Word: dos
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...personal computers and needed a PC operating system. (Computers are born naked; they need operating systems to be presentable.) Mammoth, blue-chip IBM employed thousands of capable software builders, and didn't trust a single one of them; IBM hired Microsoft to build its operating system. Microsoft bought Q-DOS from a company called Seattle Computer Products and retailored...
...released in August 1981 and was followed into the market by huge flocks of honking, beeping clones. Microsoft's DOS was one of three official PC operating systems but quickly beat out the other two. DOS was clunky and primitive at a time when the well-dressed computer was wearing UNIX from Bell Labs or (if its tastes ran upscale) some variant of the revolutionary window-menu-mouse system that Xerox had pioneered in the 1970s. But despite (or maybe because of) its stodginess, DOS established itself as the school uniform of computing. It was homely, but everyone needed...
Apple released the Macintosh in January 1984: a tony, sophisticated computer was now available to the masses. Henceforth DOS was not merely homely, it was obsolete. But it continued to rake in money, so what if the critics hated it? In May 1990, Microsoft finally perfected its own version of Apple windows and called it Microsoft Windows 3.0--another huge hit. Now Gates really (I mean really) had it made...
...recover. At a meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists last month, researchers reported that eating potatoes before an operation could theoretically lengthen the time anesthetic drugs remain in your body. While it's too soon to conclude that you should avoid spuds altogether, there are plenty of other dos and don'ts to keep in mind...
With its ugly green color and keyboard-only interface, users are reminded of the dog days of DOS...