eight technology leaps that changed our world
In the early 1970s, the idea of an ordinary person owning a computer sounded absurd. Computers back then were more like aircraft carriers or nuclear power plants than household appliances – vast machines housed in data centres operated by teams of specialists, serving governments, universities and large corporations. Then came Apple. Founded on April 1 1976 by “college dropouts” Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the Silicon Valley startup did not invent computing. What it did was arguably more important: it helped turn computing into a personal technology. Before Apple, computers were largely sold in kit form. Jobs saw that people wanted them pre-assembled and ready to run. The earliest Apple I units, featuring handmade koa wooden cases, now sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. As an early Apple adopter and app developer, here’s my selection of the company’s (and Jobs’s) most significant technological achievements over the last 50 years. Apple II – beige yet distinctive Early personal computers were more curiosities than practical tools. The Apple II, launched in June 1977, introduced something new: …
