David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
On May 8, 2006, corporate and straitlaced Dell completed its purchase of Alienware, a maker of edgy gaming computers. It was a long courtship. Dell considered buying Alienware for four years before making the deal. And the tie-up of this odd couple has worked. At the time of this writing, Dell has owned Alienware for 20 years, twice as long as it didn’t own it.
29 years ago, on May 7, 1997, Intel introduced its Pentium II processor. It wasn’t the first followup to the very successful Pentium. But the Pentium II overcame problems with the Pentium Pro that kept it from gaining more widespread mainstream acceptance.
Before May 2013 there was always question about whether you actually owned software after you paid for it. But before May 6, 2013, you certainly had more control. That was the day Adobe switched to a subscription-only model for its creative software. Other companies followed suit, notably Microsoft with its office suite.
The first desktop computer dates to earlier than you probably think. And officially at least, it was an accident. Great inventions often are. But it was surprisingly similar to desktop computers that followed it.
Design work on the first desktop computer commenced in 1969, and it hit the market in May 1970. Yes, you read that right. It predated the Apple II and even the Altair 8800 by several years, and the IBM Personal Computer and IBM compatibles by more than a decade. And it wasn’t built in Silicon Valley either. But this ahead-of-its-time oddball is the direct ancestor of your modern desktop or laptop computer, right down to the Intel processor design.
On May 4, 1984, Milton Bradley, a leading producer of board games for 124 years, agreed to sell itself to Hasbro. Changes in the way people played games in the 80s, especially kids, put pressure on the company. In this blog post, I’ll explain how changing times led Milton Bradley to make a transformational bet at the worst possible time that ultimately sunk the maker of the game Battleship, and what happened to what was left of Milton Bradley.
On April 28, 2026, Microsoft unexpectedly open sourced 86-DOS. This is the direct ancestor to PC DOS 1.0. I’ve written a number of things about the controversies around PC DOS 1.0 and early versions of MS-DOS, so of course I need to say something about this, even if I’m a few days late.
Ad Lib, Inc. was a Canadian manufacturer of sound cards founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval in Quebec City. Ad Lib’s best known product was an eponymously named sound card, the first add-on sound card for the IBM PC and compatibles to achieve widespread acceptance. It became a de facto standard.
On April 29, 1994, Commodore announced it was bankrupt and was going out of business. Its demise was a long time coming. Arguably it had been inevitable for 10 years. But the reasons Commodore went bankrupt are often oversimplified and misunderstood.
Palm was a high-flying brand in the late 1990s, creating the first really popular personal data assistant. Then it seemed to vanish almost as quickly as it came. What happened to Palm Pilots, and the company who made them? On April 28, 2010, HP acquired Palm for $1.2 billion, with big plans to use its tech to compete directly with Apple. That didn’t go to plan, so you’re not reading this on a Palm-based phone or tablet. But the tech may be hiding in plain sight elsewhere in your home.
The TRS-80 Model 100 was an early laptop computer manufactured by Kyocera in Japan and marketed in North America by Radio Shack. Kyocera’s own version, the Kyotronic-85, didn’t set any sales records. But the TRS-80 Model 100 and the line it spawned proved widely successful in the United States.