Editing Wintel (section)

== Background ==
By the early 1980s, the chaos and incompatibility that was rife in the early [[microcomputer]] market had given way to a smaller number of de facto industry standards, including the [[S-100 bus]] expansion board, the [[CP/M]] operating system, the [[Apple II]] home computer, the use of the programming language [[Microsoft BASIC]] in [[read-only memory]] (ROM), and the {{frac|5|1|4}} inch [[floppy disk|floppy drive]] storage medium. Firms competed fiercely to control the industry, and innovation in hardware and software was the rule. [[Microsoft Windows]] and [[Intel]] processors gained ascendance and their ongoing alliance gave them market dominance.<ref>{{cite newspaper |url=https://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703808704576062073117494078 |title=Microsoft Alliance With Intel Shows Age|
work=Wall Street Journal| date=Jan 4, 2011| access-date=18 June 2014}}</ref>

Intel has claimed that this partnership has enabled the two companies to give customers the benefit of "a seemingly unending spiral of falling prices and rising performance".<ref>{{citation |title=Doing Business Better | page=4 |url=http://www.intel.com/assets/pdf/general/windows7_brochure.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170225040754/http://www.intel.com/assets/pdf/general/windows7_brochure.pdf |archive-date=2017-02-25 |url-status=dead |website=Intel Corp.}}</ref> In addition, they claim a "history of innovation" and "a shared vision of flexible computing for the agile business".