1.
Windows 10
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Windows 10 is a personal computer operating system developed and released by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was officially unveiled in September 2014 following a brief demo at Build 2014, privacy concerns were also voiced by critics and advocates, as the operating systems default settings and certain features require the transmission of user data to Microsoft or its partners. Up to August 2016, Windows 10 usage was increasing, with it then plateauing, the operating system is running on more than 400 million active devices and has an estimated usage share of 27. 72% on traditional PCs and 12. 53% across all platforms. We won’t have an ecosystem for PCs, and one for phones, in December 2013, technology writer Mary Jo Foley reported that Microsoft was working on an update to Windows 8 codenamed Threshold, after a planet in Microsofts Halo video game franchise. Similarly to Blue, Foley called Threshold a wave of operating systems across multiple Microsoft platforms and services, Foley reported that among the goals for Threshold was to create a unified application platform and development toolkit for Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox One. The new Start menu takes after Windows 7s design by using only a portion of the screen, the second column displays Windows 8-style app tiles. Myerson said that changes would occur in a future update. Windows Phone 8.1 would share nearly 90% of the common Windows Runtime APIs with Windows 8.1 on PCs, despite these concessions, Myerson noted that the touch-oriented interface would evolve as well on 10. He also joked that they could not call it Windows One because Windows 1.0 already existed.1, further details surrounding Windows 10s consumer-oriented features were presented during another media event held on January 21,2015, entitled Windows 10, The Next Chapter. Additional developer-oriented details surrounding the Universal Windows Platform concept were revealed and discussed during Microsofts developers conference Build, among them were the unveiling of Islandwood, which provides a middleware toolchain for compiling Objective-C based software to run as universal apps on Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile. On June 1,2015, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 would be released on July 29,2015. The commercials focused on the tagline A more human way to do, the campaign culminated with launch events in thirteen cities on July 29, which celebrated the unprecedented role our biggest fans played in the development of Windows 10. Windows 10 harmonizes the user experience and functionality between different classes of device, and addresses shortcomings in the interface that were introduced in Windows 8. Windows 10 Mobile, the successor to Windows Phone 8.1, shares some user interface elements, the Windows Runtime app ecosystem was revised into the Universal Windows Platform. These universal apps are made to run across platforms and device classes, including smartphones, tablets, Xbox One consoles. Developers can allow cross-buys, where purchased licenses for an app apply to all of the users compatible devices, on Windows 10, Windows Store serves as a unified storefront for apps, Groove Music, and Movies & TV. Windows 10 also allows web apps and desktop software to be packaged for distribution on the Windows Store, desktop software distributed through Windows Store is packaged using the App-V system to allow sandboxing. A new iteration of the Start menu is used on the Windows 10 desktop, with a list of places and other options on the left side, the menu can be resized, and expanded into a full-screen display, which is the default option in Tablet mode
2.
Microsoft Windows
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Microsoft Windows is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedded and Windows Phone, defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows 10 Mobile is an active product, unrelated to the defunct family Windows Mobile. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20,1985, Microsoft Windows came to dominate the worlds personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. Apple came to see Windows as an encroachment on their innovation in GUI development as implemented on products such as the Lisa. On PCs, Windows is still the most popular operating system, however, in 2014, Microsoft admitted losing the majority of the overall operating system market to Android, because of the massive growth in sales of Android smartphones. In 2014, the number of Windows devices sold was less than 25% that of Android devices sold and this comparison however may not be fully relevant, as the two operating systems traditionally target different platforms. As of September 2016, the most recent version of Windows for PCs, tablets, smartphones, the most recent versions for server computers is Windows Server 2016. A specialized version of Windows runs on the Xbox One game console, Microsoft, the developer of Windows, has registered several trademarks each of which denote a family of Windows operating systems that target a specific sector of the computing industry. It now consists of three operating system subfamilies that are released almost at the time and share the same kernel. Windows, The operating system for personal computers, tablets. The latest version is Windows 10, the main competitor of this family is macOS by Apple Inc. for personal computers and Android for mobile devices. Windows Server, The operating system for server computers, the latest version is Windows Server 2016. Unlike its clients sibling, it has adopted a strong naming scheme, the main competitor of this family is Linux. Windows PE, A lightweight version of its Windows sibling meant to operate as an operating system, used for installing Windows on bare-metal computers. The latest version is Windows PE10.0.10586.0, Windows Embedded, Initially, Microsoft developed Windows CE as a general-purpose operating system for every device that was too resource-limited to be called a full-fledged computer. The following Windows families are no longer being developed, Windows 9x, Microsoft now caters to the consumers market with Windows NT. Windows Mobile, The predecessor to Windows Phone, it was a mobile operating system
3.
Software developer
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A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process, including the research, design, programming, and testing of computer software. Other job titles which are used with similar meanings are programmer, software analyst. According to developer Eric Sink, the differences between system design, software development, and programming are more apparent, even more so that developers become systems architects, those who design the multi-leveled architecture or component interactions of a large software system. In a large company, there may be employees whose sole responsibility consists of one of the phases above. In smaller development environments, a few people or even an individual might handle the complete process. The word software was coined as a prank as early as 1953, before this time, computers were programmed either by customers, or the few commercial computer vendors of the time, such as UNIVAC and IBM. The first company founded to provide products and services was Computer Usage Company in 1955. The software industry expanded in the early 1960s, almost immediately after computers were first sold in mass-produced quantities, universities, government, and business customers created a demand for software. Many of these programs were written in-house by full-time staff programmers, some were distributed freely between users of a particular machine for no charge. Others were done on a basis, and other firms such as Computer Sciences Corporation started to grow. The computer/hardware makers started bundling operating systems, systems software and programming environments with their machines, new software was built for microcomputers, so other manufacturers including IBM, followed DECs example quickly, resulting in the IBM AS/400 amongst others. The industry expanded greatly with the rise of the computer in the mid-1970s. In the following years, it created a growing market for games, applications. DOS, Microsofts first operating system product, was the dominant operating system at the time, by 2014 the role of cloud developer had been defined, in this context, one definition of a developer in general was published, Developers make software for the world to use. The job of a developer is to crank out code -- fresh code for new products, code fixes for maintenance, code for business logic, bus factor Software Developer description from the US Department of Labor
4.
Software release life cycle
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Usage of the alpha/beta test terminology originated at IBM. As long ago as the 1950s, IBM used similar terminology for their hardware development, a test was the verification of a new product before public announcement. B test was the verification before releasing the product to be manufactured, C test was the final test before general availability of the product. Martin Belsky, a manager on some of IBMs earlier software projects claimed to have invented the terminology, IBM dropped the alpha/beta terminology during the 1960s, but by then it had received fairly wide notice. The usage of beta test to refer to testing done by customers was not done in IBM, rather, IBM used the term field test. Pre-alpha refers to all activities performed during the project before formal testing. These activities can include requirements analysis, software design, software development, in typical open source development, there are several types of pre-alpha versions. Milestone versions include specific sets of functions and are released as soon as the functionality is complete, the alpha phase of the release life cycle is the first phase to begin software testing. In this phase, developers generally test the software using white-box techniques, additional validation is then performed using black-box or gray-box techniques, by another testing team. Moving to black-box testing inside the organization is known as alpha release, alpha software can be unstable and could cause crashes or data loss. Alpha software may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final version, in general, external availability of alpha software is uncommon in proprietary software, while open source software often has publicly available alpha versions. The alpha phase usually ends with a freeze, indicating that no more features will be added to the software. At this time, the software is said to be feature complete, Beta, named after the second letter of the Greek alphabet, is the software development phase following alpha. Software in the stage is also known as betaware. Beta phase generally begins when the software is complete but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs. Software in the phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, as well as speed/performance issues. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing, the process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release and this is typically the first time that the software is available outside of the organization that developed it. Beta version software is useful for demonstrations and previews within an organization
5.
Software license
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A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law all software is copyright protected, in code as also object code form. The only exception is software in the public domain, most distributed software can be categorized according to its license type. Two common categories for software under copyright law, and therefore with licenses which grant the licensee specific rights, are proprietary software and free, unlicensed software outside the copyright protection is either public domain software or software which is non-distributed, non-licensed and handled as internal business trade secret. Contrary to popular belief, distributed unlicensed software is copyright protected. Examples for this are unauthorized software leaks or software projects which are placed on public software repositories like GitHub without specified license. As voluntarily handing software into the domain is problematic in some international law domains, there are also licenses granting PD-like rights. Therefore, the owner of a copy of software is legally entitled to use that copy of software. Hence, if the end-user of software is the owner of the respective copy, as many proprietary licenses only enumerate the rights that the user already has under 17 U. S. C. §117, and yet proclaim to take away from the user. Proprietary software licenses often proclaim to give software publishers more control over the way their software is used by keeping ownership of each copy of software with the software publisher. The form of the relationship if it is a lease or a purchase, for example UMG v. Augusto or Vernor v. Autodesk. The ownership of goods, like software applications and video games, is challenged by licensed. The Swiss based company UsedSoft innovated the resale of business software and this feature of proprietary software licenses means that certain rights regarding the software are reserved by the software publisher. Therefore, it is typical of EULAs to include terms which define the uses of the software, the most significant effect of this form of licensing is that, if ownership of the software remains with the software publisher, then the end-user must accept the software license. In other words, without acceptance of the license, the end-user may not use the software at all, one example of such a proprietary software license is the license for Microsoft Windows. The most common licensing models are per single user or per user in the appropriate volume discount level, Licensing per concurrent/floating user also occurs, where all users in a network have access to the program, but only a specific number at the same time. Another license model is licensing per dongle which allows the owner of the dongle to use the program on any computer, Licensing per server, CPU or points, regardless the number of users, is common practice as well as site or company licenses
6.
