22: Building the Personal Computer

IBM quickly lost control of the market it had helped create, going from industry-leader to quietly exiting the personal computer business in just a couple of decades.

The first IBM PC kicked off what would be a line of computers that would be sold through the 1980s. This week, Quinn and Stephen hit the high points of this beige wave.

With its PC built, IBM needed to find an operating system that would run on it. Its choice would change the computer industry forever.

The IBM Personal Computer was developed in a shockingly short period of time. This time, Quinn and Stephen discuss the machine's hardware as well as some of the company's earlier attempts at personal computers.

This season on Flashback, Quinn and Stephen are covering the rise — and fall — of IBM's PC business, but first: some background on the enormous company that Apple and so many others lived in the shadow of back in the 80s.

The story of Windows Vista is a complicated one. Born from a long and troubled development cycle, it wasn't free of problems at launch, but hardware OEMs and others didn't do much to help its reputation.

In the early 1980s, Apple launched a computer with a GUI and mouse ... that wasn't the Macintosh.

Google has a knack for shutting down products. This episode, Stephen and Quinn talk about a handful of them.

A phone. An email terminal. A web-browsing portable companion. A phone. An email terminal. A web-browsing portable companion. A phone. An email terminal. A web-browsing portable companion. A phone. An email terminal. A web-browsing portable companion. Are you getting it? These are not three devices. It's two devices, and we're calling them your Palm phone and Foleo.

A year and a half before the iPhone was introduced, Apple took the stage to announce a very, very different product: the iTunes phone, built in partnership with Motorola and Cingular.