36 Years Ago Today, Steve Jobs Unveiled the First Macintosh (macrumors.com) 108
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: On January 24, 1984, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the first Macintosh at Apple's annual shareholder's meeting in Cupertino, California, debuting the new computer equipped with a 9-inch black and white display, an 8MHz Motorola 68000 processor, 128KB of RAM, a 3.5-inch floppy drive, and a price tag of $2,495. The now iconic machine weighed in at a whopping 17 pounds and was advertised as offering a word processing program, a graphics package, and a mouse. At the time it was introduced, the Macintosh was seen as Apple's last chance to overcome IBM's domination of the personal computer market and remain a major player in the personal computer industry. Despite the high price at the time, which was equivalent to around $6,000 today, the Macintosh sold well, with Apple hitting 70,000 units sold by May 1984. The now iconic "1984" Super Bowl ad that Apple invested in and debuted days before the Macintosh was unveiled may have helped bolster sales.
... and look how bad things have become for it (Score:3, Insightful)
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I don't think people buy products based on quality.
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Nostalgia blinders (Score:2)
We have had decades of crap products. The few that lasted are still in our memory. But we often go back and try to figure out why these products never really made it?
It often came down to the quality products were too expensive back in the day.
So today I can get an Amiga or an SGI workstation that still runs well after decades. But at the time these were expensive pipe dream systems that didn’t have enough off the shelf software to justify the expense. The cheap plastic PC compatible is what we g
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Apple still also make the best laptops. Their keyboard was susceptible to debris. So? Most laptops are. Apple's computers are held to a higher standard, and I appreciate that. They are still the best hardware you can buy.
iOS will never be perfect. Neither will anyone else's software. You know what? Its pretty fucking awesome. Oh, and it works with the best desktop operating system in such an amazing way, its pra
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Apple still also make the best laptops
Bologna. Panasonic makes the best laptops wrt their Toughbook line. You won't get a more reliable, durable laptop than one of those.
Re:... and look how bad things have become for it (Score:5, Informative)
For most people something like a Toughbook is just overbuilt, and therefore heavier and more expensive than it needs to be. "Quality" means meeting user's needs, and what is best for one user is not necessarily best for everyone.
I've known people who were murder on equipment, and for them something like that may well be an advance in quality. But for me Thinkpads hit about the right spot, build quality-wise. They generally work for me until the scissor mechanism on the keys breaks down, and then I just replace the keyboard.
Apple hardware has similar build quality, it just puts more emphasis on design innovation. Changing a keyboard on a MacBook Pro is quite a chore, though. The keyboard assembly is actually quite flimsy; the way they give it a solid feel is to tack it to their very rigid aluminum chassis with scores of *tiny* screws. I'm talking almost watchmaker-tiny. Since I do watch repair as a hobby I've got the screwdrivers and magnifiers, it's not a problem for me. That's actually quite a nice engineering solution to making the thing feel solid while staying reasonably light.
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" flimsy; the way they give it a solid feel is to tack it to their very rigid aluminum chassis with scores of *tiny* screws. I'm talking almost watchmaker-tiny. Since I do watch repair as a hobby I've got the screwdrivers and magnifiers, it's not a problem for me. That's actually quite a nice engineering solution to making the thing feel solid while staying reasonably light."
I wonder how durable the actual keyboard is. Think Toughbook- delicate components on the inside, but a thick tank like case on
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Up until 2015, very durable. The chassis is a solid block of machined aluminum. By connecting the flexible keyboard to that chassis with over seventy screws, that keyboard becomes mechanically rigid. As I said, it's a smart solution; all the rigidity you need is already there, in the chassis; you don't need to duplicate it in your keyboard assembly if you use enough screws.
While I believe Apple still uses the same approach, it introduced a change to the design of the actual key mechanism in 2015. Since th
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Their keyboard was susceptible to debris. So? Most laptops are.
The ThinkPad I'm typing this on right now has so much dust on it I'd be embarrassed to post a photo. Still works fine.
