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

A stack of paper?

[BandwidthHog]

Well, that's a mighty tall stack. Maybe if you'd purchased the original Macintosh with 1 Yen notes, we'd have some equivalency here. (No, I can't be bothered to look up historical exchange rates and do the math. So sue me.)

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.

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 stack of paper?

[dohnut]

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.

Durability of the Mac

[ackthpt]

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.

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.

Re:Durability of the Mac

[taniwha]

I still have an original Mac 128, it still works (mind you it's been upgraded to 1Mb and had a hard disk bolted on the back - which doesn't work any more).

IMHO the big advance on the Mac at the time was having a high-quality (for the time) bit-mapped display on a consumer priced PC - even then it seemed an amazing waste of memory

Re:Durability of the Mac

[Jim Hall]

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.

Re:Durability of the Mac

[Oz Factor]

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.

Re:Durability of the Mac

[grammaticaster]

Why throw out rare, antique, collector item computers to the bin?

maybe because they're worthless and nobody wants them?

Re:Durability of the Mac

[Basehart]

"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.

Re:Durability of the Mac

[gumbi west]

I'm trying to imagine the labratory notebook of the biologist who discovered that computers were toxic:

10.00 AM: computer feed to mouse
10.01 AM: mouse exploded.
Conclusion: computers are toxic.

Re:Durability of the Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

In 100 years, I'll be too dead to care.

Re:Durability of the Mac

[thunderbird46]

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.)

Re:Durability of the Mac

[Doppler00]

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.

Re:Durability of the Mac

[Haeleth]

In 100 years reproducing things will be next to free and owning an 'original' will be meaningless.

This is demonstrably not true. It's already possible to produce artificial gemstones which are essentially indistinguishable from "real" gemstones - but for some reason people still value "real" gemstones very highly, and sneer at artificial ones!

By your logic, the availability of good forgeries of any product would render genuine examples worthless. But that has never happened in the past, isn't happening now, and I doubt it ever will - not for as long as advertising continues to work.

Re:Durability of the Mac

[Chemical Serenity]

Counter-prediction: Simply by the fact that things will be able to be reproduced for pennies means exactly that the original, hard-to-assemble objects will become exceedingly rare and valuable collectors peices, and command exhorbitant prices.

I can easily get lithographics of a Renoir for a few bucks, but an original will cost big bucks.

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

[zoney_ie]

To be perfectly honest... I wouldn't have a barmy notion how to "properly" dispose of a PC here in Ireland. Possibly legally - chuck it in the bin, but as Ireland has a whole list of breaches of E.U. Environmental Directives - I don't think that counts.

Re:Durability of the Mac

[The Almighty Dave]

Ok, let's save every piece of crap we accumulate in our lives, just because it might be worth something someday. That's a great idea. Your grandkids will end up paying to have your treasures hauled away, because most of it is crap and they can't be bothered to sort it out.

Re:Durability of the Mac

[TrancePhreak]

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.

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:Durability of the Mac

[daviddennis]

We're fanatical because we care.

I'm willing to concede that Apple and Steve have plenty of faults. Unfortunately, the alternatives have far worse ones.

I'd rather be around a bunch of fanatics than The Resigned.

D

Re:Durability of the Mac

[Hrothgar The Great]

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.

Re:Durability of the Mac

[rickshaf]

Uh, does this mean that, if I send you my old Commodore PET, that you'll pay the COD charges and give it a good home? Seriously, I wish I had the two that I bought in '77 for the tracking station where I worked. They might be quite valuable. (And, I had the one with the 8K memory card! Whoop de doo!) I guess I wish that I had the old original Mac I bought (SN 28!) in the Winter of '84. But, I gave it to a homeless shelter, so, I guess it wasn't homeless, at least for a while. What's really amazing is that I still have a stack of old floppies with some original Mac software on it. (I beta-tested some software for Apple.) Anyone have any use for MacDraw V0.95?

Re:Durability of the Mac

[Steve Jobbs]

Apple fanatics are the type of people who bring their iMacs to Starbucks in the hopes that someone will notice that they're using an Apple computer

I did try bringing along my iMac to the local Starbucks here on the Apple campus, but unfortunately they didn't have any spare power jacks for me to plug it into. Someone told me that the Starbucks in Palo Alto was much bigger and had power jacks everywhere, so I asked one of the guys in engineering to give me a loan of his dual 2GHz G5 tower for the weekend. I was all set to go when some fool with an IBM T40 Thinkpad bumped into me as I was connecting the 23" Cinema display up to the back of the G5's ADC connector, thus spilling my Mocha Frappucino all over the G5! It went into the front of the G5, and was whipped up by the cooling fans into a kind of milkshake/smoothie drink, and ejected rapidly through the rear of the machine. Not happy!

