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Macintosh's 1984 Debut

Posted by michael on from the $2495-cheap dept.

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."

54 of 613 comments (clear)

  1. Durability of the Mac by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We're finally tossing the last of our original Macs. Some are Mac Plus, or a little newer, but it's remarkable how much use one could get out of those things. Can't quite say the same about PC's as we're chucking crates of those that are only 3-5 years old.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:Durability of the Mac by Jim+Hall · · Score: 4, Interesting

      We're finally tossing the last of our original Macs. Some are Mac Plus, or a little newer, but it's remarkable how much use one could get out of those things.

      A friend of mine last night said he was finally retiring his Mac LC. The hard drive had died, and figured it was time to let it go. I'm not a huge Mac fan, but I have to admit the longevity of these Macs is impressive.

    2. Re:Durability of the Mac by Oz+Factor · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yeah, I agree. The small office that I used to work in still has a Mac SE tucked under a desk that acts as a Fax server and does some NAT routing. Not bad for a 15+ year old computer.

    3. Re:Durability of the Mac by Basehart · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "We're finally tossing the last of our original Macs"

      Sounds like Bank Of America talking!

      Their branches here in the NW have been running SE's as terminals since the SE was introduced, and I still see them sat on manager desks and in reception areas.

      If I was responsible for deciding what hardware replaces those machines I'd be hard pressed to switch to a different manufacturer after using the same Apple hardware for such a long time.

    4. Re:Durability of the Mac by thunderbird46 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Old Macs are still worth something on places like eBay. Using the Mac Plus as an example, I typed that in eBay's search and came across one item going for $102.50 at the moment (admittedly, a very nice example that also has a good amount of acessories.)

    5. Re:Durability of the Mac by Doppler00 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Apple II's and Mac's are not necessarily rare. You can find lots of them on ebay at pretty decent prices. It's not like only a few hundred of these computers were produced. If I were to keep every generation of PC I've purchased over my life I wouldn't have any storage space left, and I certainly wouldn't be using the old computers.

    6. Re:Durability of the Mac by TrancePhreak · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I have an IBM XT from 1984 that still works. All my other computers I've had throughout my life still work... Perhaps if you treated the computers better they'd live longer. Kinda like plants, need to clean them and take care of them.

      --

      -]Phreak Out[-
    7. Re:Durability of the Mac by Hrothgar+The+Great · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You're exactly right - they aren't rare at all for the most part. It should be pretty easy to check if something you own is worth anything or is ever going to be after it's ten freaking years old already.

      Take the Apple II or the Mac Plus for instance. We're talking about a couple of the most popular models of computers of all times. There are hundreds of thousands of these things sitting in storage closets in universities and schools and even people's basements. These aren't exactly fringe products we're talking about.

    8. Re:Durability of the Mac by calyphus · · Score: 2, Interesting
      The Debears cartel keeps the cost of diamonds artificially high by controlling the supply (acquiring and closing every new source found). Advertising does more to create a perception that they are much rarer and therefore worth the cartel's prices.That inflated price is what makes the cost of making artifical copies feasible.

      If Debears didn't control the market the price should drop. However, in their shadow, and outside of their control, conflict diamonds from Africa are sold to support dictatorships and genocide on that continent. (I had no intention when I started writing to go down this path, but...) Debears is as culpable for supporting the tyranny in Africa as any direct funder.

      That aside, value of an original vs. copies. Copies are only valuable as substitutions for an unobtainable original. In rare instances a copy can surpass the value of an original, e.g. the original becomes so mass produced that it's devalued, but a knock-off that is just as well made, or better, is made by a mfr. that goes on to make better products. The knock-off, while still a copy, acquires added value from the producer's later reputation.

      However, that is rare. Collectibility for anything boils down to one thing: Significance. Was it significant for innovation in design or function? Is it significant for who made it or when? Does it commemorate something, an event, a time of change, a point of change, etc.? Does it hold nostalgic significance?

      Unless a copyist distinguishes himself significantly, his work will not surpass the value of a significant original. Most often, the presence of copies themselves makes originals more valuable.

      --


      The potato it is uninformed.
  2. Link to the famous ad? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I've never seen the famous Superbowl Mac ad. Can anyone provide a link to it online?

  3. Innovation by gtrubetskoy · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The first Apple computers and the Mac were very innovative indeed.

    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! And while MS was improving Windows (added multitasking, threading, nicer GUI), Apple was stagnating - little new was being introduced in their MacOS, Jobs quit.

    These days Apple is innovating (OS X, iTunes, iPod, etc), and MS is stagnating.

