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Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is a 2001 action adventure film based on the Tomb Raider video game series featuring the character Lara Croft, portrayed by Angelina Jolie. An international co-production between the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany, it was directed by Simon West and revolves around Lara Croft trying to obtain ancient artifacts in competition with the Illuminati.

The film was released on June 15, 2001, to generally negative reviews from critics, although Jolie was praised for her performance. It grossed $274.7 million worldwide, making it one of the highest-grossing video game adaptations. A sequel, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life, was released in 2003.

Plot
Adventurer Lara Croft defeats a robot in an Egyptian tomb, revealed to be a training exercise arena in her family manor, where she lives with her technical assistant Bryce and butler Hillary. In Venice, as the first phase of a planetary alignment begins, the Illuminati search for a key to rejoin halves of a mysterious artifact, "the Triangle," which must be completed by the final phase, a solar eclipse. Manfred Powell assures the cabal that the artifact is almost ready, but has no real idea of its location.

Lara's father Lord Richard Croft, long missing and presumed dead, appears to her in a dream. Lara awakens to a mysterious ticking, and finds a strange clock hidden inside the manor. On her way to consult a friend of her father's, Wilson, Lara crosses paths with Alex West, an American associate and fellow adventurer. Lara shows Wilson the clock, and he puts her in touch with Powell. Lara shows Powell photographs of the clock, which he claims not to recognize.

That night, armed commandos invade the house and steal the clock, bringing it to Powell. The next morning, a prearranged letter from Lara's father arrives, explaining that the clock is the key to retrieving the halves of the Triangle of Light, an ancient object with the power to control time. After misuse of its power destroyed an entire city, the Triangle was separated: one half was hidden in a tomb at Angkor Cambodia, and the other in the ruined city located at Ukok Plateau, Siberia. Her father tasks her to find and destroy both pieces before the Illuminati can exploit the Triangle's power.

In Cambodia, Lara finds Powell, who has hired West, and his commandos already at the temple. West solves part of the temple's puzzle, and Powell prepares to insert the clock at the moment of alignment. Lara, realizing they made a mistake, finds the correct keyhole; with only seconds left, Lara persuades Powell to throw her the clock. She unlocks the first piece of the Triangle, and the statues of the temple come to life and attack the intruders. West, Powell, and his remaining men flee with the clock, leaving Lara to defeat an enormous six-armed guardian statue. She escapes with the first piece; recovering at a Buddhist monastery, she arranges a meeting with Powell.

In Venice, Powell proposes a partnership to find the Triangle, and informs Lara that her father was a member of the Illuminati, and offers to use the Triangle's power to resurrect him; though reluctant, she agrees to join forces. Lara and Bryce travel with Powell, West, and the leader of the Illuminati to Siberia. Entering the tomb, they discover a giant orrery, which activates as the alignment nears completion. Lara retrieves the second half of the Triangle, and Powell kills the Illuminati's leader to restore the Triangle himself, but the halves will not fuse. Realizing Lara knows the solution, Powell kills West to persuade her to complete the Triangle to restore West's and her father's lives. Lara complies, but seizes the Triangle herself.

In a "crossing" of time, Lara faces her father, who urges her to destroy the Triangle for good rather than save his life. Returning to the tomb, Lara manipulates time to save West and stab Powell, and destroys the Triangle. The tomb begins to collapse, and all flee but the wounded Powell, who reveals to Lara that he murdered her father. After a hand-to-hand fight, she kills Powell, retrieving her father's pocket watch and escaping the tomb.

Back in her manor, Lara visits her father's memorial and finds that Bryce has reprogrammed the robot, and Hillary presents her with her pistols, which she takes with a smile.

Cast

 * Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, a British adventurer and archaeologist
 * Rachel Appleton as young Lara
 * Iain Glen as Manfred Powell, leader of the Illuminati
 * Jon Voight as Lord Richard Croft, Lara's father
 * Daniel Craig as Alex West, a former acquaintance of Lara and rival treasure hunter who teams with Powell for financial gain
 * Noah Taylor as Bryce, Lara's tech expert
 * Richard Johnson as the Distinguished Gentleman
 * Chris Barrie as Hillary, Lara's butler
 * Julian Rhind-Tutt as Mr Pimms
 * Leslie Phillips as Wilson

Development
Tomb Raider went through many drafts and several writers, which resulted in production delays. In 1998, writer Brent V. Friedman, who had co-written Mortal Kombat Annihilation the year before, penned an unproduced Tomb Raider script. Producer and screenwriter Steven E. de Souza, who wrote and directed the 1994 video game film Street Fighter, penned an early draft of the Tomb Raider script in 1999, but it was rejected by Paramount. The final draft of the script was attributed to five writers, including director Simon West. West reverted to the original writers after he replaced Stephen Herek as director.

Financing
Lara Croft was financed through Tele München Gruppe (TMG), a German tax shelter. The tax law of Germany allowed investors to take an instant tax deduction even on non-German productions and even if the film has not gone into production. By selling them the copyright for $94 million and then buying it back for $83.8 million, Paramount Pictures made $10.2 million. The copyright was then sold again to Lombard Bank, a British investment group and a further $12 million was made. However, to qualify for Section 48 tax relief, the production must include some UK filming and British actors, which was acceptable for a film partially set in the United Kingdom. Presales to distributors in Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain made a further $65 million. Showtime paid $6.8 million for premium cable television rights. In total, $94 million was put together.

Casting
The announcement of the film generated significant discussion about who would be cast to play Lara Croft. Numerous actresses (and non-actresses) were rumored to be on the shortlist to play her and countless others declared their interest in the role, most notably Rhona Mitra (official model to Tomb Raider II), Jennifer Love Hewitt, Famke Janssen, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Hurley, Ashley Judd, Sandra Bullock, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Diane Lane, Demi Moore and Denise Richards, with many considering the latter the favorite to win the role.

The casting of Jolie was controversial among many fans of the Tomb Raider series, who felt she wasn't physically appropriate enough to play the large-breasted heroine; others complained about an American actress being hired to play a British character; others cited Jolie's tattoos and well-publicized controversial personal life. Director Simon West dismissed these concerns and said, in reference to Jolie's penchant for sexual knife play, "it was always Angelina. I mean, Lara sleeps with knives and doesn't take shit from anybody. That's [Angelina] down to a tee." Jolie wore a padded bra to increase her bust size when playing Lara. As she explained to NY Rock in June 2001: "C'mon, I'm not so flat chested to begin with. When I wear a tight T-shirt, I look a certain way. So it wasn't like we had to completely change me. You know, we just had to enhance me a little. I'm a 36C. Lara, she's a 36D. And in the game, she's a double D, so we took her down some. But we did give her a bit of padding there. For me, it was simply one size. So it was like having a padded bra. But no, I am not flat chested anyway. So we still made it Lara Croft, but we didn't go to any extremes. And Lara doesn't apologize for herself, and for having that, you know, recognizable shape. So I'm not going to apologize for her either."

The film marked the feature film debut of television actor Chris Barrie, known for his role of Arnold Rimmer in the BBC science fiction comedy series Red Dwarf. English actor Daniel Craig adopts an American accent for the role of Alex West whilst Jolie, being American herself, takes on an English accent. Jon Voight, Angelina Jolie's father, plays Richard Croft, Lara's father in the film.

Filming
Principal photography for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider took place from July 30 to November 30, 2000. Portions of the film were shot on location at the Ta Prohm temple, located in Angkor, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia. The film was the first major motion picture to be shot in Cambodia since Lord Jim in 1964, following the country's occupation by the Khmer Rouge regime. In addition to on-location shooting, a majority of the film's production also took place on the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios. Hatfield House in Hertfordshire was used as Croft's home in the film.

