Text 9. The IBM PC and The Apple Macintosh

Fig.6. IBM PC

IBM has had an enormous influence on the computers that we use today. In the late 1970′s IBM developed a personal computer known as the PC. It went on to be released to the public in August of 1981. The IBM PC grabbed the attention of the public. Since the IBM PC was based on the shelf parts and had an open architecture, many businesses would be able to support and even start to build computers of their own.

The first IBM PC had a 4.77 MHZ Intel 8088 microprocessors, 16 KB of RAM, two 160K floppy drives and even an optional color monitor.

While the IBM PC definitely took off, not only for consumers, but small and medium businesses, Apple computers still continued to be dominant in the market. In 1984, the Apple Macintosh was released. The Apple Macintosh had one of the first GUI (graphical user interfaces) that made computing much more attractive and easy to use. In addition, the Apple Macintosh also had an 8 MHZ processor, 128K of RAM, a floppy disk drive and a monitor, it went into production from January of 1984 to October of 1985 and cost around $2,500. However, it lacked in memory and was difficult to use with its one single floppy disk drive.