    Give it another few years, and the tables will turn again....

    1. Re:Innovation by the_2nd_coming · · Score: 2, Interesting

      actually...if you looked it up, you would see that Apple payed in stock for the ability to look at the stuff Xerox was doing and was given the ability to use anything they saw.

      there was no steeling, except on the part of MS....well that was more of a poorly worded agreement on the part of Mr. Pepsi who was running apple at the time.

      --



      I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
    2. Re:Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      yeah, but microsoft *actually* stole mac intellectual property from apple, as in lifted extensive technical documents and carried them surreptitiously out the door and back to seattle where they were put to use developing software. it makes me laugh every time billg spouts on about intellectual property.

    3. Re:Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      OSX - BSD had been around for quite some time.

      It's not the BSD core that's innovative about OSX, it's the GUI.

      Sure, that's based on NeXTStep, but it's all Jobs, so I reckon it counts.

    4. Re:Innovation by Powercntrl · · Score: 2, Interesting

      XBox -- Everyone's got a PS2. Sorry. Putting a P3-700 in a box with a harddrive and a TV-out running a stripped down windows kernel and DirectX doesn't count as "innovation". That's called "building a computer that plugs into the TV". And Sony's done it better.

      If you think that's what an Xbox is, you haven't used one. While true it is based on PC components, the Xbox is a console. You put a game DVD in and it just works... It is far from a "PC with TV-Out".

      As for Sony doing it better, if you really see Sony as a lesser of the evils, that's fine. At the moment, the PlayStation 2 is the leading game system; however, considering the fact the Xbox already has more marketshare than the Gamecube, I'd say the Xbox is far from the flop you're making it out be.

      Now Microsoft actually making any profit off the Xbox, that's a different story.

      --

      ---
      DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
    5. Re:Innovation by bhtooefr · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Whoa, there. Windows 95, although it had the concept of threads, wasn't a true multitasking OS. On the UI front, Win95 finally came up to the level of the Mac. On the technical front? OK, so it was better than the Mac, as it understood the concept of threads (it had to, as it was built around the Win32 API developed for WinNT), but it was still DOS-based, and was about as stable as Mac OS. In 1984, technically it was roughly equal to 1.04, but on the UI it was like a REALLY bad Windows 95 (maybe Chicago 58?). OS X is technically like any BSD (as it is), and blows Windows away. On the UI, in the "ooh, look, fancy shapes" department, it's better than XP because it uses them carefully, but less sparingly, and in the general feel department, it's the same quality (this is biased because I have more Windows experience - someone who has more Mac experience would think otherwise).

    6. Re:Innovation by Jester99 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Perhaps you're right about the Xbox controller's feel, and the raw tech specs. Fine, they're better than PS2's.

      But the question was: Is the XBox innovative?

      Putting slightly higher-spec'd gear into a console system isn't innovative.

      It is not a quantum leap over the state of the art. While it may outpace the PS2 as you claim, it doesn't do so by any amount that really matters. (It's not like the Super Nintendo vs. the NES, for example.)

      My argument from popularity is this: In a console system, it all comes down to: Do people really want to play the games for that system?

      And frankly, at least among the college-age kids I know, the PS2 holds the line. More people have a PS2 than XBox. More kids get excited about playing PS2 games (the sole exception, it seems being Halo). So, is making a beefier box "innovative"? I'd say it's not. Because the system does not do what it should have been designed to do: Make everyone want to play console game systems on their console.

      In that way, XBox fails at being innovative.

  4. Macintosh - An Opinion by ten000hzlegend · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Macintosh appealed to everyone who had the cash really, remember, 1984 still had the ring of niche markets and professional roles in computing, games demoted to the Commodore 64 amongst others

    I remember seeing the first Mac in school around 1990, it was bought in 1985 with the UK introduction and people asked where it all sat, what did it do etc...

    http://www.theapplemuseum.com/index.php?id=tam&p ag e=personal&subpage=mac

    A great page for somemore Apple history, especially technical details and those legendary Code Names!

  5. 1984 Commercial by coolmacdude · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I like Apple's remake of their famous 1984 ad. This time the woman wears an iPod.

    --

    -You may license this sig for only $6.99.
  6. Mac's Popularity by mick88 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    After all these years, I still wonder two things:
    1) why hasn't the Mac done better?
    2) why hasn't the Mac died?
    I know the standard answer to why Mac is still around is "Small but loyal group of devotees", but I have trouble with that idea.

    If it is good enough to inspire fanatical loyalty in some, why hasn't it been good enough to win over the rest of the world? And, having failed in winning over the world, how can apple still afford to be in the business?