Next time, I think I'm going to bring an iBook or PowerBook to Starbucks so people can notice me as the CEO of Apple. Taking an iMac to Starbucks really isn't practical. But maybe you knew that. Maybe you just got the model name wrong. That's OK. That's why we still sell one-button mice for people like you.

And hey...don't forget to mention my e-mail address (steve@apple.com) when you're signing up for your .Mac subscription renewal...I get a $15 credit! It's good to be the boss.

Re:Durability of the Mac

[longbottle]

I think the version of HFS that shiped prior to OS 8 wasn't able to handle volumes larger than 2GB.

Re:Durability of the Mac

[calyphus]

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.

I remember all of this

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember all of this, and one of the things quite a few people said at the time

"This is the end of apple. They're dead"

heh. Apple. Going out of business since 1977

Re:I remember all of this

[questamor]

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 :)

Re:I remember all of this

[Pionar]

My how things have changed. From one of those newsgroup posts:

For more info, you might try to dig up a copy of the article (well, ok, the Mercury is not one of your major national newspapers, but I am too lazy to and most would not appreciate my entering the text of the article).

For just a second, I was like, how rude not to post a link! :)

Re:I remember all of this

[option8]

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

Innovation

[gtrubetskoy]

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....

Re:Innovation

[the_2nd_coming]

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.

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.

Re:Innovation

[Jester99]

can you really claim Media Center PCs, Tablet PCs, Pocket PCs, the XBox, Media Player 9 (player and codecs), etc... stagnation?

Let's see...

Media Center PC -- What's that? I've yet to see anyone who has one.

Tablet PC -- A fantastic step backwards in design. If you're already lugging two pounds and something the size of a notebook around, why not just use a notebook PC? It does everything a tablet PC does and more, and has a much easier input interface.

Pocket PC -- Oh, huge innovation there. Apple beat them. Palm beat them. Handspring beat them. That's just another ripoff.

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.

Media Player 9 -- The player sucks. Sure, there are some good new codecs, but the best interface they ever had was in 6.4. Ever since spacebar-to-pause-and-play was removed, they've gone downhill. Whoever thought that was a good idea seriously needs a smack with the cluestick.

Re:Innovation

[Fancia]

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.

Commodore beat them to it years ago, with the Amiga CDTV and CD32. ;b

Re:Innovation

[fermion]

Really what you are talking about are different kinds of innovation. MS started with a couple products, DOS and Basic, and evolved them. Over time some of the innards are the same, some of the innards are different. Some of the interfaces are the same, some are different. DOS had a GUI tacked on. Windows had networking tacked on. Basic had a GUI tacked on, then had it's mid level codes generalized, then had other languages tacked on. This evolution provided a level of comfort. You could buy a MS product and know that with relatively minor changes things would still work. The innovations would mostly be cosmetic. MS would never innovate too much.

Apple, OTOH, never limited itself to the current platform. It built a product that worked well, and then tweaked the product with small improvements. If we were still working with a glorified Apple ][ in 1995, would you have said it was innovative to put a GUI on ProDos?(I wonder if shape tables would have made it better than Windows?) The early mac very quickly had a hard disk, networking, fonts, all the things we think as modern, by the late 80's. It did not have to deal with TSR kludge, and multifinder allowed everything one would need for the common office and creative tasks. During this time, Apple was creating the basics of home desktop publishing. MS spent the time catching up, until the early 90's. By the time they did, Apple knew that the 6800 platform was not sufficient. So it working in a new chip. Thank god for that. And then Apple realized that the original MacOS was insufficient, so it developed OS X. Thank god for that.

As i said, it is different forms on innovation. Even now what MS is doing cannot really be compared to what apple is doing. They are moving towards different goals. Apple has developed the pay for download music industry. MS is going to make people use it. Both innovative, but different. A few years likely will not make a difference. Both companies will do what they do best.

