Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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)."

10 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.

  3. 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.
  4. 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?
  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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...

  8. 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