Post-production
Simon West's first director's cut of the film was around 130 minutes long, and that was before it went through re-shoots some time later after principal photography was finished. West was removed from working on the film in post due to some problems between him and Paramount, however he did return to work on re-shoots. Editor Stuart Baird was brought in by Paramount to re-edit the entire film. He was well known for coming in at last minute to help film studios by fixing up their films which went through troubled productions and had problems with earlier cuts. Baird was promised the job of directing Star Trek: Nemesis by Paramount in exchange for re-editing original 130-minute cut of this film and John Woo's original 210-minute cut of Mission: Impossible 2. Due to all the work on post-production taking longer than anyone thought it would, and how rushed it was, some of the major effects were apparently left unfinished by the time the film was released in theaters. Baird ended up re-editing the film down to 88 minutes. One of the bigger cuts on the film was changing the original score. Originally, Nathan McCree was hired to compose the score, since he already composed the music for the first three Tomb Raider games, but Paramount insisted on a more well-known composer. Greg Hale Jones started to work on the score with Peter Afterman in November 2000, right after production was finished, and Danny Elfman composed the main theme for the film. Jones later said how once West was fired from the film, his score and Elfman's theme were shelved. Michael Kamen was then hired and he submitted a couple of demos, although according to Tales From Development Hell by David Hughes, Kamen did in fact compose a full score which was rejected once the film was re-edited by Baird. Graeme Revell was then brought in and he had to compose sixty minutes of music inside ten days. Some earlier reports about the film mentioned John Powell as one of original choices for composer, and Fatboy Slim too. Jerry Goldsmith was also attached to score the film at one point, but he couldn't do it due to problems with his health at the time.

Despite the fact that a large amount of the film was cut out, only four deleted scenes, seven minutes long in total, were included as extras on the film's DVD and Blu-Ray releases. Trailers for the film show more deleted scenes. At the time of its release in July 2001, Simon West said in an interview how he already prepared alternate version of the film for a DVD release which would include a lot of deleted scenes, but this version was never released. Angelina Jolie's nude scenes were also cut out for a PG-13 rating. The shower scene, for example, originally had actual nude shots of Lara, and the next scene where she throws her towel away originally showed some rear nudity from her. But according to Jolie, she used body double for her nude shots. One of the special features of the film, Digging Into Tomb Raider, shows filming of another deleted scene where Lara is showering, but this one takes place in some outside location. Some of the earlier scripts for the film included more scenes focusing on Lara's sex appeal, like Lara flashing her breasts to some villains as a distraction (Steven E. de Souza's February 1999 script), using her breasts to crush a giant millipede (Mike Werb & Michael Colleary's November 1999 script), and many similar scenes (reportedly including her showering, bathing, skinny dipping, losing her bikini while fighting some creature...), but possibly due to rating problems, this was changed and toned down with each new script. Jolie later said how she was disappointed with how Lara's sexual appeal was scaled down, and how she thought Lara wasn't sexy enough in the final film.

Soundtrack
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is a 2001 soundtrack album to the film. The various artists soundtrack was released June 15, 2001. The Score was later released on June 25, 2001. The film also featured the songs "Lila" by Vas, "Inhaler" by Craig Armstrong, and a Piano rendition of "Largo" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Harpsichord Concerto no. 5 performed by Hae-won Chang. These were not featured on the soundtrack.

Score
Graeme Revell composed the soundtrack in less than two weeks, following failed attempts by other composers.

The CD was released through Elektra Entertainment. As noted by Revell, the tracks were mislabeled after failed attempts to stop the pressings. For example, the opening track includes both the Main Titles and Lara Croft at Home cues together. The resulting score caused the composer himself to issue an apology "for the poor listening experience" through his website. The track list was later revised.

Home media
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was released on DVD and VHS on November 13, 2001; a Blu-ray release followed on June 3, 2008. A 4K UHD Blu-ray release followed on February 27, 2018.

On the North American video rental charts, the film grossed US$38.5 million in DVD rental revenue,. In the United Kingdom, it was watched by 7 million viewers on television in 2004, making it the year's sixth most-watched film (and third most-watched British film) on television.

Box office
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was a box office success as it debuted at number one with $48.2 million, ahead of Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Shrek, giving Paramount its second-best debut after Mission: Impossible 2 and the fifth-highest debut of 2001. In addition, it had the fourth largest June opening weekend, behind Jurassic Park, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Batman Forever. It beat the opening record for a film featuring a female protagonist ($42.3 million for Scary Movie) as well as the opening record for a video game adaptation ($31 million for Pokémon: The First Movie), and is one of the highest-grossing video game to film adaptations. According to the Associated Press, the opening weekend audience was 55 percent male and 45 percent female.

The film grossed a total of $131,168,070 domestically and $274,703,340 worldwide. Adjusted for inflation, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider remains the highest grossing live-action adaptation of a video game at the domestic box office.

Critical response
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider received generally negative reviews from critics. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, of  critic reviews are positive for the film, and the average rating of. The site's consensus is "Angelina Jolie is perfect for the role of Lara Croft, but even she can't save the movie from a senseless plot and action sequences with no emotional impact." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 33 out of 100, based on reviews from 31 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B on scale of A to F.

IGN gave the film the lowest out of all the scores, a 0.0 ("Disaster") rating, condemning everything from character performances to the ending. Todd McCarthy of Variety said "[the film] has the distinction of being a major motion picture that’s far less imaginative, and quite a bit more stupid, than the interactive game it’s based on." McCarthy praises Jolie but says "everything else about this frenetic production is flat and unexciting." A positive review came from Roger Ebert, who awarded the film three out of four stars and said, Lara Croft Tomb Raider' elevates goofiness to an art form. Here is a movie so monumentally silly, yet so wondrous to look at, that only a churl could find fault."

In 2018, IGN reported that the film was "generally regarded as one of the better video game adaptations". In 2021, British GQ listed Lara Croft: Tomb Raider as one of the "only video game adaptations worth watching..." In 2023, The Vulture also commented that the film was "one of the select few times a big-budget video-game movie has actually worked."

Accolades
The film was nominated for two MTV Movie Awards, these awards included: Best Female Performance and Best Fight scene, but the film lost to Moulin Rouge! and Rush Hour 2 respectively. The film was also nominated for Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie - Drama. Angelina Jolie was nominated for the Worst Actress Golden Raspberry Award for her role in the film, but she lost to Mariah Carey in Glitter.

Themes
Director Simon West would comment a decade after its release that the creation of Lara Croft was influenced by a film market that "wasn't used to women leading summer blockbusters". This factor influenced his decision to cast Angelina Jolie who was not well known at the time, and not the studio's first choice (in contrast to Catherine Zeta-Jones, Ashley Judd, and Jennifer Lopez). West said that his decision to cast Jolie lay in the fact that "there hadn't been a female lead of an action-adventure film that had carried a film [by herself recently], and Angelina wasn't as big as some of the other actresses that were up for the part, who'd done bigger films and had a longer track record and bigger box-office grosses... Some of their [images] were safer than Angelina's, whose was quite dangerous. She had all sorts of thing written about her—some obviously not true. She was a young woman experimenting."

While Lara Croft's box office totals were the highest for a female-led action film at the time, and the film inspired theme park rides and led to a sequel, West stated in 2018 that "at the time, the studio was incredibly nervous at what the outcome could have been. I'm surprised it's taken so long [for other female-fronted action stories to rise up], because I thought that two or three years after, there'd be 10 other movies like it cashing in on its success ...[b]ut it's amazing how things work so slowly. But finally The Hunger Games and Wonder Woman have caught up!"

Sequel
Angelina Jolie returned in the sequel Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life. While it was viewed as a critical improvement over its predecessor, it did not repeat its financial success, grossing $156 million compared to the previous installment's $274 million.