Windows 2.0
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Windows 2.0 is a 16-bit Microsoft Windows GUI-based operating environment that was released on December 9,1987, and is the successor to Windows 1.0. Windows 2.0 allowed application windows to each other unlike its predecessor Windows 1.0. Windows 2.0 also introduced more sophisticated keyboard-shortcuts and the terminology of Minimize and Maximize, as opposed to Iconize, the basic window setup introduced here would last through Windows 3.1. Like Windows 1. x, Windows 2. x applications cannot be run on Windows 3.1 or up without modifications since they were not designed for protected mode, Windows 2.0 was also the first Windows version to integrate the control panel. New features in Windows 2.0 included VGA graphics and it was also the last version of Windows that did not require a hard disk. With the improved speed, reliability and usability, computers now started becoming a part of life for some workers. Desktop icons and use of keyboard shortcuts helped to speed up the work, the Windows 2. x EGA, VGA, and Tandy drivers notably provided a workaround in Windows 3.0 for users who wanted color graphics on 8086 machines. EMS memory support also appeared for the first time, the first Windows versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel ran on Windows 2.0. Third-party developer support for Windows increased substantially with this version, however, most developers still maintained DOS versions of their applications, as Windows users were still a distinct minority of their market. Windows 2.0 was still dependent on the DOS system. There were some applications that shipped with Windows 2.0, Apple claimed the look and feel of the Macintosh operating system, taken as a whole, was protected by copyright and that Windows 2.0 violated this copyright by having the same icons. The judge ruled in favor of Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft in all but 10 of the 189 patents that Apple sued for, the exclusive 10 could not be copyrighted, as ruled by the judge
7.
Graphical user interface
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GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of command-line interfaces, which require commands to be typed on a computer keyboard. The actions in a GUI are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements, beyond computers, GUIs are used in many handheld mobile devices such as MP3 players, portable media players, gaming devices, smartphones and smaller household, office and industrial controls. Designing the visual composition and temporal behavior of a GUI is an important part of application programming in the area of human–computer interaction. Its goal is to enhance the efficiency and ease of use for the logical design of a stored program. Methods of user-centered design are used to ensure that the language introduced in the design is well-tailored to the tasks. The visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes referred to as chrome or GUI, typically, users interact with information by manipulating visual widgets that allow for interactions appropriate to the kind of data they hold. The widgets of an interface are selected to support the actions necessary to achieve the goals of users. A model–view–controller allows a structure in which the interface is independent from and indirectly linked to application functions. This allows users to select or design a different skin at will, good user interface design relates to users more, and to system architecture less. Large widgets, such as windows, usually provide a frame or container for the main presentation content such as a web page, smaller ones usually act as a user-input tool. A GUI may be designed for the requirements of a market as application-specific graphical user interfaces. By the 1990s, cell phones and handheld game systems also employed application specific touchscreen GUIs, newer automobiles use GUIs in their navigation systems and multimedia centers, or navigation multimedia center combinations. Sample graphical desktop environments A GUI uses a combination of technologies and devices to provide a platform that users can interact with, a series of elements conforming a visual language have evolved to represent information stored in computers. This makes it easier for people with few computer skills to work with, the most common combination of such elements in GUIs is the windows, icons, menus, pointer paradigm, especially in personal computers. The WIMP style of interaction uses a virtual device to represent the position of a pointing device, most often a mouse. Available commands are compiled together in menus, and actions are performed making gestures with the pointing device, a window manager facilitates the interactions between windows, applications, and the windowing system. The windowing system handles hardware devices such as pointing devices, graphics hardware, window managers and other software combine to simulate the desktop environment with varying degrees of realism. Smaller mobile devices such as personal assistants and smartphones typically use the WIMP elements with different unifying metaphors, due to constraints in space
8.
Personal computer
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A personal computer is a multi-purpose electronic computer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. PCs are intended to be operated directly by a end-user, rather than by an expert or technician. In the 2010s, PCs are typically connected to the Internet, allowing access to the World Wide Web, personal computers may be connected to a local area network, either by a cable or a wireless connection. In the 2010s, a PC may be, a multi-component desktop computer, designed for use in a location a laptop computer, designed for easy portability or a tablet computer. In the 2010s, PCs run using a system, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux. The very earliest microcomputers, equipped with a front panel, required hand-loading of a program to load programs from external storage. Before long, automatic booting from permanent read-only memory became universal, in the 2010s, users have access to a wide range of commercial software, free software and free and open-source software, which are provided in ready-to-run or ready-to-compile form. Since the early 1990s, Microsoft operating systems and Intel hardware have dominated much of the computer market, first with MS-DOS. Alternatives to Microsofts Windows operating systems occupy a minority share of the industry and these include Apples OS X and free open-source Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and Berkeley Software Distribution. Advanced Micro Devices provides the alternative to Intels processors. PC is an initialism for personal computer, some PCs, including the OLPC XOs, are equipped with x86 or x64 processors but not designed to run Microsoft Windows. PC is used in contrast with Mac, an Apple Macintosh computer and this sense of the word is used in the Get a Mac advertisement campaign that ran between 2006 and 2009, as well as its rival, Im a PC campaign, that appeared in 2008. Since Apples transition to Intel processors starting 2005, all Macintosh computers are now PCs, the “brain” may one day come down to our level and help with our income-tax and book-keeping calculations. But this is speculation and there is no sign of it so far, in the history of computing there were many examples of computers designed to be used by one person, as opposed to terminals connected to mainframe computers. Using the narrow definition of operated by one person, the first personal computer was the ENIAC which became operational in 1946 and it did not meet further definitions of affordable or easy to use. An example of an early single-user computer was the LGP-30, created in 1956 by Stan Frankel and used for science and it came with a retail price of $47, 000—equivalent to about $414,000 today. Introduced at the 1965 New York Worlds Fair, the Programma 101 was a programmable calculator described in advertisements as a desktop computer. It was manufactured by the Italian company Olivetti and invented by the Italian engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto, the Soviet MIR series of computers was developed from 1965 to 1969 in a group headed by Victor Glushkov
9.
Microsoft
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Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup, as of 2016, it was the worlds largest software maker by revenue, and one of the worlds most valuable companies. Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on April 4,1975, to develop and it rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The companys 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in its share price, since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion, in June 2012, Microsoft entered the personal computer production market for the first time, with the launch of the Microsoft Surface, a line of tablet computers. The word Microsoft is a portmanteau of microcomputer and software, Paul Allen and Bill Gates, childhood friends with a passion for computer programming, sought to make a successful business utilizing their shared skills. In 1972 they founded their first company, named Traf-O-Data, which offered a computer that tracked and analyzed automobile traffic data. Allen went on to pursue a degree in science at Washington State University. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systemss Altair 8800 microcomputer, Allen suggested that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device, after a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a demonstration. Since they didnt actually have one, Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter and they officially established Microsoft on April 4,1975, with Gates as the CEO. Allen came up with the name of Micro-Soft, as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article. In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office, the company moved to a new home in Bellevue, Washington in January 1979. Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, however, it was MS-DOS that solidified the companys dominance. For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS, following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS. Since IBM copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, other companies had to engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles. Due to various factors, such as MS-DOSs available software selection, the company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with a publishing division named Microsoft Press. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkins disease, while jointly developing a new OS with IBM in 1984, OS/2, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, a graphical extension for MS-DOS, on November 20,1985. Once Microsoft informed IBM of NT, the OS/2 partnership deteriorated, in 1990, Microsoft introduced its office suite, Microsoft Office
10.
Apple Inc.
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Apple is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. Apples consumer software includes the macOS and iOS operating systems, the media player, the Safari web browser. Its online services include the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, Apple Music, Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 to develop and sell personal computers. It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. in January 1977, Apple joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average in March 2015. In November 2014, Apple became the first U. S. company to be valued at over US$700 billion in addition to being the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization. The company employs 115,000 full-time employees as of July 2015 and it operates the online Apple Store and iTunes Store, the latter of which is the worlds largest music retailer. Consumers use more than one billion Apple products worldwide as of March 2016, Apples worldwide annual revenue totaled $233 billion for the fiscal year ending in September 2015. This revenue accounts for approximately 1. 25% of the total United States GDP.1 billion, the corporation receives significant criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors and its environmental and business practices, including the origins of source materials. Apple was founded on April 1,1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, the Apple I kits were computers single-handedly designed and hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard, which was less than what is now considered a personal computer. The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666.66, Apple was incorporated January 3,1977, without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple, during the first five years of operations revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980 yearly sales grew from $775,000 to $118m, the Apple II, also invented by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16,1977, at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It differed from its rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because of its character cell-based color graphics. While early Apple II models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface called the Disk II. The Apple II was chosen to be the platform for the first killer app of the business world, VisiCalc. VisiCalc created a market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II. Before VisiCalc, Apple had been a distant third place competitor to Commodore, by the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line
11.
Macintosh 128K
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The Macintosh 128K, originally released as the Apple Macintosh, is the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Its beige case consisted of a 9 in CRT monitor and came with a keyboard, a handle built into the top of the case made it easier for the computer to be lifted and carried. It had a selling price of $2,495. The Macintosh was introduced by the now-famous $370,000 television commercial by Ridley Scott,1984, sales of the Macintosh were strong from its initial release on January 24,1984, and reached 70,000 units on May 3,1984. Upon the release of its successor, the Macintosh 512K, it was rebranded as the Macintosh 128K, the centerpiece of the machine was a Motorola 68000 microprocessor running at 7.8336 MHz, connected to 128 KB RAM shared by the processor and the display controller. The boot procedure and some operating system routines were contained in an additional 64 KB ROM chip, Apple did not offer RAM upgrades. Unlike the Apple II, no source code listings of the Macintosh system ROMs were offered, the RAM in the Macintosh consisted of sixteen 4164 64k×1 DRAMs. Such an arrangement reduced the performance of the CPU as much as 35% for most code as the display logic often blocked the CPUs access to RAM. This made the machine appear to run more slowly than several of its competitors, the built-in display was a one-bit black-and-white,9 in CRT with a fixed resolution of 512×342 pixels, establishing the desktop publishing standard of 72 PPI. Expansion and networking were achieved using two non-standard RS-422 DE-9 serial ports named printer and modem, they did not support hardware handshaking, an external floppy disk drive could be added using a proprietary connector. The keyboard and mouse used simple proprietary protocols, allowing some third-party upgrades, the original keyboard had no arrow keys, numeric keypad or function keys. Later, Apple would make a numeric keypad available for the Macintosh 128K, the keyboard sold with the newer Macintosh Plus model would include the numeric keypad and arrow keys, but still no function keys. As with the Apple Lisa before it, the mouse had a single button, standard headphones could also be connected to a monaural jack. Apple also offered their 300 and 1200 bit/s modems originally released for the Apple II line, initially, the only printer available was the Apple ImageWriter, a dot matrix printer which was designed to produce 144 dpi WYSIWYG output from the Macs 72 dpi screen. Eventually, the LaserWriter and other printers were capable of being connected using AppleTalk, the Macintosh contained a single 400 KB, single-sided 3. 5-inch floppy disk drive, dedicating no space to other internal mechanical storage. The Mac OS was disk-based from the beginning, as RAM had to be conserved, one floppy disk was sufficient to store the System Software, an application and the data files created with the application. Indeed, the 400 KB drive capacity was larger than the PC XTs 360 KB5. 25-inch drive, however, more sophisticated work environments of the time required separate disks for documents and the system installation. Due to the constraints of the original Macintosh, and the fact that the floppies could hold 400 KB, users frequently had to swap disks in
12.