    Dunno. I always did like Macs, myself. Always met my needs.

    --
    I created this account just so I could comment on this story
    1. Re:Mac's Popularity by brucehoult · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If it is good enough to inspire fanatical loyalty in some, why hasn't it been good enough to win over the rest of the world?

      This really doesn't bother me. Just about everything I do or like seems to be a tiny minority thing.

      Apple computers have always been far more hackable (in sofware -- I'm a software guy, not a hardware guy) than the alternatives, but most people don't care, or mistakenly think they're "closed" or something. They're simply better for how I want to hack computers than any alternative (especially once you could get A/UX, or now OSX), but clearly 97% of the popupation doens't agree with me. No prob.

      I ride motorcycles. I never owned a car until I was about 35 and had family reasons to. By the time I was 24 I gravitated from the Japanese ones to BMW motorcycles and have stuck with them ever since. They're simply *better*, based on what makes a motorcycle useful to me, but clearly 99% of the population doesn't agree with me. No prob.

      I fly sailplanes. I can't imagine why everyone doesn't, but it really seems that it doesn't interest most people -- I've taken more than forty of my friends, relatives and workmates for flights, and so far only *two* of them have been interested enough to go solo themselves -- and maybe half a dozen of the others ask for repeat flights. Oh well, no prob, each to their own, and the sport will survive even with only the current 1 person in 4000 (here in NZ, fewer in the USA, more in Germany) doing it.

      My favourite programming language is Dylan. I can't imagine why everyone doesn't use it, but they don't, so I'm stuck with using Dylan for fun and programming contests, while using C and C++ at work. No prob, there are enough of us using Dylan to protect our compiler from bitrot, port it to new platforms, and gradually enhance it to be even better.

      Every one of the above things is very much a minority thing that attracts fanatically loyalty in some. It would be great if the rest of the world agreed with me, but in fact the world is so big, and communication and trade so easy, that you don't *have* to have everyone using something to allow it to survive and even prosper.

  7. Re:Still works by Quarters · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My brother has an Atari 2600 that's even older (1980-81, I think) and it sill works. I, until recently had an original Amiga 1000 from that era that worked without a hitch, and I know many people with working C-64s from then. There's no reason to believe that an 8086, 8088, 80286, etc.. wouldn't still work fine today if it was taken care of.

  8. Well, it took 20 years... by teamhasnoi · · Score: 5, Interesting
    but I am now and forever more going to use Macs. When OS X came with a mac we got for work, I gave it a shot, and have never looked back. I bought a 15" AL Powerbook last year and it has been the best computing experience ever.

    Sure, back in the day, I had an Apple IIgs, and used Apple II computers at school - but when I got out on my own, I built a PC (for games of course).

    Now that my gaming has been replaced by other things, I find that my last objection to going to Mac is moot. Of course, this is even more moot (can that happen?), because there is a fine selection of games available for the Mac.

    I still would like to see GTA for the mac, as that is one you can play for 10 min, or ten days...

    My last PC will be my last.

    I look forward to see what else Apple will improve - I still think that I should never have to wait for anything on a computer, that I should be able to comunicate with it in plain language, and that it remains a tool for me, rather than a 'content delivery and licensing kiosk' like many of our Windows friends are ending up with.

    Shut up, you had me at hello. *tear*

    heh.

    1. Re:Well, it took 20 years... by Durandal64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If it wasn't for OS X, I'd be a Windows or Linux user. OS 9 was becoming increasingly bloated, unstable and shitty overall. The only reason I tolerated it was because I was used to it. So I bought a QuickSilver G4, and it came with OS X v10.0.0. I was a little resistant to using it, at first. I had waded into OS X with the Public Beta, and I was thoroughly confused by it. But, I decided that it was the future, and that I'd best adopt it and learn to use it as soon as possible.

      Haven't looked back since. Now, with Panther, OS X is easily the best OS on the market. Sure, it has its faults (the Finder, the Dock, both uber pieces of shit), but I remedy them with the innovative and awesome products that the Mac shareware community creates (Path Finder, DragThing, et cetera). Using Windows is like a chore. The OS is just ugly, not just from an aesthetic standpoint, but everything seems disproportioned and poorly laid-out. My computing experience has dramatically improved with OS X, and with Expose on 10.3, I'm wondering what the Hell I ever did before to manage my windows. And we get new releases every 14 months or so that offer huge improvements in usability and OS behavior. Panther is to Jaguar was Windows 98 was to 95. It took Microsoft 3 years; it took Apple about 1. The OS X team is truly busting their asses.