Reboot
GK Films first acquired the rights to reboot the film in 2011. In April 2016, MGM and GK Films announced a reboot of the film starring Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft with Roar Uthaug directing. It was released March 16, 2018.

title: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider


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Action

Action may refer to:
 * Action (philosophy), something which is done by a person
 * Action (narrative), a literary mode
 * Action fiction, a type of genre fiction
 * Action game, a genre of video game

Film

 * Action film, a genre of film
 * Action (1921 film), a film by John Ford
 * Action (1980 film), a film by Tinto Brass
 * Action 3D, a 2013 Telugu language film
 * Action (2019 film), a Kollywood film.

Music

 * Action (music), a characteristic of a stringed instrument
 * Action (piano), the mechanism which drops the hammer on the string when a key is pressed
 * The Action, a 1960s band

Albums

 * Action (B'z album) (2007)
 * Action! (Desmond Dekker album) (1968)
 * Action Action Action or Action, a 1965 album by Jackie McLean
 * Action! (Oh My God album) (2002)
 * Action (Oscar Peterson album) (1968)
 * Action (Punchline album) (2004)
 * Action (Question Mark & the Mysterians album) (1967)
 * Action (Uppermost album) (2011)
 * Action (EP), a 2012 EP by NU'EST
 * Action, a 1984 album by Kiddo

Songs

 * "Action" (Freddy Cannon song) (1965), the theme song to the TV series Where the Action Is
 * "Action" (Sweet song) (1975), covered by various artists
 * "Action", a version of "Feeling This" by Blink-182
 * "Action", a 1994 song by Terror Fabulous featuring Nadine Sutherland
 * "Action", a 2020 song by Black Eyed Peas from Translation
 * "Action", a 1984 song by The Fits
 * "Action", a 1960 song by Lance Fortune
 * "Action", a 1988 song by Pearly Gates
 * "Action", a 1988 song by Girlschool from Take a Bite
 * "Action", a 1989 song by Gorky Park from Gorky Park (album)
 * "Action", a 2003 song by Powerman 5000 from Transform
 * "Action", a 1972 song by Scorpions from Lonesome Crow
 * "Actions", a 1980 song by The Stingrays
 * "Action Action Action Action Action", a 2008 song by We Are the Physics from We Are the Physics Are OK at Music

Literature

 * Action (comics), a British comic book published in 1976–1977
 * Action Comics, a DC Comics comic book series
 * Action: A Book about Sex, a 2016 book by Amy Rose Spiegel
 * Action (newspaper), a newspaper of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists
 * Hareket, conservative magazine in Turkish which was named after action theory

People

 * Action Bronson (born 1983), American rapper, reality television star, author, and talk show host

Television and radio

 * Action (Canadian TV channel)
 * Action (French TV channel)
 * The Action Channel (US TV channel), a subsidiary of Luken Communications
 * Action (radio), a 1945 radio program
 * Action (TV series), a comedy series on Fox in 1999–2000
 * CBS Action (2009–2018), now known as CBS Justice
 * Sky Sports Action, a TV channel

Theatre

 * Action (theatre), a principle in Western theatre practice
 * Action (play), a 1975 play by Sam Shepard

Businesses

 * Action (store), a Dutch discount store chain with branches in many European countries
 * Action (supermarkets), an Australian supermarket chain
 * Actions Semiconductor, a Chinese semiconductor company
 * ACTION, an Australian public transport company
 * The Action Network (branded as Action), an American sports betting analytics company

Political parties

 * Action (Cypriot political party), a Cypriot political alliance
 * Action (Greek political party), a Greek political party
 * Action (Italian political party), an Italian political party

Other organizations

 * ACTION (U.S. government agency), a former US government federal domestic volunteer agency

Science, technology, and mathematics

 * Action (physics), an attribute of the dynamics of a physical system
 * Action at a distance, nonlocal interaction in physics
 * Group action (mathematics)
 * Continuous group action
 * Semigroup action
 * Ring Action (mathematics)
 * Action (firearms), the mechanism that manipulates cartridges and/or seals the breech
 * Action! (programming language), for the Atari 8-bit family of microcomputers
 * Action (UML), in the Unified Modeling Language
 * Dudek Action, a Polish paraglider design
 * Diia, a brand of e-governance in Ukraine

Other uses

 * Lawsuit or action

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Action


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Pope Zephyrinus

Pope Zephyrinus was the bishop of Rome from 199 to his death on 20 December 217. He was born in Rome, and succeeded Victor I. Upon his death on 20 December 217, he was succeeded by his principal advisor, Callixtus I. He is known for combating heresies and defending the divinity of Christ.

Papacy
During the 18-year pontificate of Zephyrinus, the young Church endured persecution under the Emperor Septimius Severus until his death in the year 211. To quote Alban Butler, "this holy pastor was the support and comfort of the distressed flock". According to St. Optatus, Zephyrinus also combated new heresies and apostasies, chief of which were Marcion, Praxeas, Valentine and the Montanists. Eusebius insists that Zephyrinus fought vigorously against the blasphemies of the two Theodotuses, who in response treated him with contempt, but later called him the greatest defender of the divinity of Christ. Although he was not physically martyred for the faith, his suffering – both mental and spiritual – during his pontificate have earned him the title of martyr, a title that was repealed 132 years after his death. He was accused of being seduced by Monarchian views.

Conflicts
During the reign of Emperor Septimius Severus (193–211), relations with the young Christian Church deteriorated, and in 202 or 203, the edict of persecution appeared, which forbade conversion to Christianity under the severest penalties.

Zephyrinus's predecessor, Pope Victor I, had excommunicated Theodotus the Tanner for reviving a heresy that Christ became God only after the Resurrection. Theodotus' followers formed a separate heretical community at Rome, ruled by another Theodotus, the Money Changer, and Asclepiodotus. Natalius, who was tortured for his faith during the persecution, was persuaded by Asclepiodotus to become a bishop in their sect in exchange for a monthly stipend of 150 denarii. Natalius then reportedly experienced several visions warning him to abandon these heretics. According to an anonymous work entitled The Little Labyrinth quoted by Eusebius, Natalius was whipped a whole night by an angel, and the next day, he donned sackcloth and ashes and weeping bitterly threw himself at the feet of Zephyrinus.

Feast day
A feast of St Zephyrinus, Pope and Martyr, held on 26 August, was inserted in the General Roman Calendar in the 13th century, but was removed in the 1969 revision, since he was not a martyr and 26 August is not the anniversary of his death which is 20 December, the day under which he is now mentioned in the Roman Martyrology. His feast is currently celebrated on 26 August in both the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite and within the Maronite Catholic Church, as well as in the Orthodox Church.

title: Pope Zephyrinus


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IBM PC–compatible

IBM PC–compatible computers are technically similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. The term "IBM PC compatible" is now a historical description only, since IBM no longer sells personal computers after it sold its personal computer division in 2005 to Chinese technology company Lenovo. The designation "PC", as used in much of personal computer history, has not meant "personal computer" generally, but rather an x86 computer capable of running the same software that a contemporary IBM PC could. The term was initially in contrast to the variety of home computer systems available in the early 1980s, such as the Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore 64. Later, the term was primarily used in contrast to Apple's Macintosh computers.

These "clones" duplicated almost all the significant features of the original IBM PC architectures. This was facilitated by IBM's choice of commodity hardware components, which were cheap, and by various manufacturers' ability to reverse-engineer the BIOS firmware using a "clean room design" technique. Columbia Data Products built the first clone of the IBM personal computer, the MPC 1600 by a clean-room reverse-engineered implementation of its BIOS. Other rival companies, Corona Data Systems, Eagle Computer, and the Handwell Corporation were threatened with legal action by IBM, who settled with them. Soon after in 1982, Compaq released the very successful Compaq Portable, also with a clean-room reverse-engineered BIOS, and also not challenged legally by IBM.