Usability
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Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object such as a tool or device. The object of use can be an application, website, book, tool, machine, process, vehicle. A usability study may be conducted as a job function by a usability analyst or as a secondary job function by designers, technical writers, marketing personnel. It is widely used in electronics, communication, and knowledge transfer objects. Usability includes methods of measuring usability, such as needs analysis, in human-computer interaction and computer science, usability studies the elegance and clarity with which the interaction with a computer program or a web site is designed. Usability differs from user satisfaction and user experience because usability does not directly consider usefulness or utility, by understanding and researching the interaction between product and user, the usability expert can also provide insight that is unattainable by traditional company-oriented market research. For example, after observing and interviewing users, the usability expert may identify needed functionality or design flaws that were not anticipated, a method called contextual inquiry does this in the naturally occurring context of the users own environment. In the user-centered design paradigm, the product is designed with its users in mind at all times. In the user-driven or participatory design paradigm, some of the users become actual or de facto members of the design team, the term user friendly is often used as a synonym for usable, though it may also refer to accessibility. Usability describes the quality of experience across websites, software, products. There is no consensus about the relation of the terms ergonomics, some think of usability as the software specialization of the larger topic of ergonomics. Others view these topics as tangential, with focusing on physiological matters. Usability is also important in website development, according to Jakob Nielsen, Studies of user behavior on the Web find a low tolerance for difficult designs or slow sites. And they dont want to learn how to use a home page, theres no such thing as a training class or a manual for a Web site. People have to be able to grasp the functioning of the immediately after scanning the home page—for a few seconds at most. Otherwise, most casual users simply leave the site and browse or shop elsewhere, ISO defines usability as The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use. The word usability also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process, efficiency, Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks. Memorability, When users return to the design after a period of not using it, errors, How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors
13.
Computer multitasking
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In computing, multitasking is a concept of performing multiple tasks over a certain period of time by executing them concurrently. As a result, a computer executes segments of multiple tasks in a manner, while the tasks share common processing resources such as central processing units. Multitasking does not necessarily mean that multiple tasks are executing at exactly the same time, even on multiprocessor or multicore computers, which have multiple CPUs/cores so more than one task can be executed at once, multitasking allows many more tasks to be run than there are CPUs. In the case of a computer with a single CPU, only one task is said to be running at any point in time, multitasking solves the problem by scheduling which task may be the one running at any given time, and when another waiting task gets a turn. The act of reassigning a CPU from one task to one is called a context switch. Multiprogramming systems are designed to maximize CPU usage, in time-sharing systems, the running task is required to relinquish the CPU, either voluntarily or by an external event such as a hardware interrupt. Time sharing systems are designed to allow programs to execute apparently simultaneously. In real-time systems, some waiting tasks are guaranteed to be given the CPU when an event occurs. Real time systems are designed to control devices such as industrial robots. The term multitasking has become a term, as the same word is used in many other languages such as German, Italian, Dutch, Danish. In the early days of computing, CPU time was expensive, when the computer ran a program that needed access to a peripheral, the central processing unit would have to stop executing program instructions while the peripheral processed the data. The first computer using a system was the British Leo III owned by J. Lyons. During batch processing, several different programs were loaded in the memory. When the first program reached an instruction waiting for a peripheral, the context of program was stored away. The process continued until all programs finished running, multiprogramming doesnt give any guarantee that a program will run in a timely manner. Indeed, the very first program may very well run for hours without needing access to a peripheral. As there were no users waiting at a terminal, this was no problem, users handed in a deck of punched cards to an operator. Multiprogramming greatly reduced wait times when multiple batches were being processed, the expression time sharing usually designated computers shared by interactive users at terminals, such as IBMs TSO, and VM/CMS
14.
Shell (computing)
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In computing, a shell is a user interface for access to an operating systems services. In general, operating system shells use either a command-line interface or graphical user interface, depending on a computers role and it is named a shell because it is a layer around the operating system kernel. The design of a shell is also dictated by the employed computer periphery, such as keyboard, pointing device or touchscreen. CLIs are also easier to be operated via refreshable braille display, graphical shells place a low burden on beginning computer users, and they are characterized as being simple and easy to use. With the widespread adoption of programs with GUIs, the use of shells has gained greater adoption. Since graphical shells come with certain disadvantages, most GUI-enabled operating systems provide additional CLI shells. Operating systems provide services to their users, including file management, process management, batch processing. Most operating system shells are not direct interfaces to the underlying kernel, shells are actually special applications that use the kernel API in just the same way as it is used by other application programs. A shell manages the interaction by prompting users for input, interpreting their input. Since the operating system shell is actually an application, it may easily be replaced with another similar application, on Unix-like systems, Secure Shell protocol is usually used for text-based shells, while SSH tunneling can be used for X Window System–based graphical user interfaces. On Microsoft Windows, Remote Desktop Protocol can be used to provide GUI remote access, most operating system shells fall into one of two categories – command-line and graphical. Command line shells provide an interface to the operating system. Other possibilities, although not so common, include voice user interface, the relative merits of CLI- and GUI-based shells are often debated. A command-line interface is a system shell that uses alphanumeric characters typed on a keyboard to provide instructions and data to the operating system. Operating systems such as UNIX have a variety of shell programs with different commands, syntax. Application programs may also implement a command-line interface, for example, in Unix-like systems, the telnet program has a number of commands for controlling a link to a remote computer system. Since the commands to the program are made of the same keystrokes as the data being sent to a remote computer, an escape sequence can be defined, using either a special local keystroke that is never passed on but always interpreted by the local system. The program becomes modal, switching between interpreting commands from the keyboard or passing keystrokes on as data to be processed, a feature of many command-line shells is the ability to save sequences of commands for re-use
15.
MS-DOS
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MS-DOS is a discontinued operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. MS-DOS resulted from a request in 1981 by IBM for a system to use in its IBM PC range of personal computers. Microsoft quickly bought the rights to 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, IBM licensed and released it in August 1981 as PC DOS1.0 for use in their PCs. During its life, several competing products were released for the x86 platform and it was also the underlying basic operating system on which early versions of Windows ran as a GUI. It is a operating system, and consumes negligible installation space. MS-DOS was a form of 86-DOS – owned by Seattle Computer Products. This first version was shipped in August 1980, Microsoft, which needed an operating system for the IBM Personal Computer hired Tim Paterson in May 1981 and bought 86-DOS1.10 for $75,000 in July of the same year. Microsoft kept the number, but renamed it MS-DOS. They also licensed MS-DOS1. 10/1.14 to IBM, within a year Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to over 70 other companies. It was designed to be an OS that could run on any 8086-family computer, thus, there were many different versions of MS-DOS for different hardware, and there is a major distinction between an IBM-compatible machine and an MS-DOS machine. This design would have worked well for compatibility, if application programs had only used MS-DOS services to perform device I/O, Microsoft omitted multi-user support from MS-DOS because Microsofts Unix-based operating system, Xenix, was fully multi-user. After the breakup of the Bell System, however, AT&T Computer Systems started selling UNIX System V, believing that it could not compete with AT&T in the Unix market, Microsoft abandoned Xenix, and in 1987 transferred ownership of Xenix to the Santa Cruz Operation. On 25 March 2014, Microsoft made the code to SCP MS-DOS1.25, as an April Fools joke in 2015, Microsoft Mobile launched a Windows Phone application called MS-DOS Mobile which was presented as a new mobile operating system and worked similar to MS-DOS. Version 3.1 – Support for Microsoft Networks Version 3.2 – First version to support 3.5 inch,720 kB floppy drives and diskettes. Version 3.21 Version 3.22 – Version 3.25 Version 3.3 – First version to support 3.5 inch,1.44 MB floppy drives and diskettes, Version 3. 3a Version 3.31 – supports FAT16B and larger drives. MS-DOS4.0 and MS-DOS4.1 – A separate branch of development with additional multitasking features and it is unrelated to any later versions, including versions 4.00 and 4.01 listed below MS-DOS4. x – includes a graphical/mouse interface. It had many bugs and compatibility issues. Version 4.00 – First version to support a hard disk partition that is greater than 32 MiB. Version 4.01 – Microsoft rewritten Version 4.00 released under MS-DOS label, First version to introduce volume serial number when formatting hard disks and floppy disks
16.
Computer program
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A computer program is a collection of instructions that performs a specific task when executed by a computer. A computer requires programs to function, and typically executes the programs instructions in a processing unit. A computer program is written by a computer programmer in a programming language. From the program in its form of source code, a compiler can derive machine code—a form consisting of instructions that the computer can directly execute. Alternatively, a program may be executed with the aid of an interpreter. A part of a program that performs a well-defined task is known as an algorithm. A collection of programs, libraries and related data are referred to as software. Computer programs may be categorized along functional lines, such as software or system software. The earliest programmable machines preceded the invention of the digital computer, in 1801, Joseph-Marie Jacquard devised a loom that would weave a pattern by following a series of perforated cards. Patterns could be weaved and repeated by arranging the cards, in 1837, Charles Babbage was inspired by Jacquards loom to attempt to build the Analytical Engine. The names of the components of the device were borrowed from the textile industry. In the textile industry, yarn was brought from the store to be milled, the device would have had a store—memory to hold 1,000 numbers of 40 decimal digits each. Numbers from the store would then have then transferred to the mill. It was programmed using two sets of perforated cards—one to direct the operation and the other for the input variables, however, after more than 17,000 pounds of the British governments money, the thousands of cogged wheels and gears never fully worked together. During a nine-month period in 1842–43, Ada Lovelace translated the memoir of Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea, the memoir covered the Analytical Engine. The translation contained Note G which completely detailed a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers using the Analytical Engine and this note is recognized by some historians as the worlds first written computer program. In 1936, Alan Turing introduced the Universal Turing machine—a theoretical device that can model every computation that can be performed on a Turing complete computing machine and it is a finite-state machine that has an infinitely long read/write tape. The machine can move the back and forth, changing its contents as it performs an algorithm
17.
