We could go for the low-hanging fruit here and talk about the original IBM PC or the first Macintosh from 1984 but you already know about those.
So instead, let's talk about five other machines that changed the PC market in a big way.
Let's start with the Xerox Alto. Although Xerox was already well known as a manufacturer of copiers, their entry into the PC market was extremely impressive
as the Alto was the first personal computer designed with a graphical user interface, or GUI.
And keep in mind, this was all the way back in 1973, eight years before the original IBM PC and eleven years before the original Macintosh,
with the latter being the system that really popularized the GUI for the mass market.
The Alto didn't receive as much attention as it could have because of its high price, $32,000, which today would be over $110,000.
Nonetheless, it was well ahead of its time, not just due to its desktop-based GUI, but also because it had its own hard drive, a 606 x 808 pixel display,
very high res at the time, and even a mouse, which wouldn't become broadly popular until the Macintosh came out.
Unfortunately, Xerox made a big strategic mistake when they decided not to take the Alto's concepts and make them affordable for home users.
By the time they realized this, Apple had already seized the initiative and Xerox computers just faded into obscurity.
But before the Mac popularized the GUI concept, Apple had a huge hit in 1977 with the Apple II.
Before the Apple II was released, people tended to think of computers as super expensive machines only used in business or as difficult DIY projects just for enthusiasts.
The Apple II went a long way towards changing these perceptions as it sold for less than $1,300 and it came fully assembled and ready to use.
But the Apple II wasn't just appealing because it was cheap and easy.
It used programming tricks to enable color on its display without charging the consumer a huge premium.
In fact, this became such a defining characteristic of the Apple II that it led Apple to change its logo to that multi-colored bit and fruit it used until the late 90s.
The color support combined with a killer app called the VisaCalc, the first ever automatic PC spreadsheet, made it really popular with businesses,
helping the Apple II become one of the best-selling personal computers ever.
Moving on, we've got the Commodore 64. And although it sounds like some kind of naval simulator from Nintendo, it was actually an early PC that looked a lot like a smaller Apple II.
Released in 1982, the Commodore 64 absolutely crushed the lower end of the PC market for most of the decade,
as it was even more affordable than the Apple II at a release price of just $595.
But the lower price didn't mean it was underpowered.
Like the Apple II, it had color graphics but with better quality, which made it a popular platform for computer games at the time,
as well as the demo scene, which was an early computer art movement centered around small AV pieces.
The Commodore 64 also included a signature audio chip called the Sound Interface Device that made it very attractive to electronic musicians.
And although its Haiti came to an end in the late 80s when the more powerful 32-bit IBM PC compatible started to dominate the market,
the Commodore 64 still has a very loyal following.
But what about laptops? Let's talk about the compact LTE, not to be confused with the modern cell network, though.
Although it wasn't the first laptop, it was definitely one of the most important.
It was introduced in 1989, a time where laptops really started to make inroads with professionals,
but most were either bulky or limited in what they could do.
And the LTE changed all of that as it weighed only 3 kilograms or 6.7 pounds for our friends in the US.
It ran a 286 processor and MS-DOS and was powerful enough to support Windows as well.
Because of its computing muscle and small size, the LTE is often considered the first true notebook-style laptop,
since it was, as you guessed it, about the same size as a notebook.
The LTE also featured a docking station, enabling it to entirely replace a desktop computer at a time when doing so really wasn't all that common.
However, even though it had a 2.4 kilobyte per second modem, the compact LTE lacked one crucial feature that's present in all modern laptops.
Wi-Fi, the first consumer laptop to feature it, and our final system of the day, was the Apple iBook.
Released in 1999, this was the first computer in Apple's main laptop lineup before the MacBook debuted,
and it originally had a look comparable to the iMac G3, which was brightly colored plastic and a rounded aesthetic.
Aside from its looks, the iBook's Wi-Fi boasted speeds of up to 11 megabits per second,
and although it sounds super slow by today's standards, it was actually pretty amazing for its time.
As Steve Jobs famously demonstrated at the launch event, where he passed the iBook through a hula hoop while he surfed the web,
to the ooh and ah of a rather easily impressed crowd.
No wires! Come to think of it, Apple events haven't fundamentally changed in the past two decades.
So those are our picks for the five computers that totally changed the game.
But what do you guys think? Is there a system more deserving of the title?
Let us know down in the comments and you might see them in a future episode.
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