This article delves into what tech headlines looked like before smartphones, laptops, and tablets. We’ve come a really long way, and hopefully, we will show our readers the giant strides we’ve made in the technological department.
Going through vintage computer advertisements puts into perspective how far we’ve come from the 1950s when computers were massive and reserved for business and industrial operations to these days when it has become mobile and really common to see individuals operating them.
In the 1980s, it had become a household item, making it uncommon to see a household without a personal computer. The computer served multiple uses like playing games and communicating and helped in numerous business-related applications. As more people bought computers and the demand increased, they became more user-friendly.
The Commodore 64 in 1982 shook the market and took the nation by storm because of the wide range of its abilities and its price. This computer that had 64 Kb of RAM was sold at $400 dollars which was very affordable as it was below the usual cost of a personal computer at that time.
The amount of RAM was more than it had ever been, and this served as an additional edge in the market, making this personal computer system one of the best-selling models of all time. The Commodore 64’s record of 22 million unit sales was unmatched by any other model for ten years.
The Apple Macintosh came into the personal computer space in 1984 and offered even a wider range of features than other computers for $2500. It was introduced in a commercial during the 1984 Super Bowl, and due to its already installed floppy disk and 128 Kb of RAM, it became more popular.
The Macintosh also came with unique programs like MacWrite (for word processing), Aldus PageMaker (for desktop publishing), and the MacPaint program (ideal for editing images). The MacPaint program showed the benefits of using a mouse with a computer.
The computer companies in the 1980s put in so much work into creating user-friendly models and modifying the previous machines so everyone could enjoy the benefits of having a personal computer. These efforts led to naming the next decade “The Age of Personal Computers.”
The home computers also offered the option of creating a program as they contained the BASIC programming language included on the system ROM, which made it easy for the computer user to make their simple applications. Many users found this fun, and it served to introduce them to digital technology.
