Most youngsters today take for granted the mouse based operating systems that have been the norm since the 80s. The mouse is the biggest advance that I can think of in the evolution of the home computer.

When I was a kid the PCs everyone wanted to have were the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. These were a basically a bulky keyboard that plugged into your TV set, and a tape player to store and load data, programs, or games. You could hardly call it an operating system; there wasn't even a mouse and it was nothing like Windows XP or OS X. When you bought a game for these systems, on the back it had instructions of how to load. As far as I can remember, I think you had to type in "Run" or something and press play.

The Importance of the Mouse

My first memories of using a mouse were when using a Commodore Amiga 500 - one of the hottest gaming computers of the mid to late 80s. The Amiga did a primitive OS but it could only display a few colours and so it looked pretty rubbish. However, this was the first steps away from having to type in code to operate a computer. The mouse is much more intuitive that computer code and made a big impact in helping to popularizing the home PC.

When I was at University, a friend of mine called told me an interesting story about the invention of the mouse. His dad worked at Xerox and had said the company was the inventor of the mouse. Then Steve Jobs saw the device and decided that he was going to incorporate it into his Apple computers. I don't know what kind of legal proceedings ensued, but the patent for the mouse has to be one of the lucrative ever devised. There must have been billions of the things produced.

The introduction of the mouse was really the dawn of the operating system as we know it. Microsoft produced Windows 3.1 which was pretty ugly even in those days. The Apple OS 7 was far more good looking and intuitive to use. The problem was that the software on Windows was really suited to business use. The Apple computer catered for the graphics inclined - becoming the platform for desktop publishing, and graphic design. The two platforms were like chalk and cheese, you couldn't even exchange a floppy disk between them, they had their own printers, and you could forget about networking them. Very slowly over the next 20 years the gap closed, and in 2006 Apple computers started to use Intel CPUs and could even run Windows.

Microsoft Windows has always been playing catch-up to Mac OS in terms of good looks. Even with the latest Vista, it still looks inferior to OS X Leopard - but that might just be something to do with Bill Gates taste.

In the Pipeline...

Looking into the future, there are some very interesting potential avenues for new interface devices. The mouse was the break-through device for operating systems in the 80s, and in 2007 the touch screen could well follow in its footsteps. The iPhone has done away with mice, trackballs, and keyboards, and replaced them with a touch screen. Although typing is a little tricky with no sensation of a button press, it has forged a new territory in the evolution of the operating system. It delivers much greater portability and convenience - something that is bound to get better and better in forthcoming years.

Zach Hope is the author of Speed-Up-Windows-XP.com, a site that can teach anybody to speed up Windows to invigorate old computers. You can have dramatically more PC speed today from your slow computer.