones (one of the first things Jobs did when he returned to Apple in the late 1990s).

In the PC world, you can shop at Dell or any number of other outlets (including Best Buy, if you are so inclined), or you can buy the parts and put your own custom system together. You don't even have to get an Intel chip in your PC unless you want one. Like one sage said, "Some people will pay extra just for the name", even though the two systems (Intel and AMD) run about the same speed.

Bill Gates did Steve Jobs and Apple a huge favor when he convinced the latter to adopt Intel compatibility and make it easier to transfer data back and forth between Macs and PCs.

 

[vela]

Since Apple is the sole supplier of Mac products, they also control the wholesale price at which any retail outlet can purchase systems. Apple long ago quashed any Macclones (one of the first things Jobs did when he returned to Apple in the late 1990s).

Saying Apple is the sole manufacturer of Macs isn't the same as saying the only place you can buy a Mac is directly from Apple, which is what you claimed.

Bill Gates did Steve Jobs and Apple a huge favor when he convinced the latter to adopt Intel compatibility and make it easier to transfer data back and forth between Macs and PCs.

I have to admit this claim is a new one. I've never heard Bill Gates credited for the transition from PowerPC to Intel processors. I doubt it's true.

 

[SteamKing]

Saying Apple is the sole manufacturer of Macs isn't the same as saying the only place you can buy a Mac is directly from Apple, which is what you claimed.

When the Macs come from a single source, does it really matter if you are taking retail delivery from Best Buy, the Apple Store, or XYZ Computers?

I have to admit this claim is a new one. I've never heard Bill Gates credited for the transition from PowerPC to Intel processors. I doubt it's true.

When the Mac was initially introduced, Microsoft migrated some of its applications to the new platform from the MS-DOS environment. Since Gates was not in direct competition with Apple on the hardware front, he was shrewd enough to cultivate Apple as a customer for MS applications. When Apple's fortunes were at a low ebb in the late 1990's, just as Steve Jobs returned to the company, Microsoft invested $150 million in non-voting Apple stock, which investment went a long way to keeping Apple viable as a company.

By 2006, Apple had rationalized its product line and converted over to Intel CPUs from the variety of processors it had hitherto used. By touting compatibility of the Apple product line with Win XP and the ability to run other MS applications, it stretches credulity to believe that Jobs had come to this decision alone without some discussions with MS, if not Gates personally.

 

[vela]

When the Macs come from a single source, does it really matter if you are taking retail delivery from Best Buy, the Apple Store, or XYZ Computers?

Yes, since your claim was that "your only choice to buy a Mac is the Apple Store or the Apple Store." If you want to move the goalposts, then fine, but at least be honest about it.

By 2006, Apple had rationalized its product line and converted over to Intel CPUs from the variety of processors it had hitherto used. By touting compatibility of the Apple product line with Win XP and the ability to run other MS applications, it stretches credulity to believe that Jobs had come to this decision alone without some discussions with MS, if not Gates personally.

What strains credulity is to say that having discussions (if there indeed were any) is the same as Gates convincing Jobs to transition to Intel.

Jobs and Apple had grown dissatisfied with the PowerPC processor because its development stalled with the G4 and G5. It was expensive to develop processors, and the hopes of widespread adoption, that would have helped fund the development costs, were never realized. IBM was more interested in embedded systems and wasn't really interested in developing a power-efficient processor for laptops and desktops, which is what Apple needed. It turned out that Apple secretly had OS X running on Intel processors since 2000. The project was a fallback plan in case PowerPC performance stalled. When it did, Apple made the switch.

Here's an account of what happened from the wife of the engineer who did the initial port:

http://www.quora.com/How-does-Apple-keep-secrets-so-well/answers/1280472

 

[enorbet]

This is a highly imaginative recounting of the development of OS/2 and early Windows platforms, which doesn't seem to have any other sources of support.

It's not "highly imaginative" just because it comes from the IBM side rather than the MS side. If you never ran OS/2 then your side is left to imagine how the other saw it. I ran both Windows and OS/2 and perhaps saw a more balanced, if polarized series of events. I won't stoop to attempting to "discredit the witness" when you can't discredit the testimony. Examples follow -

http://os2news.warpstock.org/OS2History.html][/PLAIN] [/PLAIN]
1990 - The Schism

In 1990, IBM and Microsoft were still working together on the development of OS/2. Microsoft, however, had found that Windows 3.0 - released in May 1990 - generated more revenue for them and therefore allotted increasingly more resource to Windows and correspondingly less to OS/2.

