> The technology world moved much more slowly then than it does now.
Respectfully disagree.
Respectfully disagree.
1981 IBM PC - turn key useful but expensive and clunky
1982 Commodore 64 - cheap, good gfx + sound
1985 Amiga - you could drop someone from today (2022) on an Amiga and they could still find their way around the UI and write a document, save it, print it, use the calculator, whatever. (Before you start comparing with MacOS v1 and Windows v1, yes, true, but Windows 1 has clunky UI and neither MacOS nor Windows could execute more than program at a time. Only Amiga had that.)
So, within 4 years we went from the "Personal Computer" becoming a real actual thing with the PC, to having basically the same desktop metaphor we still use today, with the Amiga. That's incredible development speed.
The only thing I have seen which was just as fast, was the iPhone driving adoption of touch interfaces and mobile Internet. This also drove the concept of an "app" as something you pick and choose and expect to be there for major brands and services.
It's hard to say if the "PC" (I mean that loosely) or the iPhone/touch/mobile trifecta had a greater impact.
On the one hand, almost "everyone" are or will soon have a smartphone, so that has a huge impact.
On the other hand, while "PC" adoption was not ubiquitous, it drove major changes in mass culture (printing, music, video) and industry and economy. Not everyone had a computer, but everyone was aware of them and were impacted by them in ways large and small.
Except in 1984 we had the Macintosh, and a year before that we had the Apple Lisa. So only 2 years. Even faster.
I picked my goal posts arbitrarily, but an Amiga could basically run all software we have today, if the CPU was faster. Stream music + download something + editing a text, for instance. The Mac OS could only have done this a little bit later.
But sure, yes, the UI of the Mac was incredible, only 2 years after IBM PC.