Interesting and Educational!
Loyd E. Eskildson | Phoenix, AZ. | 12/03/2008
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Integrated circuits (ICs) became cheap and prevalent in the 1980s, thanks to Moore's Law (power doubles in about 18 months). Intel's 8088 chip (1981) had 29,000 transistors; its latest has 713 million.
Wozniak designed Apple's initial hardware and wrote the software as well; Jobs was the business mind. Wozniak also developed GUI for Lisa, but it didn't sell well because it required lots of costly memory; later was updated to become the Macintosh.
ICs then brought arcade gaming, home games (eg. Atari), VCRs, the tape wars (Betamax's slightly better quality, vs. VHS' cheaper and longer, allowing an entire movie), Walkmans, CD players, Discman, camcorders, miniature headphones, and cell phones - all in the 1980s. Sony was a leader in all, except VHS and cell phones.
DeLorean brought out his own car design - popular at first, then sales stalled because it was underpowered and overpriced. Simon and Rubik's Cube were also immensely popular.
Bottom Line: The 80s gave birth to numerous new products that are being further refined today."