Altair 8800: The start of microcomputer revolution

An Air Force trained engineer who had designed electronics for Christmas window displays, Henry Edward "Ed" Roberts and a colleague in 1969 founded MITS Inc., in Albuquerque, N.M. The company's name was an acronym for Micro Telemetry Instrumentation Systems; it initially built equipment for model-rocketry hobbyists.

With several years of experience producing electronics kits for hobbyists, Ed Roberts decided to design a small, affordable computer with the Intel 8080 microprocessor at its core. He called it Altair 8800. His daughter suggested the name based on a star that had also featured as a destination in a Star Trek episode.

The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured on its cover a box with switches and blinking lights called the Altair 8800, considered by many to be the first personal computer.

Ed Roberts intended to sell only a few hundred to hobbyists, but he was surprised when he sold thousands in the first month. The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a de facto standard in the form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was Micro-Soft's founding product—Altair BASIC.

The Altair garnered 5,000 orders in its first year, with the base model selling for $397.

Some of the first software that was created for the Altair 8800 was a BASIC interpreter created by Paul Allen and Bill Gates, while they were working for MITS.
Altair 8800: The start of microcomputer revolution

Macintosh computer

In 1979 the Macintosh personal computer existed only as the pet idea of Jef Raskin, a veteran of the Apple II team, who had proposed that Apple Computer Inc. make a low-cost "appliance"-type computer. Raskin wanted to create a computer for the average consumer, which could be operated without spending much time reading a manual.

Named in honor of Raskin's favorite edible apple (the McIntosh), the Macintosh had been in the works since 1979, so when Jobs joined the team it was already well advanced.

From the beginning, the Macintosh project was powered by the dedicated drive of two key players on the project team. For Burrell Smith, who designed the Macintosh digital hardware, the project represented an opportunity for a relative unknown to demonstrate outstanding technical talents.

For Steven Jobs, the 29-year-old chairman of Apple and he had a clear vision of the product from the beginning.

In 1984, Apple released the Macintosh, which provided advanced graphics capabilities and a revolutionary Graphical User Interface.

Macintosh is a platform of desktop computers targeting the home, educational, and professional markets. Included in this line are the iMac, which helped Apple recapture success in the personal computer market; the Mac mini, a tiny desktop computer targeting price-conscious consumers; and the Mac Pro, a series of high-performance machines.

The original Mac was the first affordable personal computer to feature a menu-driven, graphical user interface. It also came with a built-in monitor, keyboard, mouse, and a more compact 3.5" floppy drive.

Mouse was developed by Douglas Englebart of the Stanford Research Institute, the point-and-click interface replaced the cumbersome commands of MS-DOS with an intuitive, elegant means of interaction.

Between 1984 and 1985, Apple's net income fell 17% due to poor follow-up sales of the Macintosh computer. Jobs was forced out of the company, while CEO John Sculley, who was previously brought into the company by Jobs, assumed control. Later risky ventures such as the Newton PDA caused market share and stock price to drop at an alarming rate.
Macintosh computer

Dell Computer

In 1983, Michael Dell was a college freshman, who upgraded IBM-compatible PCs in his spare time in his dorm room at the University of Texas at Austin. Dell quickly realized that instead of upgrading older machines, he could buy components and assemble the entire PC more cheaply by himself. Then, he would sell the PC with his name on it directly to customers at a 15% discount to established brands. He built PCs to users’ specifications.

Dell soon started advertising in trade magazines and orders kept coming. Within a year, Dell had to drop out of college to attend to his business full time and on May 3, 1984, his dorm-room business officially became Dell Computer Corporation.

He shifted to assembling and marketing its own brand of PCs in 1985. In the first few years the company provided customers with a 24-hour hotline for complaints and guaranteed 24- to 48- hour shipment of replacement parts.

In 1987, Dell became the first PC company to offer next-day, on-site service. International expansion began with a subsidiary in the United Kingdom. Dell went public in 1988.

Dell released its first notebook computer, the 316LT, in 1989. The following years were marked by advancements in Dell’s mobile technology.
Dell Computer

Apple II

Stephen Wozniak designed the Apple II with eight expansion slots on the motherboard. These slots have direct access to the machine’s data and address buses and could be the machine’s saving grace.

Apple hired some marketing men including Nolan Bushnell, who founded Atari. Mike Markkula invested $250, 000 and became the chairman of the company.

The revolutionary $1,298 Apple II was introduce under the badge of the new logo during the first West Coast Computer Fair held at San Francisco Civic Auditorium on April 17, 1977, and it took the fledging computer industry by storm.

In the years 1980 to 83, when the Apple II was the largest-selling computer in the world, the company didn’t advertise it once. Everybody else who was making products for it was advertising for it.
Apple II

Computer Apple 1

On April 1, 1976, two college dropouts, Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak, founded the Apple Computer Company. Jobs had left his potion at Atari, and Woz quit his job at Hewlett-Packard to work for Apple full item. They began operating out of garage building the Apple I, which some claim to be the first personal computer to be sold as a fully assembled package.

In the early 1970s, before the introduction of the Apple I, the personal computing products available in the market had limited appeal. They were generally sold by small electronics firms and individual hobbyists through clubs.

The concept of commercial software barely existed in 1976. Companies like Apple made their money from hardware sales.

Nine programs were available in cassette: BASIC, Mastermind, Lunar Laner, Blackjack, Hamurabi, Mini-Startrek, 16K-Startrek, Dis-Assembler an Extended Monitor. Apple sold these programs for $5 apiece to encourage interest in the Apple I.

The Apple I was not a big success. It had 8K RAM, a low resolution black and white display, a keyboard port and a monitor program. Apple hired some marketing folks, Nolan Bushnell, who founded Atari, Mike Markkula, who had cut his teeth in the technology business as Intel’s Marketing Manager, invested $250, 000 and became the chairman of the company.
Computer Apple 1

History of search engine of Yahoo!

Yahoo! was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo, both electrical engineering students at Stanford. They started their guide in a campus trailer in February 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet.

Initially the name was “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” but was renamed as Yahoo in April 1994. “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” provided a directory to other sites, and recognized their site by categories such as business education, entertainment, etc., all with dozens of other subcategories.

Seeking to emphasize their easy going, anti-bureaucratic style, they name their company Yahoo! Yahoo! is short for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."

As Yahoo!’s popularity, grew, Yang and Filo dropped out of Stanford to devote themselves full-time to their venture. In April 1995, Sequoia Capital agreed to fund Yahoo! with an initial investment of nearly $2 million. Yahoo! launched a highly-successful IPO in April 1996 with a total of 49 employees.

On 8 March 1997, Yahoo! acquired online communications company Four11. Four11's webmail service, Rocketmail, became Yahoo! Mail. In December 2002, Yahoo! acquired Inktomi. Today, Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet communications, commerce and media company that offers a comprehensive branded network of services to more than 345 million individuals each month worldwide.

Yahoo! makes money mostly through advertising, and its advertising base includes many of the world’s blue chip companies.

The company also provides online business and enterprise services designed to enhance the productivity and Web presence of Yahoo!'s clients. According to Web traffic analysis companies, the domain yahoo.com attracted at least 1.575 billion visitors annually by 2008.

By the February 2015, it had dropped to the third largest search engine in the United States, handling 12.8 percent of the search queries. Google had 64.5 percent of the searches and Bing, 19.8 percent.
History of search engine of Yahoo!