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Macintosh's 1984 Debut
Stephen E. Jobs writes "SiliconValley.com is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Mac by republishing some of its coverage of the machine's 1984 launch. 'After two years of secrecy, brainstorming and sometimes zany company maneuvering, Apple Computer Inc. will unveil a new personal computer Jan. 24 that is the size of a stack of paper and, for about the same price, contains more power than the basic IBM PC.' That's how one writer described the Apple Macintosh in 1984. There's more at SiliconValley.com."
ok, here it is: http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/sb01/200 1-01-27-favorite-ads.htm
http://www.uriah.com/apple-qt/1984.html and new version: notice the ipod?
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
I really wish people wouldn't do this. Firstly, you shouldn't throw computers out; they're toxic, they need to be disposed of safely.
Why throw out rare, antique, collector item computers to the bin? A twentysomething twitty fool of a girl at my mother's workplace threw out some early model Acorn Archimedes in the bin without asking anyone. This is how these old computers become rare in the first place.
http://www.apple-history.com/movies/1984.mov
Plus, a neato article on it here: http://www.duke.edu/~tlove/mac.htm
The Welkin: Online Music Reviews
Silly psuedonyms. You're referring to Steven P. Jobs
But remember that when Microsoft came up with Windows, it was actually a very innovative thing too - a Mac-like interface for you DOS machines!
Of course Windows 1.0 was not the first attempt to do this. Don't forget such wonders as IBM's TopView, Quarterdeck's Desq, Digital Research's GEM and a number of others. For a while in the early/mid 1980's there was a swirl of innovation and copying (not to mention a lawsuit or two) as people tried to bring the Xerox-invented GUI to desktop computers.
Sailing over the event horizon
http://www.apple.com/hardware/ads/1984/
There's just one subtle difference...
Goo goo g'joob.
It sounds like the journalist at the time was confusing the Mac with the Apple //c, which was released around the same time as the first Mac. Not counting its attached monitor, the //c was about the size of a 500-sheet stack of paper.
//c.
It was a neat little package, but the Apple II platform's best days were behind it by then, and most people have probably never seen a
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
1. Jobs did not quit- he was voted out of his own company, many saying he was too hard on his employees until 1997 when he returned to Apple as CEO
2. It is doubtful the tables will turn to Apple again. Ever heard of Linux?
3. Apple made lots of mistakes early on. They did not almost go out of business because Microsoft had a superior product.
Check out this article for further information.
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
It's all about gameplay, not just pretty graphics!
Peace
Around 233.80 Yen/US Dollar in 1984. I would give a link but I looked it up on Reuters. If you have a Reuters terminal just use RIC JPY=.
For reference, it is ~105 Yen. This means in 1984 Japanese products would cost half in US dollar terms tham they do now. [Yeah simplistic, but this is the numerical terms]. Kinda puts pleas by the present administration about the exchange rate into perspective.
What Jobs did was realize that Xerox had something special on their hands. Xerox had no plans to actually do anything with the idea.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
Peace!
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
Here is a good writeup on how the advertisement came about and what the initial internal reaction to the ad was in late 1983.
The Macintosh's Twisted Truth, which talks about how Jef Raskin was the real inventor of the Mac (and how Jobs wanted to kill the Macintosh project at the time), and Apple's Unlikely Guardian Angel, which details how Microsoft support the Mac from day one.
Such a language did exist, but it was eventually called Object Pascal and was released in 1985 by Apple
Windows: Product activation. Uninstallable browser and email client. File associations stolen. Kludgy interface, that doesn't follow it's own rules. Crappy audio management. (I have a rather specialized sound card and breakout box. The driver is great, the 'Control Panel' handling of it is not.)
I won't count Trusted Computing and DRM as there isn't really an implementation of it currently (ignoring WMP), but why wait for it to come?
No way to efficiently back up, standards that have been 'extended', and refusal to work with other OSes.
With the Mac, I don't have to worry about any of that. OS X is rather seamless and easy to use. The install takes no time at all, you don't have to activate it, and most everything is out in the open - let's not forget that it keeps getting faster every time I update!.
Yes, there are mistakes, such as the 'improved' network browser, and the now crippled iTunes that doesn't let me listen to my music at work. The Mac doesn't like legacy hardware much (but then again, neither do I) and there are other issues (say with laptop build quality, and initial price) that make a Mac less attractive. It is closed source (based on open source) and built by one company (don't die, Apple!), so that may be a concern - however, the benefits to having a singular vision of how the OS works and how the GUI looks far outweigh the negatives for me.
Linux intrigues me, but I have yet to find it simple enough for me to choose to use. I don't want to have to deal with the issues that my Linux-running friends have. I want to sit down and DO.
On a side note, I think that OpenBeOS will make a solid competitor to Linux 'on the desktop' - I really think it's all about consistency in the GUI. Gnome seems to be on the right track, but there are still too many things for the average person to configure. I know I might come off as a Mac/BeOS zealot, but I don't think I am. I am a realist when it comes to my computing experience - I can configure Apache, but I really don't want to. I don't want to spend my time getting things to work, I want them to work, now. I see the value in Macs being the ease of use, yet no lack of command line power *if you want it*, the consistency of the GUI, the apps that run on it, and the workflow that it fosters.
