Apple's shares yesterday closed at $80.86 on the day CEO Steve Jobs introduced the first-ever Macintosh computers based on Intel microprocessors.

Astute Register readers will immediately recognise that number: the 8086 was, of course, Intel's first 16-bit, x86 processor. It shipped in 1978, the year after Apple was founded. It contained 29,000 transistors and clocked a massive 5MHz. That's 5MHz, not G5MHz, of course.

The 8086 paved the way for the 8088, the CPU used in IBM's first PC in 1982, and then in countless clones of that machine. The rest, as they say, is history. IBM's PCs are now sold by China's Lenovo. The first cloner, Compaq, is owned by HP. Bill Gates is as rich as Croesus. Apple's market share is a fraction of what it was back then. ®

Thanks to reader Neil Sunerton for spotting this one.

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