Re:Innovation

[Erratio]

None of the things that you mentioned are "innovative". They're all adequately engineered implementations of already established technologies, as has been pretty much everything in Microsoft's history. I'd say that it's now more readily apparent that they're not innovative since the industry's grown so much, rather than back when what they were doing was somewhat risky just because of the much smaller computer market. Microsoft's expansion into other PC-related markets is only "innovative" in a business sense, not a technological one. Microsoft has no reason to be on the curring edge of technology..why dump a lot of resources into ideas that may or may not work when you can just dump a bunch of money into making clones of ideas that you know do. They'll probably always be a corporation first and a technology company second.

Re:Innovation

[nathanh]

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!

How was it innovative when Digital's GEM did the same thing before Windows even existed?

Seems Microsoft can just say "innovate" enough times and people start to believe it.

Re:Innovation

[Powercntrl]

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.

Re:Innovation

[alex_ant]

Other examples of false "innovations":

TV - oh there were moving pictures long before that.
light bulb - sheesh, we've had the sun for aeons, and that's even brighter!
radio - ever hear of can and string?
camera - stuff has been happening in real life for a long time, these people who invented film are just ripping off reality.

Re:Innovation

[bhtooefr]

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).

Re:Innovation

[Monkeybaister]

I've looked at getting a Tablet PC. Everyone I've seen has been underpowered and overpriced. For the same price, a notebook would be a better computer but not in the tablet form factor.

I also believe Tablet PC makers have been saying that the sales are not agreeing with the hype.

The problem seems to be that they are trying to sell them as notebook replacements instead of a computer that's a tablet. They're too thick, too heavy, don't have enough battery power, or are overpriced.

I'd like a Tablet PC to do those things you list, but they all suck.

Re:Innovation

[Euler]

I work with tablets, and find them to be more trouble than they are worth. To do any serious work on them, I have to add a keyboard. So then I have this stupid keyboard hanging off it like a desktop unit would. Kinda defeats the purpose of portability. Tablets are usable if you only use the machine for a specific application that only requires point and click operation.

Touchscreens are handy though, and there are plenty of laptops out there with touchscreens. Some newer models like the Panasonic CF-18 and Toshiba 3500 have swivel screens that convert the unit from laptop to tablet configuration.

Re:Innovation

[Endive4Ever]

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.

Re:Innovation

[Jester99]

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.

Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

My Mac is still about the size of a stack of paper, and still has a little more power than the basic IBM PC. You'd think in 20 years we'd have seen some progress!

Re:Progress?

[midifarm]

I think the proper thing to say is that it's now powered by IBM! Hmmm, it's in a way become an IBM PC!!!

Re:Link to the famous ad?

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, here it is: http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/sb01/200 1-01-27-favorite-ads.htm

Stack of paper??

[k4_pacific]

'that is the size of a stack of paper and, for about the same price'

Stacks of paper can come in all different sizes and shapes. The recycling plant near my house has a stack of newsprint big enough to bury a bus. That's like saying, "I have a jar big enough to hold the volume of air inside it."

Macintosh - An Opinion

[ten000hzlegend]

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!

1984 Commercial

[coolmacdude]

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

Re:1984 Commercial

[WalterSobchak]

Was I entirely out of the loop? I did not notice that before, and thought this was the original ad...

Or am I just drinking too much?

Alex

Re:1984 Commercial

[FattMattP]

It's not a remake. It's the original with an iPod composited in.

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:Link to the famous ad?

[squarefish]

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

The Wintel world needs the Mac...

[Genghis9]

...to stay on their toes. It's the original un-Microsoft, long before Linux rolled round. And the non-Intel trend keeps them innovating too.

Mac Opinion

[Upaut]

This is just my opinion, but I think that Mac has always been geared towards the artist, while IBM has always been aimed at engineers. Using either of these machines one could see the begining of this trend, and now in the year 2004 it is still true. I do not believe that either machine is better than the other, and they never were. The difference between the two is more right-brain left brain.

Re:Mac Opinion

[KrispyKringle]

First, it's not just your opinion. You probably got it from the fact that Macs are marketed at graphic designers, artists, and the like, while PCs are business machines in accounting offices, cubicles, and so forth. IBM was and still is renowned for engineering and research, not cultural relevance or consumer appeal.

Comparitavely, Macs are (or at least were) rarely used in scientific research (like I said, this is changing--I know of a few labs now that use G5s and the like as a replacement for more expensive Unix workstations, but by and large Lintel is far cheaper). Apple has instead tried to appeal to consumers, not businesses or engineers. iPods are for hip twenty-somethings, not procurement departments in major corporations.