  9. Re:I remember all of this by questamor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Here's a link to a google newsgroups search for all the mentions of Macintosh up until January 24 1984. It's all the same rumormongering that goes on before Apple's releases today, just shifted a fifth of a century back.

    Some things don't change :)

  10. Re:If its taken care of... by bckrispi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually, the drives of my first 286 ran the last time I tested them. The fricking things are armored like a tank and weigh a ton, so I'm sure that has something to do with their longevity. The PC itself, alas, wasn't so fortunate. The BIOS wasn't powered by a NiCad battey, but by two AA alkalines. One day, I powered it on only to see a strange grey haze on the monitor screen. I opened the case (which also weighed a ton, btw) to find that the batteries had leaked right onto the chipset. It was a sad day...

    --
    Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
  11. My Last PC... by NeoGeo64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My next computer will be an Apple *Mac or *Book.

    I really don't mind using Windows XP; it's stable enough for me -- but I'm looking towards the future...

    I think Longhorn is really going to be a prison for it's users.

    Don't get me wrong, I think light-use-DRM is fair (e.g. iTunes Music Store) but Microsoft is just plain evil. They want to control your BIOS, your computer and your life.

    Hell, after 2006 when this Trusted Computing platform comes out, don't be surprised to see that you can't install Linux or any other UNIX variant on your machine because the BIOS won't let you. That box won't be yours, it'll be Microsoft's. Ever wondered why that little icon on your desktop was called My Computer? Maybe you should read the EULA better!

    I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Apple had double digit marketshare by 2010.

    1. Re:My Last PC... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      what the frellin hell are you talking about? Change the parts? Hell you can hack the hell out of any and all Apples, even back in the day you could swap parts...you had limited sources for those parts but you could swap 'em. now that they use pretty much the same kind of standard hardware as a PC you can do about anything you like in the way of swapping or changing or fixing other then a motherboard (those you now have to get from Apple and have to be a repair shop. to many people were building unlicensed clones)! Okay you may have some problems with video card choices but not major ones.

      The bit on the BIOS...oy!

      And sealed like they are going into space? Are you talking about the new G5? All that stuff comes off EASY as pie!

      Now if you are talking about Macs being tough to hack into?

      Yeah they are and we LIKE it that way! Last virus I had on my Mac? was over 10 years ago! I LOADED IT ON PURPOSE. It was called rude mac and was funnier then hell!

      Where as I have seen PC's get owned before you download the first security update......and some of that has got to be by design. Look up something called "internet exploder" on google....

      But I really should expect not much more from you considering that you probably live East of the lake in the heart of MS country.

  12. An Amazing Read by MBCook · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I've got to say that was a VERY interesting read. I'm just under 21 so I didn't pay much attention to the Macintosh's launch at the the time. But reading the article, it's amazing how much the (computer) world has changed. They have to describe what things like icons are, and what a mouse is. Today it's almost unfathomable that someone wouldn't know what a mouse it. Some of the technical specs are interesting too. It seems so weird that things were specified in BYTES then. I realize it made sense but can you imagine what it would be like to go to a computer store and ask for a 40,000,000,000 disk drive? I also have to say the description of being "the size of a stack of paper" seems very odd to me, as when I think of a stack of paper I think of something the size of a book at max, but still. Weirdest of all is describing Microsoft and where they are located (Seattle). These days people don't write about a Seattle software company named Microsoft, they write about MS because we ALL know who MS is.

    Seeing the introduction of some things from the past can be facinating in how much our world has changed. But in this case, it's especially interesting in how FAST it's changed. I'm sitting here typing on a laptop that is a year or two old. That said my laptop (for about that price, ignoring inflation) has a hard drive that's half a million times larger than the machine's RAM, has more power than a building full of old Macs running together weighs 1/3 (or less) what that mac did, can do TONS of other things that the Mac could never dream of, and my laptop is OLD AND OUT OF DATE. Of course, I owe a HUGE amount of this stuff to that little Mac (which I have 4 of im my basement ;). Go Apple!

    --
    Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
  13. other magazines by savetz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For other perspectives, see Creative Computing magazine: Apple Mac review and Compute magazine: Apple's Macintosh Unveiled

  14. I Switched... by voodoo_bluesman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    a year ago and haven't looked back. Unix functionality with a nice GUI. I use the Mac for development (perl and C utilities), music and video production, and plain old web surfing and email. I have never really had a computer in the past that could handle all of my different interests w/ this much ease.

    For example, we shot a low budget indie short film two years ago. After shooting, we went to my PC and tried to edit it. We ended up giving up due to frustration. A year later, I bought an eMac and edited with no problem using iMovie and then distrubuted it w/ iDVD.

