David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Activision was the first independent third-party publisher of console video games, founded October 1, 1979 by a group of former Atari developers. Activision proved successful, becoming the largest and most enduring publisher of video games for both game consoles and computers of its era. What happened to Activision was its successor company, Activision Blizzard, was acquired by Microsoft on October 13, 2023, ending a 44-year run.
October 1, 2006 was a good day. It was the day that the last of the patents covering the GIF file format finally expired and GIF became free to use. Today GIF is a staple of social media, but it was also a staple of the early web, and, indeed, telecommunications before the Internet became accessible to the average household.
The IBM PS/2 line, released April 2, 1987, was IBM’s attempt to reinvigorate its aging personal computer line and fight off cloning. The line sold better than we remember. On September 30, 1988, IBM announced it had sold its 3 millionth unit. But the PS/2 failed to hold off cloning and IBM never regained the market dominance it enjoyed in the first half of the decade.
The IBM PS/2 did offer numerous enhancements over the PC line it replaced, but IBM’s customers came to resent the high price and the perception that IBM was trying to lock out third party peripherals. IBM’s decline was slow, but the PS/2 was the beginning of the end for IBM’s personal computer business.
It was on September 28, 1998 that Internet Explorer passed Netscape in market share for the first time. It took just under three years for it to go from an afterthought in the Microsoft Plus pack to the dominant browser. And that was the beginning of the end for Netscape. Internet Explorer held the position until April 30, 2012, when Chrome passed it for the first time. They jockeyed for position until May 14, 2012, when Chrome emerged with the lead.
I keep flip-flopping on whether controlling the browser matters as much now as it did in 1998. But it mattered for different reasons in 1998.
AMD went public September 27, 1972. It issued 620,000 shares at $15.50 per share, raising $7.5 million in capital. Unlike modern tech IPOs, AMD didn’t list on any of the major exchanges, opting to trade over the counter. on October 15, 1979, AMD listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and moved to the NASDAQ on January 2, 2015.
On September 26, 1996, Toshiba announced the first DVD player, the Toshiba SD-3000. It was released in Japan in November 1996 and initially cost ¥77,000, equivalent to about $770 US. It was the first consumer DVD player in the world, and of course, DVD became the successor to VHS. Ironically, the first DVD player was announced very close to 20 years after the first VHS VCR.
On September 25, 1928, Motorola was founded. Retro computer enthusiasts think of Motorola as a CPU manufacturer, and to a lesser degree, perhaps as a computer manufacturer. But its primary line of business for the majority of its existence was another electronic device: radio.
On September 24, 1998, Ebay held its IPO at $18 per share, reaching $53 per share in its first day and making founder Pierre Omidyar and president Jeffrey Skoll instant billionaires. Ebay’s first annual report listed the company’s dependence on the continued strength of the Beanie Baby market as a risk factor. Needless to say, Ebay overcame both the Beanie Baby bubble bursting and the dotcom bubble bursting, coming out on the other side as one of the few survivors of the dotcom era.
23 years ago, on September 23, 2003, AMD changed the game for x86 once and for all. They released the Athlon 64 CPU, a chip that did something Intel didn’t want. Intel didn’t want to extend the x86 CPU architecture to 64 bits. But when AMD did it, it forced Intel to clone AMD, rather than the other way around.
The NEC V20 was an Intel 8088-compatible CPU that ran slightly faster. It was a niche CPU in the 1980s and 1990s but had a following as a cheap upgrade for power users, especially in instances where motherboard swaps were impractical. It’s popular with retro computing enthusiasts today, as a period-correct upgrade. On September 22, 1986, NEC prevailed over Intel in court, clearing the way to sell it.
The NEC V20 was pin-compatible with the Intel 8088 but included some unique forward and backward compatibility features. It included the 80186 instruction set and could also emulate the Intel 8080, in addition to being faster than the 8088.