What is Digg?114 Comments
- harshbarj, on 10/12/2007, -1/+33Perhaps but 95 was a larger leap forward than 2000 was. It made computers simpler for your average joe (rather than the dos/windows 3.x combo). It's not important which was better but rather which did it first and windows 95 was the first to combine the GUI and OS in one package.
- josegutz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19What about SVGA? Helllooooo? Can you say 16 million colors?
Flesh tones....
Hence the birth of online porn... - bbatsell, on 10/12/2007, -4/+21The Macintosh is listed at #8.
- jpatch, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15Okay, but here's my complaint. Who designed this thing? Slides ripped from an UGLY PowerPoint template don't do well with me eyes.
- Weasel22, on 10/12/2007, -10/+20I'd take Windows NT/2000 over 95 any day.
- Noodles, on 10/12/2007, -9/+19You're missing the point.
- i440, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Why not include Unix on that list? It lead to an entire family of operating systems (Linux, BSD, et cetera).
- imperiousrex, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12As good as FF is, it's more evolutionary than revolutionary.
- winnch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Uh... Netscape I could see. Firefox? No way. Firefox isn't terribly innovative compared to something like Mosaic/Netscape back in the 90s. Sure, it's much better than IE... but that's not saying much!
- knellotron, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11A retrospective on *P*ersonal *C*omputing is PC biased? I am SHOCKED.
- TimDigg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I worked at a company last year that STILL uses Shiva and they even had a windows hierarchy...
Entry Level Employees - Windows 95
2-3 years - Windows 98
5+ years - Win 2k
CEO and top sales people - Windows XP
I'm not even kidding............are windows licenses really THAT expensive? or did I work for a cheap ass company? - rodan32, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I'm surprised I don't see some OS/2 in there.
- rodan32, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Windows 95 was huge. I remember beta testing it and being knocked off my feet. Of course, we were using Windows 3.11 at the time. . .
- newevilmind, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Commodore 64.
hello!?!?! - harshbarj, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7With only 25 possible choices they can't list everything in the history of computers. Heck if that's so I want to see magnetic memory listed. It was a huge step forward in it's day.
http://vt100.net/docs/misc/core/ - imperiousrex, on 10/12/2007, -8/+14Ooops. Me bad. Sorry about that. Still, where's the C-64?
- cyberdork, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Maybe they didn't include it because there used to be a distinct separation between personal computers (IBM PC, Macintosh) and home computers (Apple ][, C64 etc) in the 80s. Actually I was wondering how many diggers grew up with those good old home computers. Ruining joysticks with Decathlon and loading games from audio tapes ("Press Play on Tape").
I think I will have a look at my gaming magazines from the mid 80s now.. good times. - ggko, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Perhaps it didn't define personal computing, but the Apple // did define how a personal computer should *look*. It was the first targeted towards the general consumer, predecessors only appealed to geeks who cared about the circuits and chips rather than the case they came in. The Apple // delivered on both accounts, cool hardware, sleek case. (The PET is also floating around in my head, but according to WIkipedia, both are 1977 releases, no month indicated.)
- muddo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Unix was not designed to be run on personal computers. I could be wrong, but I believe Linux was the first variant targetted for the PC.
- ggko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Aside from being [insert prior computer] with better graphics and sound,
Just what did the C64 do to change the computer industry?
- The IBM PC removed the expensive-toy stigma from personal computers and "legitimized" them (in the business environment mostly.)
- The Macintosh redefined the user interface/experience for the general populace (yea, yea, Xerox Star...)
- The Compaq took the heavy desktop box and made it portable (in a tad less heavy box with a handle.)
- The Palm Pilot stripped the handheld down to just what you needed, rather than be a do-all (do all half-assed) device. - LegendarySock, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Yes and I also don't see why Nessus is on the list. Although its a great security tool, it doesn't seem to be a great candidate for "defining" a personal computer. This list needs some reworking.