    I've been recording music in my home studio for quite a while now, and while I had an ok setup with my PC, it got sooo much easier when I got the Mac. Especially now, with Garage Band, I've been able to scratch out songs with half of the effort I had to put into my Windows box.

    Keep in mind that I'm a network engineer, and I maintain over 500 Windows servers - so I'm not really biased. For the enterprise, Windows is your choice (for now), but for the home user, I'd encourage everyone to consider the Mac.

  15. A little revisionist history... by BookRead · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't think they got the Mac right until the Mac SE came out in '86 or so. The original 128K Mac was too slow and small for its ambitions. The other funky thing about them was their power supply. It was cooled by convection, which made sure the power supplies died easily and often. I think the other forgotten aspect of the Mac was the LaserWriter which made the WYSIWYG metaphor work.

    And let's not forget the Apple Lisa which started the mouse/icon/desktop thing for Apple. That puppy was way ahead of its time. The Mac simply brought it down (relatively speaking. a Lisa was $10K) to where mere wealthy mortals could afford it.

  16. How Microsoft got away with "copying" Mac UI by tepples · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wondered if I would ever find out exactly how Microsoft was ever able to take the Mac GUI, complete with Mac icons.

    Windows 1.x was a toy which I'm guessing Apple just ignored. Windows 2.x was licensed. Windows 3.x was found to have been covered by the Windows 2.x agreement. Windows 4.x (Windows 95 and Windows NT 4) was first published after Lotus v. Borland, which held that UI is a process, not a copyrightable expression. None of them copied anything from the Mac pixel-for-pixel.

  17. Why the Mac did not do better by heironymouscoward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A good question, since the Mac was launched when there was a real window of opportunity. My first PC at work cost something like $6,000 and this was a "cheap clone" at the time. But it had a 20 Mb hard disk and that meant we could do real work on it. The Mac, with its 128Kb RAM and single floppy, was just too slow for serious work.

    If Apple had made the Mac expandable using some kind of external bus (something the Apple II and Commodore 64 and CP/M systems and PCs all did), there would have been a supply of external disks that would have allowed it to compete with the PC.

    If they had made a business version that had a larger case which could be opened and expanded with more memory, they might have cornered the market.

    If they had licensed the hardware and software to other manufacturers, they would have been able to compete with the price drops that kept the (IBM) PC the most popular choice.

    As it was, IBM clones were simply cheaper, more expandable, more widely available, and eventually, more capable.

    Apple captured a small number of markets with its graphic capability and has basically been serving the same markets ever since.

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une signature
  18. "Might have to 'swap' diskettes..." by dpbsmith · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My favorite quotation from the article: "Because the machine now has one drive and 128K of RAM, several sources said users might have to 'swap' diskettes..." Oh, brother. Did we ever.

    It's strange that Steve Jobs, generally a fan of new technology, had such a blind spot about internal hard drives. I tend to think it was that, more than anything else, that got the Mac off to a dangerously slow start.

    I remember paying, I believe it was $400, for a second, external floppy drive, without which the machine wasn't very usable. Even then, it was (after the novelty wore off) quite annoying listening to those drives play that "MacDirge" (they had a very audible, musically pitched whine that jumped between several pitches as the disk format went to different numbers of sectors per track. I never thought to take it down in musical notation, but the drive played three or four notes of a minor chord).

    --

    "How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!

    1. Re:"Might have to 'swap' diskettes..." by Trurl's+Machine · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's strange that Steve Jobs, generally a fan of new technology, had such a blind spot about internal hard drives.

      Jobs hated hard drives because they were loud and power hungry. A Macintosh with internal hard drive would require a cooling fan, and that was agains Jobs will. He was always a fan of silent computing (and still is - the hard drive in my iBook is incredibly silent, and the machine is almost entirely mute, until the fan kicks in, but that's not very often). Oddly enough, many people in early 80's considered hard drives to be a dead end and obsolete technology. The mass storage of the future was supposed to be bubble memory. Kind of like the gallium arsenide story, methinks - but I still remember predictions in computer press that no hard drive can go past the 100 megabyte barrier and no silicon-based CPU can break the 100 megahertz.

  19. Re:Amiga forever! by mdwh2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Now that's an Amiga attitude! If you were living in 1993 what you say might be relevant, but none of us exist in the past. It's 2004.

    Normally I'd agree, but this is an article reminiscing about 20 years ago, so I'd say looking to the past is relevant.

