Gates almost bought the farm with Windows. He stole the concept from Apple and the early attempts were dismal failures. The right click and Windows 95 put him on the map.
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The change from DOS to Windows made using a computer easier...thank goodness. When the first 'user friendly' spreadsheet came out (Lotus 1,2,3) I had to take classes at the local university to operate it. Believe it or not, that was my first experience with a mouse. You don't need a mouse for DOS. I think the original program came out on about a dozen floppy discs (remember them?).
And Apple stole the concept from Xerox-Parc.
A Alto running SmallTalk:
http://i.snag.gy/WDWAa.jpg
(http://toastytech.com/guis/alto3.html)
Yep. But cupholders were by far the greatest innovation!
http://i.snag.gy/z8Zow.jpg
So were these little thingy's
http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?&id=HN.607...d=1.9&rs=0&p=0
we used to call a company for computer repair that had a repair man that I adored! He was a whiz on the computers and he had a really great sense of humor. He knew I was not the most patient of customers. One day he opened his repair case & pulled out a nerf bat & handed it to me...told me have at it! After I beat on the computer for a few minutes, he put the bat away & fixed the problem. He called it his 'bit bat'.