I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.
No one will need more than 637Kb of memory for a personal computer
Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
The vast majority of people do not have, nor will they ever have a personal computer. They haven't been exposed to Windows or Office, or anything like that, and in their lives it's unlikely that they will.
The term, information at your fingertips, is to remind people what a broad role the personal computer will be playing. It's not a computation device, it's not a word processing or a spreadsheet device. It's a window onto the world of information.
Computer users soon learn that the miraculous powers of personal computers are based on avoidance of error.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Intel's Pentium III processor operating at 1 GHz is the highest performance microprocessor for PCs, enabling Intel's customers to ship the fastest personal computers in the world.
In 1970, Americans spent about $6 billion on fast food; in 2000, they spent more than $110 billion. Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music—combined.
With current technology it is possible to put four floppy disk drives in a personal computer. It is just that doing so would be pointless.
There are two distinctive classes of people today, those who have personal computers, and those who have several thousand extra dollars apiece.
It is always the young that make the change. You don't get these ideas when you're middle-aged. Young people have daring, creativity, imagination and personal computers. Above all, what you have as young people that's vitally needed to make social change, is impatience. You want it to happen now. There have to be enough people that say, ‘We want it now, in our lifetime.’ This is your moment. This is your opportunity. Be adventurists in the sense of being bold and daring. Be opportunists and seize this opportunity, this moment in history, to go out and save our country. It's your turn now.
When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it's the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you'll rule the world.
Bill Gates is the pope of the personal computer industry. He decides who is going to build.
Your programming leads to your thoughts; your thoughts lead to your feelings; your feelings lead to your actions; your actions leads to your results. Therefore, just as is done with a personal computer, by changing your programming, you take the first essential step to changing your results.
Why is it that I notice so many brilliant scientists using Macs for their personal computers; why does the Lawrence Livermore & Berkeley Labs buy millions of dollars worth of Macs?
I think that having been around computers all my life - my father had brought home personal computers at a very early age in the '70s - so being around computers from a very early age perhaps I had even subconsciously seen the exponential progression of what was happening with computers.
People tend to personalize technology so they can't get to the systemic analysis. They say, "Oh, I can't give up my personal computer." Or, "I just love radio too much."
The early personal computers were not very powerful so the idea of feeding their program into a small amount of memory requires immense skill.
If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.
If I were a 13-year-old and I wanted to create subversive art, I wouldn't go out and buy an electric guitar. I'd get myself a personal computer.
I often think about the many remarkable things that my personal computer can do which I never ask it to do. I probably use a small fraction of its capabilities. I often wonder if the same dynamic occurs with our capacity for creativity.
I talk to myself through the computer. I ask myself questions, leave things to be looked at again, things that you would do with a notepad. It turns out today that it’s much better today to do with a personal computer rather than a notepad.
The idea that hardware on networks should just be caches for movable process descriptions and the processes themselves goes back quite a ways. There's a real sense in which MS and Apple never understood networking or operating systems (or what objects really are), and when they decided to beef up their OSs, they went to (different) very old bad mainframe models of OS design to try to adapt to personal computers.
With the greatest of respect, I have watched Apple from the day it started. I was publishing magazines about the Apple II before most people had ever heard what a personal computer was.
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