    The fastest Amiga that can run a real, released AmigaOS is what, a PPC604? yes. It's a PPC604. Don't go counting the AmigaOne and it's generic G3 or G4 motherboard because then you're falling into the typical Amiga trap of living for vaporware. Perhaps when AmigaOS4 is actually released and not a "Beta that will be here next month!!" you can only be 5 years behind the times.

    Well, you could run Amiga software on a G4 with MorphOS on a Pegasos (yes, it's not the original AmigaOS, but then OS X isn't the same as the original MacOS either - that was ditched a few years ago).

  20. Amazing computer. by aussersterne · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I still have two Mac 128k machines in the garage and they still run. They were amazing machines in their day. Compared to the green-screen PC's running cumbersome software with manuals inches thick, the Mac was a beautiful machine to use. The sense of control and interaction was so immediate!

    Does anyone remember the lovely tutorial disk that came with the Mac? I can't remember what it was called (i.e. what was on the label), but there was a disk that you booted from that just taught you how to use the machine. It walked you through a lovely animated tutorial with sound that went through use of the mouse, windows, menus, icons, files, etc. using little games -- a maze, an on-screen piano... and it provided feedback in how skilled you were with all of these things. It only took about 10 minutes to get through it, and then you could use the Mac like a pro! But it had graphics and sound! People take these things for granted today, but I had a steady stream of friends over who just wanted to go through that amazing tutorial over and over again and couldn't believe their eyes and ears.

    I still remember seeing MacWrite/MacPaint for the first time, just after having set the machine up and gone through the tutorial. Without ever reading a single manual, I knew how to use this incredibly powerful (for its time) WYSIWYG text editor (unheard of on the PC) and paint program. I must have spent hours just doodling in MacPaint, and friends who owned PCs would come over to do the same and then to print out their doodles on the ImageWriter, which, as a graphics-oriented printer that printed fonts as they appeared on-screen, was about as wild an idea as the Mac itself was. To the friends, who had single-font dot-matrix or daisy wheel printers, even the idea of dot-matrix graphics from a printer seemed like a visit from the kool aid fairy.

    The disks were a pain, it's true, but they stored more than the PC floppies and were much more compact and durable, and nobody else but mid-sized and large businesses at the time had any way to afford a hard drive. The 5MB (yes, 5 megabyte) full-height hard drives for PCs were prohibitively expensive, thousands of dollars... Not to mention 10MB (there were no 20MB PC drives yet, IIRC).

    Even just the black-on-white display was stunning. Everyone was so accustomed to the notion that computer displays were by necessity some sort of harsh green... Even though Tandy had had a white-on-black display for their TRS-80 Model I some time earlier. I remember one of my friends commenting that if there was no technical reason for making green displays, he'd be happy never to have to see one again after seeing my Mac's display.

    Even when Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 came out years later, the computing environment that they created was nowhere near as integrated or as usable as the original Finder 1.0 had been for the Mac. The Mac is quite a testament to the vision of Apple computers, the influence of Xerox notwithstanding... I mean, how often is the devil really in the details (look at Windows, for example), and yet Apple in a remarkable number of cases over the years seems to have gotten 95% of the details in their products right... more often than not when Steve Jobs has been around.

    --
    STOP . AMERICA . NOW
    1. Re:Amazing computer. by ktakki · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That disk was called "Macintosh Guided Tour", IIRC and, at the time I bought my first Mac (late '85), was accompanied by an audio cassette (also called "Guided Tour"). The tape consisted of a gentleman with a soothing voice walking you through the Finder and instructing you on how to use the mouse. There was a new-agey piano track under the voiceover. "Very West Coast", I thought at the time.

      I do recall that there was a little maze applet that was meant to introduce you to mousing. I might still have the diskette in storage somewhere, though I'm pretty sure I recorded over the cassette. I wasn't thinking about the eBay value of things like that back in 1985.

      Oh, and one other thing: I recall that the street price of my 512K "Fat Mac" was somewhere around $1200. I bought it to do MIDI sequencing, and still have it around. Still boots, too. With the Mac, Sound Designer I, and an Ensoniq Mirage, I had a poor-man's Fairlight CMI.

      k.

