2005 – Steve Jobs spoke in front of the masses at the WWDC announcing that Apple will switch their processors from PowerPC to Intel. He then showed off the Mac OS X running on aPentium 4 CPU. The reasoning was that PowerPC chips took too much power to run and also ran hotter than an Intel chip.
1967 – Video game developer Ralph Baer plays the first two-player video game. Fox and Hounds was a game where the fox (a red dot) was chased by the hounds (white dots). The controller were two knobs – horizontal and vertical. You would see how long you could avoid the hounds.
From his own website: 7 May 1967 – Played first two-player video game (I lost!)
This was part of a series of more complex video games including shooting games, handball and Ping Pong. Ultimately leading to the Magnavox Odyssey TV game system in 1972.
1984 – Apple introduces the Apple IIc, their answer to a portable machine. It weighed 7 1/2 lbs and featured a 1.023MHz CPU and 128 KB RAM. $1,295. The device device had a built-in floppy and peripheral expansion ports. This was a closed system – no expansion slots to plug in cards. It was deemed an appliance computer, which meant was ready to go when you pulled it out of the box.
1999 – AMD releases the AMD K6-III Processor in speeds of 400 and 450 MHz. It would feature a 64KB Level 1 cache and a 256KB Level 2 cache. The 3DNow! graphics instructions would be supported, along with Direct X 6.0. There were 21.3 million transistors on the 0.25 micron process wafer.
2005 – Steve Jobs spoke in front of the masses at the WWDC announcing that Apple will switch their processors from PowerPC to Intel. He then showed off the Mac OS X running on aPentium 4 CPU. The reasoning was that PowerPC chips took too much power to run and also ran hotter than an Intel chip.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for June 6
1967 – Video game developer Ralph Baer plays the first two-player video game. Fox and Hounds was a game where the fox (a red dot) was chased by the hounds (white dots). The controller were two knobs – horizontal and vertical. You would see how long you could avoid the hounds.
From his own website: 7 May 1967 – Played first two-player video game (I lost!)
This was part of a series of more complex video games including shooting games, handball and Ping Pong. Ultimately leading to the Magnavox Odyssey TV game system in 1972.
Baer passed away on December 8, 2014.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 7
2005 – Steve Jobs spoke in front of the masses at the WWDC announcing that Apple will switch their processors from PowerPC to Intel. He then showed off the Mac OS X running on aPentium 4 CPU. The reasoning was that PowerPC chips took too much power to run and also ran hotter than an Intel chip.
2011 – It was also a sad day, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave what was to become his last keynote at WWDC. He introduced us to iCloud – a new service so you do not need a computer to connect your iPad or iPhone. iOS got an upgrade to version 5, and Jobs announced Mac OSX Lion. Also announced was iTunes Match, a way to keep your music in the cloud.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for June 6
1997 – Intel changes the processor game a bit with the Pentium II processor. Starting at speed of 200 MHz / 66 MHz bus, the proc had a new design. What was called “Slot 1” processor, Intel got away from the pin architecture to a card slot. You would insert the PII to the slot just like you would memory, an ISA or PCI card.
What was Code-named Klamath, the processor incorporated 7.5 million transistors using 0.35 micron process technology, contained a 512kB Level-2 external cache, performs at 613 MIPS (300 MHz), and is able to address 64GB of memory. MMX instruction was included on the processor. Prices started at $636 for 233 MHz, $775 for 266 MHz and US$1981 for 300 MHz).
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 7