I recently came across two nostalgic artifacts from personal computer history: the user guides for the Apple II and Windows 95. I’ve never touched an Apple II, but I remember aimlessly clicking around on a Windows 95 machine as a child. As I thumb through these user guides, I struggle to envision how an average adult would have reacted to personal computing devices during the early pioneering days of the industry. I try to imagine my present-self in the midst of the personal computing era of the 1970’s, 80’s, and 90’s. I hold the conviction that had I been an adult during this era, I probably would have viewed personal computers as nothing more than a frivolous hobby until the traction of computer spreadsheets in the 1980’s.

I learned to use computers innately in the 1990’s, and started programming in the late 2000’s. But it was in the 2010’s that I realized that the rise of personal computers can be described with a story-line that any Game of Thrones fan could appreciate. An interesting side note: George R.R. Martin writes with WordStar 4.0 on a DOS machine to this day.

UserGuides
User's Guide for Apple II and Windows 95

Prelude to Personal Computing

The miniaturization of computer hardware was the key driving force behind personal computing. The watershed moment was the invention of the transistor at Bell Labs in 1947. Large, clunky, and unreliable vacuum tubes ceased to be the limiting factor of computers since the introduction of transistors.

Approximately a decade later, complete electrical circuits were miniaturized by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments (1958) and Bob Noyce at Fairchild (1959). Both men developed integrated circuits using a semiconductor base with metal interconnects. In accordance with Moore’s Law, engineers were doubling the density of transistors in integrated circuit every two years. In 1971, the first microprocessor - named the Intel 4004 - came to existence. And in 1974, the iconic Intel 8080 microprocessor was introduced.

Equipped with the Intel 8080 CPU, the Altair 8800 computer kit built by MITS was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics in January 1975. The kit appealed to hobbyists, and kicked off the age of personal computers. Within the subsequent decade, personal computers would take center-stage of the world. Players like Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Xerox, Compaq, and Commodore would clash and pivot around each other in the race to gain market share. With hindsight, we can appreciate the compelling underdog stories of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, which have been the basis for several books and movies.

Apple II

Apple Computers didn’t start as anything more than a few college-aged kids assembling printed circuit boards in 1976. Each circuit board, named the Apple I, gave serious hobbyists a starting point to build their own computer. The business was profitable, but Steve Wozniak had a vision for an integrated computer that could be hooked up to a keyboard and television. Coincidentally, Steve Jobs found a new market for building a more complete computer kit that software-oriented hobbyists could immediately start playing with.

Steve Wozniak’s vision was prototyped as the Apple II, and it even had the ability to display colored graphics. With speculation of high production costs, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak approached Atari and Commodore with the intention of selling the rights of the Apple II over to a larger company. Atari declined, and Commodore went to work on creating a copy-cat product. The hopes of immediately cashing in on the Apple II were dashed. The two co-founders of Apple Computers focused on creating a marketable, elegant, and user-friendly product. In addition to the colored graphics, the Apple II would eventually tout a switching power supply, optimized motherboard, and a simple plastic case. In 1977, the Apple II was introduced at the West Coast Computer Faire. The fair firmly put Apple Computers on the map.

Competition

IBM was a titan during the early computing age; it was the prevalent manufacturer of main-frame computers used by big businesses. By 1979, the company had taken notice of Apple’s success in the emerging personal computer industry. In an effort to enter the market quickly, IBM decided to make heavy use of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components for the development of the IBM PC. Microsoft was initially contacted for the licensing of both BASIC and an operating system. Microsoft did not have an operating system of its own at the time, and referred IBM to Gary Kildall who developed the popular CP/M operating system. After an initial fallout between IBM executives and Gary Kildall’s wife, Microsoft hastily offered to develop an ad-hoc operating system for the IBM PC.

IBM would be one of many companies to successfully enter the personal computer industry. Microsoft quietly built an empire throughout the 1980’s as they licensed software to nearly every computer manufacturer on the market. After a fallout with IBM in 1990, Microsoft took a big leap to take charge of the personal computer industry themselves.

Windows 95

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had been in close contact throughout the early 1980’s. Apple was licensing software from Microsoft, and allowing Microsoft’s engineers to get an inside look at Apple’s emerging technology. Much of this emerging technology had been “stolen”, as Steve Jobs would phrase it, from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Xerox management failed to appreciate the breakthrough work being done at its research center in Palo Alto, and gave Apple an inside look at Xerox PARC’s revolutionary technologies such as graphical user interfaces (GUIs), object-oriented programming, and computer networking. Apple immediately pivoted and prioritized the development of a GUI for the Macintosh. Steve Jobs guided his engineers to develop tremendously innovative products, but his underestimation of Bill Gates in the 1980’s proved to be a costly mistake. While Apple was squarely focused on beating IBM, Bill Gates had been rapidly copying Apple’s latest designs into the Windows operating system.

The relationship between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates soured after the announcement of Windows 1.0 operating system. Windows jumped ahead of Apple, and continued to gain market share for the next two decades. Five years after the Windows 3.0 launch in 1990, the iconic Windows 95 operating system would establish Microsoft in an entirely new echelon in the personal computer industry.

Sources

This post morphed away from the typical nature of a personal blog post, and crept into the territory of a brief research paper. Although I did not make any citations within this article, I am providing a list of sources I referred to:

  1. Bob Cringely’s 3-part series: Triumph of the Nerds
  2. Computer History 101 by Bestofmedia Team
  3. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
  4. The Evolution of Personal Computing Infographic by Microsoft