      --
      "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
  21. i have one. still amazes me. by option8 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    i have a circa 1984 macintosh i picked up at a garage sale or surplus at some point. i can't remember when. i have so many now - 9 compact "toaster" models of various descriptions.

    anyhoo, it's still a marvel. at some point, it has been upgraded from the original 128k to a 512k-e motherboard so it's actually pretty usable. i wish i had the original 128k mobo. i'd frame it - "look kids, soldered on memory and no expansion slot!".

    the keyboard and mouse still work after 20 years, which is remarkable in itself, but by the feel of them in the hand and the action of the keys, they could have been sold a year ago.

    i had to track down an operating system (and 400k floppies) to get it and its brethren to work. the folks at sun remarketing used to sell software for it - i can't find it on their site now - system version 5.x and finder 4.x, i think, but i was able to track down a couple years ago disk images all the way back to system 1.

    it's tricky to get a working 400k system disk from a G3 with no floppy to a 512k with no network connection, but suffice it to say it involves another power mac and a mac plus with two floppy drives.

    but anyway... the finder and few apps i have are not only remarkably fast (no multitasking, though), but beautifully designed - every pixel placed with care, and use of the very limited screen real estate well thought out.

    it's no wonder, comparing this machine to some of the other '80s vintage PCs in my collection, why the press of the time was gushing over the first mac. regardless of its lack of hard drive and cooling fan (steve likes his computers quiet - and when not reading from the floppy, the mac is eerily quiet) and nonexistant expansion opportunities, it was way ahead of everything else out there.

    well, maybe with the exception of the Lisa.

    --
    - Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
  22. Re:Amiga forever! by tgibbs · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Flamebait my ass. The Amiga was more powerfull, and CHEAPER too! That's fact! Oh, and it had 4096 colors at a time when the Mac had *2* and the Pc had *4*.

    The Amiga was a really nice piece of hardware. But the multitasking OS had a really poor user interface and was constantly crashing and throwing up guru meditation numbers. It just had an overall "unfinished" feel. I'm not surprised that it never really challenged the Mac. Great games for its time, though.

  23. Bought my first mac ... by smoondog · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... two weeks ago. A 15" G4 AL laptop w/ a superdrive. It is god's machine. This is by far the coolest computer I've ever owned. The ease and utility of a mac and the versatility and power of unix. It is like NeXT reincarnated and better. In the last twenty years, no offense bill, but M$ has gone from bad to worse. Linux is still cool, however.

    -Sean

    1. Re:Bought my first mac ... by Nonillion · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This is the very same reason I will be buying the 15" Powerbook with the superdrive in the next few months. I'm sick of running Windows to watch DVDs and my Linux box is incapable of this amoung other things, but is still an exelent choice as a server platform.

      --
      "I bow to no man" - Riddick
    2. Re:Bought my first mac ... by bzImage8 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      1 year ago, i switch from PC to mac. I have an ibook and i use it for everything.. yes, linux its cool and i have a linux server for internet access, but linux has failed on the desktop area, OS X its the best desktop environment i have used EVER..

      --
      Unix its simple, but sometimes it takes a geniuos to understand the simplicity -- Dennis Ritchie
  24. Durability of the Mac vs PCs by Felinoid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ohhh but...
    Quite a few early Macs died quickly suffering from a sereous defect. A poor powersuply I believe.
    Early PCs had the same problem however for sligtly diffrent reasons.
    The Mac power supply didn't supply enough power for the computer so it slowly burnt out suffering the same problems of the Channel F and Commodore 64.

    However the C64 power supply would last a very long time and most units are still working today. They are also easly to replace making it easy to just buy a new one. It was a tolerable nusence for a cheap computer.

    The Mac powersuply like the Channel F PS gave out quickly and was not easly replaced.
    In all three examples (and the PC) the power supply death could take out other parts killing the computer.

    The PC power supply issue was diffrent. It was actually over rated for the PC BUT the PC was expandable the original Mac was not. For power supplys this meant a PCs power requirements could increase over time as each upgrade requires more power. The user who is fussy and not wanting to open the case won't be upgrading it eather.
    If the power supply needs to be replaced it's not much more complex than adding any other hardware.

    Something that long bothered me about the PCs is that they use uveprom or at least they did in the past. Most people just call them eproms I know but the fullly qualified name is nessisary to seperate it from eeproms.

    Most manufacured computers use proms or roms. ROMs are manufactured with the data installed proms are manufactured blank but burn once and stay that way. eproms are erasable. uveproms are erasable by ultra violet light.
    A small amount of sunlight is UV and that silver (or worse white) tab over the window dosen't reflect all the UV light. After a few years enough light leaks through to cause some of the bits on the uveprom to erase.

    PC motherboard manufactuers prefered to use uveproms so they could recycle BIOS roms with old code instead of tossing them.
    (This also was due to the nature of PCs at the time forever having the BIOS tweeked)

    Apple however used ROMs. So did IBM so I think you'll find the original IBM brand name PCs still work. However you'll find those PCs have a bunch of upgrade rom chips inserted. IBMs method did not require tossing the old roms but just adding new ones.

