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."

Comments

Re:Link to the famous ad?

[squarefish]

http://www.uriah.com/apple-qt/1984.html and new version: notice the ipod?

Re:Durability of the Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The Ad

[anarchima]

http://www.apple-history.com/movies/1984.mov

Plus, a neato article on it here: http://www.duke.edu/~tlove/mac.htm

Re:Innovation

[gwernol]

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.

Remake of the classic "1984" ad

[Gothic_Walrus]

For those of you who haven't seen it, here is Apple's way of commemorating their 20th anniversary:

http://www.apple.com/hardware/ads/1984/

There's just one subtle difference...

Re:Remake of the classic "1984" ad

[gerardrj]

Two subtle differences. One much more suble than the other.

The obvious one is of course the woman is wearing an iPod.
The second is that the date on the "big screen" is changed. The date is in the lower left portion of the talking head screen, and in the original commercial, it read "1-24-84" in now reads "1-24-04"

Re:A stack of paper?

[John Miles]

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.

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 //c.

Mod parent down- He doesn't know

[qewl]

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.

Re:Mod parent down- He doesn't know

[badasscat]

3. Apple made lots of mistakes early on. They did not almost go out of business because Microsoft had a superior product.

Lots of people (not just you) seem to be doing a bit of history revision here - the original battle in 1984 was not between Apple and MS, it was between Apple and IBM. Read the article if you don't believe it, but I also recall this clearly and it was even the subject of Apple's famous 1984 SuperBowl ad ("Big Brother" was represented by IBM, not Microsoft).

In 1984, IBM still had a stranglehold on the corporate market. This was, in all honesty, the market the Mac was originally intended for. It was designed as an easier computer for non-technical company drones to use - rather than spending weeks training on how to use an IBM PC, they just sit down and start clicking around with their mouse. The Apple II line was expected (initially) to continue as Apple's home machine. Design work (which would become Apple's main niche later on) was not even a consideration back then - no desktop computer was powerful enough to handle it. There was no "Think Different" campaign back then - the idea of the Mac was not to enable creativity, it was about letting accountants work with spreadsheets more easily.

In the end, Apple never did gain the corporate foothold that they wanted, and both Apple and IBM were eventually overwhelmed in the desktop market by MS. Apple didn't see this coming at all when they released the Mac, and neither, obviously, did IBM. MS turned PC's into commodities - it didn't matter anymore whether you had an IBM PC or a clone, because the clones would run IBM-compatible operating systems just as well. (Don't forget that IBM had their own competing OS - PC DOS - that MS-DOS was a clone of, and this was what was generally installed on clone machines.)

Both Apple and IBM continuously lost market share through the 1980s and 1990s to cheaper IBM-compatible clone machines running MS software. Apple quickly discontinued the Apple II line and put all their egges in one basket with the Mac (Jobs considered the Apple II to be largely Steve Wozniak's machine, and I still believe the discontinuation of the line was partly a personal decision - at that point in time the Apple II line was actually more powerful and more expandable than the Mac, with more software and hardware add-ons available). If they had not hit on the strategy of pitching Macs for creative work (which didn't happen until at least the late 80's or early 90's), there is no question Apple would have been out of business. They had no other market, and had failed in all of their efforts at retaining market share both at home and in the workplace (not to mention schools, for that matter). The major slide started, btw, when Jobs was still leading the company. I always smirk when I read Mac fans acting as if Jobs is the savior of Apple; in fact, he pretty well drove the company into the ground with his early strategies, but to his credit he seems to have learned a lot over the years about how to run a company.

Anyway, so the initial enemy was IBM, who were thought of back then in much the same way many people think of MS now. It's one of the biggest ironies in the history of the computing industry that at this moment, the only major internal part that separates Apple architecture from (IBM-compatible) PC architecture is a CPU that's co-produced and designed by IBM.

Exchange rate

[Uber Banker]

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.

Re:POINT AND CLICK????

[zaffir]

What Jobs did was realize that Xerox had something special on their hands. Xerox had no plans to actually do anything with the idea.

Stack of Paper

[midifarm]

Remember that the average stack of computer paper back in 1984 came in a tall box and each sheet was connected and perforated so our DOT Matrix printer could feed it through it's track wheels! A lot has changed and hopefully will continue to, for the better!

Peace!

1984 advertisement history

[rufey]

Other posters have provided links to the famous 1984 advertisement, but I haven't seen anyone post the history of the ad. It almost wasn't shown at all because the board didn't like it at all.

Here is a good writeup on how the advertisement came about and what the initial internal reaction to the ad was in late 1983.

Wired

[phalse phace]

Wired also has some interesting write ups about Apple and the Mac, such as:

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.

Re:Wired

[jefraskin]

Diamondsw says that the original Mac didn't have a GUI, sound, etc. He also says that I made up a "lot of history". Please give me an example or two. The example has to be something I actually said or wrote, not what somebody else said or an example of bad reporting. For example a web site recently said that I said that I "started Apple". I wrote to them to tell them it was wrong and they corrected it: I had said no such thing (and never have).

Before you respond, consider taking a look at the "Holes in the Histories" article on www.jefraskin.com. If you want dates and want to see original documents dating back to 1979, read "The Book of Macintosh" much of which is in the Stanford University History of Technology collection.

If you want proof that I wanted computers to be graphics-based and human-centered (and that I had invented and built my own graphic input device in 1965 or 66) see "The Quick Draw Graphics System", my thesis, which was published (Penn State) in 1967 -- 5 years before PARC was established. This puts the lie to the often-stated claim that the Mac stole its basic orientation from Xerox PARC. Not that we didn't learn a lot from PARC's brilliant work later.

So, diamondsw, even if the original Mac didn't have a GUI as most people now know it, but it did have a graphics-based interface that was (IMHO) even easier to learn and use. As for sound, it had it from the first -- I've been doing computer music for years before the Mac and there's no way I'd design a product without built-in sound.

Also see the Appendices to my book, "The Humane Interface" which has a detailed, button-press-by-button-press, account of some of the differences between PARCs interface and the one I designed.

Jef (I was there :-) Raskin

Re:Well, it took 20 years...

[teamhasnoi]

Well, for one everything works out of the box - and it's easy! With Win XP's default install - I am thrust into a GUI that tries to second guess all I do, not to mention the fact that things like browsing and email are several (shareware or freeware) programs away. I won't and can't run Windows without virus scanning, firewalls, and some knowlege of what is vulnerable and needs to be patched. I have seen many an new XP box owned after 1 minute of being connected to the net. None of my macs have any virus scanners or firewalls (beyond the router); as far as patching - I've needed to download 12-15 patches (10.2 -> 10.8 on a Beige G3) rather than the 40 or more patches recommended by Windows Update for a default XP install.

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. :)

Re:Durability of the Mac

[Aqua OS X]

I wouldn't toss them.

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.shtm l

Re:Durability of the Mac

[MarcQuadra]

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.

Re:1984 Commercial

[FattMattP]

If it is the original except for the iPod, why do they say something about an "anniversary" at the beginning?

Did you listen to what was being said? It probably wouldn't make much sense unless you've read 1984. Here it is:

Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!

Re:A stack of paper?

[aboyce]

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.

Re:A little revisionist history...

[jefraskin]

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.

The Mac was a lot more than something that "simply brought" the Lisa price down.

Jef (I was there :-) Raskin