Timeline October 2011

Events in October 2011 13

• 1927 – 2011 John McCarthy (1927-2011) Died 24 October 2011, aged 84 The American computer scientist coined the term "artificial intelligence" and invented the Lisp programming language. He won the Turing Award in 1971 for his contributions to the field. He died in California after a long career at Stanford University.
• 1941 – 2011 Dennis Ritchie (1941-2011) Died 12 October 2011, aged 70 The American computer scientist created the C programming language and co-created the Unix operating system at Bell Labs. His work underpins much of modern software and computing infrastructure. He died at his home in New Jersey shortly after the death of Steve Jobs, which drew comparatively little public attention.
• 1942 – 2011 Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011) Died 20 October 2011, aged 69 Gaddafi, the longtime ruler of Libya, was captured and killed by rebel fighters near his hometown of Sirte during the Libyan Civil War. His death marked the effective end of his four-decade rule and the collapse of his government. Video of his capture and death spread rapidly worldwide.
• 1955 – 2011 Steve Jobs Apple co-founder Steve Jobs co-founded Apple and pioneered personal computing and the smartphone era with the Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
• 2011 NATO intervention in Libya Airstrikes support rebel forces against Gaddafi Acting under a UN Security Council resolution, NATO conducted a bombing campaign against forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi to protect civilians during the Libyan Civil War. The intervention ran from March to October 2011 and was decisive in the rebels' eventual victory. It was one of the alliance's largest combat operations since Kosovo.
• 2011 Breaking Bad season 4 13 episodes A season-long duel with Gustavo Fring, ending in the nursing home explosion.
• 2011 AMD Bulldozer — the architecture that failed AMD introduces the Bulldozer processor architecture in October 2011 — intended to challenge Intel's Sandy Bridge. The result is catastrophic: Bulldozer is dramatically slower than Sandy Bridge per clock and per core, runs hot and consumes more power. AMD's Bulldozer-based FX processors are outperformed by Intel chips costing half as much. The architecture failure is AMD's worst since the K5. AMD's CPU market share falls below 20%. The company posts large losses and begins what will be a five-year period of near-irrelevance in the CPU market.
• 2011 Galaxy Note — phablet category invented Samsung launches the Galaxy Note in October 2011 — a 5.3-inch smartphone with a stylus that critics mock as absurdly large. It sells 10 million units in five months, proving consumer demand for large-screen phones. Samsung invented the "phablet" category that Apple eventually joins with the iPhone 6 Plus in 2014. The Note line becomes one of Samsung's most distinctive and profitable product families.
• 2011 Nokia Lumia launched with Windows Phone Nokia launches the Lumia 800 in October 2011 — its first Windows Phone device. The Lumia's design is striking (Nokia's hardware team is still excellent), but Windows Phone has only 35,000 apps vs iOS's 500,000. The app gap proves insurmountable. Despite Nokia selling 30 million Lumia devices over three years, Windows Phone never exceeds 4% global market share. Nokia loses €700 million in 2012 and is downgraded to junk bond status.
• 2011 Siri launched First mainstream AI voice assistant Apple launched Siri with the iPhone 4S on October 4, 2011, the first mainstream AI voice assistant. It demonstrated that natural language interfaces could work on consumer devices and sparked the voice assistant race.
• 2011 Steve Jobs dies Apple co-founder, age 56 Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, Pixar and NeXT, died on October 5, 2011, aged 56, from pancreatic cancer. He had transformed six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing and digital publishing.
• 2011 2011 Rugby World Cup victory Captains New Zealand to World Cup glory on home soil, playing through a fractured foot McCaw captained the All Blacks to a tense 8-7 victory over France in the final at Eden Park, ending New Zealand's 24-year wait for a second Rugby World Cup title. He played the entire tournament, including the final, with a fractured bone in his foot that was kept from the public until after the tournament, an act of endurance that became central to his legend.
• 2011 All Blacks win 2011 Rugby World Cup A first World Cup winner's medal Despite being unable to play in the knockout stages, Carter was part of the All Blacks squad that won the 2011 Rugby World Cup, defeating France 8-7 in the final at Eden Park. It was New Zealand's first World Cup title since the inaugural 1987 tournament, and Carter received his first winner's medal despite the bittersweet nature of his own tournament.