INTRODUCTION
While some companies manufactured massive mainframes, a number of companies believed that individuals would find smaller more inexpensive computers useful and entertaining. In addition to IBM, and Apple, some of these manufacturers included Texas Instruments (who was already manufacturing and selling electronic calculators), Tandy (manufacturers of electronic equipment), Timex (of watch fame), MTIS, and Commodore Business Machines, to name a few.

These are by no means the first to make the effort to produce inexpensive computers. For Example GENIAC was available for $19 in 1958 as a kit. But their computers were among the first to be generally available. Each of them ran different operating systems and represented different theories for how computer technology would impact humankind. The companies all ultimately failed or moved into different markets, but nonetheless these were the manufacturers that first brought computing to the rest of us.

In some cases (e.g., Commodore), their failure was in their marketing, but in most cases, the computers simply failed to meet the standards established by the next computer generation. The next (successful) generation of computers was as effective professionally as it was at home. Although by modern standards they are small and slow, at the time, the original IBM PC and Apple Macintosh were faster and easier to use than the others, and although they cost 10 times as much, the public was prepared to pay the difference.

This chapter, then, examines the war between Macintosh and Microsoft and the PC – who did what to whom, and how in the world did they get away with it?
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Tandy TRS-80

Commodore 64

Texas Instrument, TR-99

Timex Sinclair 1000

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