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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."
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
:-) Raskin
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
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