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A Review of the 128KB Macintosh

Posted by Zonk on from the retro-love dept.

bfwebster writes "The physicist John Wheeler famously quipped that 'Time is nature's way to keep everything from happening at once.' The web flattens time by making more of the past accessible. Here, then, is a reprint of BYTE's official review of the original 128KB Macintosh from the August 1984 issue. The article highlights the radical break with other PCs that the Mac represented, while at the same time giving the first real warning of Steve Jobs's least-productive tendency: pre-emptive and often arbitrary constraint of end-user options (e.g., no memory expansion on the 128KB or announced 512KB Macs, even though the 68000 processor had a lovely, flat 16MB address space, as opposed to Intel's 808x segmented hell)."

23 of 476 comments (clear)

  1. Ha! by gowen · · Score: 5, Funny

    1984 called, it wants it article back. ... no, wait, that doesn't work.

    --
    Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
  2. Flattened time? by warkda+rrior · · Score: 5, Funny

    The web flattens time? What was the shape of time before? Was it fluffy? Did it have spikes or bumps?

    --
    You need to install an RTFM interface.
    1. Re:Flattened time? by julesh · · Score: 4, Funny

      It was all balled up, like string. And if you could jump from one piece to another...

      No, sorry, wrong thread.

    2. Re:Flattened time? by mfender9 · · Score: 2, Funny
      Oh come on... it was a perfect cube!

      I guess this makes it square...

  3. Um.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Any news happen *today*?

  4. Color, multitasking? by jdp816 · · Score: 5, Funny

    My Amiga 1000 laughs in superiority.

    1. Re:Color, multitasking? by idontgno · · Score: 4, Funny
      2. Commodore could not market it's way out of a wet paper sack. If Commodore bought KFC they would have changed the name to "Warn dead birds in a paper bucket".

      I heard another version: "Commodore Sushi: Cold, dead, raw fish."

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    2. Re:Color, multitasking? by El+Cabri · · Score: 3, Funny

      I can indeed hear that laugh, albeit muffled by six feet of earth.

    3. Re:Color, multitasking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      zero business software available at its introduction

      True. There was eventually a funky little graphical spreadsheet app called Excel from some tiny Seattle sofwtare firm. Not sure whatever happened to it. Probably buried by Lotus 1-2-3 ...

  5. Hard to believe it caught on. by BandwidthHog · · Score: 5, Funny

    No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

    (sorry, couldn't resist.)

    --

    Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
  6. Re:Seriously by hab136 · · Score: 4, Funny
    If you own a Ford, does your car drive better if you talk shit about imports whenever you're not driving your car?

    Only if you get the Calvin-peeing-on-Chevy sticker.

  7. Their web server... by _PimpDaddy7_ · · Score: 1, Funny

    Their web server would seem to be running on this same 128K Mac...

  8. No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. by Fear+the+Clam · · Score: 1, Funny

    ### 30 ###

  9. This is great by jayhawk88 · · Score: 4, Funny

    But what I really need from this issue of Byte is that article that had 5000 lines of BASIC you could type in verbatim to your computer and play a clone of Pitfall.

  10. Ironic by Sheepdot · · Score: 4, Funny

    The Macintosh has a standard, one-button, mechanical-tracking, optical-shaft-encoding mouse (again a departure from industry norms).

    21 years later...

  11. Mac 128k vs. a brick by garignak · · Score: 4, Funny

    For those that haven't seen it, there is a "review" comparing a Mac 128k vs. a brick. It's available here (Google cache).

    --
    "Sometimes a man's gotta do what a woman wouldn't consider." - Red Green
  12. Always with the Intel Bashing... by 3D+Monkey · · Score: 2, Funny

    as opposed to Intel's 808x segmented hell

    Hey! I owned an 8088 and besides having to use a hammer to add your expanded 640k of RAM it was a great little piece of shit!

  13. Re:It was 1984, I was a poor junior elisted slob, by rharris · · Score: 2, Funny

    I couldn't afford a Mac, of course.

    Haha. Macs used to be so pricey, funny how things cha.. er, never mind.

    --
    "It's like my pool is TEARIN' ASS 'round my backyard!" --Carl, From Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
  14. Re:Upper limit was actually 4 megs, not 16 by gowen · · Score: 2, Funny
    If you think that was bad BTW, the Sinclair QL had a 68008...
    Yeah, but all us Sinclar junkies were too busy going "Wow, a proper keyboard", to notice technical stuff like that.
    --
    Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
  15. 640K is more than anyone will ever need by computational+super · · Score: 2, Funny

    From TFA linked to by TFA: When 256K-bit memory chips become available the Macintosh will be upgraded to a 512K-byte machine, enough space for the most ambitious application programs.. Wow... obviously they weren't thinking about screen-savers back then...

    --
    Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
  16. Re:Upper limit was actually 4 megs, not 16 by stinerman · · Score: 3, Funny

    Correct!

    The engineers ran out of pins and accepted a 24-bit address bus as an acceptable limitation. I mean, who would ever need more than 16MB of RAM?

  17. Re:Silly Rabbit (or S.R.) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Or . . .
    Mindless Amateur Crap
    Monolithic Android Cartoons
    Megalomaniacal Anthropomorphic Cacophony
    Missives About Che (Guevara)
    Managing Acrid Cheloids . . .

    : D

  18. Sold! by netglen · · Score: 2, Funny

    Alright I'm sold. Where can I pick one up?