• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Macworld has a retrospective of Mac history.

facattack

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 7, 2007
Messages
960
Location
Bucks County, PA
I noticed at the grocery store, but decided not to buy the magazine. It had an old picture of a smiling Steve Jobs with two old Macintoshes. It claimed the picture was taken 25 years ago & in their first issue they'd carefully explained the desktop of the Mac.
 
Mac history could be summed up in a few lines;

1) Introduce a computer that is incompatible with everything else on the face of the Earth.
2) Convince the artsy-fartsy crowd that it makes them unique. Unique in the fact that they are paying 1.5 - 2 times what they could get a Intel clone for to do the same thing.
3) Get it into the schools by giving them away (financed by the artsy-fartsy crowd) and "demo machines" given to the people who make the decisions.
4) Obsolete it in 6 months and make anyone who doesn't upgrade immediately a pariah.
5) Repeat until...
6) Make it a WIntel clone
 
Mac history could be summed up in a few lines;

1) Introduce a computer that is incompatible with everything else on the face of the Earth.
2) Convince the artsy-fartsy crowd that it makes them unique. Unique in the fact that they are paying 1.5 - 2 times what they could get a Intel clone for to do the same thing.
3) Get it into the schools by giving them away (financed by the artsy-fartsy crowd) and "demo machines" given to the people who make the decisions.
4) Obsolete it in 6 months and make anyone who doesn't upgrade immediately a pariah.
5) Repeat until...
6) Make it a WIntel clone

Gee, what a constructive and totally objective post.
 
I have quite a few Macworld magazines covering the time period I cared about (missing a few in 93/94 I think) plus the original 1st years release including issue #1. Issue #1 has a geek looking Bill Gates gushing about how the mac is so superior to other platforms, guess he changed his mind later on in life and got a better haircut.

Nothing makes you want to spend money on ebay then reading about some cool hardware or software in the old magazines.

Honestly Jobs original mac was a useless piece of junk, not enough RAM to be usefull (128K when the LISA was shipping with 1MB), and little software (because it was new and didn't run LISA apps or Apple II ones either). I think original adopters got burned on buying them, or had to pay quite a bit to get them upgraded to 512K where they started being usefull.

My favorite period of Macs is after Jobs got fired and before he got back. I like the expandable towerd machines starting with the Mac II and SE/30 and ending with the Beige G3 MT and Wallstreet laptop. If jobs had stayed I don't there would have been a mac you can take the cover off and expand so they would have died out and we would be using Apple XX's by now that were expandable.
 
Steve balmer should go back to selling used cars!

Steve balmer should go back to selling used cars!

I have quite a few Macworld magazines covering the time period I cared about (missing a few in 93/94 I think) plus the original 1st years release including issue #1. Issue #1 has a geek looking Bill Gates gushing about how the mac is so superior to other platforms, guess he changed his mind later on in life and got a better haircut.

Bill Gates knew that the GUI/MOUSE was the way of the future for computers, he just had to find a way to copy it, make it work good enough and cheap, the Walmart mentality in the 80's of computers. Move ahead 20+ years and their incompetance is finally catching up with them, Vista!
 
Last edited:
Methinks you are forgetting what things were like back then.

Mac history could be summed up in a few lines;

1) Introduce a computer that is incompatible with everything else on the face of the Earth.

The cool thing about that era was that a better mousetrap stood a chance of gaining market share. Do you really believe the inertia-laden x86 architecture is that elegant?

2) Convince the artsy-fartsy crowd that it makes them unique. Unique in the fact that they are paying 1.5 - 2 times what they could get a Intel clone for to do the same thing.

Show me an Intel clone from 1986 that was the equivelent of the Mac *and* had professional-level software available *and* had the marketing and history of Apple. And had the same performance. Once you added enough onto a PC to let it do what the Mac did, the price point was the same or worse.

3) Get it into the schools by giving them away (financed by the artsy-fartsy crowd) and "demo machines" given to the people who make the decisions.

That marketing move actually is more tightly tied to the Apple ][ line and was a brilliant move to get rid of inventory, take donation write offs *and* influence future users.

4) Obsolete it in 6 months and make anyone who doesn't upgrade immediately a pariah.
5) Repeat until...
6) Make it a WIntel clone

Yes, because that *never* happens in the PC world. Hey, remember the Itanium? That was the PC world's attempt to do what Apple does (break out of x86).

I'm actually not an Apple fanboy; I own a good representation of the history but have never been a user, not since the ][e, anyway. In my opinion, Apples have a very solid place in personal computing history, and that includes their effect on the marketing of devices that until then only appealed to accountants and hardware geeks.
 
Picked up a copy the other day. The writer did a pretty fair job of covering not only the good products but also some of the bombs. Pretty interesting read overall IMHO.
 
Methinks you are forgetting what things were like back then.



The cool thing about that era was that a better mousetrap stood a chance of gaining market share. Do you really believe the inertia-laden x86 architecture is that elegant?



Show me an Intel clone from 1986 that was the equivelent of the Mac *and* had professional-level software available *and* had the marketing and history of Apple. And had the same performance. Once you added enough onto a PC to let it do what the Mac did, the price point was the same or worse.



