Module1 - Section7 Apple and the Mac

Introduction - Apple II was produced in 1977 ( before IBM PC) and was a best seller of its time. - The production of the IBM PC and its clones significantly slowed the sales of the Apple II. - Apple III, successor of Apple II had some initial flaws which had gave the computer a bad name (didn’t meet the expectation). Its sales was very weak compared to Apple II. Make computer accessible to every one and make it very easy to use. - Apple’s philosophy was: Make computer accessible to every one and make it very easy to use. - Apple decided to use GUI concept ( developed by Xerox) in its new PCs - it led to the production of the Lisa computer (1983) which used the GUI interface.

The Lisa - The Lisa computer was the result of the Apple’s Manager Visit to Xerox PARC Where they realized that GUI was the key to making microcomputer accessible to everyone. - The Lisa was based on Powerful CPU and Hard disk. These factors made it very expensive as a PC (~ 10,000 $). - The Lisa computer used the GUI interface and a new expression (metaphor) which is desktop:it means that the screen resembles the top of a desk, with various files on it and even a waste basket - Although it was very expansive, the Lisa computer was very slow compared to the IBM PC. - For these reasons, the Lisa didn’t sell well and Apple depended on the success of the project which had run in parallel to Lisa, the Macintosh.

Developing the Macintosh - The Macintosh team have worked very hard and used the best technology available for all of its components to produce a very significant PC. - With all of this hard work, Macintosh was late for 2 years - Its price was 2500 $ (target price was 1000 $). - Although a group of people were convinced with its easy of use, still its sales were not that great. - Macintosh was missing the application which was the Desktop publishing. - A company called Aldus has produced the desktop publishing software, the Page Maker.

Developing the Macintosh (Con ’ t.) - With desk publishing software, people were able to produce magazines and newspapers using the computer much easier and faster than manual production. - The Macintosh was very suitable for the desktop publishing software that required a GUI which was only available at the Macintosh at that time. - This has increased the sales of Macintosh. - However, the Macintosh did not sell to big corporations, which at that time resisted the idea of easy computing. They stayed with IBM or its clones.

Empowerment - Apple was successful in introducing GUI and desktop concept to general public which helped in making computing easier and accessible and had affected and improved people’s life. Some of these improvements are: A. The ease of using and accessing information like using accounting software to check their finances and the Internet to get lots of information. B. The PC provides a tool to help people be more creative like using drawing software to do their own drawings. C. To be able to have your own business anywhere in the world through using the Internet.

After the Mac - After producing the Macintosh, and even with its success, Apple still was losing market share. IBM PCs and compatibles still dominated the market - In 1996, Apple reported a loss of 1 $ billion dollars. There were many reasons for the decline of Apple. Some of these reasons are: A. The decision not to make the Macintosh an open industry standard in the same way as that IBM did with its PC. Having an open standard for the Macintosh might not guarantee its success but it would at least make its design very popular. B. The leadership of Apple which had many leaders come and go C. The prices of Apple computers were always higher than an equivalent PC.

After the Mac (Con ’ t.) - Steve jobs returned to Apple in since then, its performance has improved. - In 1998, Apple produced the IMac. This machine used the powerful microprocessor so that it can run PC applications. This product had increased the net earnings of Apple in 1999 to 601 $ million. - Other products from Apple were the PowerBook, iBook and a new OS Unix.

The personality of companies - Generally, computer companies have their own personalities formed by the personalities of their founders. - These people have an enormous influence on the early years of a company’s development. They will determine which products to make, and how they should be made and sold. Examples: - Tom Watson ( founded IBM) - Bill Gates and Paul Allan ( founded Microsoft). - Steve jobs and Steve Wozniak ( founded Apple).

Section 8: Windows, OS/2 and Networking - After the success of GUI in the Apple Macintosh PC and with the technological advances in the microprocessor industry, there was a very big need for a better operating system for the IBM PC and its compatibles. - Microsoft and IBM took on a joint development project to develop OS/2, a new GUI operating system which would be owned by IBM. - the OS/2 was released around Many people predicted that OS/2 would be the operating system for the future. - However, OS/2 had failed and is almost dead now. Some of these reasons for its failure were marketing and the need for a relatively powerful PC to run on.

Windows, OS/2 and Networking(Con ’ t.) - At the same time of developing the OS/2, Microsoft was developing its own operating system called windows 3.0. It was just a GUI interface for Dos. - Windows 3.0 was released in 1990 and was a great success, even though OS/2 was technically superior. Windows 3.0 was compatible with earlier software running on Dos. - There were many software packages running on windows 3.0 available shortly after. This was one of the main reasons for the success of windows.

Legacy - To give a software product a good chance of success, it has to be compatible with older versions of the same product. This is known as backward compatibility. - Backward compatibility is part of the general problem called Legacy problem. Legacy: It means that there is a history relevant to a certain product that has to be considered. - The legacy problem is not restricted to software. It is also present in hardware especially in mainframes - a famous example of this problem is Year 2000 problem or the millennium Bug.

the year 2000 problem - Many programs written in the 70s and 80s used two digits instead of 4 digits when referring to years. For example, instead of writing 1975, they wrote The programmers who wrote those programs never thought that they would still be used in the year As an example, if you write 01 as a year it meant 1901 instead of So, when the year 2000 arrives, all dates in those programs will be wrong. - To solve this problem, millions of code in programs had to be inspected and some of them needed to be changed. The cost of fixing this problem was estimated to be around 500 billion dollars.

Network Operating System - The earlier operating systems for PCs dealt with the PC as a separate unit that controls and has access only to its resources. - So, there was a need for a new type of operating system that will allow the PC to interact with other computers. Such type of operating systems is called Network Operating System (NOS). - Network operating system needs to perform the same functions of a regular operating system plus some additional features.

Network Operating System (Con ’ t.) The main additional features of a network operating system are: 1- Multi-user: the system needs to allow more than one user to access the computer resources at one time without interfering with each other. 2- Multi-task: with multi-tasking, the CPU time is divided among more than one program so that the system allow more than one task (or program) to run at the same time. 3- Portable: this allows NOS to work across different types of computers with different architectures. 4- Secure: because more than one user can access the system, the system should provide its users with security features so that everybody can access only his own things. 5- compatible: the system should communicate with other operating systems on the network. 6- Safe: the system should be protected against accidental damage (like a computer virus).

Competition,collaboration and co-operation - The computer industry has many features that distinguish it from many other industries. - these features led to companies being partners in one computer product and big enemies in another ( like IBM and Microsoft, Netscape and Microsoft). - There are reasons that led to such dynamic and fast shifting relations between companies

reasons that led fast shifting relations between companies 1- Moore’s law: Due to this law, the computer industry develops at a very high rate. So, companies try to keep up by making alliances and breaking them if necessary. 2. Passionate about computers: Most of the leaders in computer companies are not regular businessmen. So, there are many products that were developed by people who made the product free for any one to use. 3. Personalities: the founders of the computer industry were holding strong opinions about computer issues that often conflicted with other leaders in the industry. 4. Development costs: In the computer industry, people often try to guess what the next hot technology will be. So, to develop some products, big companies often try to be partners with a small company that has the experts in that product. If the product failed, then the big company would not lose as much as the cost of developing the whole product by itself, and it would end the partnership.