0 had an 8-row by 40-column reflective LCD screen, supplied ROM based applications including a text editor and a communications program, and it had a built-in modem, nonvolatile RAM, and a keyboard. Weighing under 4 lb, and with a battery life measured in weeks (it used four AA batteries), the TRS-80 Model 100 became the first popular laptop, especially among journalists. With its battery-backed RAM, the Model 100 was always in standby mode, ready to take notes, write a report, or go on-line. NEC's PC 8201 was essentially the same Kyocera-manufactured system.dBaseWayne Ratliff's dBase was originally intended to manage a company football pool, but ended up being the first serious database system for personal computers. dBase II, running on DOS, was a massive success. It provided just the right combination of features for a small business database, plus it was relatively easy to learn, and it ran on cheap PC's. As a result, lots of small businesses which had previously been surviving without a database system decided dBase running on a PC was cheap enough and offered enough benefits to be worth buying. Ashton-Tate acquired dBase from Ratliff when dBase was at its peak (dBase III), but let their users down badly by releasing the bug-ridden dBase IV in 1988. dBase for Windows didn't arrive until 1994, by which time its market share was gone.The Apple MacintoshIn January 1984 the introduction of Apple's Macintosh computer, with its graphical user interface, generated even more excitement than the IBM PC had three years earlier. Apple's R&D people were inspired by the critical ideas developed at Xerox PARC (and practiced on the Apple Lisa) but Apple programmers also added many of their own ideas to create the final polished Macintosh product. It was this polished product that changed the way people used computers.The Macintosh (lovingly called simply the Mac) was introduced in the famous "1984" TV commercial broadcast during the SuperBowl. It...
