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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.
How about a demo of Jay Miner demoing the Amiga 1000?
I'm really nostalgic for the days when Silicon Valley was an innovative hotbed when some sharp brash kid could not only make it big, but provide a product that has some value.
Now, Silicon Valley is a bunch of whiny bitches who are trying to get ever cheaper labor for their social media/advertising app/user-data pimping service in order to market crap to a population in a downward spiral of their living standard.
If Jobs were wanting to wholly take credit would he have wanted everyone's signatures embossed on the inside of the case? I don't think so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There's no denying the Mac was a game-changer, but it's also important to note that when it was released it cost $5600 in today's dollars - Adding a printer pushed you well north of the $6000 mark.
No wonder nobody I knew had one.
Look, man: no slashdotter worth his salt has any illusion that Steve Jobs was involved in technical design beyond a very abstract level.
But he's a disgusting human being for having clarity of vision and salesmanship? I'll grant that he seemed like a dick for other reasons, but that's another discussion.
I'm writing this from an Ubuntu box that I built myself, and I tend to be an OS pragmatist. I make my living as an engineer. I don't discount my own contribution in my work, but I dare say there is room for more Steve Jobs (Jobses?) in tech. Someone's got to identify opportunity, guide a bunch of engineers to a product, and then sell the fucking thing. If that someone is very highly effective, it's no small contribution and I submit that if one person deserves credit for Mac it's Jobs.
I truly don't get the level of vitriol for this guy... there are posts here that honestly read batshit, foaming at the mouth crazy to me.
Besides, have you seen what happens when engineers drive product design? There are situations where those products are appropriate but we're talking about mainstream PCs here. Sure, elements were ripped off from Xerox, sure you can probably dig up earlier, better technical implementations of most of this tech. The thing that matters, and the reason we're still talking about it, is that Apple brought it into your grandmother's living room.