1984 – Apple announced they would split up the Cupertino based company into three divisions – Apple II (handling all Apple III computers as well), the Apple 32 division (Lisa, and new Macintosh line of computers) and Accessory Products (Printers, keyboards, etc).
Delbert Yocam led the Apple II group which Steve Jobs would take care of Apple 32. Michael Muller would lead the accessories.
Apple did a lot of reorganizing, including Michael Spindler to VP of the European group and William Campbell to VP of sales in the US.
In 1984, they also introduced the Macintosh, with a groundbreaking Superbowl ad. At this time, Sculley and Jobs were co-working on a better Apple computer, but that would turn sour where Jobs resigned in 1985 to start NeXT Computers.
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Related articles
Mistrial in WordPerfect antitrust case against Microsoft (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
January 15: Ralph Baer Patents First Video Game (dayintechhistory.com)
Gateway computer makes a bold move and purchases rival eMachines for 50 million shares of Gateway common stock and $30 million in cash.
eMachines was a company founded by Lap Shun Hui along with South Korean companies Korea Data Systems, and TriGem. Their strategy was to put a PC in every house starting at $399.
These computers housed lower-end processors, and Windows OS – enough for the average person to get on and get online.
eMachines had previously purchased Free-PC; the company that offered free computers in exchange for pop-up ads while browsing.
Gateway finalized the acquisition in March. Wayne Inouye was placed as CEO, and eMachines stayed a separate company.
Ultimately, Gateway computers was purchased by Acer computers. The eMachines brand was ultimately discontinued on Jan 17, 2013.
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Atari starts using the slogan “Innovative Leisure”
1984 – One billion points on one quarter. That was the reason for Tim McVey Day. At the Twin Galaxies arcade back on January 17th, Tim scored 1,000,042,270 points on one quarter to the game “Nibbler” – a hybrid Pac-Man and Centipede game.
McVey got his name in Computer Games Magazine for it, and so he became the first video gamer to get a civic day in his honor.
His record was broken eight months later by Enrico Zanetti.
Of course, this event gets overshadowed by the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing by Timothy McVeigh.
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Yahoo buys Geocities
Radio Shack chooses Compaq over IBM
Ann Marie Linscott uses Craigslist to hire a hitman
2006 – Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was a game that changed perception of the industry. The grit and cruelty of the GTA franchise has not only brought controversy, its also brought the fans.
One bit of controversy was the “Hot Coffee” minigame within GTA. Hot Coffee was a euphemism for sex. In the minigame, the main character and the girlfriend initiated in coitus, which got a lot of parents upset.
The Hot Coffee minigame was disabled by Take-Two, but people found ways around the block. This minigame prompted a re-rating to Adult, ultimately getting pulled from many game shelves.
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1981 – While getting this up to 88 miles per hour doesn’t take you back in time, it was still a cool car to have. The First production Delorean DMC-12 was built. A prototype was made back in 1976 and all Deloreans were made in Ireland.
9,000 Deloreans were made before financial issues got to the company in 1983. A revival was attempted and announcements of an all-electric Delorean (with prototype), but as of this point has not come out of Vaporware.
There is one gold-plated Delorean in Reno, NV. I also got to experience the original “Back to the Future” Delorean at CES 2014 (video below).
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1983 – at an introductory price of $9995, Apple introduces the Lisa computer – the first computer with a GUI (Graphical User Interface). The computer featured a 5 MHz 68000 microprocessor, 1 MB RAM, 12″ monochrome monitor, dual 5.25″ 860 KB floppy drives, a 5 MB hard drive and more.
Lisa cost Apple Computer US$50 million to develop. The software for it cost Apple Computer US$100 million to develop.“Lisa” is an acronym for Local Integrated Software Architecture.
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2012 – Yahoo! had some turbulent times from 2007 when founder Jerry Yang was CEO. Of course the big debacle being the Microsoft bid, which took over 9 months to settle with Carl Icahn being a major instigator.
Add to that the 2007 incident of the arrest of Shi Tao and Yahoo’s stance. Tao was arrested for divulging trade secrets and Yang put out a statement saying “We have to comply with Chinese Law”.
During this whole time, Yahoo shares were declining. Yang was replaced in 2009 by Carol Bartz, but remained on the board until 2012 when Yang fully resigned from all positions in the company.
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Other Historical Events in Technology
The infamous “Apple Ad” shows up in movie theatres
1956 – The U.S. Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) was disclosed to the public. SAGE is a computer that connected hundreds of radar stations in the US and Canada as a one-stop monitoring of the sky.
SAGE was commissioned and developed by MIT.
The project started in 1950 and SAGE became fully operational on June 26, 1958 (DC-01). By 1980, many SAGE sites were fully dismantled as other airborne detection systems took its place.
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