It was also ridiculously cheap [slickdeals.net] at the time I bought it.
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Re: ... and look how bad things have become for it (Score:2)
If apples products suddenly became sub par, I'd go elsewhere. Apples are know for retaining their value and functioning well beyond what is typical of most computers. Missteps like the keyboard are bad, but they are learning and moving on.
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No, not really. There are many reviews and comments made that aren't about quid pro quo. No, no one *needs* to defend Apple, who can be twits and pompous boors.
But expressing one's own opinion, gleeful or malignant as it might be, is important. Actual user testimony is terribly important, and sadly becomes rarer for the shills, astroturfers, bot armies and other disinformation campaigners now spreading flatulence everywhere.
I don't care if they lose money or have trillion dollar annual income, if their prod
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It's always the same shitty arguments. If something is less quality than Apple, it's painted as cheap crap. But if it's higher quality, the response is "Most people aren't going to need that high quality". When Apple delivers a faulty product, it's a "misstep they learn from". When this happens to another manufacturer it's always a proof that Apple is just better. They do this strategy all the times, with their laptops, phones, OS, you name it.
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Their keyboard was susceptible to debris. So?
The mark of a true fanboi.
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Their keyboard was susceptible to debris. So?
The mark of a true fanboi.
Take a vacuum cleaner, turn it on, run the vacuum nozzle over the keyboard, problem solved. You don't have to be a 'fanboi' to practice basic hygiene.
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You did not lose it, you knew exactly where it went!
Re:... and look how bad things have become for it (Score:4, Interesting)
Despite a few missteps, Apple still makes BY FAR the best desktop operating system. By. Far.
No, not anymore. Linux is better if you're doing development and Windows is better for everything else. Mac OS is just... adequate these days. It doesn't have any "killer features" anymore and is full of bugs and intentional breakages like abandoned 32-bit support in Catalina.
Re: ... and look how bad things have become for it (Score:2)
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I can copy paste from my iPhone.
I'll grant you this one.
I can message people from my OS.
I can too, and unlike you, it'll work for people who can only receive SMS or MMS, not just iMessage.
I can print without a driver.
I don't recall installing a driver for my printer. My computer just picked it up on the network, and it works.
Try doing so on windows.
Methinks you haven't used Windows since the 95 days.
Re: ... and look how bad things have become for i (Score:2)
Wow, are you saying Apple invented a way to send messages over the Internet? You don't even need your phone to send messages! How impressive.
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It's not just Apple. Everyone is getting worse. Bloated, buggy, costly, etc, :( For me, I just use all of them instead of sticking with one.
Re: ... and look how bad things have become for it (Score:1)
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Windows is better for everything else?
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So, you call out ending 32-bit support in Catalina, but ignore Windows 10 "upgrades" that install and willy-nilly remove "incompatible" software without warning? More Windows 10 "upgrades" that delete your preference for which application will be used to open certain files? Useless "features" like the replacement of the Start menu with a giant mess, etc. etc. etc.?
Having to use both every day, I still prefer the Mac. By a long way.
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Mac OS is just... adequate these days. It doesn't have any "killer features" anymore and is full of bugs and intentional breakages like abandoned 32-bit support in Catalina.
MacOS is pretty much the OS of choice for amateur and semi-pro musicians-- and probably for a lot of high-end studios too, I would guess. It works seamlessly with a lot of outboard gear (the Macs all have similar hardware configurations so there's less tweaking required), and you can get a professional-grade DAW (Logic Pro) for only $200. It's also stable enough that people routinely use their Macbooks onstage. I wouldn't care to try that with a Windows machine.
That's a killer feature, in my opinion.
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I think that depends on your use-case.
I was at a seminar where someone tried to connect a MacBook to a projector. After about 10 minutes of fiddling around, I heard the presenter say "Isn't this supposed to just work?" and then relented and used his co-workers ThinkPad.
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Windows is only better for masochists or mental retards.
Linux is ok for development, unfortunately I use one machine for everything ... so it is a Mac.
It doesn't have any "killer features" anymore ...
