1. The history of computer
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| Leptop/ computer |
The world computer derived from a Greek iatia word compute which means calculate.Thefirst computer, the ENIAC, was built and sold by IBM in 1946. IBM secured a monopoly on computers until the early 1970s, when they discovered there were several competing technologies: Vacuum Tube Computers, the first operating systems, and even better (at the time), CompuServe. The latter was acquired by America Online in 1996. The dsaw many advances in computing technology, but I’m not going to be covering them here.
I’d like to address an issue that has often been raised by commenters — namely that of kings of computer pats of computer — Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Steve Jobs (Apple) as representing one kind of computer product while Steve Wozniak (Woz), Apple’s co-founder, is actually the inventor of the first widely available laptop computer — or “personal home computer” as he called it. This is false and should be taken with a grain of salt.
The truth is that there are multiple kinds of computers out there, including laptops and desktops, based on different architectures (such as ones where the processor is more like a CPU than a GPU). In fact, today it would be easy enough to find people who have done so who don’t agree with me: they can just claim if they had invented it their names would have been mentioned somewhere on Wikipedia . And if you count all computers sold since 1946 regardless of architecture (which I do) then Steve Wozniak may well have done far more for computing than Bill Gates ever did for Microsoft .
What I want to do here is to highlight all those who contributed to advances in computing over the last few decades that were not due entirely or primarily to anyone named Gates or Jobs; those who are generally acknowledged as having played important roles in advancing computing technology over the years but otherwise left us with little or no information about their contributions. You may notice I didn’t mention Larry Ellison from Oracle or Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook . That’s because they aren’t important enough to mention.
2. How computer works
The short post is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it’s also a very useful lesson, with many “pats of computer” resulting in more than a few good laughs.
The “pats of computer” are the little things that make computers work and they range from the obvious (like functions like screen rotation) to the less obvious effects (like how your mouse pointer works or how your keyboard is laid out).
I’ll start with the first pats, which are just as important as the others:
• You don't need to turn on your computer — you can do it all from within one application. You can even do this using two applications: one for opening documents and another for moving or copying them around. This idea might sound familiar from working with web browsers; Firefox is an example of this. When I started using Firefox (which was released in 2003), I didn’t think of it as a separate application but rather as one of several tools to create and manipulate websites. Similarly, when I started getting serious about mobile web apps, I thought of them as tools and not separate applications. And likewise, when I started working on iOS apps, I didn’t think of them as separate applications but rather as tools which would be integrated into an operating system.
• You don't have to buy any special hardware — most computers are so small that they fit anywhere in your (or someone else’s) hand — making them easy to pick up and use. This is especially important if you want something portable; so many mobile phones today have touchscreens which make it much easier to hold and use them than bulky laptops or big monitors. The same applies for tablets; you can carry your phone with you everywhere without worrying about where to put it down or having weird angles or cradles for it (and this doesn't even cover using tablets in other ways).
• You don't need specialized software — most operating systems let you do pretty much just what you want without having to install any special software at all. This makes things easier than ever before because there's no need to keep track of multiple versions or install different software every time you change something (however, this also means that bugs will get worse slowly over time instead of fixing themselves quickly).
• Most programs are free; there's no reason not to use free software unless there is some technical reason
3. Examples of computers
While it likmay sound like an old saying, “write what you know” (which is the proper and universally accepted response to how has problems start), it is actually a very useful phrase when it comes to writing about computer technology.
It is often said that if you don’t understand what someone else is talking about, you can’t build a product for them. To that I would just say: no.
So, whatever your particular industry or field, and regardless of your experience or expertise level in that field, there are some things which everyone should be able to do:
• Learn how computers work (and preferably in more depth than anyone else)
• Understand how software works (and ideally in more depth than anyone else)
• Understand how software interfaces with hardware (and ideally in more depth than anyone else)
• Take responsibility for the product’s codebase and architecture (and ideally in more depth than anyone else)
And many other things too…(more on this below). In fact all of the above should be done because understanding them will make you better at working with customers and making better products. I prefer to think of the above as being “the knowledge gap”: once you have all three areas covered, your job as a developer is much easier — but if you have forgotten any of them, you are going to have problems.
4. The future of computers
some people will come up with a new device, some will buy one. Other people will use a different device. Some people will use the same device, others different ones. This is the future of computers.
The person who invented the typewriter did not invent the computer. The person who invented the typewriter did not invent the computer. The person who invented the typewriter did not invent the computer. The person who invented the typewriter did not invent the computer.
Herman Hollerith’s paper “An Analytical Engine” was published in 1883 and was used to compute payrolls for various textile and manufacturing companies in Germany, France and England for about a century afterwards; but it wasn’t until Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine — which finally put numerical computation on a solid basis — that computers became useful for business purposes (though it took years for commercial applications to catch on).
We do have lots of differences between computers now and then. But if history is any guide, we won’t be able to make much progress without generating new ideas about how we can break through human resistance to change:
Inventors should be judged by their ability to take an old idea and make it better than it was before they came up with it (or at least as good as they could have done), rather than by how many times they used mechanical parts that were part of existing devices or by how much time they spent thinking about what could go wrong (and trying to fix it).
Note that this isn’t just true of people working at startups: all of us should be attempting to apply our own creative thoughts on what might go wrong in order to improve our products as often as possible.
5. Conclusion
There are many reasons why this blog post has taken so long to write. As a company, we are constantly testing and refining our product ideas and our marketing approaches. But the single most important factor in our success is that we have found a way of communicating with customers that is both easy for them to understand and inspires trust.
It’s not a secret that Microsoft has been behind the curve in this area for a long time, but now Google seems to be catching up in terms of its messaging and customer support. For us, it’s important to avoid being too caught up in the latest market trends: we simply have to keep improving on what we do best, which is communicating value through design, and make sure everyone understands what we are trying to accomplish by building an amazing product.
The last few years have been an exciting time for technology companies, as Google and Facebook both demonstrate how it is possible to create products that can serve many different audiences at once. It’s a great example of how good companies can make their products more accessible (and thus more valuable) than ever before. We hope this blog post will help you make your own product more attractive as well.