Bill Gates
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William Henry Bill Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, author, and philanthropist. In 1975, Gates and Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft, which became the worlds largest PC software company, during his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, CEO and chief software architect, and was the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. Gates has authored and co-authored several books, since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes list of the worlds wealthiest people and was the wealthiest from 1995 to 2007, again in 2009, and has been since 2014. Between 2009 and 2014, his wealth doubled from US$40 billion to more than US$82 billion, between 2013 and 2014, his wealth increased by US$15 billion. Gates is currently the richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$85.6 billion as of February 2017. Gates is one of the entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. He has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief architect for himself. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work and he gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014, taking on a new post as adviser to support the then newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella. Gates was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28,1955 and he is the son of William H. Gates Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates. His ancestry includes English, German, Irish, and Scots-Irish and his father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates maternal grandfather was JW Maxwell, a bank president. Gates has one sister, Kristi, and one younger sister. He is the fourth of his name in his family, but is known as William Gates III or Trey because his father had the II suffix, early on in his life, Gates parents had a law career in mind for him. When Gates was young, his family attended a church of the Congregational Christian Churches. The family encouraged competition, one reported that it didnt matter whether it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the dock. There was always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing, at 13, he enrolled in the Lakeside School, a private preparatory school
18.
Computer mouse
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A computer mouse is a pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on a display, physically, a mouse consists of an object held in ones hand, with one or more buttons. Mice often also other elements, such as touch surfaces and wheels. The earliest known publication of the mouse as referring to a computer pointing device is in Bill Englishs July 1965 publication. The plural for the rodent is always mice in modern usage. The plural of a mouse is mouses and mice according to most dictionaries. The first recorded usage is mice, the online Oxford Dictionaries cites a 1984 use. The trackball, a pointing device, was invented in 1944 by Ralph Benjamin as part of a World War II-era fire-control radar plotting system called Comprehensive Display System. Benjamin was then working for the British Royal Navy Scientific Service, Benjamins project used analog computers to calculate the future position of target aircraft based on several initial input points provided by a user with a joystick. Benjamin felt that a more elegant input device was needed and invented what they called a ball for this purpose. The device was patented in 1947, but only a prototype using a ball rolling on two rubber-coated wheels was ever built, and the device was kept as a military secret. Another early trackball was built by British electrical engineer Kenyon Taylor in collaboration with Tom Cranston, Taylor was part of the original Ferranti Canada, working on the Royal Canadian Navys DATAR system in 1952. DATAR was similar in concept to Benjamins display, the trackball used four disks to pick up motion, two each for the X and Y directions. When the ball was rolled, the pickup discs spun and contacts on their outer rim made periodic contact with wires, by counting the pulses, the physical movement of the ball could be determined. A digital computer calculated the tracks and sent the data to other ships in a task force using pulse-code modulation radio signals. This trackball used a standard Canadian five-pin bowling ball and it was not patented, since it was a secret military project. Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute has been credited in published books by Thierry Bardini, Paul Ceruzzi, Howard Rheingold, Engelbart was also recognized as such in various obituary titles after his death in July 2013. That November, while attending a conference on computer graphics in Reno, Nevada, Engelbart began to ponder how to adapt the underlying principles of the planimeter to X-Y coordinate input
19.
Computer hardware
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Computer hardware is the collection of physical components that constitute a computer system. By contrast, software is instructions that can be stored and run by hardware, hardware is directed by the software to execute any command or instruction. A combination of hardware and software forms a usable computing system, the template for all modern computers is the Von Neumann architecture, detailed in a 1945 paper by Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann. The meaning of the term has evolved to mean a stored-program computer in which an instruction fetch and this is referred to as the Von Neumann bottleneck and often limits the performance of the system. For the third year, U. S. business-to-business channel sales increased. The impressive growth was the fastest sales increase since the end of the recession, sales growth accelerated in the second half of the year peaking in fourth quarter with a 6.9 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2012. There are a number of different types of system in use today. The personal computer, also known as the PC, is one of the most common types of computer due to its versatility, laptops are generally very similar, although they may use lower-power or reduced size components, thus lower performance. The computer case is a plastic or metal enclosure that houses most of the components, a case can be either big or small, but the form factor of motherboard for which it is designed matters more. A power supply unit converts alternating current electric power to low-voltage DC power for the components of the computer. Laptops are capable of running from a battery, normally for a period of hours. The motherboard is the component of a computer. It is usually cooled by a heatsink and fan, or water-cooling system, most newer CPUs include an on-die Graphics Processing Unit. The clock speed of CPUs governs how fast it executes instructions, many modern computers have the option to overclock the CPU which enhances performance at the expense of greater thermal output and thus a need for improved cooling. The chipset, which includes the bridge, mediates communication between the CPU and the other components of the system, including main memory. Random-Access Memory, which stores the code and data that are being accessed by the CPU. For example, when a web browser is opened on the computer it takes up memory, RAM usually comes on DIMMs in the sizes 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB, but can be much larger. Read-Only Memory, which stores the BIOS that runs when the computer is powered on or otherwise begins execution, the BIOS includes boot firmware and power management firmware
20.
IBM PC compatible
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IBM PC compatible computers are those similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, able to run the same software and support the same expansion cards as those. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones, Columbia Data Products built the first clone of the IBM personal computer by a clean room implementation of its BIOS. Early IBM PC compatibles used the computer bus as the original PC. The IBM AT compatible bus was named the Industry Standard Architecture bus by manufacturers of compatible computers. The term IBM PC compatible is now a historical description only, only the Apple Macintosh classic Mac OS and macOS kept significant market share without compatibility with the IBM personal computer, so consumers are typically identified as being a PC or Mac user. IBM decided in 1980 to market a low-cost single-user computer as quickly as possible in response to Apple Computers success in the microcomputer market. On 12 August 1981, the first IBM PC went on sale, there were three operating systems available for it. The least expensive and most popular was PC DOS made by Microsoft, in a crucial concession, IBMs agreement allowed Microsoft to sell its own version, MS-DOS, for non-IBM computers. The only component of the original PC architecture exclusive to IBM was the BIOS and this software would run on any machine using MS-DOS or PC-DOS. Software that directly addressed the hardware instead of making standard calls was faster, however, software addressing IBM PC hardware in this way would not run on MS-DOS machines with different hardware. The 808x computer marketplace rapidly excluded all machines which were not hardware-, the 640 KB barrier on conventional system memory available to MS-DOS is a legacy of that period, other non-clone machines, while subject to a limit, could exceed 640 kB. Rumors of lookalike, compatible computers, created without IBMs approval, by June 1983 PC Magazine defined PC clone as a computer accommodate the user who takes a disk home from an IBM PC, walks across the room, and plugs it into the foreign machine. Because of a shortage of IBM PCs that year, many customers purchased clones instead, Columbia Data Products produced the first computer more or less compatible to the IBM PC standard during June 1982, soon followed by Eagle Computer. Compaq announced its first IBM PC compatible in November 1982, the Compaq Portable, the Compaq was the first sewing machine-sized portable computer that was essentially 100% PC-compatible. The company could not copy the BIOS directly as a result of the decision in Apple v. Franklin. Each computer would have its own Original Equipment Manufacturer version of MS-DOS, any software written for MS-DOS would operate on any MS-DOS computer, despite variations in hardware design. This expectation seemed reasonable in the marketplace of the time. Until then Microsoft was based primarily on computer languages such as BASIC, the established small system operating software was CP/M from Digital Research which was in use both at the hobbyist level and by the more professional of those using microcomputers
21.
PARC (company)
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PARC, formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California, with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology and hardware systems. Xerox formed Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated as an owned subsidiary in 2002. Pake selected Palo Alto, California, as the site of what was to become known as PARC. S, the integration of Ethernet prompted the development of the PARC Universal Packet architecture, much like todays Internet. Xerox has been criticized for failing to properly commercialize and profitably exploit PARCs innovations. A favorite example is the user interface, initially developed at PARC for the Alto. Although very significant in terms of its influence on future system design, a small group from PARC led by David Liddle and Charles Irby formed Metaphor Computer Systems. They extended the Star desktop concept into a graphic and communicating office-automation model. Among PARCs distinguished researchers were three Turing Award winners, Butler W. Lampson, Alan Kay, and Charles P. Thacker. The Association for Computing Machinery Software System Award recognized the Alto system in 1984, Smalltalk in 1987, InterLisp in 1992, and the remote procedure call in 1994. Lampson, Kay, Bob Taylor, and Charles P. Thacker received the National Academy of Engineerings prestigious Charles Stark Draper Prize in 2004 for their work on the Alto, PARCs developments in information technology served for a long time as standards for much of the computing industry. Many advances were not equalled or surpassed for two decades, enormous timespans in the fast-paced high-tech world, a number of GUI engineers left to join Apple Computer. Work at PARC since the early 1980s includes advances in computing, aspect-oriented programming. Xerox Daybreak GlobalView Michael A. Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning, Xerox PARC, alexander, Fumbling the Future, How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer ISBN 1-58348-266-0 M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine, J. C. R. Strassmann Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Oral history interview with William Crowther Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
22.
Floppy disk
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Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive. Floppy disks, initially as 8-inch media and later in 5¼-inch and 3½-inch sizes, were a form of data storage and exchange from the mid-1970s into the mid-2000s. These formats are usually handled by older equipment and these disks and associated drives were produced and improved upon by IBM and other companies such as Memorex, Shugart Associates, and Burroughs Corporation. The term floppy disk appeared in print as early as 1970, in 1976, Shugart Associates introduced the first 5¼-inch FDD. By 1978 there were more than 10 manufacturers producing such FDDs, there were competing floppy disk formats, with hard- and soft-sector versions and encoding schemes such as FM, MFM and GCR. The 5¼-inch format displaced the 8-inch one for most applications, the most common capacity of the 5¼-inch format in DOS-based PCs was 360 kB and in 1984 IBM introduced the 1.2 MB dual-sided floppy disk along with its PC-AT model. IBM started using the 720 kB double-density 3½-inch microfloppy disk on its Convertible laptop computer in 1986 and these disk drives could be added to older PC models. In 1988 IBM introduced a drive for 2.88 MB DSED diskettes in its top-of-the-line PS/2 models, throughout the early 1980s, limitations of the 5¼-inch format became clear. Originally designed to be practical than the 8-inch format, it was itself too large, as the quality of recording media grew. A number of solutions were developed, with drives at 2-, 2½-, 3-, 3½-, the large market share of the 5¼-inch format made it difficult for these new formats to gain significant market share. A variant on the Sony design, introduced in 1982 by a number of manufacturers, was then rapidly adopted. By the end of the 1980s, 5¼-inch disks had been superseded by 3½-inch disks, by the mid-1990s, 5¼-inch drives had virtually disappeared, as the 3½-inch disk became the predominant floppy disk. Floppy disks became ubiquitous during the 1980s and 1990s in their use with computers to distribute software, transfer data. Before hard disks became affordable to the population, floppy disks were often used to store a computers operating system. Most home computers from that period have a primary OS and BASIC stored as ROM, by the early 1990s, the increasing software size meant large packages like Windows or Adobe Photoshop required a dozen disks or more. In 1996, there were a five billion standard floppy disks in use. Then, distribution of packages was gradually replaced by CD-ROMs, DVDs. External USB-based floppy disk drives are available, many modern systems provide firmware support for booting from such drives
23.