It has, it is called: Mac OS X or as they renamed it: macOS. All the other killer features as in printing, colours, graphics I never used. But I use Automator and AppleScript
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Most developers buy a macbook for the Unix features and they take all the MacOX crap that comes with it for granted.
Re: ... and look how bad things have become for it (Score:1)
A desktop operating system has the task of making the hardware available to the user. For Macs you have to figure out which hardware will work, what doesn't probably never will. Sure, you can just buy everything from Apple. ..
A win for windows, Linux second, Mac third.
Then you want to use your hardware with software. Any system wins that runs the software you need, most likely in general a win for windows, Mac second, Linux third.
T
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It's not really surprising. At this point, Apple is basically a mobile electronics company that happens to still sell computers out of nostalgic reverence. It's like when RadioShack became a cell phone store that had a few dusty parts shelves in the back ostensibly as a homage to their roots. Apple has more-or-less admitted as much [youtube.com].
As they say in that slowly-rotating Disney World attraction that people only visit to get out of the hot Florida sun, "That's what they call progress, dear."
Convergence in components for mobile and desktop? (Score:2)
At this point, Apple is basically a mobile electronics company that happens to still sell computers out of nostalgic reverence.
No, you need to Apple computers to make the software for the Apple mobile devices. ;-)
... but run different operating system. Well different in user experience more than actual code implementing the operating system.
That said, mobile devices and desktop computers will probably merge to a degree. There is already a bit of overlap between iOS and macOS. Apple's mobile device CPUs and GPUs are quite competitive. An iPad and MacBook may one day share components: mainboard, CPU, GPU, etc
Hell, maybe the "M
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It's weird how Apple has been having AQ problems for two decades now and still hasn't got on top of them. Considering how much money they must lose replacing butterfly keyboards alone you would think throwing a few million at the problem would be a no brainer.
There must be some deeper problem, and it can't be down to just one person as they have all come and gone over that period of time.
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Are we fanboys or are you a troll? I guess you haven't heard that the latest MacBooks don't have the butterfly keyboard. Or I guess you've always been in charge of bug free OS updates that span multiple ecosystems while trying to shift everyone to a new and better way of development.
I don't think Apple is perfect, and yeah this has been a rough upgrade cycle. But if you pay attention to what is going on under the hood there is a reason why. I curse at Xcode almost every day right now, but I see where they a
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a Macintosh SE in 1985
I had my first Mac in 1985 and I can assure you they only had the 128K and the 512K. The Mac Plus was in 1986.
Re: ... and look how bad things have become for it (Score:2)
Now that you mention it you are correct, probably was 1986 or 1987. I bought it during college, and I get those years mixed up a bit. :)
But I do remember the options were a Mac or a DOS machine. The feature that made me choose the Mac was a spellchecker believe it or not. As a government major doing lots of papers it was a godsend
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The campus was about recruiting the best and brightest. All of the big Silicon Valley companies are doing everything they can to recruit the limited quantity of the highest quality talent.
That not justification for Apple skimping on QA - for the amount of money they've wasted on that ego-boosting campus, they could've hired many, many people and trained them to become good engineers and QA folk - might have actually done wonders for unemployment as well.
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I see a lot of ranting against Apple. But I hear very few alternatives offering a superior product.
In Linux I do an update every day fixing bugs and problems in software.
Android while an alternative to iOS isn’t a superior one just a good competitive alternative.
While I prefer my mechanical keyboard in terms of portability it isn’t so great.
Apple is a reflection of the industry in general. As selling consumer grade products, they are rarely the best at anything. But it’s success also sho
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So still there is enough energy to post hater troll posts.
Debuted? (Score:3)
Actually, it was broadcast in a minor market, late night weeks before in 1983, so it could qualify for awards.
Downside to the early Mac (Score:3)
One downside to the early Mac, if I recall correctly, was that Apple didn't provide a development environment on it. You had to buy a Lisa (much more pricey) to write full-blown native programs for it.