By late 1990, Microsoft had intensified its disagreements with IBM to the point where IBM decided that it would have to take some overt action to ensure that OS/2 development continued at a reasonable pace. IBM, therefore, took over complete development responsibility for OS/2 1.x, even though it was in its dying days, and OS/2 2.00. Microsoft would continue development on Windows and OS/2 3.00. Shortly after this split, Microsoft renamed OS/2 V3 to Windows NT.

Since I only directly quoted one section, perhaps you would enjoy visiting the page which is rather mild compared to the FUD campaign and active sabotage that MS engaged into see a different perspective documented by IBM OS/2 developers to see the rest of my "imagination".

OS/2 was a separate development project contracted to MS by IBM:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2

Development of OS/2 started Aug. 1985 and was released in Dec. 1987. The original OS/2 releases lacked a GUI which was only supplied later. Windows 3.0 and later 3.1 were initially released in 1990, both with a GUI right out of the box. Both of these versions of Windows acted on top of the underlying MS-DOS operating system to give computers with 286 and 386 chips access to extended memory.

Oops apparently need to show one more since the introduction of the x386 was a very serious game changer for everyone and IBM initially made the mistake of under assessing the adoption rate and resulting drop in cost, a snowball effect.

http://os2news.warpstock.org/OS2History.html][/PLAIN] [/PLAIN]
OS/2 2.00 - 1992
OS/2 2.00 was released in the spring of 1992. The first true 32 bit operating system for personal computers (and for years the only one), it met IBM's stated goal of being a better DOS than DOS and a better Windows than Windows. It did this through the use of Virtual DOS Machines (VDMs) which allowed OS/2 to run many DOS (and Windows) programs at the same time as though they were on completely separate computers. As far as the DOS programs were concerned, they actually were in separate computers. Windows programs run on IBM's licensed version of Windows 3.1 called Win-OS/2.

Because of this separation of DOS programs from each other, one Windows (remember - Windows is a DOS program) program which crashes can not crash any other Windows program. By placing Windows programs which do not play well together in Windows sessions in different VDMs, they can both run without interfering with each other. In addition the programs can still communicate through Dynamic Data Exchange and the clipboard.

The Workplace Shell (WPS) was also introduced in OS/2 2.00. The Workplace Shell is an object oriented user interface (OOUI). The IBM WPS takes the GUI to the next generation by integrating it much more fully with the rest of the operating system, including the file system.

Dave Cutler and his team from DEC were instrumental in getting the original Windows NT off the ground in the late 1980s and early 1990s. There might have been some overlap between OS/2 and Windows/WindowsNT, but after the big breakup in 1990, OS/2 development was handled by IBM without any input from MS.

Non Sequitur - As already shown above in the first quote IBM flatly stated that MS OS/2 v3 NT became WinNT v3 just as I originally stated in my "imagination". The differences were ridiculously slight and mostly bad like allowing apps direct access to hardware throwing "preemptive" out the window which was the birth of the BSOD... of which MS's "research" into double-fault GPFs should have been an important lesson. The most objective way to see that this is so is to have actually run them both to see for oneself instead of relying on the proponents and antagonists whose position varies according to who is telling the story.

Your very choice of words like "might have been" "some overlap" speaks volumes about your naive agenda and how it has colored what you think. So you suppose MS just wrote off man/years, thousands of KLOC and millions of dollars and moved on?

In the further interest of objectivity and disclosure, I never worked for either MS or IBM but only used both of their products. Would you care to tell us if you were ever employed by one of them?

It might also be good to explain how Dave Cutler managed to sidestep his nondisclosure agreement with DEC in order to allegedly make vast, sweeping changes in MS OS/2 v3 to warrant what I (and IBM) see as mere rebranding to MS WinNT v3, a common event in corporations who wisely don't wish to lose R&D expenditures and capitalize on everything remotely possible. Then, please, practice what you preached and back this up and flesh this out by listing the changes for which he was supposedly responsible.

In summary, I have no affiliation or even particular allegiance for Apple, Microsoft or IBM. I just respect that each of them have made extremely important advances in the field and give credit where it's due. I have no axe to grind in the matters in this thread and I think my posts, while revealing any biases I might have, have also shown that I am not guilty of single-mindedness, "Mine r0X, Urs sux" inane and unproductive pissing contests. From this post perhaps all can also see that I am not guilty of "highly imaginative recounting of the development of OS/2 and early Windows platforms, which doesn't seem to have any other sources of support.", while you seem to be wearing blinders emblazoned with "Made in Redmond".