What was the most significant PC innovation?

In 1983 IBM rolled out the IBM PC (Personal Computer). Of course there had been other personal computers before. Firms like Apple and Osborne had sold lots of them. Osborne even made a portable computer.

But IBM made the personal computer a safe buy for corporations. "No one ever got fired for buying IBM". (Of course in later years the same safety could be found if you bought Microsoft products.)

But, while IBM made the PC market safe for business consumers, it also precluded competition. If you wanted a PC that could run the software writing for the IBM PCs, it had to come from IBM.

Not surprisingly other companies wanted in on the market. (Compaq was one of the early ones that still sort of survives, if only at the whim of HP's CEO.) The problem was that the software required the IBM BIOS (Basic Input/Output System).

In order to sell a PC that was compatible with software written for IBM PC, the software had to be compatible with the IBM BIOS. But the IBM BIOS was protected by copyright.

Phoenix came up with a cunning plan to reverse engineer an IBM-compatible BIOS that did not infringe on the IBM copyright. The method was actually very clever and completely lawyer proof.

The Phoenix BIOS passed the most popular compatibility tests of the day; running Lotus 123 and Microsoft's Flight Simulator.

So, a seemingly insignificant piece of computer code, developed by a firm that most people knew little or nothing about, changed the face of competition in the PC marketplace.

Of course IBM's abandonment of the PC market, the rise of Google, and Apple's current market value tell a more complete story of today's personal computer market.