Early IBM PC compatibles used the same computer buses as their IBM counterparts, switching from the 8-bit IBM PC and XT bus to the 16-bit IBM AT bus with the release of the AT. IBM's introduction of the proprietary Micro Channel architecture (MCA) in its PS/2 series resulted in the establishment of the Extended Industry Standard Architecture bus open standard by a consortium of IBM PC compatible vendors, redefining the 16-bit IBM AT bus as the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus. Additional bus standards were subsequently adopted to improve compatibility between IBM PC compatibles, including the VESA Local Bus (VLB), Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), and the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP).

Descendants of the x86 IBM PC compatibles, namely 64-bit computers based on "x86-64/AMD64" chips comprise the majority of desktop computers on the market as of 2021, with the dominant operating system being Microsoft Windows. Interoperability with the bus structure and peripherals of the original PC architecture may be limited or non-existent. Many modern computers are unable to use old software or hardware that depends on portions of the IBM PC compatible architecture which are missing or do not have equivalents in modern computers. For example, computers which boot using Unified Extensible Firmware Interface-based firmware that lack a Compatibility Support Module, or CSM, required to emulate the old BIOS-based firmware interface, or have their CSMs disabled, cannot natively run MS-DOS since MS-DOS depends on a BIOS interface to boot.

Only the Macintosh had kept significant market share without having compatibility with the IBM PC, although that changed during the Intel Macs era running Mac OS X, often dual-booting Windows with Boot Camp.

Origins

IBM decided in 1980 to market a low-cost single-user computer as quickly as possible. On August 12, 1981, the first IBM PC went on sale. There were three operating systems (OS) available for it. The least expensive and most popular was PC DOS made by Microsoft. In a crucial concession, IBM's agreement allowed Microsoft to sell its own version, MS-DOS, for non-IBM computers. The only component of the original PC architecture exclusive to IBM was the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System).

IBM at first asked developers to avoid writing software that addressed the computer's hardware directly and to instead make standard calls to BIOS functions that carried out hardware-dependent operations. This software would run on any machine using MS-DOS or PC DOS. Software that directly addressed the hardware instead of making standard calls was faster, however; this was particularly relevant to games. Software addressing IBM PC hardware in this way would not run on MS-DOS machines with different hardware (for example, the PC-98). The IBM PC was sold in high enough volumes to justify writing software specifically for it, and this encouraged other manufacturers to produce machines that could use the same programs, expansion cards, and peripherals as the PC. The x86 computer marketplace rapidly excluded all machines which were not hardware-compatible or software-compatible with the PC. The 640 KB barrier on "conventional" system memory available to MS-DOS is a legacy of that period; other non-clone machines, while subject to a limit, could exceed 640 KB.

Rumors of "lookalike," compatible computers, created without IBM's approval, began almost immediately after the IBM PC's release. InfoWorld wrote on the first anniversary of the IBM PC that

"The dark side of an open system is its imitators. If the specs are clear enough for you to design peripherals, they are clear enough for you to design imitations. Apple ... has patents on two important components of its systems ... IBM, which reportedly has no special patents on the PC, is even more vulnerable. Numerous PC-compatible machines—the grapevine says 60 or more—have begun to appear in the marketplace."

By June 1983 PC Magazine defined "PC 'clone as "a computer [that can] accommodate the user who takes a disk home from an IBM PC, walks across the room, and plugs it into the 'foreign' machine". Because of a shortage of IBM PCs that year, many customers purchased clones instead. Columbia Data Products produced the first computer more or less compatible with the IBM PC standard during June 1982, soon followed by Eagle Computer. Compaq announced its first product, an IBM PC compatible in November 1982, the Compaq Portable. The Compaq was the first sewing machine-sized portable computer that was essentially 100% PC-compatible. The court decision in Apple v. Franklin, was that BIOS code was protected by copyright law, but it could reverse-engineer the IBM BIOS and then write its own BIOS using clean room design. Note this was over a year after Compaq released the Portable. The money and research put into reverse-engineering the BIOS was a calculated risk.

Non-compatible MS-DOS computers: Workalikes

At the same time, many manufacturers such as Tandy/RadioShack, Xerox, Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, Sanyo, Texas Instruments, Tulip, Wang and Olivetti introduced personal computers that supported MS-DOS, but were not completely software- or hardware-compatible with the IBM PC.

Tandy described the Tandy 2000, for example, as having a "'next generation' true 16-bit CPU", and with "More speed. More disk storage. More expansion" than the IBM PC or "other MS-DOS computers". While admitting in 1984 that many PC DOS programs did not work on the computer, the company stated that "the most popular, sophisticated software on the market" was available, either immediately or "over the next six months".

Like IBM, Microsoft's apparent intention was that application writers would write to the application programming interfaces in MS-DOS or the firmware BIOS, and that this would form what would now be termed a hardware abstraction layer. Each computer would have its own Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) version of MS-DOS, customized to its hardware. Any software written for MS-DOS would operate on any MS-DOS computer, despite variations in hardware design.

This expectation seemed reasonable in the computer marketplace of the time. Until then Microsoft's business was based primarily on computer languages such as BASIC. The established small system operating software was CP/M from Digital Research which was in use both at the hobbyist level and by the more professional of those using microcomputers. To achieve such widespread use, and thus make the product viable economically, the OS had to operate across a range of machines from different vendors that had widely varying hardware. Those customers who needed other applications than the starter programs could reasonably expect publishers to offer their products for a variety of computers, on suitable media for each.

Microsoft's competing OS was intended initially to operate on a similar varied spectrum of hardware, although all based on the 8086 processor. Thus, MS-DOS was for several years sold only as an OEM product. There was no Microsoft-branded MS-DOS: MS-DOS could not be purchased directly from Microsoft, and each OEM release was packaged with the trade dress of the given PC vendor. Malfunctions were to be reported to the OEM, not to Microsoft. However, as machines that were compatible with IBM hardware—thus supporting direct calls to the hardware—became widespread, it soon became clear that the OEM versions of MS-DOS were virtually identical, except perhaps for the provision of a few utility programs.

MS-DOS provided adequate functionality for character-oriented applications such as those that could have been implemented on a text-only terminal. Had the bulk of commercially important software been of this nature, low-level hardware compatibility might not have mattered. However, in order to provide maximum performance and leverage hardware features (or work around hardware bugs), PC applications quickly developed beyond the simple terminal applications that MS-DOS supported directly. Spreadsheets, WYSIWYG word processors, presentation software and remote communication software established new markets that exploited the PC's strengths, but required capabilities beyond what MS-DOS provided. Thus, from very early in the development of the MS-DOS software environment, many significant commercial software products were written directly to the hardware, for a variety of reasons:
 * MS-DOS itself did not provide any way to position the text cursor other than to advance it after displaying each letter (teletype mode). While the BIOS video interface routines were adequate for rudimentary output, they were necessarily less efficient than direct hardware addressing, as they added extra processing; they did not have "string" output, but only character-by-character teletype output, and they inserted delays to prevent CGA hardware "snow" (a display artifact of CGA cards produced when writing directly to screen memory)——an especially bad artifact since they were called by IRQs, thus making multitasking very difficult. A program that wrote directly to video memory could achieve output rates 5 to 20 times faster than making system calls. Turbo Pascal used this technique from its earliest versions.
 * Graphics capability was not taken seriously in the original IBM design brief; graphics were considered only from the perspective of generating static business graphics such as charts and graphs. MS-DOS did not have an API for graphics, and the BIOS only included the rudimentary graphics functions such as changing screen modes and plotting single points. To make a BIOS call for every point drawn or modified increased overhead considerably, making the BIOS interface notoriously slow. Because of this, line-drawing, arc-drawing, and blitting had to be performed by the application to achieve acceptable speed, which was usually done by bypassing the BIOS and accessing video memory directly. Software written to address IBM PC hardware directly would run on any IBM clone, but would have to be rewritten especially for each non-PC-compatible MS-DOS machine.
 * Video games, even early ones, mostly required a true graphics mode. They also performed any machine-dependent trick the programmers could think of in order to gain speed. Though initially the major market for the PC was for business applications, games capability became an important factor motivating PC purchases as prices decreased. The availability and quality of games could mean the difference between the purchase of a PC compatible or a different platform with the ability to exchange data like the Amiga.
 * Communications software directly accessed the UART serial port chip, because the MS-DOS API and the BIOS did not provide full support and was too slow to keep up with hardware which could transfer data at 19,200 bit/s.
 * Even for standard business applications, speed of execution was a significant competitive advantage. Integrated software Context MBA preceded Lotus 1-2-3 to market and included more functions. Context MBA was written in UCSD p-System, making it very portable but too slow to be truly usable on a PC. 1-2-3 was written in x86 assembly language and performed some machine-dependent tricks. It was so much faster that it quickly surpassed Context MBA's sales.
 * Disk copy-protection schemes, in common use at the time, worked by reading nonstandard data patterns on the diskette to verify originality. These patterns were impossible to detect using standard DOS or BIOS calls, so direct access to the disk controller hardware was necessary for the protection to work.
 * Some software was designed to run only on a true IBM PC, and checked for an actual IBM BIOS.