I see the potential in OpenBeOS as a consistent GUI coupled with an emphasis on the user - add open source to that, and I think we have a winner.
Whew. Long rambly post. Hope I answered your one line question. :)
It's not a remake. It's the original with an iPod composited in.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I wouldn't toss them.
m l
Put them on ebay. People still want those things. They are still great for MIDI sequencing, and you can turn them into a Macquarium if you want...
http://www.lowendmac.com/compact/macquarium.sht
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
I'm not sure the whole legal status behind it, but I have been told that there was some sort of trademark or contractual agreement that prevents Apple from making a multi button mouse. I personally have been using a mutli button trackball for 10 years now. Would I like to see Apple make one? Yes, but it doesn't bother me too much. But it irks me not to have it on a PowerBook. Ack!
I was guessing about Windows 1.0 not infringing the copyright on Apple's icons because I have never in my life seen a PC running Windows 1.x or 2.x. But now that I've seen some Windows 1.x and 2.x screenshots, the icons don't look like Mac copies.
Would you pay $3200 or $4000, instead of $2495?
Not only would you add the cost of a hard drive, but add cooling fan, an extra i/o chip in the motherboard, firmwire/bois modifications, and fit it in a tiny tiny ( by 84 standards) space, would make the apple as expensive as the $7,000 lisa!
This is 1983 we are talking about here.
These are not commidity items back then.
A simple analog to digital converter was hundreds of dollars! Today they cost about a nickel and are used in cell phones.
If you have ever seen the original AT motherboards you would know what I am talking about. They were huge because engineers had to use many chips and ic's because of their price. The mac was very very tiny and powerfull for its time.
As pc makers ordered things in bulk and chip fabrication improved the hard drives came. I think the macII had one by default.
Remember also Commodores costs hundreds and the IBM XT was estimated to cost around a $1000 after the following year. Apple almost went under thanks to the mac because of its high cost.
With no real graphic accelerators, Apple engineers had to have special dedicated bitmapped processors for icons, etc. This cost money.
http://saveie6.com/
Even cooler is that you can strap an 18GB hard drive into those old machines and it freakin' works! Try strapping a drive that big into a PC from that era, it looks at you silly when you try to teach it that there's more than 2GB in the world.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I think the stack the reporter is referring to is a stack (box) of 8.5 x 11 tractor feed paper, which is indeed about the size of the mac in question.
Zealotry is over-rated.
;-)
If you're deciding between Mac OS X, Linux, or BSD, the deciding factor should be what you are going to use the OS for.
For servers, I would definitely go with BSD or Linux. I like BSD for its robustness and security. However, Linux, with the latest kernels will have better performance (load handling and thorough-put). Also, Linux is highly touted by IBM and HP, so if you ever need to find external support, it's probably a better platform.
However, for the desktop, I suggest Mac OS X for now. Ultimately I see Linux will become much more prevelant on the desktop, but it's just not quite there yet. With Mac OS X, you can run practically any Linux application (with the built-in X server and Fink, etc.), yet still enjoy a polished and consistent UI. The iLife applications are great too. Besides, Mac OS X allows you to learn/polish your Unix skills, and should you ever decide to go to a Linux desktop, those skills would be applicable too. So for now, it's the best of both worlds.
Then again, I do run Mac OS X on a TiBook, so I might be slightly biased!
-B
The one that had real potential in my mind was Quarterdecks' DeskView/X.
A multitasking environment integrated with Microsoft Windows that let people with 386 boxes run Windows, DOS, and had an X-server built into it to let them also run X apps over the wire.
A friend of mine was running X apps that way on the machines in his lab, from home over a 9600 baud modem link in the early 90's. It's a cool, cool environment and people could use it even today to make use of cheap older hardware as X terminals where they need Windows (3.1) capabilities as well.
---
BookRead has some facts sort of sideways. The Lisa certainly did not start "the mouse thing" for Apple. What most people don't know is that the Mac and the Lisa were started within a few months of each other and were parallel products. When I started the Mac project, the Lisa was still a character-generator, green-on-black, machine. I sold the Lisa team on going graphic.
:-) Raskin
The Mac was a lot more than something that "simply brought" the Lisa price down.
Jef (I was there
Neither was Jobs the visionary for this product nor was it a Xerox copy.
:-) Raskin
Save me some typing and see my article "Holes in the Histories" on www.jefraskin.com
I also have some longer postings on this topic somewhere nearby...
Jef (I was there
I think the version of HFS that shiped prior to OS 8 wasn't able to handle volumes larger than 2GB.
I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it!
Where can I buy one?
Amazingly enough: here, here, or here
seems some things just never die
(and no I'm not still using one myself as my main machine, but you did ask...)
In many ways the Mac started the decline of Apple and the rise of the PC and M$, at least from a hackers POV.
"Normally that's written Apple ][. It was the Apple /// that used the slanting slashes."
///+), Apple//e, Apple//c, Apple//gs.
Apple][, Apple][+, Apple/// (and
"Pedantic... I know"
Could be worse...I was at Apple from late 1980 through mid-85 (thanks, Mr. Sculley), and wrote manuals for some of the Apple// and Apple/// family and their software. The Apple//c docset was my last major project there.
I've still got some of the manuals around here...somewhere...