I hated history - While in high school, I had no clue why in the world would any sane person in this world would be interested in learning the past when the future seems so exciting. Why in the world spend time look back when you can look ahead and create exciting things for the future?

 

I don’t know if I’m growing old or what, I'm surprising myself by being interested in the history of computing, starting in the year 1976 of course - ok I know that’s much earlier than I was even born - but hey - getting to know  what Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were up to then - sure suddenly has begun to Interest me - the making of the worlds first "real" (some tend to call it "personal" - but I prefer calling it "real") computer that had a Monitor came out back then. Here's a take on its configuration

 

CPU: MOS Technology 6502
CPU Speed: 1 MHz
Bus Speed: 1 MHz
Data Path: 8 bit
Onboard RAM: 8 kB
Maximum RAM: 32 kB
VRAM: 1 kB
Max Resolution: 60.05 Hz, 40x24 char (reminder - its Chars not Pixels ;-)

 

All that for a bargain price of just $666.66 (A little devil of a price or what?) ;-)

 

IBM never would have ever thought this puny 1Mhz machine had the potential to destroy its dominance, I really admire Steve Jobs vision. www.apple-history.com has a whole bunch of very very interesting facts on Apple computers - here's a link to a print ad from a 1976 newspaper for the Apple I (courtesy - www.apple-history.com).

 

Apple's controversial 1984 commercial and the launch of the Apple Macintosh is a historic (cant believe i said that) moment - the dawn of the GUI era. But hey it was a bit too late for Apple though - Bill Gates already had incorporated the GUI in Windows 1.0 - yeup pretty much a more important historic moment - the first version of Windows ever. I have Windows 1.0 running on a Virtual PC on my laptop, it cant even detect my mouse ;-) or hey wait a min - did it use a mouse? The after years lead to a down fall of Apple and a huge rise for Microsoft and the IBM "clone" PCs - then later came to be called Intel Pentium "clone" PCs - or simply still Windows PCs :-)

 

Just like how the GUI changed computing forever, I firmly believe that we stand today at the threshold of yet another breakthrough in computing. The world will change forever; the next wave of computing is all set to sweep across, the Services wave is here to stay. Look forward to www.live.com on how it can change your world.

 

Hey maybe History isn't all that bad - after all “today” is the “history of the future”... and darn been thinking about "History" a bit too much these days - I just hope it’s not about me getting older ;-).