1992 – 1995retired
IBM Simon
“First to the smartphone party, left early because the battery died.”
“It gave Unix the internet and the internet a backbone. Rest easy, Berkeley.”
BSD, or Berkeley UNIX, was a Unix-based operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley. First released in 1978, it began as an improved derivative of AT&T's original Unix from Bell Labs, with Bill Joy and Ozalp Babaoglu leading early development. People loved it because it took a good thing and made it better, then shared it.
Backed by DARPA funding from 1979 to 1988, BSD incorporated ARPANET support and later implemented the TCP/IP protocol suite — plumbing much of the internet we still use. The project was discontinued in 1995, closing out a long, productive run at Berkeley. Its legacy lives on wherever packets flow.
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“First to the smartphone party, left early because the battery died.”
“The last of the little Macs, colorful to the very end.”
“The last Quadra to arrive, first to bow out, still a bargain at the farewell party.”