Macintosh by Apple - Complete History of Mac Computers

While 200000 people participated, dealers disliked the promotion, the supply of computers was insufficient for demand, and many were returned in such a bad shape that they could no longer be sold. This marketing campaign caused CEO John Sculley to raise the price from $1995 to $2495. In 1985, the combination of the Mac, Apple’s LaserWriter printer, and Mac-specific software like Boston Software’s MacPublisher and Aldus PageMaker enabled users to design, preview, and print page layouts complete with text and graphics, it was an activity to become known as desktop publishing. Initially, desktop publishing was unique to the Macintosh, but eventually became available for IBM PC users as well. Later, applications such as Macromedia FreeHand, QuarkXPress, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator strengthened the Mac’s position as a graphics computer and helped to expand the emerging desktop publishing market. The limitations of the first Mac soon became clear: it had very little memory, even compared with other personal computers in 1984, and could not be expanded easily; and it lacked a hard disk drive or the means to attach one easily.

His idea, called the Geometry Engine, was to create a series of components in a VLSI processor that would accomplish the main operations required in image synthesis-the matrix transforms, clipping, and the scaling operations that provided the transformation to view space. Clark attempted to shop his design around to computer companies, and finding no takers, he and colleagues at Stanford University, California, started their own company, Silicon Graphics. SGI's first product (1984) was the IRIS (Integrated Raster Imaging System). It used the 8 MHz M68000 processor with up to 2 MB memory, a custom 1024×1024 frame buffer, and the Geometry Engine to give the workstation its impressive image generation power. Its initial market was 3D graphics display terminals, but SGI's products, strategies and market positions evolved significantly over time, and for many years were a favoured choice for CGI companies in film, TV, and other fields. In 1981, Quantel released the "Paintbox", the first broadcast-quality turnkey system designed for creation and composition of television video and graphics. Conte᠎nt w᠎as created　᠎with G᠎SA Con tent G enerator Demover si on᠎.

There had to be an interface. Multiple operations had to run at the same time. The initial focus on hardware locked in what O’Brien called a “primitive architecture” while opening space for Margaret Hamilton, a woman in the heavily male Apollo program, to lead software design. As it became clear that the software was truly where the mission would be made, Hamilton’s team expanded to 350 people at its peak. The system they built was remarkably advanced. To maximize the built-in architecture, Hamilton and her colleagues came up with what they named “The Interpreter”-we’d now call it a virtualization scheme. It allowed them to run five to seven virtual machines simultaneously in two kilobytes of memory. It was terribly slow, but “now you have all the capabilities you ever dreamed of, in software,” O’Brien said. The astronauts communicated with the computer through the DSKY, short for “display and keyboard.” They’d punch in numbers and get responses.

The long-held dreams of computers that can interface with us through touch, gesture, and speech are finally coming true, with more radical interfaces on the horizon. 3D printing promises a revolution in fabrication, with many opportunities to produce designs that would have been prohibitively expensive. The growing availability of data and demand for its insights holds great potential to improve many data-driven decisions. Machine learning plays an increasingly important role in our lives, whether it’s ranking search results, recommending products, or building better models of the environment. Unlocking information in pictures and videos has had a major impact on consumers and more significant advances are in the pipeline. Technology has been pivotal in improving human and animal health and addressing threats to the environment. Vast amounts of data are enabling the improvement of human health and unraveling of the mysteries of life. From autonomous delivery of hospital supplies to telemedicine and advanced prostheses, medical robotics has led to many life-saving innovations.