    Recovering old PCs is simply a matter of reburnning the BIOS and it wouldn't hurt if you got the latest upgrades while your at it many old bios required you used a dos application to set up the system settings while newer PC bios roms have that in the software. And a few PC upgrades are entirely BIOS upgrades. Wouldn't kill to have ISA plug and play support added to an old 386 now would it?

    I think the "PC Clone" makers really didn't care if your PC lasted 5 years. In fact they'd be thrilled if it didn't. If you didn't eventually upgrade they'd be out of business.

    Yes you personally.. Nobody else.. Not me or her but YOU. Just kidding. It dosen't matter if you personally upgrade so long as most users upgrade and little things like this make sure the majority of the market dosen't sit back and say "Welp this is all I need thanks"... That sort of thing nearly killed Atari.

    --
    I don't actually exist.
  25. My Dad still uses his Mac Plus! by MarcQuadra · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My Dad has been using his Mac Plus problem-free for about 17 years. He has a G4 that he uses for his graphic design work, but when he needs to do billing or add/search contacts he turns to the Mac Plus running his do-everything Hypercard stack running under System 6.0.8.

    The machine has an 8MHz 68000, 1MB RAM, a 20MB hard drive (external under-mac that I spent three years convincing him to use), and an ImageWriter II dot-matrix printer that screams to high-heaven, but prints beautiful three-part forms.

    I don't think the machine has ever been opened for even a cleaning. They don't build 'em like they used to.

    --
    "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
  26. print ads from 1984 by option8 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    this page on macobserver.com is an old article, but timely. it has links to a lot of old apple ads and brochures from the days when you had to explain to people what a mouse was.

    i have a little collection of old BYTE magazines that i picked up from used book stores specifically for their apple ads. it's always amusing to me what kinds of claims they made back then...

    --
    - Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
  27. Re:I remember all of this by option8 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    excellent reading. thanks for the link.

    i love all the rampant speculation and comparison between the McIntosh (sic) and the PCjr, and the 1984 ad compared to the "tramp" chaplin ads from IBM. ...and about 17 years later, this guy got his answer:

    1. When will UNIX (XENIX, UniPlus, UNITY, or (dare I hope?) 4.2BSD)
    be available for the Mac?

    2. Which hapless software house gets to do the port?

    actually, it was less than ten years before apple brought out a BSD-based unix for the 68k mac in the form of A/UX, but it was killed in '94 and never made it to powerpcs

    --
    - Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
  28. Re:Amiga 1000 was better by scottgfx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yes, in many ways the Amiga was better. I just pulled out my A2000 and turned it on over the Christmas holiday. What a blast. Where the Amiga fell behind was in the interface. Even back then, the Mac interface was much more elegant and consistent. Also, as a former Commodore employee once said; 'Commodore is not a computer company, they are a company that makes widgets.'

    --
    It's mandatory to wash your hands before returning to the land of Dairy Queen.
  29. Re:Remake of the classic "1984" ad by CameronWolf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does anyone else get the sense Apple are going to release something on the 24th?

  30. What was the Mac for? by jefraskin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of the posts states: "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 poster correctly identifies one of the original marketing directions. But the original major application I proposed was the Net (which didn't exist yet). If you want to read the original document about what I expected people to do with it, see the Appendix (written in 1979, when I started the Mac project) to my article "Holes in the Histories" on www.jefraskin.com.

    Jef (I was there :-) Raskin

  31. Re:A stack of paper? by dohnut · · Score: 2, Interesting


    Yup, I've got a //c in the closet also along with a Centris 610. The //c is about 20 years old, Centris is about 10 years old. Both still work -- last time I checked.

    I've got an ex-girlfriend's Mac Classic that I've had in my possession for almost 10 years now. (damn I'm getting old) It's broken, I was supposed to fix it for her. (heh) Oh well, she got my gumby doll -- fair trade. You know, I still haven't looked at the contents of the hard drive. I am curious to see what's on there, but apparently not curious enough.

    --
    Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
  32. The most important attribute of early macs by master_p · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It is that with a very "primitive" configuration, compared to what we have today, one could do 90% of the every day tasks that we can do today with a PC. The Mac toolbox was in ROM and it took 128 KB of memory. It had networking, print support and a GUI that was economical in resources and easy to use. The Mac was a "quantum leap" for computers in that era.

  33. Amigas by Pope · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I always thought Amiga-heads were the most zealous, simply because for the most part they were right :) It was a hell of a machine that could do more than the Mac when both first launched.

    Me, I'm a Mac guy because I like to dole out my geekiness in small doses.

    --
    It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.