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There are 1 billion window-based computers. technology is an important part of our lives. -Noah.s
Magnetic tape was great because you didn’t have to insert a physical piece of paper and they could also store way more, so that saved a lot of paper.
In 1971, IBM switched over to using floppy disks, and they became commercially available the next year. Floppy disks came in a variety of sizes, so people absolutely
loved them, and they became hugely popular and were used for years.
It’s 1975 now. Floppy disks have completely taken over the market, and magnetic tape has evolved into cassette tapes, which are still sticking around. SONY attempted to change that, but was unsuccessful despite the fact that it produced a better image. A 19-year old college dropout named Bill Gates read an article about the Altair 8800. After reading the article, he decides he has to create a BASIC interpreter for the computer
Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen had already started a hardware company called Traf-O-Data in 1972. Gates was 16 and Allen was 19. The two lacked experience in creating hardware and the project was a disaster.
The BASIC interpreter would allow the computer to interpret BASIC, a computer programming language. They did not own an Altair, so they had to create an emulator that ran on a minicomputer. The interpreter worked and became a mild success. In 1976, the product began distribution and the developer of the Altair, MITS, partnered with Gates and Allen. Allen became a MITS employee and the partnership deal was called Micro-Soft.
Meanwhile, two programmers named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started a company called Apple in their garage. Their first computer was called the Apple Computer I. The Apple I was a moderate success in the computer market. Next year, they created the Apple II. The Apple II was a huge success and launched Apple’s popularity. The Apple II originally used cassette tapes, but moved over to floppy disks.
So what made the Apple II so popular? The answer was VisiCalc. VisiCalc was an old spreadsheet program launched in 1979. VisiCalc was also a huge success. That same year, Apple launched the Apple II Plus. By this point, they were a proper company with employees and a campus that was not Steve Jobs’ garage. The Apple II Plus was one of the only computers to run on Apple’s first operating system, Apple DOS. Apple DOS only lasted 5 years before being replaced by Pro DOS.
Going back to Microsoft, in 1980, Microsoft made their own operating system called Xenix, which was a spin-off of Unix. Xenix never became all that popular, but their next operating system was a success. The next year, Microsoft created MS-DOS. MS-DOS was the old operating system that most school computers ran on in the 80s and the 90s.
Noah.-tech