"Operationally Compatible"
"The first thing to think about when considering an IBM-compatible computer is, "How compatible is it?""

- BYTE, September 1983

In May 1983, Future Computing defined four levels of compatibility:

 * Operationally Compatible. Can run "the top selling" IBM PC software, use PC expansion boards, and read and write PC disks. Has "complementary features" like portability or lower price that distinguish computer from the PC, which is sold in the same store. Examples: (Best) Columbia Data Products, Compaq; (Better) Corona; (Good) Eagle.
 * Functionally Compatible. Runs own version of popular PC software. Cannot use PC expansion boards but can read and write PC disks. Cannot become Operationally Compatible. Example: TI Professional.
 * Data Compatible. May not run top PC software. Can read and/or write PC disks. Can become Functionally Compatible. Examples: NCR Decision Mate, Olivetti M20, Wang PC, Zenith Z-100.
 * Incompatible. Cannot read PC disks. Can become Data Compatible. Examples: Altos 586, DEC Rainbow 100, Grid Compass, Victor 9000.

During development, Compaq engineers found that Microsoft Flight Simulator would not run because of what subLOGIC's Bruce Artwick described as "a bug in one of Intel's chips", forcing them to make their new computer bug compatible with the IBM PC. At first, few clones other than Compaq's offered truly full compatibility. Jerry Pournelle purchased an IBM PC in mid-1983, "rotten keyboard and all", because he had "four cubic feet of unevaluated software, much of which won't run on anything but an IBM PC. Although a lot of machines claim to be 100 percent IBM PC compatible, I've yet to have one arrive ... Alas, a lot of stuff doesn't run with Eagle, Z-100, Compupro, or anything else we have around here". Columbia Data Products's November 1983 sales brochure stated that during tests with retail-purchased computers in October 1983, its own and Compaq's products were compatible with all tested PC software, while Corona and Eagle's were less compatible. Columbia University reported in January 1984 that Kermit ran without modification on Compaq and Columbia Data Products clones, but not on those from Eagle or Seequa. Other MS-DOS computers also required custom code.

By December 1983 Future Computing stated that companies like Compaq, Columbia Data Products, and Corona that emphasized IBM PC compatibility had been successful, while non-compatible computers had hurt the reputations of others like TI and DEC despite superior technology. At a San Francisco meeting it warned 200 attendees, from many American and foreign computer companies as well as IBM itself, to "Jump on the IBM PC-compatible bandwagon—quickly, and as compatibly as possible". Future Computing said in February 1984 that some computers were "press-release compatible", exaggerating their actual compatibility with the IBM PC. Many companies were reluctant to have their products' PC compatibility tested. When PC Magazine requested samples from computer manufacturers that claimed to produce compatibles for an April 1984 review, 14 of 31 declined. Corona Data Systems specified that "Our systems run all software that conforms to IBM PC programming standards. And the most popular software does." When a BYTE journalist asked to test Peachtext at the Spring 1983 COMDEX, Corona representatives "hemmed and hawed a bit, but they finally led me ... off in the corner where no one would see it should it fail". The magazine reported that "Their hesitancy was unnecessary. The disk booted up without a problem". Zenith Data Systems was bolder, bragging that its Z-150 ran all applications people brought to test with at the 1984 West Coast Computer Faire.

Creative Computing in 1985 stated, "we reiterate our standard line regarding the IBM PC compatibles: try the package you want to use before you buy the computer." Companies modified their computers' BIOS to work with newly discovered incompatible applications, and reviewers and users developed stress tests to measure compatibility; by 1984 the ability to operate Lotus 1-2-3 and Flight Simulator became the standard,    with compatibles specifically designed to run them.

IBM believed that some companies such as Eagle, Corona, and Handwell infringed on its copyright, and after Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp. successfully forced the clone makers to stop using the BIOS. The Phoenix BIOS in 1984, however, and similar products such as AMI BIOS, permitted computer makers to legally build essentially 100%-compatible clones without having to reverse-engineer the PC BIOS themselves. A September 1985 InfoWorld chart listed seven compatibles with $256 KB$ RAM, two disk drives, and monochrome monitors for US$1495 to US$2320, while the equivalent IBM PC cost US$2820. The inexpensive Leading Edge Model D is even compatible with IBM proprietary diagnostic software, unlike the Compaq Portable. By 1986 Compute! stated that "clones are generally reliable and about 99 percent compatible", and a 1987 survey in the magazine of the clone industry did not mention software compatibility, stating that "PC by now has come to stand for a computer capable of running programs that are managed by MS-DOS".

The decreasing influence of IBM
"The main reason why an IBM standard is not worrying is that it can help competition to flourish. IBM will soon be as much a prisoner of its standards as its competitors are. Once enough IBM machines have been bought, IBM cannot make sudden changes in their basic design; what might be useful for shedding competitors would shake off even more customers."

- The Economist, November 1983

In February 1984 Byte wrote that "IBM's burgeoning influence in the PC community is stifling innovation because so many other companies are mimicking Big Blue", but The Economist stated in November 1983, "The main reason why an IBM standard is not worrying is that it can help competition to flourish".

By 1983, IBM had about 25% of sales of personal computers between US$1000 and US$10000, and computers with some PC compatibility were another 25%. As the market and competition grew IBM's influence diminished. In November 1985 PC Magazine stated "Now that it has created the [PC] market, the market doesn't necessarily need IBM for the machines. It may depend on IBM to set standards and to develop higher-performance machines, but IBM had better conform to existing standards so as to not hurt users". In January 1987, Bruce Webster wrote in Byte of rumors that IBM would introduce proprietary personal computers with a proprietary operating system: "Who cares? If IBM does it, they will most likely just isolate themselves from the largest marketplace, in which they really can't compete anymore anyway". The magazine predicted that in 1987 the market "will complete its transition from an IBM standard to an Intel/MS-DOS/expansion bus standard ... Folks aren't so much concerned about IBM compatibility as they are about Lotus 1-2-3 compatibility". By 1992, Macworld stated that because of clones, "IBM lost control of its own market and became a minor player with its own technology".

The Economist predicted in 1983 that "IBM will soon be as much a prisoner of its standards as its competitors are", because "Once enough IBM machines have been bought, IBM cannot make sudden changes in their basic design; what might be useful for shedding competitors would shake off even more customers". After IBM announced the OS/2-oriented PS/2 line in early 1987, sales of existing DOS-compatible PC compatibles rose, in part because the proprietary operating system was not available. In 1988, Gartner Group estimated that the public purchased 1.5 clones for every IBM PC. By 1989 Compaq was so influential that industry executives spoke of "Compaq compatible", with observers stating that customers saw the company as IBM's equal or superior.