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He didn't want internal expansion ports. The idea was to attach everything using high-speed serial ports. I didn't say it was a good idea. But that was the idea.
As I understand the story, Steve Jobs hated fans. The Apple III had no fan which was fine until you started putting expansion cards in which disrupted the passive cooling and generated lots of problems. So when Jobs did the Mac, he kept the passive cooling but sealed it so you couldn't put expansion cards in.
Or you programmed a Mac from your Apple II (Score:3)
One downside to the early Mac, if I recall correctly, was that Apple didn't provide a development environment on it. You had to buy a Lisa (much more pricey) to write full-blown native programs for it.
Or program in assembly language. Code and cross assembly on an Apple II. Download the binaries to the Mac to see them run (or more likely not).
;-)
And for a really sweet setup you get a 68000 coprocessor board for your Apple II. Then you can debug your core assembly language code, code that does not interface with MacOS, running on the Apple II. This greatly improves productivity.
Did Commodore 64 code this way too. Code on Apple II, download to C64, watch it run. Some things could be debugged on the A
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Actually, I used the SUMac C compiler [info-mac.org] on a VAX at college.
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I wish the Apple II GS had done better (Score:4, Informative)
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Wow, that's not bad at all. I remember playing some games on my Apple //c which were bad like Gauntlet. :(
Re: I wish the Apple II GS had done better (Score:2)
The Apple IIgs was, IMHO, an abomination meant to keep other, less-expensive 68K-based systems (Atari ST, Amiga) from encroaching on Mac turf. But the IIgs was essentially an amped-up 6502, NOT a 68K-class chip.
Ironic (Score:2)
That Macintosh computer is soooooo 1984!
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Meanwhile I was learning about the new and interesting things my penis could do. So.
Re: Ironic (Score:2)
I remember this about it: (Score:4, Interesting)
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The OS was cool, but the original Mac really wasn't a good computer. It cost $2,500 (in 1984 dollars, so more than double that today!) and only had 128 K of RAM, during a time where you could get a Commodore 64 with a much better software collection for just $495. There was a good reason why it didn't sell well early on.
The Mac did not sell well, Apple II paid the bills (Score:5, Interesting)
"Despite the high price at the time, which was equivalent to around $6,000 today, the Macintosh sold well, with Apple hitting 70,000 units sold by May 1984
Speaking as an Apple II developer, one who was grandfathered into the Mac developer program in 1983 and had early access to docs and hardware, who in 1984 developed Mac software in assembly language on Apple II's and downloaded the binaries to see how they ran on the Mac (hint: reg A4 (?) is reserved for system variables :-)) ...
The Mac was absolutely amazing, the 68K CPU a dream, ... but the Mac did *not* sell well. The Mac was a commercial failure under the entirety of Steve Jobs' tenure. Thankfully the Apple II paid the bills for Apple during that time frame. Sometime under Scully's (?, I don't think Amelio's) tenure the Mac became profitable.
... Win9x class software in the WinNT era. It wasn't until we have Steve Jobs 2.0 and NeXTSTEP (aka MacOS X - protected, multitasking, a frigging *nix console - heresy!, etc) go to Apple that things got good. And then when the switch to Intel occurred things got great. Gone was that age old choice of Mac or PC, you could now have both natively running on the same hardware (yeah, CHRP, but it didn't ship, at lest the Mac bits).
Lets be honest, the Mac had more iffy years than good years in its "classic" configuration, cooperative multitasking, no protected memory, etc
Yes 1984 was historic, it was a vision of things to come, but it was that vision that had the real impact, not so much the hardware itself. The hardware was a triumph of technology, awesome work by the software and hardware developers of the day, but a commercial breakthrough, no.
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What about the x86 coprocessors available for the Quadra line? You could run PC on your Mac then. Multitasking? That was implemented in 8 way before Jobs made a bunch of money selling NeXT to Apple.
The problem with the classic system was that it was being pushed to the side by Jobs, like he was famous for doing at the beginning with Macintosh and Apple II.
