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1. Martin Král
The most important computer companies
in the world
History:
Apple Inc.
Today Apple is one of the most interesting companies in the world. Apple
was established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne
in a “garage”. There was only one reason, why they established this company, they
wanted to sell Apple I personal computer kit. But on January 3, 1977 Apple was
incorporated. In that time Apple was without Wayne who sold his shares of this
company back to Jobs and Wozniak. Personally I think that Steve Jobs is very very
smart person. He is a visionary who can see the future of his products earlier than
anyone else. Because of that he visited XEROX PARC in 1979 and he bought their
Operating System which had GUI(graphical user interface) - the same interface as
we know in modern system like Windows or Mac OS X. A very important feature of
this system was mouse controllled interface. It was very cheap for Apple and I think
that it is one of the most important deals in the computer history. And then in 1983
Apple introduced a new computer with this graphical user interface which is a very
famous computer APPLE LISA. Maybe, Apple failed because the price was very
high(9 995USD) and software was very limited for this new platform. However, now
we can tell, that Apple Lisa was a great product
for future Mac computers.
Next big commercial event happened
when Apple announced release of
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2. Martin Král
Macintosh by the famous $1.5 million television spot which named 1984. Why
1984? It is simple, everybody knows the famous book by George Orwell. This
television spot was based on the same idea and was directed by Riddley Scott. The
spot was broadcasted only once during the third quarter of Super Bowl.
In 1985 started a power struggle between Steve Jobs and CEO John Sculley
who was made redundant in next two years. Because of this fight Steve Jobs
resigned from Apple and founded NeXT Inc. the same year. Then a very bad period
for Apple broke out. Yes, Steve Jobs is symbol of Apple and without him this
company isn’t good in the market. Computers which they have made in this period
was terrible. For Apple this was very bad because Microsoft with Bill Gates won this
race and introduced their new operating system. Year 1996 meant another big step
for Apple. Apple was choosing between some new operating system interface and
core because OS9 was archaic in comparison with Windows. New CEO of Apple
Gil Amelio detemined to purchase NeXT and its NeXTSTEP operating system. This
event brought Steve Jobs back to Apple and Apple started growing up very fast.
Steve Jobs became CEO in 1997 and began restructuring the company products
line. In 1998 the first interesting computer by Apple - iMac G3 was introduced and it
was also interesting also for me. This computer was All-In-One which reduced
electricity usage. And this computers was very nice and user-friendly. There was
only one drawback, this computer ran only on OS9, because developers worked on
new operating system based on NeXTSTEP. This new operating system was
introduced on March 24, 2001. The name of this system was MAC OS X 10.1.
During next years Apple introduced many products which are famous among
people all around world. For example: one of the best mobile phone - iPhone, best
music player called iPod and laptop which are famous as MacBook, PowerBook or
MacBook Air - the most thinnest laptop. I think that all what this company has
shown us is thanks to Steve Jobs who is one of the best people for me. This is
history of Apple and after showing history of three other big companies. I am going
to tell you something about my opinion and future attitude to the development of
this company in next pages of this work.
Microsoft
Next big computer company which develops hardware and software for users
is Microsoft, which is most popular in the world. There are very few people, who do
not know what Microsft is. The same as Apple, there were two big men, who
established this company. That came about on April 4, 1975. It was Paul Allen and
most famous Bill Gates. Gates worked as CEO. Both of them were friends from
chilhood with a passion for computer programming. Firstly they developed a BASIC
Interpreter(microcomputer) which was named as Altair BASIC. The first home of
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3. Martin Král
this company was
the city of Bellevue
in Washington
where they moved in
1979. For me this is
very curious
because they had
had their
headquarters in New
Mexico for four
years.
When I read
something about
Microsft, I was embarrased when I see that Microsft entered into OS bussines with
Unix version of operating system, which is based on free open source. Open
source means that we can modifiy core and interface of this system. They called it
XENIX. When I read following pages I found out that it was the first version of DOS.
DOS stands for Disk Operating System. The story about DOS is very crazy.
