After a vigorous 12-month development session, IBM released the world's first commercially available personal computer in 1981. A year later, after retro-engineering IBM's design, Compaq released its own PC model. Thus, the race for the best personal computer was on. Apple Computer entered the game in 1984 with its release of the Macintosh computer. The advent of the Macintosh was nothing short of revolutionary. Even the Super Bowl commercial with which Apple rolled out its Mac model won wide phrase and lots of consumer attention. The Macintosh introduced the concept of the graphical user interface to the world. GUIs quickly became widely adopted and served to anchor new, evolving programming languages, like Java. In the 1990s, the PC market exploded, thanks to faster processors, improved manufacturing techniques, and reduced prices. Finally, home consumers could afford their own computers. The flowering of the home PC market coincided with the advent of the Web. PC developers focused intensely on developing web access, and big software companies, like Microsoft, and hardware companies, like Intel, led the charge to better connectivity. Today, the PC market is crowded not just with big-name suppliers, but also with boutique designers, who borrow from open source codes and use nonproprietary hardware to construct ad hoc machines. The PC market is also specializing. Gamers, for instance, now seek out computers that are specially designed as massive data interfacers.
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