But this is solely because of marketing and focus. Macs are no better for digital art than PCs, in my experience (except for perhaps a few bits of software not available on PC, such as Final Cut Pro). Macs are rarely significantly faster for the price at graphics. And conversely, few scientific applications wouldn't run as well on OSX--which presumably can compile most ANSI C and, if I'm not mistaken, has POSIX compliant libraries and so forth--as they would on Windows or Linux.

There's no reason to say Macs are better for artists and PCs are better for engineers. Both appreciate speed and reliability, both appreciate security and stability, both appreciate elegance and ease of use. It's marketing that's shaped your perception. Nothing more.

Stephen E. Jobs writes...

[coolmacdude]

Funny, I never thought Steve was the type to whore about his achievements on Slashdot.

Re:Stephen E. Jobs writes...

[JoshWurzel]

Silly psuedonyms. You're referring to Steven P. Jobs

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

Mac's Popularity

[mick88]

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.

Re:Mac's Popularity

[JoshWurzel]

Just because something is good enough to inspire brand loyalty doesn't mean that everyone will feel that way or that everyone can jump on the bandwagon. Some people just never get exposed to macs. Either because they aren't sold at the local computer place, or the "knowledgable" person they trust doesn't use them. Believe it or not, some people have never heard of Apple.

Also, some people see it and don't care, and some people see it but can't afford to go buy one (expense argument aside, entry level macs are more than low-end PC's).

With a small but loyal following, Apple could easily stay in business. TiVo is still around. So is BMW. Everyone who drives a BMW loves it and wants one, but for some reason I still see lots of Fords and Chevys. But my parents are going to be buried in their BMW's, I assure you.

Re:Mac's Popularity

[Mwongozi]

> Ever looked at the price of a mac?

Have you?
G4 eMac with 17" monitor: $799
G4 iBook: $1099
And you can even buy the fastest personal computer in the world for $2999.

For what you get, Macs are not expensive.

Re:Mac's Popularity

[Photar]

Its because having a mac is like being gay. If its what you're into its great. If your not into that sort of thing you just aren't.

Re:Mac's Popularity

[Lars T.]

I bought a Mac 128K in 1985 new for something like $1,499. It really hurt. That's the most I've paid for a computer, ever.

Ahh, so you did not buy a IBM PC for more at that time? Yeah, that pricing sure kept those out of the business/office world.

Re:Mac's Popularity

[MalachiConstant]

If I'm going to a network party, and I show up with a Mac, I'm going to be left out unless we're playing Unreal or something.

Are you trolling, or do you not know much about macs? How about:

C&C Generals

Quake III

Starcraft

Diablo II

Halo

SimCity

Age of Empires II

Civilization III

Age Of Mythology

Alien Vs. Predator II

Baldur's Gate II

Harry Potter Games

Max Payne

Medal Of Honor games

Neverwinter Nights

No One Lives Forever 1 & 2

Return To Castle Wolfenstein

Jedi Knight II

Tony Hawk Games

Warcraft III

Lineage

Everquest

True, PCs get more games, and sometimes the Mac releases come later, but quite a lot of the games I buy ship with Mac and PC versions on the same disk.

Re:Mac's Popularity

[brucehoult]

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.

POINT AND CLICK????

[armando_wall]

I remember being completely skeptical of that new "point and click with a mouse" thing, in the macintosh. It looked like a cool idea, but in my keyboard-oriented mind, I just couldn't imagine how, lord, HOW you could tell the computer what to do by entirely relying on clicks on graphics. Steve Jobs was a great envisioner (or xerox copycat, depending of your point of view).

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.

Re:POINT AND CLICK????

[kfg]

Well, in point of fact you couldn't then, and you can't now.

The Mac development kit consisted in large part of a command line interface.

You can point and click to tell a computer to do certain mechanical functions of a predetermined nature, but the person who did the predetermination couldn't tell the computer what was expected of it entirely by pointing and clicking; and if you ever want to step off that predetermined path neither can you.

Simple signs with pictures on them work well enough when pointing at one and grunting is sufficient communication for the task at hand. In fact in times gone by it wasn't uncommon for travelers to carry a deck of cards with pictograms on them conveying certain ideas like "Where the hell is the bathroom," or " That's too much money. Your camel smells like a toilet."

For more complex ideas linguistic language is still needed. As evidence I point to the fact that you haven't abandoned speech yet and seriously doubt you have any intention of doing so in the future in favor of a deck of cards.

KFG

Re:POINT AND CLICK????

[jefraskin]

Neither was Jobs the visionary for this product nor was it a Xerox copy.