Supposedly, Bill Gates bought full operating system from Tim Paterson for 50 000
USD. They only edited this system for their needs and then they earned millions of
USD. Personally, I think that it is the deal of 20th century. In 1980 another famous
man - Tim Ballmer joined Microsoft.
Next significant year was 1986, when Microsoft developed the third version of
their text editor “Word” which has
become the most predominant
editor on a computer. Microsoft
was very bestial in developing
their software. By that time the
first disputes between Gates and
Jobs appeared. Gates told Jobs
that he could help him with
developing their new computer
Macintosh however Gates could
see nothing but new graphical
interface which he used in the
next version of his operation
system DOS was similar. It was a
clever step in this argument. After very hard work(over 110 000 hours) Microsoft
finished their first version of Windows in 1985. When they released Windows 2.0
two years later, Apple sued Microsoft because Gates completely copied graphical
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4. Martin Král
interface. This lawsuit went on for five following years but then the accusations
were denied. I suppose that it was not a good step of american court. This interface
was identical to the interface on Macintosh.
The company developed very fast and Bill Gates became a billionaire when
he was 31 years old and then he relocated the company to Redmond, in where we
can find his company today. The nineties was a period of great progress - Microsoft
released popular office package which called Microsoft Office, Windows 95(more
than 4 million copies were sold during the first four days), Windows 98(with the first
integrated web browser Internet Explorer 4), Windows 2000 which was not built on
MS-DOS core. The most popular version of Windows was Windows XP, which was
n o t
released in 2003 however the support for this system is very limited in nowadays.
For many Microsoft fanatics was bad year the 2008 because Bill Gates
stopped his work in this company and Steve Ballmer became new CEO. Microsoft
did not produce hardware and computers that much, they especially developed a
softwares for this machine and some hardware company made components for this
software. There are more differences between Apple and Microsoft nevertheless I
think that Microsoft was inspired by Apple in most ways. For example: when Apple
had introduced iPhone, Microsoft tried it too, they came up with Microsoft Kin which
did not become popular so that they stopped the production. But you can read more
about future and this topic in the next chapter.
Facebook
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5. Martin Král
Facebook represents another computer company. Being labeled as a
computer company there are, however, some differences between Facebook on
one side and Apple with Microsoft on the other one. FaceBook is only social
networking service which runs on a computer manufactured by Apple or on a
computer with Windows. The history of Facebook is very strange. There were many
cheats and ruses before launching the website.
FaceBook was established by Mark Zuckerberg who is a very intelligent
young man according to me. Why was he all the time beside computer? The
answer is easy. He had big problems with girls and his life was so hard. In fact
computers were his entire life. All started when he hacked into the protected areas
of Harvard’s computer network and copied all ID images of students. The site with
these images was very attractive and had many visitors when he started it. Site was
shutdown a few days later by the school’s IT administrator and Zuckerberg was
charged by school administration. Basically the whole story started when three
students from Harvard knew that Zuckerberg was smart when it came to computer
programming and they told him about their idea of new social network inside
Harvard. They believed that he could do it for them. But Zuckerberg stole their idea
and started with programming new network. When he finished, he did not tell this
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three students about it. He opened the site to his classmates and people could start
sharing their school notes. This was the first version of Facebook. Zuckerberg
began writing a new code for website in January 2004 and on February 4, 2004 he
launched TheFacebook located at thefacebook.com. When the three students
complained the situation to the administration, the investigation began and later
they led a lawsuit against Zuckerberg.
In June 2004 they moved with his FaceBook team to Palo Alto in California
which is a very famous place in the USA. They received first money from their
investors and in 2005 they dropped “The” from its name and purchased new
domain which was called facebook.com. In September 2005 facebook launched the
first hich school version. Then Facebook expanded to other schools and states.
When Facebook was growing up, its price was very high and it became the third
largest US web company after Google and Amazon. It was unfortunate for Google
because the traffic of this site was sometimes higher.
Google
Google began in January 1996 as a research project led by Larry Page and
Sergey Brin. They were students and good friends both of them. The birth of
Google and its instant success is a true story of business success and ability to find
new solutions, the history of the search algorithm, which evolved into a multibillion
business. The name of Google was crated only by a mistake when they rewrote it.
