Eight turning points in tech history
Neil McAllister | Sunday, 15 June 2008
Imagine how different the computing world would be if IBM had used proprietary chips in the original PC, rather than off-the-shelf components. The PC clone market would never have happened, and IBM, rather than Microsoft, might have emerged as the leading company of the computer revolution.
Or if Steve Jobs had never taken his fateful tour of Xerox PARC? Had he not seen PARC's GUI in action he might never have created the Macintosh. And then where would Windows be today?
In every industry there are key milestones that mark a change in the course of history, and the fast-moving technology field has more than its share. Presented here are 15 turning points that shaped the computing world as we know it today, including some that still continue to influence its direction for years to come.
In the late 1990s, Apple was in bad shape. Its image was tarnished, its market share was declining, and Windows NT and Windows 95 had outpaced the aging Mac OS in features and technology.
Apple's top-secret new OS, code-named Copland, could restore Apple's technological lead -- if it ever shipped. After 10 years of development, it had swelled into an overambitious boondoggle.
In 1996, with no release date for Copland in sight, then-CEO Gil Amelio made one of the toughest decisions in Apple's history. Abandoning the Copland money-pit, he acquired upstart NeXT, which not only had a Unix-based operating system that could be modified to run on the Mac but also Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as its CEO.
Reunited, Jobs proceeded to reinvent Apple. His successes included not just Mac OS X, but the iMac, the iPod, and a winning line of servers, workstations, and portables. The decision did lead to Amelio's departure, but the legacy of his NeXT move is a radically different Apple than the one he joined.
Xerox and the dawn of free software: Consider this: In 1980, programmers at MIT's artificial intelligence lab, blessed with one of Xerox's newest laser printers, had to run upstairs to check whether a print job was finished because the machine had been installed on the wrong floor.
No problem, thought one MIT hacker. He'd simply modify the printer's software to automatically e-mail users when their jobs were completed. He'd done it before, for earlier Xerox printers; all he needed was the printer's source code. But something had changed. Citing copyright and trade secrecy, Xerox wouldn't release the code for its newest machine without a signed nondisclosure agreement -- an unheard-of request at the time.
The hacker was Richard Stallman, and his anger with Xerox fast became the stuff of legend. Stallman declared war on proprietary software, and went on to form the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation -- proving that, forcing a coder to do legwork is a surefire way to launch a revolt.
For a brief time in 2000, the IT community could be forgiven for humming "ding-dong, the witch is dead." In June of that year, having found that Microsoft had abused its monopoly position in the software market, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled that the software giant should be split into two companies: one to sell operating systems, and another devoted to applications.
It never happened. The following year, the U.S. appeals court would overturn Jackson's ruling, eliminating the breakup.
We can only speculate what the IT landscape might look like today in a split-Microsoft world -- Microsoft itself described the breakup plan as " a death sentence" -- but we know what happened once the appeals court overturned Jackson's decision. Free to conduct its software business as it saw fit, Microsoft headed down a path that would eventually bring us Windows Vista -- even though many of us wish we could still save XP.
By the late 1990s, Palm, having created the PDA market, was struggling to defend its share against challengers, including Microsoft. A group of Palm executives left the company in 1998 to found Handspring, a start-up aimed at breathing fresh air into the Palm platform.
The difference? Handspring's PDAs could accept add-on hardware modules, allowing the company and its partners to experiment. For example, rather than just store phone numbers, what if your PDA could dial them, too?
The result, an add-on cellular radio called the VisorPhone, was a hit, and Handspring ran with it. Plans were soon laid for a model that would combine phone and PDA functionality in a single, compact device.
When Handspring unveiled the Treo in 2001, the concept was too good even for Palm to ignore. Palm acquired Handspring in 2003, and the stand-alone PDA was effectively finished, replaced by the far-more-utilitarian smart phone.
Arpanet, the predecessor of the modern Internet, was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense to allow computer researchers, vendors, and other government contractors to communicate across long distances. In large part, that meant e-mail.
Then one day in 1978, Gary Thuerk, a marketer for Digital Equipment Corp., had a bright idea for this new medium. Instead of addressing an e-mail to one or two people on Arpanet, why not include all of them at once? It would be a quick, easy way to let everyone know about an upcoming open house at which Digital planned to unveil its new line of mainframes.