After 1987, IBM PC compatibles dominated both the home and business markets of commodity computers, with other notable alternative architectures being used in niche markets, like the Macintosh computers offered by Apple Inc. and used mainly for desktop publishing at the time, the aging 8-bit Commodore 64 which was selling for $150 by this time and became the world's bestselling computer, the 32-bit Commodore Amiga line used for television and video production and the 32-bit Atari ST used by the music industry. However, IBM itself lost the main role in the market for IBM PC compatibles by 1990. A few events in retrospect are important:

 * IBM designed the PC with an open architecture which permitted clone makers to use freely available non-proprietary components.
 * Microsoft included a clause in its contract with IBM which permitted the sale of the finished PC operating system (PC DOS) to other computer manufacturers. These IBM competitors licensed it, as MS-DOS, in order to offer PC compatibility for less cost.
 * The 1982 introduction of the Columbia Data Products MPC 1600, the first 100% IBM PC compatible computer.
 * The 1983 introduction of the Compaq Portable, providing portability unavailable from IBM at the time.
 * An Independent Business Unit (IBU) within IBM developed the IBM PC and XT. IBUs did not share in corporate R&D expense. After the IBU became the Entry Systems Division it lost this benefit, greatly decreasing margins.
 * The availability by 1986 of sub-US$1000 "Turbo XT" PC XT compatibles, including early offerings from Dell Computer, reducing demand for IBM's models. It was possible to buy two of these "generic" systems for less than the cost of one IBM-branded PC AT, and many companies did just that.
 * By integrating more peripherals into the computer itself, compatibles like the Model D have more free ISA slots than the PC.
 * Compaq was the first to release an Intel 80386-based computer, almost a year before IBM, with the Compaq Deskpro 386. Bill Gates later said that it was "the first time people started to get a sense that it wasn't just IBM setting the standards".
 * IBM's 1987 introduction of the incompatible and proprietary MicroChannel Architecture (MCA) computer bus, for its Personal System/2 (PS/2) line.
 * The split of the IBM-Microsoft partnership in development of OS/2. Tensions caused by the market success of Windows 3.0 ruptured the joint effort because IBM was committed to the 286's protected mode, which stunted OS/2's technical potential. Windows could take full advantage of the modern and increasingly affordable 386 / 386SX architecture. As well, there were cultural differences between the partners, and Windows was often bundled with new computers while OS/2 was only available for extra cost. The split left IBM the sole steward of OS/2 and it failed to keep pace with Windows.
 * The 1988 introduction by the "Gang of Nine" companies of a rival bus, Extended Industry Standard Architecture, intended to compete with, rather than copy, MCA.
 * The duelling expanded memory (EMS) and extended memory (XMS) standards of the late 1980s, both developed without input from IBM.

Despite popularity of its ThinkPad set of laptop PC's, IBM finally relinquished its role as a consumer PC manufacturer during April 2005, when it sold its laptop and desktop PC divisions (ThinkPad/ThinkCentre) to Lenovo for US$1.75 billion.

As of October 2007, Hewlett-Packard and Dell had the largest shares of the PC market in North America. They were also successful overseas, with Acer, Lenovo, and Toshiba also notable. Worldwide, a huge number of PCs are "white box" systems assembled by myriad local systems builders. Despite advances of computer technology, the IBM PC compatibles remained very much compatible with the original IBM PC computers, although most of the components implement the compatibility in special backward compatibility modes used only during a system boot. It was often more practical to run old software on a modern system using an emulator rather than relying on these features.

In 2014 Lenovo acquired IBM's x86-based server (System x) business for US$2.1 billion.

Expandability
One of the strengths of the PC-compatible design is its modular hardware design. End-users could readily upgrade peripherals and, to some degree, processor and memory without modifying the computer's motherboard or replacing the whole computer, as was the case with many of the microcomputers of the time. However, as processor speed and memory width increased, the limits of the original XT/AT bus design were soon reached, particularly when driving graphics video cards. IBM did introduce an upgraded bus in the IBM PS/2 computer that overcame many of the technical limits of the XT/AT bus, but this was rarely used as the basis for IBM-compatible computers since it required license payments to IBM both for the PS/2 bus and any prior AT-bus designs produced by the company seeking a license. This was unpopular with hardware manufacturers and several competing bus standards were developed by consortiums, with more agreeable license terms. Various attempts to standardize the interfaces were made, but in practice, many of these attempts were either flawed or ignored. Even so, there were many expansion options, and despite the confusion of its users, the PC compatible design advanced much faster than other competing designs of the time, even if only because of its market dominance.

"IBM PC compatible" becomes "Wintel"
During the 1990s, IBM's influence on PC architecture started to decline. "IBM PC compatible" becomes "Standard PC" in 1990s, and later "ACPI PC" in 2000s. An IBM-brand PC became the exception rather than the rule. Instead of placing importance on compatibility with the IBM PC, vendors began to emphasize compatibility with Windows. In 1993, a version of Windows NT was released that could operate on processors other than the x86 set. While it required that applications be recompiled, which most developers did not do, its hardware independence was used for Silicon Graphics (SGI) x86 workstations–thanks to NT's Hardware abstraction layer (HAL), they could operate NT (and its vast application library).

No mass-market personal computer hardware vendor dared to be incompatible with the latest version of Windows, and Microsoft's annual WinHEC conferences provided a setting in which Microsoft could lobby for—and in some cases dictate—the pace and direction of the hardware of the PC industry. Microsoft and Intel had become so important to the ongoing development of PC hardware that industry writers began using the word Wintel to refer to the combined hardware-software system.

This terminology itself is becoming a misnomer, as Intel has lost absolute control over the direction of x86 hardware development with AMD's AMD64. Additionally, non-Windows operating systems like macOS and Linux have established a presence on the x86 architecture.

Design limitations and more compatibility issues
Although the IBM PC was designed for expandability, the designers could not anticipate the hardware developments of the 1980s, nor the size of the industry they would engender. To make things worse, IBM's choice of the Intel 8088 for the CPU introduced several limitations for developing software for the PC compatible platform. For example, the 8088 processor only had a 20-bit memory addressing space. To expand PCs beyond one megabyte, Lotus, Intel, and Microsoft jointly created expanded memory (EMS), a bank-switching scheme to allow more memory provided by add-in hardware, and accessed by a set of four 16-kilobyte "windows" inside the 20-bit addressing. Later, Intel CPUs had larger address spaces and could directly address 16 MB (80286) or more, causing Microsoft to develop extended memory (XMS) which did not require additional hardware.

"Expanded" and "extended" memory have incompatible interfaces, so anyone writing software that used more than one megabyte had to provide for both systems for the greatest compatibility until MS-DOS began including EMM386, which simulated EMS memory using XMS memory. A protected mode OS can also be written for the 80286, but DOS application compatibility was more difficult than expected, not only because most DOS applications accessed the hardware directly, bypassing BIOS routines intended to ensure compatibility, but also that most BIOS requests were made by the first 32 interrupt vectors, which were marked as "reserved" for protected mode processor exceptions by Intel.

Video cards suffered from their own incompatibilities. There was no standard interface for using higher-resolution SVGA graphics modes supported by later video cards. Each manufacturer developed their own methods of accessing the screen memory, including different mode numberings and different bank switching arrangements. The latter were used to address large images within a single 64 KB segment of memory. Previously, the VGA standard had used planar video memory arrangements to the same effect, but this did not easily extend to the greater color depths and higher resolutions offered by SVGA adapters. An attempt at creating a standard named VESA BIOS Extensions (VBE) was made, but not all manufacturers used it.

When the 386 was introduced, again a protected mode OS could be written for it. This time, DOS compatibility was much easier because of virtual 8086 mode. Unfortunately programs could not switch directly between them, so eventually, some new memory-model APIs were developed, VCPI and DPMI, the latter becoming the most popular.

Because of the great number of third-party adapters and no standard for them, programming the PC could be difficult. Professional developers would operate a large test-suite of various known-to-be-popular hardware combinations.

