Re: Apple II: Second Best Tech Product of All Time!

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

heuser.marcus@freenet.de wrote:
> On Apr 3, 9:12 pm, pau...@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter) wrote:
>
> > Those articles both have an amazing frog perspective.  While they say
> > "tech products" they really mean "computer tech products".  And while
> > they say "of all time", they really mean "during the last few decades".
>
>
> While your further argumentation is of course correct you forget
> one thing: The site is named "PC World"...  ;-)
>
>
> OTOH my personal #1 would've been the on-going progress in
> the component field including integration & miniaturisation.
>
> Beginning with relais -> Complete paradign change ->  Tubes
> -> Bang! Completely different materials -> Semiconductors
> -> Bang! -> Integrated circuits...
>
> Now it's parallelisation - who knows what's next?
>
> Reportedly no other technical discipline has had the same progress
> as this relatively young field.

And of all those breakthroughs, the most amazing is the exploitation
of the "smoothness" of ultrapure crystalline silicon, which has given
us at least a millionfold improvement in electronic circuit density--
dwarfing all "technological improvement" curves of the past.

The devices that we take for granted could only be seen as magic
just a generation ago.

Imagine where we would be if *any* other field had accomplished similar
feats of doing more with less.

-michael

NadaNet networking for Apple II computers!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

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