- bobborries, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Hmmmmm. the first personal computer ever made was the the Apple ][. Me thinks it's a major omission.
- winnch, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Exactly. I'd put UNIX in general before Linux. Personally, I don't see how the Apple II is not also on there in addition to the Mac. The Apple II spured the consumer desktop market before the IBM PC. I'd argue IBM would not have gotten into the personal computer market save for the Apple II (at least not for many, many more years).
- cyberdork, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3And that's it?
They jump started the first major generation of software engineers!
Home computers were the start of the entire PC mass market. - zyntax, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Wow. Those slides are ugly. Ugly background, ugly font, distorted images.
My younger 7-yr-old sister can do a much better job at creating slides with Powerpoint. - antechinus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4The people at E-Week don't have a good sense of history. Perhaps they are too young.
Some of the seminal products in the last 25 years were:
- CP/M: without which there would not have been DOS. CP/M paved the way for the IBM PC.
- Leor Zolman's BDS C compiler: this product single handedly enabled the widespread take up of the C language as the dominant language for producing software for and on small computers.
- VisiCalc: the very first spreadsheet application. Without VisiCalc there would not have been Lotus 1-2-3.
- HyperCard: Defined RAD and hypermedia. - OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Win95? "It was huge"? You must not have been using anything besides Win 3.x at the time. I clearly remember seeing the Registry for the first time and thinking "This is going to suck." And it did!
I like their point about Visual Basic though. I think it is overlooked at how much influence that had in businesses adopting Windows. Normally you think of Internet Explorer and Office, but Visual Basic is what many businesses relied on for their custom apps.
Devs poo poo this "simple" and not very efficient language, but it was really doing the job back then that scripting and Java is doing today. - clickmyface, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I guess they forgot Tim Berners-Lee and Jobs's NeXT Computer. By 1990 they had developed and introduced the first of the follow: web browser (called WorldWideWeb), web editor, web server and the first web page of which all of this has followed.
I would say that is a fairly significant oversight. - colonelmustard, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Mac System 6 belongs somewhere in there, also the Newton came 3 years before the Palm Pilot kthx.
- JeremiahLBurns, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2We've all got our fav's that got missed. I agree with the comments about the C64...about Unix...I agree there ought to be something mentioned about high-end graphics processing because let's face it...it's a cornerstone of personal computing today and will continue to be.
But one that I've not seen anyone mention on here...one that has been missed...a piece of hardware...it spans OS's and applications...I guarantee you're using one right now...whether you're a gamer or casual user of your system...the mouse.
I mean, come on...I can still remember having my Tandy TL-2 at home running completely off of diskettes (essentially no HDD) and coming home from school telling my Mum about the new computers at school running "Windows". They had these cool things called a "mouse" that you use to control the applications. Well that was my first experience with mice anyway.
Face it - if you didn't have that little guy sitting next to you at your keyboard you'd be a little hard-pressed to do anything as efficiently on your computer. The mouse...groundbreaking in computer operation. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2can you spell "p e r s o n a l"? A UNIX mainframe isn't p e r s o n a l at all unlike Linux which was developed for the 386 PC.
- aleandro, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5But...but..my favorite is not on the list. This must mean that the list is BS...
- zboy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5It seems like there are some things missing on the list.
- DocDEB, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Ahh... The Radio Shack Color Computer. Hours spent typing in a maze adventure written in BASIC and published in Byte. The amazement of going from the audio tape storage to two (WOW) 5.25" floppy disk drives... random access baby. The excitement and frustration of moving up to a Radio Shack x186 machine (can't remember what they called it). Finally having enough dough to buy a MacPlus and an ImageWriter and exploring that. The Amiga (not the later ones... the first one). The first time with high speed cable intertubes access. Brings back memories when personal computing was new and amazing. A lot has changed in a very short time.
- illu45, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The lack of VisiCalc was a surprise to me, too. Also, I think the Apple II was a bigger innovation than the Mac.