The resulting mass-mailing was the world's first spam, and Arpanet authorities were not pleased. "This was a flagrant violation of the use of Arpanet, as the network is to be used for official U.S. government business only," wrote Maj. Raymond Czahor. "Appropriate action is being taken to preclude its occurrence again."
If you had a PC on your desk in 1986, chances are you were writing or crunching numbers on either WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3. Fast, lean, and full-featured, these programs were among the best that DOS had to offer. They were so good, in fact, that few businesses would dream of switching to the lackluster alternatives from Microsoft.
Unfortunately, neither Lotus nor WordPerfect anticipated the success of Windows. They assumed that applications would dictate the user's choice of operating system, not the other way around. As users began clamoring for GUI-based software, Microsoft was quick to fill the void with Word and Excel.
By 1990, Microsoft was shipping both programs, along with the newly introduced PowerPoint, in a bundle it called an "office suite." Compared with the single-purpose, DOS-based software sold by Lotus and WordPerfect, Microsoft was giving Windows users a better deal. In the end, the former market leaders may have delivered more functions, but their decision to forgo early support of Windows was costly one.
It had once been the behemoth of the computing industry, but by the time Louis Gerstner became CEO in 1993, IBM was literally falling apart. With the company posting a $4.97 billion loss for 1992 -- the largest in U.S. history -- and with mainframe sales dwindling, senior management had begun spinning off business units to free them from the Big Iron anchor around their necks.
Gerstner put a stop to that. Consolidating and streamlining IBM's various divisions, Gerstner expanded IBM's software business and revitalized its corporate culture. But his most crucial move was to shift IBM's focus from products to services. Today, IBM's Global Services division remains one of its strongest earners, pulling in $15 billion in revenue for 2007.
Equally important, IBM's new direction paved the way for countless other tech companies, including open-source vendors who rely on support revenue to underwrite free software. From the brink of insolvency, Gerstner successfully steered Big Blue into a leading position for the Internet age.
In 1973, Alexander Sawchuk needed a photo with which to test a new digital image compression algorithm he was developing at the University of Southern California. He needed glossy page with a variety of image properties to test against. In particular, he wanted a human face. A brief search around the lab turned up a photo of Lenna Sj
Or if Steve Jobs had never taken his fateful tour of Xerox PARC? Had he not seen PARC's GUI in action he might never have created the Macintosh. And then where would Windows be today?
In every industry there are key milestones that mark a change in the course of history, and the fast-moving technology field has more than its share. Presented here are 15 turning points that shaped the computing world as we know it today, including some that still continue to influence its direction for years to come.
In the late 1990s, Apple was in bad shape. Its image was tarnished, its market share was declining, and Windows NT and Windows 95 had outpaced the aging Mac OS in features and technology.
Apple's top-secret new OS, code-named Copland, could restore Apple's technological lead -- if it ever shipped. After 10 years of development, it had swelled into an overambitious boondoggle.
In 1996, with no release date for Copland in sight, then-CEO Gil Amelio made one of the toughest decisions in Apple's history. Abandoning the Copland money-pit, he acquired upstart NeXT, which not only had a Unix-based operating system that could be modified to run on the Mac but also Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as its CEO.
Reunited, Jobs proceeded to reinvent Apple. His successes included not just Mac OS X, but the iMac, the iPod, and a winning line of servers, workstations, and portables. The decision did lead to Amelio's departure, but the legacy of his NeXT move is a radically different Apple than the one he joined.
Xerox and the dawn of free software: Consider this: In 1980, programmers at MIT's artificial intelligence lab, blessed with one of Xerox's newest laser printers, had to run upstairs to check whether a print job was finished because the machine had been installed on the wrong floor.
No problem, thought one MIT hacker. He'd simply modify the printer's software to automatically e-mail users when their jobs were completed. He'd done it before, for earlier Xerox printers; all he needed was the printer's source code. But something had changed. Citing copyright and trade secrecy, Xerox wouldn't release the code for its newest machine without a signed nondisclosure agreement -- an unheard-of request at the time.
The hacker was Richard Stallman, and his anger with Xerox fast became the stuff of legend. Stallman declared war on proprietary software, and went on to form the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation -- proving that, forcing a coder to do legwork is a surefire way to launch a revolt.