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 :-) Raskin

Re:POINT AND CLICK????

[mehgul]

This is one argument against the Mac that I never understood.
I actually remember one of the first time I saw 3.5" floppies was at a friends' PC or Amiga, I can't remember well.
The stupid thing I did is when I removed the floppy while the computer was reading it. Of course if you do that too often you end up destroying the data on the floppy. You might even destroy the drive.
I think asking the computer to eject the disk properly is a bright idea indeed. The idea introduced with the Mac was to try to avoid the user misusing the computer, and that is very clever in designing any technical device. Plus I don't think you loose anything in terms of "control".
And really, if you had already crashed the the system, you would have to restart it anyway, right ? So, just restart it and push the mouse button at the same time, the floppy ejects and voila ! No need for a paperclip.

Re:POINT AND CLICK????

[calyphus]

What bothered me more than anything else was the lack of a floppy eject button. You had to ask the GUI to eject ... What the Mac introduced first was the notion that the user should not be in control of the computer.

Replacing a potentially damaging mechanical function with a safety feature is usurping the authority of the user. Electric fans were originally just metal blades with no protective shroud. Someone decided that maybe users could benefit from a little protection. A user might night intend to stick their hand into the spinning blade, but it could happen. Nor, would they want to eject a disk during a write operation, but it could happen.

If you really want to customize the function of a Mac the tools have been much more readily available (ResEdit and other resource hacks for classic Mac OS and with the Developer tools that ship with OS X). The 'do it this way' mentality of the Mac's design doesn't thwart users. It enables them to do more with one basic skill set. I'd rather a developer spend the time to make something work without my having to tweak every little thing. If I really feel the need to get under the hood, the tools are available. The average user wants a tool that works with minimal fuss. Helping the user take the most advantageous path for the most common operations aids them in doing what they want to do.

Your argument that the user must control every little aspect of a machine is a rant that argues for only computer scientists to use computers. I don't need to know how to forge a wrench to use one. I shouldn't need to forge every little function of my computer to make it do my work either.

Re:Still works

[Quarters]

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.

Forshadowing of Apple's 20 year problem

[bckrispi]

Apple's brochures and TV ads proclaim, ``Of the 235 million people in America, only a fraction can use a computer.'' Macintosh, they say, is ``the computer for the rest of us.''

This statement really tells a lot about the problems that Apple had throughout the mid 80's to late 90's. They were so innovative, that they often fell "off of the curve". In 1984, Joe Consumer wasn't about to spend $2500 on a computer; an appliance that was, at the time, a luxery, and not a necessity. And certainly, it had no where near the ubiquitiy that it enjoys today. Microsoft knew that the timing for a "computer for the masses" was around the mid 90's, ten years after the Mac debuted. So they *ahem* borrow the Mac's look and feel, and release Win 95. IIRC, '95 was around the time that Apple decided that the next revolution in computing was in handhelds and palmtops that could respond to a user "writing" rather than keying in data. The Newton exploded onto the market, and promptly gathered dust on the shelves as users passed it by. A scant four years later, 3Com capitalizes on Apple's brilliant but horribly timed innovation with the Palm series.

It looks like after 20 years, Apple is finally getting it right. The IMac was the first "sexy" computer. Only a year later, I see that I can buy neon ground effects for my transparent PC. ITunes was released at exactly the perfect time. And should be, and rightly so, a cornerstone of Apple's brand identity for the first decade of the 21'st century. So, Happy Birthday to the Mac, and congrats to the great engineers at Apple that have finally learned that innovation and market timing are inseperable.

Re:Forshadowing of Apple's 20 year problem

[tomem]

Your analysis tells us little while perpetuating the myth that Mac's were expensive. For Pete's sake, it cost $2500 for a KAYPRO with two floppies and no hard drive back then! And as expensive as the original Laserwriter was, it undersold by a large amount other comparable laser printers. Perhaps you aren't aware that the initial asking price for a Lisa was $10,000. That was a mistake, but the Mac was created to show that the price of an IBM PC could buy a lot more.

It's pretty clear to me that corporate greed, resulting in Steve Jobs departure, was what hobbled the Mac in its competition with PCs from 1985 to 1998. Meanwhile, the world wide web was developed on NeXT hardware, catching Microsoft (and Apple) flatfooted. A related lesson I draw from this is the abysmal failure of the myth that technical expertise has no place in the executive suite and that a good manager can manage anything.

Well, it took 20 years...

[teamhasnoi]

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.

