The final part of this 3-part series covers the rise of the graphical user interface. Steve Jobs, having viewed a demonstration of Xerox’s Star graphical user interface, developed a desktop manager for the Macintosh with an icon-based interface modeled on the Star.

The Apple Macintosh pioneered many of the features now standard in the PC, particularly ease of use. However, the Macintosh was considerable more expensive, so it was rapidly overtaken by the IBM PC, with some pundits not only saying that IBM had won, but also that Apple could potentially go out of business.