Word: silicon
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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From opposite ends of the U.S., they carried on the computer industry's fiercest rivalry. Based in suburban New York, International Business Machines has long looked down on Apple Computer, dismissing it as a ragtag bunch of rabble-rousers. Miles away, in both distance and culture, Silicon Valley-based Apple (1990 revenues: $5.6 billion) attacked IBM ($69 billion) as an impersonal bureaucracy, mocking the company in TV ads as Big Brother and depicting its customers as lemmings. The warring companies forced computer users to choose sides, sometimes dividing family members against one another. Those wanting easy-to-use, almost organic...
When Apple unveiled the revolutionary Macintosh in 1984, the rivalry with IBM reached full boil. Taking on Big Blue had become an obsession for the Silicon Valley boys, who called themselves "Bluebusters." Jobs launched Macintosh with an evangelistic zeal, exhorting an auditorium packed with dealers, customers and employees, "IBM wants it all and is aiming its guns on its last obstacle to industry control, Apple. Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry . . .? Was George Orwell right?" As the frenzied crowd shouted a chorus of "No!," Jobs cued a now notorious TV commercial known as "1984," which...
...younger circles. "If I had talked about how great Atlanta was two years ago, people would have laughed at me," says Beth Reimels, 21, a graduating senior at Boston University who will head there in September even though she has no job. "Now everyone is excited about Hotlanta." Silicon Valley is still looking for engineers, and the Northwest probably has the healthiest economy of any U.S. region...
...tech mumbo jumbo, but Texas Instruments is betting that it will soon be as familiar a term as computer chip. Last week the Dallas-based electronics firm announced the development of the first OEIC, a chip that transmits information not through the cumbersome contemporary method of electrons passing along silicon pathways, but rather through the simplest medium of all: light...
When the light chip reaches the marketplace, sometime within the next 10 years, it will be more compact and up to 20 times as fast as its silicon equivalent. Result: electronic equipment that is quicker, smaller and cheaper, in everything from cars to kitchens to wristwatches. The race for a light chip has been under way for years, and though Texas Instruments is the first to produce one, it still hasn't crossed the real finish line: practical consumer application...