Re:Well, it took 20 years...

[Rascasse]

I'd like to reply even though I'm not teamhasnoi. My experience is similar to his though. My first home computer was an Apple IIc we bought in the early 1980s. Since then, I'd been using all PCs (386,486,Pentium II,III, and IV). This past April, I was in need of a laptop and found that Apple's were quite cost competitive with the PC competition. So I bought a lowly iBook 700. The lowest rung of the Apple line. I upgraded it with Airport and an extra 512 MB of RAM (so it has 640 MB). And I haven't looked back.
My Pentium IV that was running, coincidentally, RH9 and KDE, is now a linux server as opposed to desktop. I don't plan on purchasing another PC in the immediate future. I am planning on purchasing a PowerMac. But in the meantime, my iBook is my primary machine.
The experience is hard to describe. I know this is corny, but it's like finding your dream girl - a gorgeous female that also is intelligent and can put up with all your geeky quirks. I find myself fighting less to get things working, and instead simply working. Mac OS X has definitely changed my perspective on computing. Though it has its own minor problems, the bar has been set so high by OS X in my eye that I now frown on software environments that I once used on a daily basis just one year ago. What I once saw as quirks to put up with, I now see as fundamental problems I do not want to have to think about.
I can't pinpoint what it is about Mac OS X that I just love - perhaps they are too numerous, or too subtle to objectify. What I can say is that those I know who have jumped ship to Mac OS X (many from Linux, a few from Windows) have not turned back. If you get a chance, try out a new Apple with Panther installed and give it a go.

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:Well, it took 20 years...

[Durandal64]

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.

If its taken care of...

[nurb432]

Except for the moving parts, most any PC ( of any type ) will last for a hundred years...

Now if you discuss fans, HD's, floppies, then yes, they do have a much redcued life span.

But even then, taken care of they should still be running.

Re:If its taken care of...

[bckrispi]

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...

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:Remake of the classic "1984" ad

[CameronWolf]

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

What is this Microsoft you speak of?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article: "Within the next few months, Microsoft Inc., a Bellvue, Wash. software publisher closely allied with IBM, is scheduled to introduce a spreadsheet package for making financial projections, a graphing package and the Basic programming language."

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.

Re:..and still they use a one button mouse...

[midifarm]

I play all of Blizzard's titles on my Mac. Most of the other ones I'll use a PS2 or a GameCube.

It's all about gameplay, not just pretty graphics!

Peace

Finally, the REAL story.

[metalligoth]

According to several sources, Microsoft has been working on Mac software for more than a year. Early on, Mac project leader Steve Jobs took the Mac plans to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, sources said. Gates reportedly agreed not to produce similar mouse-based software for a year, but with Mac behind schedule, Microsoft was able to jump into the market in 1983 with its own mouse programs for the IBM PC.

I wondered if I would ever find out exactly how Microsoft was ever able to take the Mac GUI, complete with Mac icons. There have been many conflicting stories over the years. Since this is from 1984, I tend to think we might have finally found something accurate.

Re:Amiga forever!

[Anonymous Coward]

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*.

Not to mention the ability to process RAW NTSC signals making it the supreme video editing computer TO THIS DAY.

In fact, the amiga computer actually won the top prize at Macworld one year!!! Oh the embarassment! It's not even a MAC!

But I digress, do to the Amiga what you can only do with mod points, rather than facts.

My Last PC...

[NeoGeo64]

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.

An Amazing Read

[MBCook]

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!

other magazines

[savetz]

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

Not any more

[CoolMoDee]

I disagree with your opinion, well atleast with macs in 2004. I think now days they are geared twords both engineers *and* artists. What more could an engineer want than a portable unix machine that is purdy to look at to boot?

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.

Dupe!

[ath0mic]

Oh wait... /. wasn't around in 1984; heck most /. readers weren't around in 1984.

Lost consonants

[adamsan]

"in protest he surrender his controlling hares in the company."

Damn those controlling hares...

Re:Amiga forever!

[Saven Marek]

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. 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.

In fact, the amiga, to this day, is the ONLY computer that can run Mac software on a 68060, the FASTEST 680x0 CPU ever made

That is a lie. 68060 adaptors work just fine in a Quadra 630 and will boot and use the macOS without problem. Making a big deal about the FASTEST 680x0 CPU is irrelevant when, by the time a 68060 was released, the rest of the world was using 200MHz+ Pentiums and PowerPCs. Behind the times yet again.