Device driver
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In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer. A driver communicates with the device through the bus or communications subsystem to which the hardware connects. When a calling program invokes a routine in the driver, the driver issues commands to the device, once the device sends data back to the driver, the driver may invoke routines in the original calling program. Drivers are hardware dependent and operating-system-specific and they usually provide the interrupt handling required for any necessary asynchronous time-dependent hardware interface. The main purpose of device drivers is to provide abstraction by acting as a translator between a device and the applications or operating systems that use it. Programmers can write the higher-level application code independently of specific hardware the end-user is using. For example, an application for interacting with a serial port may simply have two functions for send data and receive data. At a lower level, a device driver implementing these functions would communicate to the serial port controller installed on a users computer. Writing a device driver requires an understanding of how the hardware. In contrast, most user-level software on modern operating systems can be stopped without greatly affecting the rest of the system, even drivers executing in user mode can crash a system if the device is erroneously programmed. These factors make it difficult and dangerous to diagnose problems. The task of writing drivers thus usually falls to software engineers or computer engineers who work for hardware-development companies and this is because they have better information than most outsiders about the design of their hardware. Moreover, it was considered in the hardware manufacturers interest to guarantee that their clients can use their hardware in an optimum way. Typically, the Logical Device Driver is written by the operating system vendor, but in recent years non-vendors have written numerous device drivers, mainly for use with free and open source operating systems. In such cases, it is important that the manufacturer provides information on how the device communicates. Although this information can instead be learned by reverse engineering, this is more difficult with hardware than it is with software. Microsoft has attempted to reduce system instability due to poorly written device drivers by creating a new framework for driver development, if such drivers malfunction, they do not cause system instability. Apple has a framework for developing drivers on Mac OS X called the I/O Kit
24.
MS-DOS 2
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MS-DOS is a discontinued operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. MS-DOS resulted from a request in 1981 by IBM for a system to use in its IBM PC range of personal computers. Microsoft quickly bought the rights to 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, IBM licensed and released it in August 1981 as PC DOS1.0 for use in their PCs. During its life, several competing products were released for the x86 platform and it was also the underlying basic operating system on which early versions of Windows ran as a GUI. It is a operating system, and consumes negligible installation space. MS-DOS was a form of 86-DOS – owned by Seattle Computer Products. This first version was shipped in August 1980, Microsoft, which needed an operating system for the IBM Personal Computer hired Tim Paterson in May 1981 and bought 86-DOS1.10 for $75,000 in July of the same year. Microsoft kept the number, but renamed it MS-DOS. They also licensed MS-DOS1. 10/1.14 to IBM, within a year Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to over 70 other companies. It was designed to be an OS that could run on any 8086-family computer, thus, there were many different versions of MS-DOS for different hardware, and there is a major distinction between an IBM-compatible machine and an MS-DOS machine. This design would have worked well for compatibility, if application programs had only used MS-DOS services to perform device I/O, Microsoft omitted multi-user support from MS-DOS because Microsofts Unix-based operating system, Xenix, was fully multi-user. After the breakup of the Bell System, however, AT&T Computer Systems started selling UNIX System V, believing that it could not compete with AT&T in the Unix market, Microsoft abandoned Xenix, and in 1987 transferred ownership of Xenix to the Santa Cruz Operation. On 25 March 2014, Microsoft made the code to SCP MS-DOS1.25, as an April Fools joke in 2015, Microsoft Mobile launched a Windows Phone application called MS-DOS Mobile which was presented as a new mobile operating system and worked similar to MS-DOS. Version 3.1 – Support for Microsoft Networks Version 3.2 – First version to support 3.5 inch,720 kB floppy drives and diskettes. Version 3.21 Version 3.22 – Version 3.25 Version 3.3 – First version to support 3.5 inch,1.44 MB floppy drives and diskettes, Version 3. 3a Version 3.31 – supports FAT16B and larger drives. MS-DOS4.0 and MS-DOS4.1 – A separate branch of development with additional multitasking features and it is unrelated to any later versions, including versions 4.00 and 4.01 listed below MS-DOS4. x – includes a graphical/mouse interface. It had many bugs and compatibility issues. Version 4.00 – First version to support a hard disk partition that is greater than 32 MiB. Version 4.01 – Microsoft rewritten Version 4.00 released under MS-DOS label, First version to introduce volume serial number when formatting hard disks and floppy disks
25.
Tiling window manager
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The first Xerox Star system tiled application windows, but allowed dialogs and property windows to overlap. Later, Xerox PARC also developed CEDAR, the first windowing system using a window manager. Next in 1983 came Andrew WM, a complete tiled windowing system later replaced by X11, microsofts Windows 1.0 also used tiling. In 1986 came Digital Researchs GEM2.0, a system for the CP/M which used tiling by default. One of the early tiling WMs was Siemens RTL, up to today an example because of its algorithms of automated window scaling, placement and arrangement. RTL ran on X11R2 and R3, mainly on the native Siemens systems and its features are described by its promotional video. The Andrew Project was a client system for X with a tiling and overlapping window manager. The built-in Microsoft Windows window manager has, since Windows 95 and it can also act as a rudimentary tiling window manager. To tile windows, the user selects them in the taskbar, however, the wording of these options is misleading. These options were changed in Windows Vista to Show Windows Side by Side and Show Windows Stacked. Windows 7 adds the ability to drag windows to either side of the screen to create a simple side-by-side tiled layout, the Windows 8 GUI introduced a new basic tiling window manager. In Windows 10, users are able to tile Windows by quarters, the first version featured a tiling window manager, partly because of litigation by Apple claiming ownership of the overlapping window desktop metaphor. But due to complaints, the version followed the desktop metaphor. All later versions of the operating system stuck to this approach as the default behaviour, in the X Window System, the window manager is a separate program. X itself enforces no specific window management approach and remains usable even without any window manager, current X protocol version X11 explicitly mentions the possibility of tiling window managers. The Siemens RTL Tiled Window Manager was the first to implement automatic placement/sizing strategies, another tiling window manager from this period was the Cambridge Window Manager developed by IBMs Academic Information System group. In 2000, both larswm and Ion released a first version, awesome — a dwm derivative with window tiling, floating and tagging, written in C and configurable and extensible in Lua. It was the first WM to be ported from Xlib to XCB, bspwm — represents windows as the leaves of a full binary tree
26.
System call
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In computing, a system call is the programmatic way in which a computer program requests a service from the kernel of the operating system it is executed on. This may include hardware-related services, creation and execution of new processes, system calls provide an essential interface between a process and the operating system. In most systems, system calls can only be made from userspace processes, while in some systems, OS/360 and successors for example, the architecture of most modern processors, with the exception of some embedded systems, involves a security model. The operating system executes at the highest level of privilege, and allows applications to request services via system calls, generally, systems provide a library or API that sits between normal programs and the operating system. The librarys wrapper functions expose an ordinary function calling convention for using the system call, in this way the library, which exists between the OS and the application, increases portability. The call to the function itself does not cause a switch to kernel mode and is usually a normal subroutine call. The actual system call does transfer control to the kernel, for example, in Unix-like systems, fork and execve are C library functions that in turn execute instructions that invoke the fork and exec system calls. On exokernel based systems, the library is especially important as an intermediary, on exokernels, libraries shield user applications from the very low level kernel API, and provide abstractions and resource management. IBM operating systems descended from OS/360 and DOS/360, including z/OS and z/VSE and this reflects their origin at a time when programming in assembly language was more common than high-level language usage. IBM system calls are not directly executable by high-level language programs. On Unix, Unix-like and other POSIX-compliant operating systems, popular system calls are open, read, write, close, wait, exec, fork, exit, many modern operating systems have hundreds of system calls. For example, Linux and OpenBSD each have over 300 different calls, NetBSD has close to 500, FreeBSD has over 500, Windows 7 has close to 700, while Plan 9 has 51. This special ability of the program is also implemented with a system call. Implementing system calls requires a transfer from user space to kernel space. A typical way to implement this is to use a software interrupt or trap, interrupts transfer control to the operating system kernel so software simply needs to set up some register with the system call number needed, and execute the software interrupt. This is the only provided for many RISC processors. For example, the x86 instruction set contains the instructions SYSCALL/SYSRET and these are fast control transfer instructions that are designed to quickly transfer control to the kernel for a system call without the overhead of an interrupt. Linux 2.5 began using this on the x86, where available, formerly it used the INT instruction, an older x86 mechanism is the call gate
27.
Apple Lisa
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Apple Lisa was a desktop computer developed by Apple, released on January 19,1983. It was one of the first personal computers to offer a user interface in a machine aimed at individual business users. Development of the Lisa began in 1978, and it underwent many changes during the development period before shipping at the high price of US$9,995 with a 5 MB hard drive. The high price, relatively low performance and unreliable Twiggy floppy disks led to poor sales, in 1982, after Steve Jobs was forced out of the Lisa project, he joined the Macintosh project, at that time developing a much more limited machine with a task-switching interface. Jobs redirected the Macintosh team to build a cheaper and better Lisa, releasing it in January 1984, newer versions of the Lisa were introduced that addressed its faults and lowered its price considerably, but it never really picked up sales compared to the much less expensive Mac. The final revision of the Lisa, the Lisa 2/10, was modified, generally considered a failure, the Lisa nevertheless introduced a number of advanced features that would not re-appear on the Macintosh for a number of years. Among these was a system which featured protected memory and preemptive multitasking. The hardware itself was much more advanced than the Macintosh, with a hard drive and support for up to 2 megabytes of RAM, expansion slots. The main exception being that while the Macintosh also used the 68000 processor, the complexity of the Lisa operating system and its associated programs overtaxed the slower processor enough that users perceived it to be sluggish, particularly when scrolling in documents. While the documentation shipped with the original Lisa only ever referred to it as The Lisa, officially, decades later, Jobs would tell his biographer Walter Isaacson, Obviously it was named for my daughter. The project began in 1978 as an effort to create a modern version of the then-conventional design epitomized by the Apple II. Initial team leader Ken Rothmuller was soon replaced by John Couch, trip Hawkins, who was then on the marketing team for the nascent Lisa project, and Jef Raskin contributed to the change in design. Several years prior to this, research had been going on at Xeroxs Palo Alto Research Center to create a new way to organize everything on the screen, Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC in 1979. He was excited by the revolutionary mouse-driven GUI of the Xerox Alto and was keen to use these ideas back at Apple, a great deal of work was put into making the graphical interface into a mainstream commercial product by the Lisa team. By May 1982 InfoWorld reported that Apples yet-to-be-announced Lisa 68000 network work station is widely rumored to have a mouse. The Lisa was a project at the company, which reportedly spent more than $50 million on its development. More than 90 people participated on the design, plus more on the sales, bruce Daniels was in charge of applications development, and Larry Tesler was in charge of system software. After a six-month period in which the interface was designed, the hardware, operating system
28.
