most The noted changes to hardware during this timeline is the rapid pace progression of processors. The Intel-AMD rivalry provides a drive to produce exceedingly powerful processors. On June 1st 2005, AMD starts shipping the first dual core, 64 bit processor, the Athlon 64 X2. On July 27th 2005, Intel answers back with the core 2 processor. Despite AMDs early arrival at the gates, Apple computers announce on June 6th that they will use Intel chips in their future computers. And on January 10th they announce the MacBook pro, the first Intel, dual core laptop. Additionally they announce a desktop, Intel based machine (Wikipedia). In addition to the dual core wars, 2006 was the start of the HD format wars. Blu-ray and HD-DVD are both announced within 4 months of one another. Bluray, the eventual winner of the format wars is capable of storing 25 GB of data on a single disc layer, and 50 GB on dual layer discs (Wikipedia). Rivalries spill over into gaming as well. Nvidia announces their 6200 series of graphics cards. These cards are reported to increase rendering power by a factor of one hundred percent. Radeon, not to be outdone, announces their X800 equivalent within a couple of months of Nvidias announcement. Console gaming was seeing its fair share of fighting as well. Within two days of one another (November 17th 2006 and November 19th 2006) both the Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii were released. Playstation 3 released with a price tag of $449, resulting in a loss of $250 for each unit sold. The Wii, however, which focused less on hardware capabilities and more on user playability, outsold both the Playstation 3 and the xbox 360 (another power console release a year prior.) (Wikipedia)
Two major trends accelerated into the mainstream during the period from 2004 to 2006. Open source software entered the mainstream in a dramatic way, and the phenomenon known as Web 2.0 entered the mainstream. Both of these were largely driven by the increased adoption of broadband, and the move towards laptops over desktops. Overall, the software front was fairly quiet during this time period, until we consider the amazing number of website launches that occurred during this time period. A number of notable operating system releases also occurred during this time period. Mac OS X releases 10.3 and 10.4 dramatically improved the stability of the system, as well as adding window management features, performance improvements, Spotlight desktop search, FileVault disk encryption, and the Safari web browser. On the Microsoft side, no significant releases of desktop Windows were made, however Service Pack 2 for Windows XP was released, improving security, stability, and wireless networking. This was generally considered to be the point at which Windows XP became as stable as the later service packs of Windows 2000. However, the most significant development in the area of operating systems during this period was the introduction of the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution, which saw its 4.10, 5.10, 6.06 LTS, and 6.10 releases during this time period. Billed as "Linux for human beings", it provided enhanced end user experience using the the well regarded Debian distribution as a core. It rapidly became the most popular distribution, as well as gaining many new users from market segments in which GNU/Linux previously had little to no penetration. Relatedly, OpenOffice.org saw its 2.0 release, which dramatically improved platform integration, as well as launching the OASIS OpenDocument file format, which has since become an international standard for word processing documents. More dramatically, Mozilla Firefox was released, although previous versions had
been released under the Firebird and Phoenix names. Going through 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 major releases, as well as numerous point releases, it gained significant market share, dramatically diminishing the previously unchallenged dominance of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Firefox's promotion of open standards and superior performance also helped drive the previously mentioned rise of web applications, expanded on below. While the client application front was relatively quiet, many major web applications launched during this time period. This included the community news sites Digg and Reddit, which gained a great deal of popularity. Reflecting the move of many activities into the browser, GMail and Google Documents also launched during this time period. Additionally, the wildly popular video sharing site YouTube was founded in 2005. Further reflecting the changing patterns of Internet use, the Facebook social site networking launched to a limited user base in 2005, followed by the social micro-blogging site Twitter in 2006. In gaming, the most important software release was certainly the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game World of Warcraft. Building on the lessons learned from previous games in the genre such as Ultima Online and Everquest, as well as the assets and player base of previous games in the Warcraft and Diablo franchises, it rapidly gained a massive user base. Developers were not entirely left out, though. Java 1.5 and 1.6 were released, featuring dramatic speed improvements as well as many new language features such as generics and enumerated types. Additionally Ruby on Rails saw its first release in 2005, which then drove a subsequent second wave of Web 2.0 launches. Additionally, GCC 4.0 was released, with massive improvements in optimization.
The announcement of gmail and its entrance into the computer world marked an important achievement between the years 2004 and 2006. Its influence is widespread, hosting international bodies and providing them a platform from which to connect with the rest of the world. Paul Bucheit is responsible for developing the project from its early stages to what it was when introduced in April of 2004. For doing so, he has received much attention from Internet enthusiasts and the corporate alike. Eventually gmail would go to win 2nd in PC Worlds 100 Best Products of 2005. To ride the wings of gmails success, Google, in the same year as they launched gmail, introduced Google Scholar, another platform that it used to dominate the internets attention since 2004. It still seems to have it. Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross began a project a few years before it was introduced, but when it was, people caught on fast. Originally an experimental branch of the umbrella of Mozilla, these two men came together and successfully launched Firefox in 2004. Although the program took a few years to become fully stable, some might say, it was nothing less than an achievement for its time. Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim became quickly, even exponentially famous, after they introduced the platform YouTube in 2005. The three men created something that Time Magazine later coined the Invention of the Year in 2006. The creation itself was an online video sharing agent, allowing people with access to the internet to choose a wide variety of video to view. Steve Jobs, through becoming increasingly important over a number of years, achieved a special kind of success in 2006, when Apples market capitalization rose above Dells. Just two years earlier Jobs was diagnosed with cancer, which some speculate might have affected his ability to operate as he used to.
We can easily see how peoples life evolves around the computer world. MySpace.com for example was founded in the year of 2003 by TOM Anderson, but June 2006, it is the most popular social networking site in the U.S. On the 6th of August, 2006, the 100 millionth account was created on MySpace. On average, MySpace.com attracted 230000 new users per day. This is a reflection of exactly how computers and network is penetrating peoples daily life. High school students during the time period of 2004 to 2006 were the major user group for MySpace. This shows the ongoing generation started to rely on computers in their everyday social activities. People no longer need to see each other face to face. Instead, with a few clicks, they can see pictures, videos of their friends. They can play poker with them, leave them a message, or write a comment just about anything they see. They can filter friends, and decide who gets to see what on their own profile. This artificial social activity resembles almost exactly how people would interact with each other in the real world. The Social networks began to become a part of the normal life style. As MySpace is taking over the bandwidth, Facebook started in February 4th 2004.Then, a new chapter has truly added into peoples life style. Of course this is just a small portion which reflexes the influence of computers on people. Competitive hardware manufactures like AMD, Intel, nVidia or ATI are also forcing the software companies to push their programmers to write better code to support all these new devices. After all, the growing, advancing, competing and demanding of better computing experience drove the computer into a fast mode. No longer the 4G memory is enough or the dual core is fast, but all need is more. This causes the tight bond of
software and hardware companies to keep pushing each other for the peoples demand.