1955 – William Gates Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates has a son. William Gates III was born in Seattle, WA. Bill Gates, of course, went on to start Microsoft. Bill was CEO of Microsoft until he retired in 2008. In 2000, he started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Interestingly enough, 30 years later in 1985, Bill Gates put Microsoft up for IPO. That’s a birthday present…
1999 – Dataquest, a company that monitors PC sales, has shown a trend that Dell had maintained a 5% lead over Apple for 2 consecutive quarters. Therefore, Dell had become #1 in computer sales for 1999. Of course, a recent report mentioned that Apple could now buy Dell if it so inclined.
1995 – The Federal Networking council officially coins the term Internet: the Council’s Committee on Computing, Information and Communications (CCIC) created the FNC on Sept. 20th, 1995 to act as a forum for networking collaborations among Federal agencies.From nitrd.gov
Resolution: The Federal Networking Council (FNC) agrees that the following language reflects our definition of the term “Internet. “Internet refers to the global information system that – (i) is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons; (ii) is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and (iii) provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein.
2011 – Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson was released on Kindle and iBookstore, with a full release at Midnight. The book was planned to be released a lot later. However due to Job’s health, they pushed it up as much as possible.
2001– Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod. Little did we know what that really meant for not only Apple, but also the change in technology. You were able to get either a 5 GB or 6 GB model. The original iPod connected via firewire and was touted to hold 1000 songs – most people’s entire music library.iPod actually was a reference from 2001: a Space Odyssey. The trademark was already taken by another company, but the product – an Internet Kiosk – was discontinued by 2001, so Apple finally received the Trademark in 2005.
From the Keynote to the iPod event, Steve Jobs said:
The choice we made was music. Now why music? Well, we love music. And it’s always good to do something you love. More important, music is a part of everyone’s life. EVERYONE. Music has been around forever, it will always be around – this is not a speculative market. And because it’s a part of everyone’s life, it’s a very large target market; all around the world. It knows no boundries.
Interestingly enough, in this whole new digital music revolution, there is no market leader. There are small companies like creative and sonic blue, and then there’s large companies like Sony that haven’t had a hit yet. They have found no recipe yet for digital music. We think not only can we find the recipe, but we think the Apple brand is going to be fantastic because people trust the Apple brand to get their great digital electronics from.
1985– Intel released the 80386 DX processor. The 275,000 transistor chip was a big jump from the 20 MHz 286. It contained the ability to address up to 4 GB of memory and had a bigger instruction set. The chip would be released, but most people wouldn’t see the processor until Spring of 1986Interesting enough – the 386 chip was finally discontinued in the Fall of 2007. The chip was used after personal computer days to power many embedded systems.
1985– IBM announced, with co-developer Texas Instruments, the Token Ring network along with PC Network software – six months ahead of schedule. The Token Ring only did network transmission speed of 4 Mbps (It didn’t hit speeds of 16 Mbps until 1989), and worked over standard phone wiring.
Using terminated BNC cable, Token Ring created just that; a Ring connection that talks in one direction.
The standard was also known as the IEEE 802.5 protocol. Token Ring further developed to run 100 Mbps.
Eventually, Ethernet overtook Token Ring because it was cheaper to install, even though it was a better protocol than Ethernet.
Did/Does Cable TV Use Token Ring?
Cable companies use Fiber and Coaxial cable to bring Internet and TV into a home. The coaxial cable is similar looking to the cable used in some Token Ring networks, but the two technologies are different.
Some Token Ring cards did use a similar cable, but also used IBM’s hermaphroditic connector, and DB-9 connector. Some networks also used an RJ-45 or RJ-11 connector with the Twisted pair configuration.
1991– The second lawsuit of Apple vs. Apple was settled: Apple computers vs. Apple records (the Beatles label). The suit was about producing music. Of course there was a fine line between the lawsuit – after all Apple Computers is in the computer business and Apple Records was in the music making business.
Nonetheless, the record label felt that Apple computer was starting to infringe on their turf, so they decided to make the attack. This issue went on a few times, later in the form of iTunes and the iPod.
1997 – Gil Amelio just was just removed as CEO of Apple. People were calling for Steve Jobs to return, but others thought that would be a bad investment. At a Garner Symposium, Michael Dell was asked what he would do with Apple. He came back in saying:
“I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.” – Michael Dell
Had Apple done that, we might see a completely different market out there. Then again, we might just see the OS X as the NeXT OS on a regular PC – with NeXTpods and NeXTpad (instead of iPad).Steve Jobs had always run a war of words with Dell. However, this comment could have actually been a fuel for Jobs fire. In fact, in 2006, Jobs sent an email to employees after Apple surpassed Dell in market share. It said:
Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn’t perfect at predicting the future. Based on today’s stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. – Steve Jobs