They did many things together and could trust each other.
They developed PageRank which is one of the best things in today’s web
browsing. It counts how many times terms appeared on the page. This was the first
engine running on Google. At the beginning Google ran on Stanford University
websites and the domain was
google.stanford.com. I suppose that
nobody expected that Google would
become the most important web service
in the world. Finally the domain name
Google was registered on September
15, 1997 and one year later the
company was incorporated. We should
notice that Larry Page and Sergey Brin
did not want to do business. It is
noteworthy that the company that
changed the world of the early 21st
century, actually arose involuntarily. A
couple of doctoral students at Stanford
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7. Martin Král
originally wanted to sell the licence of the technology. This bussiness was very hard
because they had to buy servers and many other things which are very expensive.
But they had good luck because the received money from their investors.
The same as FaceBook they moved to Palo Alto in 1998 and they began
selling advertisements associated with search keywords. They changed the design
of their website and increased the speed of engine. By that time, the name of
Google had found its way into everyday language, causing the verb “google” to be
added to the Oxford English Dictionary. This was very interesting for me and when I
opened this dictionary google was denoted as “to use the Google search engine to
obtain information on the Internet”.
In next years Google acquired many companies, for example Keyhole inc
which is responsible for Google Earth, one of the most interesting services offered
by Google. In 2007 Google bought YouTube for 1.65 billion dolars, but I think that it
was not too expensive because now YouTube earns more money than before.
They started a period in which Google developed or bought some new services.
Google Voice is one of this services, it is based on our voice and search engine
then finds searched terms. Nowadays Larry Page and Sergey Brin are now
billionaires thanks to their experiment.
Me and this companies
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8. Martin Král
My life is based on computer. When I was 10 years I started with working on
a computer. I liked it because I made some interesting things on it. At the beginning
I had only common PC with Windows XP and I knew only Microsoft and their
Services. Apple was untitled for me. The first skill which i did on computer was
cracking a game. Yes I know that it is not a good activity because it is a breach of
copyrights and if I cracked s game then I stole it. But everybody needs to start
somehow.
After several years I began playing in command prompt. Provided that people
handle it, they can use more feature from their computer. But command prompt in
Windows is a bad mistake and I do not like it. However, the moment when the
computer broke down came about and I did not know what I could do. That was the
first reason why I launched BIOS in motherboard. It was a new thing for me and I
explored it closely. This happened when I was thirteen and then started a period
within which I repaired a computer to anybody, who had a problem with it kicked off.
The interesting point about it is that everything what I can do on a computer, I
learned alone. Sometimes I used Internet where I could find everything I needed. I
do not understand why people do not apprehend it.
When I was fourteen I moved to the village called Ohrazenice which is near
Jince. Before that I lived in Prague. My new school was in Příbram and there I met
my new friend who was a fan of Apple. By that time I tested these new computers
and their operating system on older Apple Computer called iMac G3. I knew that
my next computer would be a Mac from Apple. During two following years I tried
many Apple computers from desktop to laptop and All-In-One solution. Windows
became dead for me. Graphical interface, controls and their services were
unreplaceable.
Because of that I worked with this computers and earned my first money.
With my friend we could unlock or jailbreak iPhones from the USA. The first
iPhones were sold only in the USA and people who took one to the Czech Republic
had a major problem with it. It did not work with czech carriers. But we could unlock
it for these people so that they could use the first iPhone 2G in the Czech Republic
the same way as in the USA. We also repaired every computer. Not only Apple, we
repaired computers with Windows, their hardware problems and anything what
people wanted us to solve. Sometimes we set up a home network for them. And
wireless network which is currently running in our school(gymnasium Příbram) was
created by me and my friend. Microsoft is sometimes an interesting company with
few good ideas but I do not want to claim that I hate Microsoft. Sometimes I fancy
taking the computer with Windows and throwing it from the “windows”. There is one
essential problems. Many companies and people use these computers and they
have majority of the market. I do not think that it can be changed during coming
years.
