Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer

Contents: Your own computer -- Tinder for the fire. Steam ; The breakthrough ; Critical mass ; Breakout ; Hackers -- The voyage to Altair. Uncle Sol's boys ; Going for broke ; All hell breaks loose ; Putting it together ; The competition ; The fall -- The miracle makers. After Altair ; Amateurs and professionals ; Building one and building two ; Miracles and mistakes ; est and entrepreneur's disease ; Death and rebirth -- Homebrew. Power to the people ; The Homebrew Computer Club ; Wildfire in Silicon Valley ; Nostalgia for the future ; Sixers and seventy-sixers ; Home rule ; Homebrew legacy -- The genie in the box. The Altair's first recital ; Pleasure before business ; The first operating system ; Getting down to BASIC ; The other BASIC ; Electric pencil ; The rise of general software companies ; The bottom line ; Software empires -- Retailing the revolution. Spreading the word : the magazines ; Word of mouth : the clubs and shows ; Hand-holding : the first retailers ; The big players -- Apple. Jobs and Woz ; Starting Apple ; Magic times ; Trouble in paradise ; Shooting for the moon -- The gate comes down. The luggable computer ; The HP way and the Xerox worm ; IBM -- The PC industry. Losing their religion ; Clones ; Consolidation ; Commoditization ; Cyberspace ; Apple without Jobs -- The post-PC era. The big turnaround ; Getting really personal ; Into the cloud ; Leaving the stage ; Looking back.