Unix
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Among these is Apples macOS, which is the Unix version with the largest installed base as of 2014. Many Unix-like operating systems have arisen over the years, of which Linux is the most popular, Unix was originally meant to be a convenient platform for programmers developing software to be run on it and on other systems, rather than for non-programmer users. The system grew larger as the system started spreading in academic circles, as users added their own tools to the system. Unix was designed to be portable, multi-tasking and multi-user in a time-sharing configuration and these concepts are collectively known as the Unix philosophy. By the early 1980s users began seeing Unix as a universal operating system. Under Unix, the system consists of many utilities along with the master control program. To mediate such access, the kernel has special rights, reflected in the division between user space and kernel space, the microkernel concept was introduced in an effort to reverse the trend towards larger kernels and return to a system in which most tasks were completed by smaller utilities. In an era when a standard computer consisted of a disk for storage and a data terminal for input and output. However, modern systems include networking and other new devices, as graphical user interfaces developed, the file model proved inadequate to the task of handling asynchronous events such as those generated by a mouse. In the 1980s, non-blocking I/O and the set of inter-process communication mechanisms were augmented with Unix domain sockets, shared memory, message queues, and semaphores. In microkernel implementations, functions such as network protocols could be moved out of the kernel, Multics introduced many innovations, but had many problems. Frustrated by the size and complexity of Multics but not by the aims and their last researchers to leave Multics, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, M. D. McIlroy, and J. F. Ossanna, decided to redo the work on a much smaller scale. The name Unics, a pun on Multics, was suggested for the project in 1970. Peter H. Salus credits Peter Neumann with the pun, while Brian Kernighan claims the coining for himself, in 1972, Unix was rewritten in the C programming language. Bell Labs produced several versions of Unix that are referred to as Research Unix. In 1975, the first source license for UNIX was sold to faculty at the University of Illinois Department of Computer Science, UIUC graduate student Greg Chesson was instrumental in negotiating the terms of this license. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the influence of Unix in academic circles led to adoption of Unix by commercial startups, including Sequent, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX. In the late 1980s, AT&T Unix System Laboratories and Sun Microsystems developed System V Release 4, in the 1990s, Unix-like systems grew in popularity as Linux and BSD distributions were developed through collaboration by a worldwide network of programmers
29.
User interface
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The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. Examples of this concept of user interfaces include the interactive aspects of computer operating systems, hand tools, heavy machinery operator controls. The design considerations applicable when creating user interfaces are related to or involve such disciplines as ergonomics and psychology. Generally, the goal of user interface design is to produce a user interface makes it easy, efficient. This generally means that the needs to provide minimal input to achieve the desired output. Other terms for user interface are man–machine interface and when the machine in question is a computer human–computer interface, the user interface or human–machine interface is the part of the machine that handles the human–machine interaction. Membrane switches, rubber keypads and touchscreens are examples of the part of the Human Machine Interface which we can see. In complex systems, the interface is typically computerized. The term human–computer interface refers to this kind of system, in the context of computing the term typically extends as well to the software dedicated to control the physical elements used for human-computer interaction. The engineering of the interfaces is enhanced by considering ergonomics. The corresponding disciplines are human factors engineering and usability engineering, which is part of systems engineering, tools used for incorporating human factors in the interface design are developed based on knowledge of computer science, such as computer graphics, operating systems, programming languages. Nowadays, we use the graphical user interface for human–machine interface on computers. There is a difference between a user interface and an interface or a human–machine interface. A human-machine interface is typically local to one machine or piece of equipment, an operator interface is the interface method by which multiple equipment that are linked by a host control system is accessed or controlled. The system may expose several user interfaces to serve different kinds of users, for example, a computerized library database might provide two user interfaces, one for library patrons and the other for library personnel. The user interface of a system, a vehicle or an industrial installation is sometimes referred to as the human–machine interface. HMI is a modification of the original term MMI, in practice, the abbreviation MMI is still frequently used although some may claim that MMI stands for something different now. Another abbreviation is HCI, but is commonly used for human–computer interaction
30.
Compaq
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Compaq was a company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compatible computers, being the first company to reverse engineer the IBM Personal Computer. It rose to become the largest supplier of PC systems during the 1990s before being overtaken by HP in 2001, struggling in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble bust, as well as with a risky acquisition of DEC, Compaq was acquired for US$25 billion by HP in 2002. The Compaq brand remained in use by HP for lower-end systems until 2013 when it was discontinued, the company was formed by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto—former Texas Instruments senior managers. Murto departed Compaq in 1987, while Canion and Harris left under a shakeup in 1991, prior to its takeover the company was headquartered in a facility in northwest unincorporated Harris County, Texas, that now continues as HPs largest United States facility. Compaq was founded in February 1982 by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto, the three of them had left due to lack of faith and loss of confidence in TIs management, and initially considered but ultimately decided against starting a chain of Mexican restaurants. Each invested $1,000 to form the company, which was founded with the temporary name Gateway Technology, the name COMPAQ was said to be derived from Compatibility and Quality but this explanation was an afterthought. The name was chosen from many suggested by Ogilvy and Mather, the first Compaq PC was sketched out on a placemat by Canion while dining with the founders in a Houston pie shop. Their first venture came from Benjamin M. Rosen and Sevin Rosen Funds who helped the fledgling company secure $1.5 million to produce their initial computer. Overall, the managed to raise $25 million from venture capitalists. In contrast to Dell Computer and Gateway 2000, Compaq hired veteran engineers with an average of 15 years experience, under Canions direction, Compaq sold computers only through dealers to avoid potential competition that a direct sales channel would foster, which helped foster loyalty among resellers. By giving dealers considerable leeway in pricing Compaqs offerings, either a significant markup for more profits or discount for more sales, dealers had a major incentive to advertise Compaq. During its first year of sales, the company sold 53,000 PCs for sales of $111 million, Compaq went public in 1983 on the NYSE and raised $67 million. In 1986, it enjoyed record sales of $329 million from 150,000 PCs, in 1987, Compaq hit the $1 billion revenue mark, taking the least amount of time to reach that milestone. By 1991, Compaq held the fifth spot in the PC market with $3 billion in sales that year. Two key marketing executives in Compaqs early years, Jim DArezzo, other key executives responsible for the companys meteoric growth in the late 80s and early 90s were Ross A. In the United States, Brendan A. Mac McLoughlin led the companys sales organization after starting up the Western U. S. The soft-spoken Canion was popular with employees and the culture that he built helped Compaq to attract the best talent, at semi-annual meetings, turnout was high as any employee could ask questions to senior managers
31.
Zenith Data Systems
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Zenith Data Systems was a division of Zenith Electronics founded in 1979 after Zenith acquired Heathkit, which had, in 1977, entered the personal computer market. Headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan, Zenith sold personal computers under both the Heath/Zenith and Zenith Data Systems names, Zenith was an early partner with Microsoft, licensing all Microsoft languages for the Heath/Zenith 8-bit computers. Conversely, Microsoft programmers of the early 1980s did much of their work using Zenith Z-19, the first Heathkit H8 computer, sold in kit form, was built on an Intel 8080 processor. It ran K7 audio-tape software, punched tape software and HDOS software on 5¼ hard-sectored floppy disks, the CP/M operating system was adapted to all Heath/Zenith computers, in 1979. Next, the early Heath/Zenith computers were based on the Z80 processors, zDSs first computers were preassembled versions of Heathkit computers. As subsidiary of a company, ZDS could obtain monitors at cost. The company also continued Heaths practice of publishing unusually clear product documentation, distributing schematics, ZDS introduced the Z-100, its first computer not based on a kit design and second 16-bit product after the H11 minicomputer, in early 1982. Targeted for professionals, it had an S-100 bus, high color graphics, an 8-bit Z80. It ran Z-DOS, an OEM version close to MS-DOS, but was not yet the PC compatible machine. ZDS avoided the retail market and focused on customers, such as companies, universities, and government agencies, an executive said, Wed like to have. In October 1983, the United States Navy and Air Force awarded a $27 million computer contract to ZDS, in 1984 ZDS won a $100 million contract with the United States military for Tempest-shielded computers. In October 1989, Zenith sold ZDS to the French company Groupe Bull for $635 million, two key reasons for the ZDS/Groupe Bull merger with Packard Bell were the cost of repairs and cost of software upgrades for a large US government contract. ZDS lost a lot of money as a result of the US Air Force contract Desktop IV. The Air Force also insisted on making ZDS pay for the upgrade to Windows 95 on 200,000 of the machines since ZDS had agreed to provide software upgrades for the computers for free. Next, in 1987, followed the Intel 8088-based Zenith 181 and Zenith 183, the follow-on SupersPORT was substantially larger and heavier, but provided much-improved performance through the use of the Intel 80286 processor. It was selected by the US Army and Navy in one of the first major government purchases of laptop computers, later another version used an Intel 80386 processor. The later MinisPORT was the only laptop to use the 2-inch floppy disk. One unique feature of most Zenith PC-compatibles was the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Ins, later models of Zenith computers, laptops in particular, included a MACHINE. EXE program, which allowed the user to change hardware-specific settings from within other programs
32.