Meanwhile, consumers were overwhelmed by the competing, incompatible standards and many different combinations of hardware on offer. To give them some idea of what sort of PC they would need to operate their software, the Multimedia PC (MPC) standard was set during 1990. A PC that met the minimum MPC standard could be marketed with the MPC logo, giving consumers an easy-to-understand specification to look for. Software that could operate on the most minimally MPC-compliant PC would be guaranteed to operate on any MPC. The MPC level 2 and MPC level 3 standards were set later, but the term "MPC compliant" never became popular. After MPC level 3 during 1996, no further MPC standards were established.

Challenges to Wintel domination
By the late 1990s, the success of Microsoft Windows had driven rival commercial operating systems into near-extinction, and had ensured that the "IBM PC compatible" computer was the dominant computing platform. This meant that if a developer made their software only for the Wintel platform, they would still be able to reach the vast majority of computer users. The only major competitor to Windows with more than a few percentage points of market share was Apple Inc.'s Macintosh. The Mac started out billed as "the computer for the rest of us", but high prices and closed architecture drove the Macintosh into an education and desktop publishing niche, from which it only emerged in the mid-2000s. By the mid-1990s the Mac's market share had dwindled to around 5% and introducing a new rival operating system had become too risky a commercial venture. Experience had shown that even if an operating system was technically superior to Windows, it would be a failure in the market (BeOS and OS/2 for example). In 1989, Steve Jobs said of his new NeXT system, "It will either be the last new hardware platform to succeed, or the first to fail." Four years later in 1993, NeXT announced it was ending production of the NeXTcube and porting NeXTSTEP to Intel processors.

Very early on in PC history, some companies introduced their own XT-compatible chipsets. For example, Chips and Technologies introduced their 82C100 XT Controller which integrated and replaced six of the original XT circuits: one 8237 DMA controller, one 8253 interrupt timer, one 8255 parallel interface controller, one 8259 interrupt controller, one 8284 clock generator, and one 8288 bus controller. Similar non-Intel chipsets appeared for the AT-compatibles, for example OPTi's 82C206 or 82C495XLC which were found in many 486 and early Pentium systems. The x86 chipset market was very volatile though. In 1993, VLSI Technology had become the dominant market player only to be virtually wiped out by Intel a year later. Intel has been the uncontested leader ever since. As the "Wintel" platform gained dominance Intel gradually abandoned the practice of licensing its technologies to other chipset makers; in 2010 Intel was involved in litigation related to their refusal to license their processor bus and related technologies to other companies like Nvidia.

Companies such as AMD and Cyrix developed alternative x86 CPUs that were functionally compatible with Intel's. Towards the end of the 1990s, AMD was taking an increasing share of the CPU market for PCs. AMD even ended up playing a significant role in directing the development of the x86 platform when its Athlon line of processors continued to develop the classic x86 architecture as Intel deviated with its NetBurst architecture for the Pentium 4 CPUs and the IA-64 architecture for the Itanium set of server CPUs. AMD developed AMD64, the first major extension not created by Intel, which Intel later adopted as x86-64. During 2006 Intel began abandoning NetBurst with the release of their set of "Core" processors that represented a development of the earlier Pentium III.

A major alternative to Wintel domination is the rise of alternative operating systems since the early 2000s, which marked as the start of the post-PC era. This would include both the rapid growth of the smart phone (using Android or iOS) as an alternative to the personal computer; and the increasing prevalence of Linux and Unix-like operating systems in the server farms of large corporations such as Google or Amazon.

The IBM PC compatible today
The term "IBM PC compatible" is not commonly used presently because many current mainstream desktop and laptop computers are based on the PC architecture, and IBM no longer makes PCs. The competing hardware architectures have either been discontinued or, like the Amiga, have been relegated to niche, enthusiast markets. In the past, the most successful exception was Apple's Macintosh platform, which used non-Intel processors from its inception. Although Macintosh was initially based on the Motorola 68000 series, then transitioned to the PowerPC architecture, Macintosh computers transitioned to Intel processors beginning in 2006. Until 2020 Macintosh computers shared the same system architecture as their Wintel counterparts and could boot Microsoft Windows without a DOS Compatibility Card. However, with the announcement of the internally developed ARM-based M1 CPU, they are again the exception to IBM compatibility.

The processor speed and memory capacity of modern PCs are many orders of magnitude greater than they were for the original IBM PC and yet backwards compatibility has been largely maintained – a 32-bit operating system  can still operate many of the simpler programs written for the OS of the early 1980s without needing an emulator, though an emulator like DOSBox now has near-native functionality at full speed (and is necessary for certain games which may run too fast on modern processors). Additionally, many modern PCs can still run DOS directly, although special options such as USB legacy mode and SATA-to-PATA emulation may need to be set in the BIOS setup utility. Computers using the UEFI might need to be set at legacy BIOS mode to be able to boot DOS. However, the BIOS/UEFI options in most mass-produced consumer-grade computers are very limited and cannot be configured to truly handle OSes such as the original variants of DOS.

The spread of the x86-64 architecture has further distanced current computers' and operating systems' internal similarity with the original IBM PC by introducing yet another processor mode with an instruction set modified for 64-bit addressing, but x86-64 capable processors also retain standard x86 compatibility.

title: IBM PC–compatible


text:
Gary Becker

Gary Stanley Becker (December 2, 1930 – May 3, 2014) was an American economist who received the 1992 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, and was a leader of the third generation of the Chicago school of economics.

Becker was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992 and received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. A 2011 survey of economics professors named Becker their favorite living economist over the age of 60, followed by Kenneth Arrow and Robert Solow. Economist Justin Wolfers called him "the most important social scientist in the past 50 years."

Becker was one of the first economists to analyze topics that had been researched in sociology, including racial discrimination, crime, family organization, and rational addiction. He argued that many different types of human behavior can be seen as rational and utility-maximizing, including those that are often regarded as self-destructive or irrational. His approach also extended to altruistic aspects of human behavior, which he showed to sometimes have self-serving ends (when individuals' utility is properly defined and measured, that is). He was also among the foremost exponents of the study of human capital. According to Milton Friedman, he was "the greatest social scientist who has lived and worked" in the second part of the twentieth century.

Career
Becker was born to a Jewish family in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. He received a BA from Princeton University in 1951, completing a senior thesis titled "The Theory of Multi-Country Trade". He then earned a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1955 with a thesis entitled The Economics of Discrimination. At Chicago, Becker was influenced by Milton Friedman, whom Becker called "by far the greatest living teacher I have ever had". Becker credits Friedman's course on microeconomics for helping to renew his interest in economics. Becker also noted that during his time at Chicago, there were several other economists that greatly influenced his future work, namely Gregg Lewis, T. W. Schultz, Aaron Director, and L. J. Savage. For a few years, Becker worked as an assistant professor at Chicago and conducted research there. Before turning 30, he moved to teach at Columbia University in 1957 while also conducting research at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 1970 Becker returned to the University of Chicago, and in 1983 was offered a joint appointment by the Sociology Department of Chicago. In 1965 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Becker was a founding partner of TGG Group, a business and philanthropy consulting company. Becker won the John Bates Clark Medal in 1967. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972, a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1975, and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1986. Becker was a member, and later the president of, the Mont Pelerin Society. Becker received the Nobel Prize in 1992 "for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behavior and interaction, including nonmarket behavior". Becker also received the National Medal of Science in 2000. Becker received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 2001, presented by Awards Council member and Nobel Prize laureate Leon M. Lederman.

A political conservative, he wrote a monthly column for Business Week from 1985 to 2004, alternating with liberal Princeton economist Alan Blinder. In 1996 Becker was a senior adviser to Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole. In December 2004, Becker started a joint weblog with Judge Richard Posner entitled The Becker-Posner Blog.

Becker's first wife was Doria Slote. They were married from 1954 until her death in 1970. The marriage produced two daughters, Catherine Becker and Judy Becker. About ten years later, in 1980 Becker married Guity Nashat, a historian of the Middle East whose research interests overlapped his own.