I honestly do not see the Macintosh lasting throughout the 2020's. It will likely be ended and superseded with a line of iOS products that range from a hu
Re:The Mac did not sell well, Apple II paid the bi (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the x86 coprocessors available for the Quadra line?
A pricey add-on rather than built-in functionality.
Multitasking? That was implemented in 8 way before Jobs made a bunch of money selling NeXT to Apple.
Implemented poorly. As I said, Win3.1/Win9x style multitasking, lacking protection. WinNT / MacOS X / *nix get it right, before these it was just a kludgy hack.
The problem with the classic system was ...
... it was stuck in the late 80s, whenever cooperative multitasking was added to Mac OS. I suffered through Win3.1, Win9x and Mac OS classic development. Microsoft had the decency to move on to WinNT, Apple's missteps caused them to offer classic for far too longer than it should have been offered. It should have been replaced much earlier. They tried, twice ?, and NeXTSTEP literally saved the day. It was getting embarrassing.
I honestly do not see the Macintosh lasting throughout the 2020's. It will likely be ended and superseded with a line of iOS products that range from a huge, foldable iPad Pro complete with bluetooth keyboard and ...
I'm completely open to the idea of some convergence between mobile and desktop. Mobile CPUs/GPUs are computationally more than capable of what most people do on their laptops or desktops. However I think the convergence will be more hardware than software. There will be a keyboard/mouse based OS, macOS, and a touchscreen based OS, iOS. Different user experiences. Of course macOS and iOS share a bit of code so there is some software convergence too I suppose, but I expect the user experiences to remain different. Will there be a common "motherboard" with Apple CPU and GPU shared between some future iPad and MacBook? Maybe. Will the computers really be docks you plug an iPad into as the display? Maybe, docked you get macOS, undocked you get iOS. Data is cloud based and handed off between macOS and iOS apps. They are offering hand off functionality today.
desktop publishing (Score:3)
Mac sales were relatively weak until "desktop publishing" took off, starting with affordable laser printers and Aldus PageMaker. Before that, it was a solution looking for a problem. It's roughly comparable to how the spreadsheet greatly boosted microcomputer sales: every office "had to" have one.
It's not really about hardware or the OS, but software that does somethi
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It's not really about hardware or the OS, but software that does something people want or need. People lived with occasional crashing etc. if it got done what they wanted.
Only when their software was not available for the more stable OS. There was a migration to WinNT as apps were ported. Today's macOS is a more successful option because of the more stable OS. Especially as the hardware can run macOS or Windows natively so you don't have to choose one or the other, you can have both. Yes emulation is practical most of the time but only because of the common Intel CPUs. Apple making that switch literally doubled their marketshare.
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No it isn't. You might be thinking of A5 which has to point to the end of the application parameter area during most Toolbox calls (so it can find the pointer to QuickDraw globals, etc.), and by convention it's also used by the application to reference global variables. But system variables are kept at fixed addresses in low memory. When Switcher (and later MultiFinder) allowed multiple applications to run simultaneously, they had to work out which low
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No it isn't. You might be thinking of A5 which has to point to the end of the application parameter area during most Toolbox calls (so it can find the pointer to QuickDraw globals, etc.), and by convention it's also used by the application to reference global variables. But system variables are kept at fixed addresses in low memory. When Switcher (and later MultiFinder) allowed multiple applications to run simultaneously, they had to work out which low memory variables had to be saved on context switch and which ones are truly global. Very messy.
Global variables sounds familiar. This debugging incident where I used A5 as a general address register for my code and Mac OS calls failed as a result (I think I was building a menu programmatically) happened in my first week of Mac programming in1984 soon after the Mac's release. So it was pre-Switcher.
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> Win9x class software in the WinNT era
Yet it created the entire desktop publishing and photo editing markets. An entire ecosystem of people bringing Syquest 44's to service bureaus for output ran a major portion of the economy, exclusively on System 6/7+.
Sure, the Unix core was better, later, but while it was problematic, it was absolutely the best desktop available at that point in history.