Digital Equipment Corporation
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Digital Equipment Corporation, also known as DEC and using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1950s to the 1990s. DEC was a vendor of computer systems, including computers, software. Their PDP and successor VAX products were the most successful of all minicomputers in terms of sales, DEC was acquired in June 1998 by Compaq, in what was at that time the largest merger in the history of the computer industry. At the time, Compaq was focused on the market and had recently purchased several other large vendors. DEC was a major player overseas where Compaq had less presence, however, Compaq had little idea what to do with its acquisitions, and soon found itself in financial difficulty of its own. The company subsequently merged with Hewlett-Packard in May 2002, as of 2007 some of DECs product lines were still produced under the HP name. From 1957 until 1992, DECs headquarters were located in a wool mill in Maynard. DEC was acquired in June 1998 by Compaq, which merged with Hewlett-Packard in May 2002. Some parts of DEC, notably the business and the Hudson. Initially focusing on the end of the computer market allowed DEC to grow without its potential competitors making serious efforts to compete with them. Their PDP series of machines became popular in the 1960s, especially the PDP-8, looking to simplify and update their line, DEC replaced most of their smaller machines with the PDP-11 in 1970, eventually selling over 600,000 units and cementing DECs position in the industry. Originally designed as a follow-on to the PDP-11, DECs VAX-11 series was the first widely used 32-bit minicomputer and these systems were able to compete in many roles with larger mainframe computers, such as the IBM System/370. The VAX was a best-seller, with over 400,000 sold, at its peak, DEC was the second largest employer in Massachusetts, second only to the Massachusetts State Government. The rapid rise of the business microcomputer in the late 1980s, DECs last major attempt to find a space in the rapidly changing market was the DEC Alpha 64-bit RISC instruction set architecture. DEC initially started work on Alpha as a way to re-implement their VAX series, DEC was acquired in June 1998 by Compaq, in what was at that time the largest merger in the history of the computer industry. At the time, Compaq was focused on the market and had recently purchased several other large vendors. DEC was a major player overseas where Compaq had less presence, however, Compaq had little idea what to do with its acquisitions, and soon found itself in financial difficulty of its own. The company subsequently merged with Hewlett-Packard in May 2002, as of 2007 some of DECs product lines were still produced under the HP name
33.
Ashton-Tate
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Ashton-Tate was a US-based software company best known for developing the popular dBASE database application. Ashton-Tate grew from a small garage-based company to become a multinational corporation, once one of the Big Three software companies, which included Microsoft and Lotus, the company stumbled and was later sold to Borland in September 1991. The history of Ashton-Tate and dBASE are intertwined and as such, in 1978 Martin Marietta programmer Wayne Ratliff wrote Vulcan, a database application, to help him make picks for football pools. Written in Intel 8080 assembly language, it ran on the CP/M operating system and was modeled on JPLDIS, Ashton-Tate was launched as a result of George Tate and Hal Lashlee having found and licensed Vulcan from Ratliff in 1981. The original agreement was written on one page, and called for simple, the founders needed to change the name, because Harris Corporation already had an operating system called Vulcan. Hal Pawluk, who worked for their agency, suggested dBASE. He also suggested that the first release of the product II would imply that it was already in its second version, the original manual was too complex from Pawluks perspective, so he wrote a second manual, which was duly included in the package along with the first. In reality, George Tate did not have a pet parrot named Ashton, because people kept calling the company asking to speak to Mr Ashton, this hidden tidbit of information became a PC industry insider joke. DBASE II had an unusual guarantee, customers received a crippleware version of the software and a separate, sealed disk with the full version, they could return the unopened disk for a refund within 30 days. The guarantee likely persuaded many to risk purchasing the $700 application, in 1981 the founders hired David C. Cole to be the chairman, president and CEO of their group of companies. The group was called Software Plus and it did not trade under its own name, but was a holding company for the three startups, Discount Software, Software Distributors, and Ashton-Tate. Cole was given free rein to run the businesses, while George Tate primarily remained involved in Ashton-Tate, in June 1982 Cole hired Rod Turner as the director of OEM sales for Ashton-Tate. Turner was approximately the 12th employee of Ashton Tate, Jim Taylor was responsible for product management in the early days, and worked closely with Wayne Ratliff and the other key developers on dBASE II. In 1982 Perry Lawrence and Nelson Tso were the two developers who were employed at Ashton-Tate, while Wayne Ratliff employed Jeb Long from his royalty stream, the CP/M market was fragmented, with many hardware companies and nascent channels. DBASE II was ported to the IBM PC and shipped in September 1982, Pawluk ran advertisements promoting dBASE II for the IBM PC for months before it shipped. Turner expanded Aston-Tates international distribution efforts and encouraged exclusive distributors in markets to translate dBASE II from English to non-English versions. The early presence of dBASE II in international markets, as IBM rolled out the PC in those markets, facilitated rapid growth in sales and market share for dBASE. At one point in 1983, the companys French distributor La Command Electronique claimed that one in ten buyers of a PC in France is buying dBASE II, in the winter of 1982, Turner recruited the managing director for Ashton-Tates first subsidiary, Ashton-Tate UK
34.
Lotus Software
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Lotus Software was an American software company based in Massachusetts. Much later, in conjunction with Ray Ozzies Iris Associates, Lotus also released a groupware and email system, IBM purchased the company in 1995 for US$3. Lotus was founded in 1982 by partners Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs with backing from Ben Rosen, lotuss first product was presentation software for the Apple II known as Lotus Executive Briefing System. Kapor founded Lotus after leaving his post as head of development at VisiCorp, the distributors of the Visicalc spreadsheet, shortly after Kapor left Visi-Corp, he and Sachs produced an integrated spreadsheet and graphics program. Even though IBM and VisiCorp had an agreement whereby Visi-Calc was being shipped simultaneously with the PC. Lotus released Lotus 1-2-3 on January 26,1983, the name referred to the three ways the product could be used, as a spreadsheet, graphics package, and database manager. In practice the two functions were less often used, but 1-2-3 was the most powerful spreadsheet program available. In October 1984 he was named President, and in April 1986 he was appointed CEO, in July of that same year he also became Chairman of the Board. Manzi remained at the head of Lotus until 1995, as the popularity of the personal computer grew, Lotus quickly came to dominate the spreadsheet market. Lotus introduced other office products such as Ray Ozzies Symphony in 1984, Jazz did very poorly in the market. Also in 1985, Lotus bought Software Arts and discontinued its VisiCalc program, in the late 1980s Lotus developed Lotus Magellan, a file management and indexing utility. Improv also flopped, and none of these made a significant impact on the market. Lotus was involved in a number of lawsuits, of which the most significant were the look and this led Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, to found the League for Programming Freedom and hold protests outside Lotus Development offices. Paperback and Mosaic lost and went out of business, Borland won, the LPF filed an amicus curiae brief in the Borland case. In the 1990s, to compete with Microsofts Windows applications, Lotus had to buy in products such as Ami Pro, Approach, and Threadz, several applications were bundled together under the name Lotus SmartSuite. It now has very little market share, the last significant new release was the SmartSuite Millennium Edition released in 1999. All new development of the suite was ended in 2000, with ongoing maintenance being moved overseas, Lotus began its diversification from the desktop software business with its 1984 strategic founding investment in Ray Ozzies Iris Associates, the creator of its Lotus Notes groupware platform. Lotus initially brought Lotus Notes to market in 1989, and later reinforced its presence with the acquisition of cc
35.
Byte (magazine)
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Byte magazine was an American microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage. Coverage was in-depth with much detail, rather than user-oriented. Print publication ceased in 1998 and online publication in 2013, Byte started in 1975, shortly after the first personal computers appeared as kits advertised in the back of electronics magazines. Byte was published monthly, with a yearly subscription price of $10. In 1975 Wayne Green was the editor and publisher of 73 and his ex-wife, on May 25th we made a deal with the publisher of a small computer hobby magazine to take over as editor of a new publication which would start in August. Carl Helmers published a series of six articles in 1974 that detailed the design and construction of his Experimenters Computer System, in January 1975 this became the monthly ECS magazine with 400 subscribers. The last issue was published on May 12,1975 and in June the subscribers were mailed a notice announcing Byte magazine, carl wrote to another hobbyist newsletter, Micro-8 Computer User Group Newsletter, and described his new job as editor of Byte magazine. I got a note in the mail about two weeks ago from Wayne Green, publisher of 73 Magazine essentially saying hello and why dont you come up, the net result of a follow up is the decision to create BYTE magazine using the facilities of Green Publishing Inc. I will end up with the focus for the magazine. Virginia Londner Green had returned to 73 in the December 1974 issue, the first five issues of Byte were published by Green Publishing and the name was changed to Byte Publications starting with the February 1976 issue. Carl Helmers was a co-owner of Byte Publications, the first four issues were produced in the offices of 73 and Wayne Green was listed as the publisher. One day in November 1975 Wayne came to work and found that the Byte magazine staff had moved out, the February 1976 issue of Byte has a short story about the move. After a start which reads like a light opera with an episode or two reminiscent of the Keystone Cops, Byte magazine finally has moved into separate offices of its own. Wayne Green was not happy about losing Byte magazine so he was going to start a new one called Kilobyte, Byte quickly trademarked KILOBYTE as a cartoon series in Byte magazine. The new magazine was called Kilobaud, there was competition and animosity between Byte Publications and 73 Inc. but both remained in the small town of Peterborough, New Hampshire. Byte was able to attract advertising and articles from many well-knowns, soon-to-be-well-knowns, articles in the first issue included Which Microprocessor For You. by Hal Chamberlin, Write Your Own Assembler by Dan Fylstra and Serial Interface by Don Lancaster. Advertisements from Godbout, MITS, Processor Technology, SCELBI, and Sphere appear, early articles in Byte were do-it-yourself electronic or software projects to improve small computers. A continuing feature was Ciarcias Circuit Cellar, a column in which electronic engineer Steve Ciarcia described small projects to modify or attach to a computer, Byte ran Microsofts first advertisement, as Micro-Soft, to sell a BASIC interpreter for 8080-based computers
36.