For a brief time in 2000, the IT community could be forgiven for humming "ding-dong, the witch is dead." In June of that year, having found that Microsoft had abused its monopoly position in the software market, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled that the software giant should be split into two companies: one to sell operating systems, and another devoted to applications.
It never happened. The following year, the U.S. appeals court would overturn Jackson's ruling, eliminating the breakup.
We can only speculate what the IT landscape might look like today in a split-Microsoft world -- Microsoft itself described the breakup plan as " a death sentence" -- but we know what happened once the appeals court overturned Jackson's decision. Free to conduct its software business as it saw fit, Microsoft headed down a path that would eventually bring us Windows Vista -- even though many of us wish we could still save XP.
By the late 1990s, Palm, having created the PDA market, was struggling to defend its share against challengers, including Microsoft. A group of Palm executives left the company in 1998 to found Handspring, a start-up aimed at breathing fresh air into the Palm platform.
The difference? Handspring's PDAs could accept add-on hardware modules, allowing the company and its partners to experiment. For example, rather than just store phone numbers, what if your PDA could dial them, too?
The result, an add-on cellular radio called the VisorPhone, was a hit, and Handspring ran with it. Plans were soon laid for a model that would combine phone and PDA functionality in a single, compact device.
When Handspring unveiled the Treo in 2001, the concept was too good even for Palm to ignore. Palm acquired Handspring in 2003, and the stand-alone PDA was effectively finished, replaced by the far-more-utilitarian smart phone.
Arpanet, the predecessor of the modern Internet, was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense to allow computer researchers, vendors, and other government contractors to communicate across long distances. In large part, that meant e-mail.
Then one day in 1978, Gary Thuerk, a marketer for Digital Equipment Corp., had a bright idea for this new medium. Instead of addressing an e-mail to one or two people on Arpanet, why not include all of them at once? It would be a quick, easy way to let everyone know about an upcoming open house at which Digital planned to unveil its new line of mainframes.
The resulting mass-mailing was the world's first spam, and Arpanet authorities were not pleased. "This was a flagrant violation of the use of Arpanet, as the network is to be used for official U.S. government business only," wrote Maj. Raymond Czahor. "Appropriate action is being taken to preclude its occurrence again."
If you had a PC on your desk in 1986, chances are you were writing or crunching numbers on either WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3. Fast, lean, and full-featured, these programs were among the best that DOS had to offer. They were so good, in fact, that few businesses would dream of switching to the lackluster alternatives from Microsoft.
Unfortunately, neither Lotus nor WordPerfect anticipated the success of Windows. They assumed that applications would dictate the user's choice of operating system, not the other way around. As users began clamoring for GUI-based software, Microsoft was quick to fill the void with Word and Excel.
By 1990, Microsoft was shipping both programs, along with the newly introduced PowerPoint, in a bundle it called an "office suite." Compared with the single-purpose, DOS-based software sold by Lotus and WordPerfect, Microsoft was giving Windows users a better deal. In the end, the former market leaders may have delivered more functions, but their decision to forgo early support of Windows was costly one.
It had once been the behemoth of the computing industry, but by the time Louis Gerstner became CEO in 1993, IBM was literally falling apart. With the company posting a $4.97 billion loss for 1992 -- the largest in U.S. history -- and with mainframe sales dwindling, senior management had begun spinning off business units to free them from the Big Iron anchor around their necks.
Gerstner put a stop to that. Consolidating and streamlining IBM's various divisions, Gerstner expanded IBM's software business and revitalized its corporate culture. But his most crucial move was to shift IBM's focus from products to services. Today, IBM's Global Services division remains one of its strongest earners, pulling in $15 billion in revenue for 2007.
Equally important, IBM's new direction paved the way for countless other tech companies, including open-source vendors who rely on support revenue to underwrite free software. From the brink of insolvency, Gerstner successfully steered Big Blue into a leading position for the Internet age.
In 1973, Alexander Sawchuk needed a photo with which to test a new digital image compression algorithm he was developing at the University of Southern California. He needed glossy page with a variety of image properties to test against. In particular, he wanted a human face. A brief search around the lab turned up a photo of Lenna Sj