Part II

The IBM Corporation, the world's dominant computer maker, entered the new market in 1981, when it introduced the IBM Personal Computer. The IBM PC was only slightly faster than other desktop machines, but it had about 10 times their memory capacity. The IBM PC had one or two floppy disk drives and a color monitor. Intel Corporation's 16-bit 8088 microprocessor was selected as the CPU for the computer, and for software IBM turned to Microsoft Corporation. Until then, the small software company had concentrated mostly on computer languages, but Bill Gates and Paul Allen found it impossible to miss this opportunity. They bought a small operating system from another company and turned it into PC-DOS (or MS-DOS, or just DOS, for disk operating system). The IBM PC became the world's most popular personal computer, and both its microprocessor and its operating system became industry standards.

In 1982, a firm called Compaq Computer Corp. introduced a portable computer that was compatible with the IBM PC. These first portables resembled sewing machines when they were closed and weighed about 13 kg – at that time a true lightweight. Compatibility with the IBM PC meant that any software or peripherals, such as printers, developed for use with the IBM PC could also work on the Compaq portable. The machine was immediately in demand.

Compaq was not only successful but showed other firms how to compete with IBM. Quickly thereafter, many computer firms began offering IBM PC clones³. Rival machines that used Intel microprocessors and MS-DOS became known as “IBM compatibles” if they tried to compete with IBM on the basis of greater computing power or memory and “IBM clones” if they competed simply on the basis of low price.

In 1983, Apple introduced Lisa, the first personal computer with a graphical user interface. The Lisa's GUI made computers easy and fun to use and eliminated the need to type in complex commands. The Lisa was followed by the famous Macintosh PC, which was developed in 1984 and proved extremely successful. (See Figure 3) It was based on the 68000 microprocessor manufactured by Motorola. The Macintosh was particularly useful for desktop publishing because it could lay out text and graphics on the display screen, as they would appear on the printed page.

 

Figure 3