Desktop computer
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A desktop computer is a personal computer designed for regular use at a single location on or near a desk or table due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuration has a case that houses the power supply, motherboard, disk storage, a keyboard and mouse for input, and a monitor, and, often. The case may be oriented horizontally or vertically and placed either underneath, beside, an all-in-one desktop computer typically combines the case and monitor in one unit. Early computers took up the space of a whole room, minicomputers generally fit into one or a few refrigerator-sized racks. The very first programmable calculator/computer was marketed in the half of the 1960s. More desktop models were introduced in 1971, leading to a model programmable in BASIC in 1972 and this one used a smaller version of a minicomputer design based on read-only memory and had small one-line LED alphanumeric displays. They could draw computer graphics with a plotter, over the course of the 1990s, desktop cases gradually became less common than the more-accessible tower cases that may be located on the floor under or beside a desk rather than on a desk. Not only do these tower cases had more room for expansion, Desktop cases, particularly the compact form factors, remain popular for corporate computing environments and kiosks. Some computer cases can be positioned either horizontally or upright. While desktops have long been the most common configuration for PCs, notably, while desktops were mainly produced in the United States, laptops had long been produced by contract manufacturers based in Asia, such as Foxconn. This shift led to the closure of the many desktop assembly plants in the United States by 2010, battery-powered portable computers had just 2% worldwide market share in 1986. However, laptops have become popular, both for business and personal use. Around 109 million notebook PCs shipped worldwide in 2007, a growth of 33% compared to 2006, in 2008, it was estimated that 145.9 million notebooks were sold, and that the number would grow in 2009 to 177.7 million. The third quarter of 2008 was the first time when worldwide notebook PC shipments exceeded desktops, the change in sales of form factors is due to the desktop iMac moving from affordable to upscale and subsequent releases are considered premium all-in-ones. The decades of development means that most people already own desktop computers that meet their needs and have no need of buying a new one merely to keep pace with advancing technology. Recently, some analysts have suggested that Windows 8 has actually hurt sales of PCs in 2012, the post-PC trend has seen a decline in the sales of desktop and laptop PCs. The decline has been attributed to increased power and applications of computing devices, namely smartphones. Among PC form factors, desktops remain a staple in the market but have lost popularity among home buyers
37.
Kernel (operating system)
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The kernel is a computer program that is the core of a computers operating system, with complete control over everything in the system. It is the first program loaded on start-up and it handles the rest of start-up as well as input/output requests from software, translating them into data-processing instructions for the central processing unit. It handles memory and peripherals like keyboards, monitors, printers, the critical code of the kernel is usually loaded into a protected area of memory, which prevents it from being overwritten by applications or other, more minor parts of the operating system. The kernel performs its tasks, such as running processes and handling interrupts, in contrast, everything a user does is in user space, writing text in a text editor, running programs in a GUI, etc. This separation prevents user data and kernel data from interfering with other and causing instability. The kernels interface is an abstraction layer. When a process makes requests of the kernel, it is called a system call, Kernel designs differ in how they manage these system calls and resources. A monolithic kernel runs all the operating instructions in the same address space. A microkernel runs most processes in space, for modularity. The kernel takes responsibility for deciding at any time which of the running programs should be allocated to the processor or processors. Random-access memory Random-access memory is used to both program instructions and data. Typically, both need to be present in memory in order for a program to execute, often multiple programs will want access to memory, frequently demanding more memory than the computer has available. The kernel is responsible for deciding which memory each process can use, input/output devices I/O devices include such peripherals as keyboards, mice, disk drives, printers, network adapters, and display devices. The kernel allocates requests from applications to perform I/O to an appropriate device, key aspects necessary in resource management are the definition of an execution domain and the protection mechanism used to mediate the accesses to the resources within a domain. Kernels also usually provide methods for synchronization and communication between processes called inter-process communication, finally, a kernel must provide running programs with a method to make requests to access these facilities. The kernel has full access to the memory and must allow processes to safely access this memory as they require it. Often the first step in doing this is virtual addressing, usually achieved by paging and/or segmentation, virtual addressing allows the kernel to make a given physical address appear to be another address, the virtual address. This allows every program to behave as if it is the one running
38.
Xenix
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Xenix is a discontinued version of the Unix operating system for various microcomputer platforms, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T Corporation in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation later acquired rights to the software. In the mid-to-late 1980s, Xenix was the most common Unix variant, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said in 1996 that for a long time that company had the highest-volume AT&T Unix license. Bell Labs, the developer of Unix, was part of the regulated Bell System and it instead licensed the software to others. Because Microsoft was not able to license the UNIX name itself, Microsoft called Xenix a universal operating environment. The first version of Xenix was very close to the original UNIX version 7 source on the PDP-11, Microsoft said in 1981, and later versions were to incorporate its own fixes and improvements. The first port was for the Z8001 16-bit processor, the first customer ship was January 1981 for Central Data Corporation of Illinois, the first 8086 port was for the Altos Computer Systems non-PC-compatible 8600-series computers. Intel sold complete computers with Xenix under their Intel System 86 brand and this included processor boards like iSBC 86/12 and also MMU boards such as the iSBC309. The first Intel Xenix systems shipped in July 1982, seattle Computer Products also made 8086 computers bundled with Xenix, like their Gazelle II, which used the S-100 bus and was available in late 1983 or early 1984. There was also a port for IBM System 9000, SCO had initially worked on its own PDP-11 port of V7, called Dynix, but then struck an agreement with Microsoft for joint development and technology exchange on Xenix in 1982. In 1984, a port to the 68000-based Apple Lisa was jointly developed by SCO and Microsoft, the difficulty in porting to the various 8086 and Z8000-based machines, said Microsoft in its 1983 OEM directory, had been the lack of a standardized memory management unit and protection facilities. A generally available port to the unmapped Intel 8086/8088 architecture was done by The Santa Cruz Operation around 1983, SCO Xenix for the PC XT shipped sometime in 1984 and contained some enhancement from 4. 2BSD, it also supported the Micnet local area networking. The later 286 version of Xenix leveraged the integrated MMU present on this chip, the 286 Xenix was accompanied by new hardware from Xenix OEMs. For example, the Sperry PC/IT, an IBM PC AT clone, was advertised as capable of supporting eight simultaneous dumb terminal users under this version and it was followed by a System V.2 codebase in Xenix 5.0. Microsoft hopes that XENIX will become the choice for software production and exchange. Microsoft referred to its own MS-DOS as its single-user, single-tasking operating system, microsofts Chris Larson described MS-DOS2. 0s Xenix compatibility as the second most important feature. AT&T started selling System V, however, after the breakup of the Bell System, Microsoft, believing that it could not compete with Unixs developer, decided to abandon Xenix. The decision was not immediately transparent, which led to the term vaporware and it agreed with IBM to develop OS/2, and the Xenix team was assigned to that project
39.
IBM
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International Business Machines Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and was renamed International Business Machines in 1924, IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware, middleware and software, and offers hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM is also a research organization, holding the record for most patents generated by a business for 24 consecutive years. IBM has continually shifted its business mix by exiting commoditizing markets and focusing on higher-value, also in 2014, IBM announced that it would go fabless, continuing to design semiconductors, but offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries. Nicknamed Big Blue, IBM is one of 30 companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the worlds largest employers, with nearly 380,000 employees. Known as IBMers, IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, in the 1880s, technologies emerged that would ultimately form the core of what would become International Business Machines. On June 16,1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company based in Endicott, New York. The five companies had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, New York, Dayton, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Washington, D. C. and Toronto. They manufactured machinery for sale and lease, ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders, meat and cheese slicers, to tabulators and punched cards. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. fired from the National Cash Register Company by John Henry Patterson, called on Flint and, Watson joined CTR as General Manager then,11 months later, was made President when court cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Having learned Pattersons pioneering business practices, Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTRs companies and his favorite slogan, THINK, became a mantra for each companys employees. During Watsons first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million, Watson had never liked the clumsy hyphenated title of the CTR and in 1924 chose to replace it with the more expansive title International Business Machines. By 1933 most of the subsidiaries had been merged into one company, in 1937, IBMs tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data, its clients including the U. S. During the Second World War the company produced small arms for the American war effort, in 1949, Thomas Watson, Sr. created IBM World Trade Corporation, a subsidiary of IBM focused on foreign operations. In 1952, he stepped down after almost 40 years at the company helm, in 1957, the FORTRAN scientific programming language was developed. In 1961, IBM developed the SABRE reservation system for American Airlines, in 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts. A year later it moved its headquarters from New York City to Armonk. The latter half of the 1960s saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, on April 7,1964, IBM announced the first computer system family, the IBM System/360
40.
IBM TopView
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TopView is a text-mode PC DOS multitasking, object-oriented windowing environment written by IBM, announced in August 1984 and shipped in March 1985. TopView provided an environment that allowed users to run more than one application at the same time on a PC. IBM demonstrated a version of the product to key customers before making it generally available. IBM determined that the market needed a multitasking environment. 512-640 KB was recommended to load up two typical application programs of the time and this was the maximum the earlier IBM XT could have installed. Once loaded, TopView took back much of the memory consumed by DOS, TopView ran in real mode on any x86 processor and could run well behaved DOS programs in an arrangement of windows. Well behaved applications would use standard DOS and BIOS function calls to access system services, misbehaving programs such as Lotus 1-2-3, WordStar and dBase III would still run in the TopView environment, but would consume the entire screen. Object-oriented applications were written using the TopView API, TopView was not updated to make use of the virtual 8086 mode added in the Intel 80386 processors that allowed better virtualization. Initially, compatibility with the features was limited mainly to IBM applications, along with a few third-party products like WordPerfect. A chicken-and-egg situation developed where third-party developers were reluctant to add extended feature support when they did not see market demand for them. Most DOS programs did, however, support these functions and did allow the user to perform the cut, copy, some believed that IBM planned to use TopView to force them to rely on them to comply with the new technical specifications. As later versions of TopView were released, it was able to make more challenging DOS apps run in a multitasking fashion by intercepting direct access to system services. TopViews PIF files were inherited and extended by Quarterdecks DESQview and Microsoft Windows. EXE or. COM executable file, version 1.1, introduced in June 1986, added support for the IBM PC Network and IBM3270 terminal emulation. Importantly, support for swapping non-resident programs was added—onto the hard disk on all computers, the initially poor support for DOS batch files was improved. Version 1.12, introduced in April 1987, added support for the new IBM PS/2 series, their DOS3.30 operating system and it could also now use up to four serial ports. TopView ran in graphics mode, however, this was rarely used, by mid-1987, IBM began to shift focus away from TopView and was promoting the use of OS/2 to developers and end users alike. A graphical user interface was added with OS/21.1 in October 1988,1.1 could run with or without Presentation Manager as well as an embedded system with no screen, keyboard or mouse interface required. IBM officially stopped marketing the final release of TopView, version 1.12, later in April 1992, IBM introduced OS/22.0 which included virtual 8086 mode and full 32-bit support of the Intel 80386 superseding even DESQview and other similar environments
