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Watch Steve Jobs Demo the Mac, In 1984
VentureBeat is one of the many outlets featuring recently surfaced video of Steve Jobs doing an early demo of the Macintosh, 30 years ago. I remember first seeing one of these Macs in 1984 at a tiny computer store in bustling downtown Westminster, Maryland, and mostly hogging it while other customers (or, I should say, actual customers) tapped their feet impatiently.
Funny that. I remember looking over an original Mac, and asking "does this actually do anything?"
I chalk him up to being in the same ilk as Edison. He couldn't do much of anything himself, so he did everything he could to maniuplate, steal, and threaten other peoples' work out of them so he could hold the patents. He's a scumbag and the world is better off without him, even if he did help make things better as a side effect of his self-centeredness. I just think there's a special place in hell for people who are willing to rip off their best friend (a la when he screwed over Wozniak during the whole chip-reduction thing).
Dangling any kind of Apple-related story around here immediately causes a tsunami of hate. What the fuck is wrong with you people? So the Mac was released 30 years ago and Steve Jobs did a little speech. It's still true even if you don't like it. Go back to working on whatever linux box you're building out of cardboard scraps for free out of the dumpster and best of luck to you.
But no, we can't let any kind of Apple story pass without upbraiding the founders, discrediting every feature as unoriginal, loudly airing our grievances with Apple that might have occurred since the dawn of time and affirming our commitment to never purchase an Apple product for the rest of eternity. Apparently you get bonus points here for mentioning in passing what distro of linux/android you're using at the moment too. And by "in passing," I mean like "passing" wind.
Like it or not, Apple set the standard for the GUI. Without Apple, maybe somebody else would have invented something similar eventually, but that's not the way it worked out.
Does it make all you haters feel superior in some way to rip on a 30 year old historical announcement? Is your current sense of self identity so pathetically shallow that a 30 year old product announcement is a threat to it? Maybe you're all feeling a little uncomfortable that the standards that Apple set are still reflected in the GUI of whatever precious homegrown flavor of linux you're using to read this. I suggest you transfer your feelings of inadequacy to more conventional means of vicariously bolstering one's ego, like a football team, what kind of pickup truck you drive, or maybe alcoholism.