Research Center) developed the basic ideas of a graphical user interface along with all the associated innovations - the mouse, the desktop metaphor, icons, windows, menus etc. Although the ideas in the Xerox Star were revolutionary, it was a huge failure commercially. This was due mainly to the price tag of $50,000.When Steve Jobs took a tour of Xerox PARC in 1979, he saw the Alto and realized it was the future of computing. He quickly began to work towards bringing the technology to market. Many of the ideas in the Alto showed up two years later in the Apple Lisa, and finally made it to market in the Apple Macintosh. Several Xerox researchers also left to join Apple.The Commodore 64In 1982, a year after the huge success of the VIC-20, Commodore introduced the Commodore 64. This was the machine that brought computers to the masses.The Commodore 64 reached an altogether new level of popularity. A decade later it still held the record as the best-selling single computer model of all time. An estimated 22 million units were sold. That's almost as many as all the Macintosh models put together, and it dwarfs IBM's top-selling systems, the PC and the AT. For the first time ever, millions and millions of people all over the world went and bought a computer - a Commodore 64 - from their local department store!The Commodore 64 set a number of technical firsts too. It was the first cheap computer to have a whopping 64 Kb of RAM, it was the first personal computer with an audio synthesizer chip, and the portable version, the SX-64 (1983), was the first color portable.More than that, the Commodore 64 was a fun machine. Although it was only based on the MOS 6510 processor (a slightly modified version of the 6502 used to power the Apple II five years earlier), the 64 had fast color graphics with hardware sprites. Compared to the Apple II's slower color graphics and the IBM PC's monochrome display, it was way ahead. It had enough memory to make reall...
