Page 6 - Osborn Computer News Today

>> we would love to have it in a book right now about this size but thats technically impossible. >> steves like i want to make a friendly computer. a computer that comes from a different kind of place. that owes its inspiration to people who are thoughtful and creative and human and humane. >> this is an experimental office system at the xerox research center in palo alto, california. >> what flowers? my anniversary. i forgot. >> xerox in the 1980s was one of the most exciting companies in amer...

And a place called silicon valley. >> the magic part of silicon valley is that there is this boiling pot of people who were involved in technology, involved in science. silicon valley was hp, sri, xerox and stanford university. that was a hell of a powerful combination. >> there were these two cultures, engineers with ph.d.s and hobbyists. >> it was a time when there was a lot of social environment in and around the area. there was a lot of counter culture people. you had cheap semiconductors, y...

Moo moore. one of the engineers who worked at intel. basically it was an observation computer engineers are getting to the point where they can essentially double the computer power of computer chips every 18 months or so. and this was what really made the power of computers explode in the 1980s, because every 18 months, these things were getting twice as good. >> you could basically put a whole computer on a chip, it was less expensive to manufacture. so you had smaller which led to faster whic...

Been working on and it caused a sensation. >> we had absolutely no idea what people were going to do with these things when we started out. matter of fact, the two people it was designed for was woz and myself, because we couldnt afford to buy a computer kit on the market. immediately, everyone wanted one. >> woz was the technical genius and jobs was the marketing genius. >> you needed both of those kinds of mindsets to actually make this new technology work and create this company out of thin a...

>> the idea was that ordinary people might have a use for computers. now, it took awhile to figure out what those uses might be. >> the main thing was spreadsheets and word processing. the computer was the best typewriter you could ever have. it gave you a new way to write. you could change things around and check your spelling and it would always look perfect. >> bottom line numbers. >> my dad had the large ledger sheets, done them all by hand and i remember taking a computer to show him a spre...

They call user-friendly. >> isnt that pretty. now what do i do? >> making computers easy enough to use for a beginner, it wasnt always true. people have never encountered this stuff. >> hold downshift. >> so there is a great disconnect between the ambitions of the apples and microsofts and the realities of people trying to use these things for the first time. >> right now, if you buy a computer system and you want to solve one of your problems, we immediately throw a big problem right in the mid...

Steve jobs hears about some of the work going on at this lab and he wants a look. >> xerox park was an invention place. apple was an innovation place. steve was very visual and could see right away the visual graphic interface was different and more communicative than anything he had seen before. he knew it was effective because it was affecting him. >> jobs realizes this is the future of computing. this is a whole different kind of computer to be built. famously, a computer for the rest of us. ...

If all goes according to plan, "columbia" will soar like a skylark next month. >> if the shuttle program works the way its designed to work it will be a technological feat rivaling americas visit to the moon. a major moment in the history of flight. >> the space shuttle had new systems, new technology, primary things. you dont have pulleys and cables, its all done by electronics. all the commands go through a computer. >> it was built as the worlds first reusable spaceship. one that would commut...

The end of this year. by 1990, the number could be two out of three. >> we knew the personal computer was getting serious when the competition started, because when you have competition, innovation gets stimulated. >> compaq. >> atari. >> this is the one. >> high resolution, more storage and greater expandability than ibms pc. >> ibms entry heated up an already volatile market. one industry innovator, osborn computer, was forced into bankruptcy court last month. and apple, the industrys number o...

It will just be very gradual and very human and will seduce you into learning how to use it. >> random access memory is internal memory built inside of this computer. >> these new computers were big, ugly, difficult to use inventions when they first came out. >> it would crash and you had to figure out what to do. it would not always create the right results. so it really did take a mindset of someone willing to cut it some slack. >> take little steps. dont take big steps. >> everybody kind of a...