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9. Martin Král
Present and future of these companies:
In my opinion I think that computers companies will grow up for many years
in the future. And why? Because all important services and life activities are
dependent on the computers and technologies. And therefore these companies will
be here for us. As well as computer companies which are responsible for hardware
or operating systems, the internet services such as FaceBook or Twitter will
progress very fast. 5 years ago there were only a few people who knew Apple and
their products but now when Apple had released most the famous mobile devices
iPhone, everybody knows it. It is because Apple came up with something
revolutionary. Before that nobody believed that we could control a mobile device by
touchinh the screen. It can remind you the movie Minority Report.
I think that Apple has been growing thanks to iPhone and iPod which is the
most revolutionary music player for anybody. In spite of the fact that there are some
people who do not know what Apple is, the number of Mac, iPhone or iPod users is
high. Many people think that the Apple’s products are very expensive and not
unhandy for them but it is not true. At this time the products are not as costly as in
previous years. People with Mac are exceptional for me because everybody I know
and has an Apple laptop is very intelligent and does something interesting.
Personally I believe that the number of users will not rise. If it increased then
Apple could expect the same fate as Microsoft. The system would be proner to
attacks and creating viruses provided that the amount of users would be high.
Microsoft possesses a very big part of the market. It is about 80-90% of the
computer market and it means that more than 80% people use a computer with
Windows. It is terrible when I compare Windows with other systems like Linux or
Mac OS X. Maybe it is due to this high amount of users who work only with
Windows that more people can attack computers with this system and the amount
of viruses or spywares is
therefore likely to grow.
However t h e b a s e o f
Microsoft users is large
enough to survive in the
future.
Many big companies
are dependent on
Microsoft’s services and
these companies pay to
Microsoft incredible sums
of money. I believe that
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10. Martin Král
Microsoft will introduce something revolutionary because Apple is far ahead thanks
to devices such as tablet iPad. I follow everything that happens on this “computer
scene” between the two large companies and I do not tell which one of them is
going to win in the future but I know that both will be there for us for many years
and we must use only these two companies’ products.
In my view on the services which providers such as Google or FaceBook
offer we can observe some dissimilarities. I liked Google for many years because
they had a vision as to their concepts and services for the future. But in last time I
have been very dissapointed. Google comes up with concepts which look good but
finally nobody uses them. For example GoogleWave, they told us that it would be
the best service for sharing information, creating group work and any other nice
ideas. But since developing and beta-testing ended nobody has told us anything
about it.
With the arrival of FaceBook, Google has lost other places on the internet
and FaceBook has been defeating Google in many ways like users time on service
or sharing information across the internet. The same as Apple, Facebook embodies
something revolutionary in the internet usage. We can be in contact with
everybody, we can plan some activities and we can do same thing which we could
do on GoogleWave but with more features. And because of it Facebook is now the
most profitable web service on the internet. It has most of active users and thanks
to this number an advertisement is the best implementation idea which Mar
Zuckerberg has had.
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11. Martin Král
I have been using FaceBook for my work because I can contact people for
who I work very fast and they can reply to me. I am of the opinion that Facebook
represents a new adjustement of email for common internet users. However there
is one big problems and that is privacy. We share information about us, about our
life, about connecting to the internet and many other sensitive information which
somebody could exploit. I can not imagine how it could be fixed, it is a problem for
the developers of this service but creating a piracy fixing software is very hard and
not applicable at this time. When we want to use the internet services then we
stagger on the border of security and risk. Developers can work on this and maybe
we will see some really great improvements in the future. On the other hand we are
a civilization, which is not worried about these threats and if we like these services
we will use them. Therefore, I think that these services will be the most profitable
ones in the future.
Sources:
Books:
Leander Kahney - Jak Myslí Steve Jobs
Richard L. Brandt - Jak Myslí Larry Page a Sergej Brin
Steve Wozniak, Gina Smith - iWoz
others knowledge about this companies are from the internet
Movies:
Pirates of Silicon Valley
The Social Network
Internet:
Google.com
Apple.com
images from google.com
tuaw.com
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