NeXT was technically superior and completely priced out of almost every market. It's too bad A/UX never got any l
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> Win9x class software in the WinNT era
Yet it created the entire desktop publishing and photo editing markets.
That desktop publishing market was created long before WinNT, before Win9x. The PC sucked as much, or worse than (DOS era), than Mac with respect to protection, multitasking, etc. Also in the WinNT era there was some migration of desktop publishing from Mac to PC, in part due to a more stable environment. Mac had the initial advantage and applications because it offered the what-you-see-is-what-you-get environment, DOS did not.
it was absolutely the best desktop available at that point in history.
And that point was not the WinNT era.
happy birthday mac! (Score:2)
the event was catalytic in so many ways —the world was still running DOS — and boom! all of the sudden the world had a GUI. it did for the command line what the iPhone did for smartphones —total game changer —i still remember, coming from DOS (LDOS, TRSDOS, NewDOS, and PC-DOS) — and trying to figure out where to type: copy *.* A: and then it was click & drag —and that moment forever changed the way things worked ever after that. i still run windows, and love linux, bu
Mistake in the post (Score:1)
Is there some significance to 36 years? (Score:3)
I can understand marking anniversaries which are a multiple of 10 years. Maybe even a multiples of 5. But it seems excessively pedantic to be making a fuss over a 36th year anniversary. Something only a fanboi would glurge over. Or is there some significance to 36 years that the summary failed to mention?
Typo, should have been "036 years". (Score:3)
I can understand marking anniversaries which are a multiple of 10 years. Maybe even a multiples of 5. But it seems excessively pedantic to be making a fuss over a 36th year anniversary.
There was a typo, it should have been "036 years". Octal 36 = Decimal 30. So we are meeting your 10 year criteria. ;-)
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Progress? (Score:2)
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The original Mac didn't have any type of hard drive available (at least from Apple) until the painfully slow HD20 came out in late 1985. So it's pretty safe to say without timing it that any modern Mac with an SSD (or PC for that matter) would startup faster than the 128k Mac on floppies.
It wasn't until the Mac Plus came out with SCSI that hard drives became anything more than a joke on Macs.
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The HD20 really was a joke. Somehow Steve had convinced himself that the 1Mbps synchronous mode of the SCC chip would be fast enough for a hard drive. It was barely okay even for a LAN.
And thus started the grand tradition of Apple needing a technology before the PC Clone world needed it, then picking a decent standard that the rest of the world would subsequently NOT use. SCSI? IDE! NuBus? EISA...er...VESA...er PCI! FIrewire? Nah, let's abuse USB instead! At least Thunderbolt is making a good attempt to ri
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If I remember right, the HD20 also brought HFS with it. That said, I had a Bernoulli Box which attached through the serial port. It wasn't pretty...
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Yes, they do. The original one was slow to boot because of the floppy drive. Even with a hard disk it was slow to boot because it had to access it serially over the external floppy drive port. It wasn't until the Mac Plus with SCSI that you could get decent boot times.
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I'm still blown away by how fast it reboots since application state saving was added back in... somewhere between 10.6 and 10.9. Even faster with an SSD, of course. It seems to take longer to shut down now! FWIW, I also leave "verbose boot" turned on so I can watch the pre-GUI parts of start-up. It's only a couple of seconds between the GUI starting up and the desktop appearing.
But the thing that used to really bug me was how long classic MacOS took to become usable after opening up the lid from sleep. It
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A modern Mac boots about 50 - 100 times faster than an old one. Should be a no brainer, why do you ask?
It sounds expensive.. (Score:2)
Until you see the IBM PC prices at that time.
But well, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.
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Two, it's called "the Mac" . Well, not really.
Right. It wasn't The Mac. It was simply "Macintosh."
Games (Score:2)
And what's so special about that number? (Score:2)
Is there any point to post about the yearly anniversary of things?
36 years ago? (Score:2)
So what, this story is a bit late isn't it? New record.
If it was 40 or 50 years ago then I would understand this article but 36 years? Makes no sense.