If you wish to use that argument, then you may as well use it against yourself. The PC is, to this day, the only computer that can run Amiga software on a *insert favorite x86 CPU name here*, the FASTEST x86 CPU ever made. What's the point?

Re:Le roi est mort, vive le roi!

[Anonymous Coward]

Which idiot moderator modded this down. It's very ontopic to the quote "This is the end of apple. They're dead".

Morons! May the metamoderators get you!

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!

I Switched...

[voodoo_bluesman]

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.

A little revisionist history...

[BookRead]

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.

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

How Microsoft got away with "copying" Mac UI

[tepples]

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.

Re:How Microsoft got away with "copying" Mac UI

[tepples]

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.

Not a Mac user, but ...

[Scholasticus]

I've never owned an Apple/Mac, and don't particularly want to, but this is an important anniversary. Apple has innovated more over the years than just about any other computer company. Apple has had it's ups and downs, but it could be argued that they've been more loyal to their customers than anyone could have expected. The fact that so many of their customers are loyal to them - well, that should tell you something about what kind of company this is. Hats off to Apple for 20 years of the Mac!

Why the Mac did not do better

[heironymouscoward]

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.

"Might have to 'swap' diskettes..."

[dpbsmith]

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).

Re:"Might have to 'swap' diskettes..."

[Trurl's Machine]

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.

Re:Amiga forever!

[mdwh2]

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).

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.

Re:Another Super Bowl ad?

[gmhowell]

In a manner of speaking. Isn't Pepsi giving away a shitpile of free iTMS downloads? Who is one of the biggest Superbowl advertisers? Pepsi. Where did Sculley work before she joined the FBI? Apple. Before that? Pepsi.

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

[diamondsw]

Ah yes, where Jef Raskin makes up a *lot* of history (the original "Macintosh" he started did not have a GUI, sound, etc - it was really an evolution of the Apple II), and while Microsoft certainly has supported the Mac with Office and such, let's not forget that they not only stole the interface, but conveniently stopped producing Office for 3-4 long years in the mid-90's, ironically enough, right after Windows 95 arrived. Hmmmm....

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

Classcal

[Jonathan]

Such a language did exist, but it was eventually called Object Pascal and was released in 1985 by Apple

Hah - Macs will have DRM too!

[rueger]

Don't get me wrong, I think light-use-DRM is fair (e.g. iTunes Music Store) ... I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Apple had double digit marketshare by 2010.

I honestly wouldn't surprised if Apple hardware had the same DRM as PC hardware by 2010. They've already nailed their users with the iTunes DRM, and I can see no reason why they won't continue down that road.

If nothing else, companies like Adobe, who are getting positively nuts about fighting "pirates" will force them into it.

Amazing computer.

[aussersterne]

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.

Re:Amazing computer.

[ktakki]

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.

Re:Amazing computer.

[Billly Gates]

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.

i have one. still amazes me.

[option8]

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.

Re:Amiga forever!

[tgibbs]

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.

Re:..and still they use a one button mouse...

[midifarm]

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!

Help Me Decide!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm almost ready to become a zealot but I don't know whether to become a Mac, Linux, or BSD zealot.

Each operating has its advantages but surely one has be more rounded then the rest. I have been told that, like sports, I can't be a zealot of all the operating systems because you can't classify yourself as a zealot if that was the case. I mean it would be like saying I'm a Redskins and a Cowboys fan.

BSD I have been told is a dying operating system but it still seems alive to me. Linux is, I've been told by IBM commercials, a fast growing operating system that will one day transcend the heavens, whatever that means. We all know about the Macs and the Switch commercials.

Help me decide fellas.

Re:Help Me Decide!

[JudgeFurious]

I personally consider the Macintosh to be the "official platform" of zealotry. Mac zealots are a unique bunch and I think are the most obnoxious of zealots. Plus they have the original "figurehead" in Steve Jobs. Sure Linux has "The Linus" and Windows (can you be a Windows zealot?) has "Gates of Borg" but Jobs came before them and his reality distortion field is IMO stronger.

What I found really strange was that I didn't expect it to happen to me. All of the Mac nuts I know (with a small handfull of exceptions) all just got a wild hair up their ass and oneday just went and bought a Mac. That's the first step and it seems like all of them suddenly began to hold all other platforms in deep contempt.

Then comes the inevitable collecting of old Apples, Macs, and Next computers. Before you know it you have a room in your house dedicated to a bunch of old computers you didn't even care about 6 months before. You're watching keynote speeches you didn't care about 6 months before.

