Wow! I just got thinking back to the early days of personal computing. On August 13, 1980 IBM announced their first PC. 30 years!
IBM was a late-comer to personal computing. Apple, Commodore, TI, Mattel, Tandy … they were all out there. The “knock” on those machines in the business world was that they weren’t “serious” computers — they were just toy machines made for “hobbyists”.
Then IBM changed everything. The big blue behemoth of computing gave their blessing to personal computers. All of a sudden, businesses who had bought into the old saw about “you never get fired for buying IBM computers” had an excuse to test and use PCs.
I had already had some time on Apple II and TRS-80 machines before I started my first IT job in 1982. As a result, I was soon dubbed the personal computing “expert” of my company (which just happened to be a Fortune 500 firm — yikes!) It’s been a tumultuous 30 years and I’ve been there through it all.
