1993 – Microsoft released another Operating System to focus the business. NT 3.1 was the first release in the NT series. NT stood for “N-Ten,” the codename of the Intel i860 XR processor for which NT was initially developed.The NT kernal was different than the Windows 3.x version. It implemented the Win32 API, or 32 bit programming. Windows NT also was for the business. It didn’t push multimedia like it’s home counterpart.
1991 – IBM’s Jim Cannavino met with John Sculley of Apple. They worked out a deal and signed a sharing agreement. It would allow Mac to integrate with IBM enterprise systems. It would also allow Apple to use the PowerPC with their RISC based Mac to work together.Power PC stands for Performance Optimization with Enhanced RISC. It is also known as PPC. The RISC architecture processor was first meant for personal computers, yet embedded machines adopted them for use. Computers such as the AmigaOS 4, POSIX, BeOS all used PowerPC. Even Windows machines used PowerPC for their NT 3.51 and NT 4.0 OS.
Power PC came in 32 and 64 bit versions. Sony Playstation, Nintendo Wii and XBox 360 all have PowerPC inside.
On this day, we basically crunch numbers. This is where you will see companies let you know how much of their products are out there. How many copies of Windows have been sold, how many PC‘s were bought – how much shareware has been downloaded. These stats will drive how the next year is to be written. Then, they blank the numbers and start the crazy cycle all over again.The majority of the podcast will go over these statistics. But don’t worry – there is still a lot of other history to go through. But it’s still cool to know that in 1981, 250 million floppy disk drives were shipped to date…
1991 – What was first a Multimedia add-on for System 6, Quicktime has spent 21 years being Apples’ proprietary player. The original version contained graphics, animation and Video codecs – What was refered to as “Road Pizza”. Since then Quicktime had developed on both Mac and Windows sides (starting in 1992). The current version is called Quicktime X but there are signs the technology is either moving a new direction or possibly retired.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for December 2
1993 – Microsoft releases the OS Windows for Workgroups 3.11 – which is the last big release before Windows 95. It was built to connect better with Windows NT for businesses. It also had updates to improve stability and system performance.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for November 8
1984– The Osbourne Vixen debuted. Inside was a ZILOG Z80a processor, with 64k RAM and the CP/M OS. Other programs included Wordstar, Supercalc and M-Basic. All this for $1,498.The Encore was also introduced. It was developed by Vadem Inc for $2,195. The computer was an MS-DOS computer with modem and four icon keys. phone, clock, disk and calculator.
2001 – Microsoft released Windows XP Home, Pro for retail. XP used the NT Kernel and merged the consumer desktop OS with the business desktop OS. XP was code-named “Whistler”.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 25
1994 – Microsoft releases the second version of the Windows NT OS – Windows NT 3.5 in two flavors; NT Workstation and NT Server. This replaced NT 3.1 and was the first Windows NT version to have a Server and Workstation version. NT 3.5 integrated Winsock and TCP/IP support for dial-up and networking. NT 3.5 also initiated FTP and LPR printer support. The VFAT option also allowed for naming conventions up to 255 characters.
This version was a problematic one, especially since it couldn’t install on a machine with a Pentium processor inside. Therefore, NT 3.5.1 was released in 1995 to supplement.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for September 21
2008 – It was hailed as a “Mistake” on their blog. With that, Google Chrome is released in Beta on Windows machines. The new browser takes a lot of people by surprise as this was a pretty secretive project – that is, until the comic was released. Google then blogged about it saying:
At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit “send” a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for everyone, we’ve now made the comic publicly available — you can find it here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.
So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.
The browser was suppose to be announced on Sept 3rd. The download was available to the general public on Sept 2nd.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for September 1