BSD and Linux would be I think more relevant so maybe you want to be one of those guys. With those you've got cool operating systems and there's nothing wrong with that. With Macs though you've got old hardware AND old software that's unique to your new hobby. You've also got all kinds of collectible junk to spend cash on.

I'd go Mac but then I'm biased

Re:Help Me Decide!

[atheken]

Hi, my name is "Andrew" and I am a MacAddict, it happened to me too..

Re:Help Me Decide!

[phatsharpie]

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

Re:Help Me Decide!

[steeviant]

I'm almost ready to become a zealot but I don't know whether to become a Mac, Linux, or BSD zealot.

Here's a thought, why not become a *nix zealot. That way you don't have to pick a team, because they're all from the same camp.

That way you get to watch with glee as the wagons assemble in a circle around windows, and you get the freedom to use the best unixy OS for the job at hand.

Bought my first mac ...

[smoondog]

... 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

Re:Bought my first mac ...

[Nonillion]

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.

Re:Bought my first mac ...

[bzImage8]

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..

Re:Link to the famous ad?

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

New version? Piffle. She has always worn an iPod in the commercial.

Durability of the Mac vs PCs

[Felinoid]

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.

My Dad still uses his Mac Plus!

[MarcQuadra]

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.

print ads from 1984

[option8]

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...

Re:Market Share

[unother]

Christ, not that tired old analogy again.

Apple has certainly not kept their solution proprietary--they have acceded to "market demands". Any tower Mac has AGP, PCI, USB, ATA... all technologies which were created on the PC side of the fence. Rather than battle with proprietary designs (even Firewire, Apple-innovated, has been accepted as the de facto new A/V transmission standard, cross-platform), Apple has certainly chosen more compatibility, not less. Furthermore, every Mac since System 7.1 Pro has had the ability to read and write PC media. And now, OS X is, with its core: BSD!

This is a long ways from the time when PC and Mac hardware/software was absolutely separate, with completely different interfaces on each platform. When it comes to compatibility, Macs are a far cry from a "proprietary" design, relative to what it once was, these days.

what is a mouse?

[jdkane]

For $2,495, Macintosh buyers will get a computer that operates unusually quickly and is directed by a mouse - a handheld device that, when slid across a table top, moves the cursor on the Mac's screen.

Now that is a step back in history. It's funny to see that they had to fully describe what a mouse was. But I do remember those days, and the mouse was definitely something rather new to consumers, especially to "the rest of us".

Re:Link to the famous ad?

[jaoswald]

She has always worn an iPod in the commercial.

Absolutely. And we've always been at war with Eurasia.

Chillingly ironic, isn't it?

Re:Amiga 1000 was better

[scottgfx]

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.'

I actually saw the commercial live!

[troop23]

It raised the hair on the back of my neck. It was a cold rainy day in So. Illinois. My wife and kids had gone to bed. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

A little remembered fact about the commercial is that "Big Brother" is IBM. They were the Microsoft of the 70s and 80s. Lets hope they don't revert to their old ways.

iPod Mini anyone?

[starphish]

"Indeed, Apple didn't settle on the $2,495 system price until recently. For a time, sources said, the machine was to sell for $1,995."

It looks like not much has changed.

What was the Mac for?

[jefraskin]

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

Re:What was the Mac for?

[alex_ant]

Jef Raskin, you invented the god damned Macintosh, and you don't have anything more constructive to do than to post to Slashdot in the middle of the night???? It's pretty funny because nobody here even seems to know who you are, and all the slashdot snobs who have their thresholds set to +4 don't even know you're here.

Thank you for the Mac - it's an excellent computer and I enjoy it greatly. It's clear that when you thought it up, you gave a shit so that other people wouldn't have to (a very good thing). Sorry to be so fawning and starstruck - I will try to balance this out by saying that you're also an ugly fat bastard who needs a shave and a gym membership. Also, smile more - you're only half-smiling in those photos on your site and it's a little creepy.

The most important attribute of early macs

[master_p]

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.

Re:Amiga forever!

[splateagle]

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...)

Mac was a big turn off

[smallfeet]

I remember how angry a lot of us Apple II owners were at Apple because of the closed design of the Mac. The Apple II was great, I had a book that mapped every byte in that baby. The Mac was more of a sealed box.

In many ways the Mac started the decline of Apple and the rise of the PC and M$, at least from a hackers POV.

Amigas

[Pope]

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.