- hankp98072, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I started selling PCs in 1983 and this list has some ridiculous stuff in it. No Novell Netware? No 10Base-T Ethernet? No I-Tunes? No 3DFX Voodoo? No PCI bus? IDE drives? CD-ROM? They must have let the interns write this article.
- siekosunfire, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4UNIX PDP-7 is too old to make it onto the list - since the list only goes back to 1981. SysV on the other hand isn't, and should have been included in the list. VB should have also been struck down and replaced with C .
@winnch
Without the IBM PC we wouldn't have:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5885351342753379583&q=8088 - cyberdork, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The home computer got a whole generation interested in computers and was the reason for many to become software developers. Don't forget that in the mid 80s nobody except for companies and the well-of could afford a PC or Mac.
But for the first time parents could buy their children a rather inexpensive computer which was not only a great toy but was for many the start of a professional career. - penguinboy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4The *most awkward* word I have ever read is awkwardest.
I agree though, that sentence doesn't make much sense.. but neither do alot of things on this list. - edtruckell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2while i understand they were going for some concepts that will have massive influence in the future, such as sniffers, pdf. one thing lacking is the entry level systems that introduced people to the world of computing. c64, spectrum, amstarad... and also the non pc/mac computers that gave people the entry level WIMP environment. a joint entry for the amiga/atari st would suffice. also i would have to agree that the apple ][ was a much bigger step than the original mac.
not great, but could have been much, much worse. at least i learned something from it. - dikfur, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This list is a joke.
People love to hate Microsoft, but come on. The Linux kernel and Red-Hat Linux beating out all Microsoft operating systems?
Where is Windows 3.0 or 3.1?
I believe the Commodore 64 has made a bigger contribution to Personal Computing than most of the items in this biased article.
No DIGG for you! - Oakes, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Maybe he meant the Apple ][? I can't find it anywhere, which is a surprising omission.
- dazeg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@haackers
PDF is an open file format. Non adobe readers exist. - ggko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I just remembered one thing about Compaq, quite possibly more significant than the portability aspect that the list focused on. Compaq opened the floodgates for clone machines, or rather, cheap clone machines.
Compaq also pushed IBM to put out more powerful desktops. IBM hated desktops, calling them "entry level" systems. PCs threatened their lucrative mainframe business model. But Compaq put out a '386 machine, so IBM had to keep up with the Joneses. - ManInPants, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Geeze - where the hell is Microsoft Bob????
- bipolarruledout, on 01/05/2009, -0/+1Windows 95 was amazing in that it added a ridiculous amount of new technologies while still running on nearly the same footprint as Windows 3.1x.... a feat Microsoft to this day hasn't really accomplished with new OS despite what they might claim. Sure 95 was a dog on less than 16mb but so was Windows 3.1x. Most people forget that you could actually run Windows 95 on 4mb and many, many people did and it was usable.... not that anyone enjoyed using a 4mb machine but memory at about $100 a megabyte was a pretty hard sell.
- bipolarruledout, on 01/05/2009, -0/+1I'm guessing they are very small and don't have an IT department.. unless you count the go to "tech guy." If this is really the case I can practically guarantee you that the company is in trouble or suffering in other core areas in a big way.
- bipolarruledout, on 01/05/2009, -0/+1System 6 and the Macintosh in general were revolutionary but I would have a lot more respect if system 7-9 didn't blow so badly. Apple should have had a modern memory protected OS out much, much sooner.
- bipolarruledout, on 01/05/2009, -0/+1One of the biggest reasons windows dominated so quickly is that Microsoft gave crazy support to their developers and even gave always their development kit in the beginning. IBM... not so much. The visual basic 3 runtime dll was nearly essential and was on practically every machine. Nearly every shareware app was written in visual basic and the amount of software was ridiculous in a time before the internet in any form was common. There were few other platforms that offered the ease of development for a GUI environment except for maybe hypercard if you can even count it as a development tool.
- bipolarruledout, on 01/05/2009, -0/+1256 colors was MORE than enough for porn.
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