1976 – The First Annual World Altair Computer Convention is held at the Airport Marina Hotel near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Bill Gates opens the convention with his position on software piracy.
Of course, it was all about the Altair 8800. MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) was a computer that came in kit form where you could build and improve upon it.
2000 – Apple concluded their iMac trade dress infringement against Daewoo and eMachines. The two companies made machines too similar to the iconic iMac look – the eMachines eOne computer and the Daewoo E-Power.
Apple was granted an injunction for the two machines. Daewoo didn’t even get their unibody computer form out to the public. eMachines took out all color, making it a single grey computer, which allowed them to continue with sales.
Apple changed the look of the iMac with the introduction of a flat panel in the iMac G4, ultimately discontinuing the G3 CRT computer in March of 2003.
1977 – Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak officially incorporate the Apple Computer Corporation. Mike Makkula jr. invests $250,000 in venture capital and becomes the first chairman of Apple.
They also decided to move operations of the company outside of Steve Jobs parent’s garage and rent a building in Coupertino. This was so they could improve production of the Apple II, which debuted on April 16,1977.
Of course, the third founder – Ronald Wayne – was not present as he sold his stake in the company earlier in 1976.
1982 – After a decent success of the Atari 400/800 line the company noticed the console was looking a little “old”. After all, the Atari 400 actually discolors upon UV light. The 400’s non-tactile keyboard was replaced with the 800’s raised key keyboard. Still, Atari felt they needed to bring this personal computer into the 80’s.Therefore, the 1200XL was born. It was a hybrid computer – using what they called “Sweet 16” – a byte language developed by Steve Wozniak. It was to manipulate 16-bit pointer data from an 8-bit system.
The Atari 1200XL also featured 64 KB of RAM and a redesigned cable port and keyboard layout. Unfortunately the community felt the 1200XL was poorly designed for certain ports were in the wrong place. There was also a color enhancement feature that couldn’t be used because it wasn’t connected to the monitor port.
2004 – It was an interesting day in the Tech community when we heard the news. IBM was getting out of the desktop and laptop markets and focus on server and infrastructure. They started by selling all their assets to Lenovo – China’s largest computer manufacturer. Lenovo wasn’t a household name in the US, but this pretty much changed that overnight.The deal was for $650 million in cash and $600 million in stock. Lenovo would also acquire $500 million in IBM liabilities, which would put the total to $1.75 billion. In return, Lenovo would instantly become the 3rd largest PC vendor with $12 billion in revenue, not to mention major markets in both China and the U.S.
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.
2006 – The book iWoz: from Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-founded Apple and had Fun Doing it. (**WHEW!**) came out. It was a book that was written to dispel some of the rumors and misconceptions on many different items.
Hungarian immigrant Andy Grove, along with Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce founded Intel in 1968, as Integrated Electronics Corporation. Intel was actually the trademark of a hotel – They ended up buying out the name.