In 2014 Becker died in Chicago, Illinois, aged 83. The same year, he was honored in a three-day conference organized at the University of Chicago.

Economic analysis
Becker's work has been influential not only in economics but also other disciplines including sociology and demography. His most famous work is Human Capital, and he wrote on sociological topics as diverse as marriage, the family, criminal behavior, and racial discrimination.

Discrimination
Becker recognized that people (employers, customers, and employees) sometimes do not want to work with minorities because they have bias against the disadvantaged groups. He went on to say that discrimination increases a firm's cost because in discriminating against certain workers, the employer would have to pay more to other workers so that work can proceed without the biased ones. If the employer employs the minority, low wages can be provided, but more people can be employed, and productivity can be increased.

Politics
Becker's contributions to politics have come to be known as "Chicago political economy" of which he is considered one of the founding fathers.

Becker's insight was to recognize that deadweight losses put a brake on predation. He took the well-known insight that deadweight losses are proportional to the square of the tax, and used it to argue that a linear increase in takings by a predatory interest group will provoke a non-linear increase in the deadweight losses its victim suffers. These rapidly increasing losses will prod victims to invest equivalent sums in resisting attempts on their wealth. The advance of predators, fueled by linear incentives, slows before the stiffening resistance of prey outraged by non-linear damages.

Crime and punishment
Jurist Richard Posner has stressed the enormous influence of Becker's work which "has turned out to be a fount of economic writing on crime and its control", as well as the analytics of crime and punishment.

While Becker acknowledged that many people operate under a high moral and ethical constraint, criminals rationally see that the benefits of their crime outweigh the cost which depends upon the probability of apprehension, conviction, and punishment, and their current set of opportunities. From a public policy perspective, since the cost of increasing a fine is trivial in comparison to the cost of increasing surveillance, one can conclude that the best policy is to maximize the fine and minimize surveillance. However, this conclusion has limits, not the least of which include ethical considerations.

Human capital
In his 1964 book Human capital theories Becker introduced the economic concept of human capital. This book is now a classic in economy research and Becker went on to become a defining proponent of the Chicago school of economics. The book was republished in 1975 and 1993. Becker considered labor economics to be part of capital theory. He mused that "economists and plan-makers have fully agreed with the concept of investing on human beings".

Modern household economics
Together, Becker and Jacob Mincer founded Modern Household Economics, sometimes called the New Home Economics (NHE), in the 1960s at the labor workshop at Columbia University that they both directed. Shoshana Grossbard, who was a student of Becker at the University of Chicago, first published a history of the NHE at Columbia and Chicago in 2001. After receiving feedback from the NHE founders she revised her account.

Among the first publications in Modern Household Economics were Becker (1960) on fertility, Mincer (1962) on women's labor supply, and Becker (1965) on the allocation of time. Students and faculty who attended the Becker-Mincer workshop at Columbia in the 1960s and have published in the NHE tradition include Andrea Beller, Barry Chiswick, Carmel Chiswick, Victor Fuchs, Michael Grossman, Robert Michael, June E. O'Neill, Sol Polachek, and Robert Willis. James Heckman was also influenced by the NHE tradition and attended the labor workshop at Columbia from 1969 until his move to the University of Chicago. The NHE may be seen as a subfield of family economics.

In 2013, responding to a lack of women in top positions in the United States, Becker told the Wall Street Journal reporter David Wessel, "A lot of barriers [to women and blacks] have been broken down. That's all for the good. It's much less clear what we see today is the result of such artificial barriers. Going home to take care of the kids when the man doesn't: Is that a waste of a woman's time? There's no evidence that it is." This view was criticized by Charles Jones, stating that, "Productivity could be 9 percent to 15 percent higher, potentially, if all barriers were eliminated."

Home production
In the mid-1960s Becker and Kelvin Lancaster developed the economic concept of a household production function. Both assumed that consumers in a household receive utility from the goods they purchase. Such as for example, when consumers purchase raw food. If it is cooked, a utility arises from the meal. In 1981 Becker published Treatise on the Family, where he stressed the importance of division of labor and gains from specification.

Economics of the family
During Becker's time at Chicago in the 1970s, he mostly focused on the family. He had previously done work on birth rates and family size, and he used this time to expand his understanding of how economics works within a family. Some specific family issues covered during this time were marriage, divorce, altruism toward other members of the family, investments by parents in their children, and long-term changes in what families do. All of Becker's research on the family resulted in A Treatise on the Family (1981). Throughout the decade, he contributed new ideas and information, and in 1991 an expanded edition of the work was published. His research applies basic economic assumptions such as maximizing behavior, preferences, and equilibrium to the family. He analyzed determinants for marriage and divorce, family size, parents' allocation of time to their children, and changes in wealth over several generations. This publication was an extensive overview of the economics of the family and helped to unite economics with other fields like sociology and anthropology.

Rotten kid theorem
At the core of Becker's economic theory on the family, which he developed on the basis of figures for United States families in 1981, is the rotten kid theorem. He applied the economics of an altruist to a family, wherein a person takes actions that improve the well-being of another person, despite more self-interested action being feasible. Becker pointed out that a parent foregoes higher income, by focusing on family work commitments in order to maximize a well-meaning objective. Becker also theorized that a child in a US family may be perfectly selfish because it maximizes its own utility. There have been attempts to test this economic thesis, in the course of which it was found that cross-generational families do not necessarily maximize their joint income.

Organ markets
A 2007 article by Gary Becker and Julio Jorge Elias entitled "Introducing Incentives in the market for live and cadaveric organ donations" posited that a free market could help solve the problem of a scarcity in organ transplants. Their economic modeling was able to estimate the price tag for human kidneys (about US$15,000) and human livers (about US$32,000). It is argued by critics that this particular market would exploit the underprivileged donors from the developing world.

title: Gary Becker


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Talk:Pirellone

I thought I heard this building was 30 stories high. Not really a skyscraper in the modern sense of the word. I think the news used the term to evoke 9/11 flashbacks to increase ratings. --maveric149

No, Google shows that 'Grattacielo Pirelli' was its usual name. Matthew Woodcraft

 * It is its official name, too.
 * Since in Italy buildings are very seldom higher than, let's say, 50/80 meters, for us it is a Grattacielo, a term that we probably imported from english "skyscraper" as a literal translation. Of course it is a matter of relative proportions, as we are relevantly less used to high buildings and an average urban block is rarely higher than 8/10 floors.
 * For the town of Milan, this building was even more shocking, being higher than the Duomo (the main Cathedral). In order to... limit the "architectural offence", Pirelli had to put on the top of its building a copy of the "Madunina", the famous statue of Virgin Mary that is on the top of Duomo; Madunina was then again above the whole town.
 * About news: they just literally translated the official name, but I can tell you that here we all immediately thought of 9/11, me too of course, given the particular kind of accident and the alert status that we are still living in. So it was an istinctive idea and, I would say, a natural suspect. Also, the fact that the building was hit in its central part, as if it had been aimed, and reached by an orthogonal trajectory, could not let us immediately exclude terrorism. The president of our Senate declared terrorism was one of the possibilities in its urgent communication to the Parliament. After a few hours we heard instead it was a small plane with an italian pilot. Now the hypothesis that the pilot suicided (in this case, with an evident terrific inspiration eventually in his mind) is becoming more concrete hour after hour. --Gianfranco
 * OK, maybee our definition of the term "skyscraper" needs to be modified to include relative usage. -maveric149

ok ok ... why haven't the pilot been specified (or it was taken away)? i went to photograph on the location some 50 minutes after (just the time to arrive there from home) and no panic any more (lots of people with cameras and curious) ... Zisa - The external image bank has now disappeared, so I've removed it.

 * http://users.iol.it/max_vic_max/images/pirelli

If anyone has images that can be used instead, that would be fine, obviously. -- Egil 10:55 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:Pirellone