That marketing move actually is more tightly tied to the Apple ][ line and was a brilliant move to get rid of inventory, take donation write offs *and* influence future users.



Yes, because that *never* happens in the PC world. Hey, remember the Itanium? That was the PC world's attempt to do what Apple does (break out of x86).

I'm actually not an Apple fanboy; I own a good representation of the history but have never been a user, not since the ][e, anyway. In my opinion, Apples have a very solid place in personal computing history, and that includes their effect on the marketing of devices that until then only appealed to accountants and hardware geeks.

Oh, I'm not saying that they did anything wrong, I'm just saying that's how I see their history. It was repeated time and time again.

Back when the world of computers was "every company's proprietary system", apple was no better or worse than anyone else.

However, the x86/ISA platform took off and never looked back and manufacturers either adapted or died.

There is just no way a competing system could stand up against the Wintel Juggernaut. Apple managed to hang on a lot longer than the others, but, that was entirely due to a massive financial infusion from the company that everyone loves to hate.

The company was never large enough or powerful enough to greatly influence the course of computing the way Windows and Intel have been able to and they were relegated to the "We want to be different" crowd.

Everyone has an opinion and as someone that has been around the computer scene and worked with and on most platforms, that's mine.
 
The advertising campaign for the original Mac was a scream. Here are a few examples:

"The Macintosh's keyboard has fewer keys, but does a whole lot more."

Because it's so nice to have a keyboard with no numeric keypad, function, or cursor keys. Even the lowly Commodores had function and cursor keys.

"Business graphics."

This had a picture of a Mac with a pie chart and a PC with a blank screen. Of course, any fool could do that with Lotus 123.

"The Macintosh's floppy disks hold more data than IBM's do, and they're smaller. You can even fit them in your shirt pocket."

Like anyone would actually put 3.5" floppies in their pocket. What a great way to get lint in the disk.

"The Macintosh's operating system can be used by anyone. No more typing in cryptic commands."

Sounds just like their very own Apple II.

"The Motorola 68000 CPU in the Macintosh is more than twice as powerful as the CPU in the IBM PC."

No contest here. No one would question the superiority of the 68000 to the 8088.

All the while, they conveniently forgot to mention the Mac's small amount of memory, and lack of a hard disk or expansion slots.
 
I'm no Mac-lover(although lean towards them, it's only because I haven't had time to load Linux over XP) but I don't think it's fair to call out that the early Macs didn't have expansion slots nor HDDs.

In my eyes, the Mac DID have expansion slots. Those plugs on the back were the expansion. They designed it so you didn't have to open the computer just to expand. You just plugged in an ADB cord. It's got a printer port, modem port, and has serial, which was the main expansion. You could daisy-chain them to have multiple functions on just one port. Hell, you could even plug in something else in the printer or modem ports if you so should choose to. And to top it off, there was an external floppy drive port and SCSI right there.

The SCSI's main purpose, to me, is for an external HDD. Sure, it wasn't internal like the IBM could have. But an HDD nonetheless, and you had to know how to plug in a cord and boot a floppy to install it. Not much more. To say "The Mac didn't come with a hard drive, though" is unfair. You could get one at extra cost, JUST LIKE YOU COULD WITH THE PC. I don't know if cost was comparable for the external peripherals, but to me the Mac didn't have much difference than the PC when it came to peripherals and software. As a matter of fact, the Mac had alot of the same software as the PC did, such as Lotus 1-2-3, M$ word, etc.

Don't think I'm bashing any computer groups here. I think they were all good and had their own purpose. Every single computer company was proprietary one way or the other. But some of them became standards. Still, the two main groups, PC and Mac, are proprietary in their own form.

--Jack
 
In my eyes, the Mac DID have expansion slots. Those plugs on the back were the expansion. They designed it so you didn't have to open the computer just to expand. You just plugged in an ADB cord. It's got a printer port, modem port, and has serial, which was the main expansion. You could daisy-chain them to have multiple functions on just one port. Hell, you could even plug in something else in the printer or modem ports if you so should choose to. And to top it off, there was an external floppy drive port and SCSI right there.

Kind of Commodore-like, if you think about it.

When I said the Mac didn't have a hard disk, I meant that they were not available as a factory option. There were external 5 MB drives that plugged into the floppy port, but Apple did not officially support hard disks until 1986.

In fact, there were kits to add a hard disk to the early (pre-DOS 2.x) IBM PCs, but it was a kludge, especially when the OS didn't support directories.

As for software, the very first spreadsheet available for the Mac was Microsoft Multiplan, but it was an inferior port that was soon replaced by Excel.

Don't think I'm bashing any computer groups here. I think they were all good and had their own purpose. Every single computer company was proprietary one way or the other. But some of them became standards. Still, the two main groups, PC and Mac, are proprietary in their own form.

Another poster mentioned how Apple has at last succumbed to using an Intel architecture. By doing so, they essentially admitted that it was impossible to have a truly unique computer in this day and age.

Even among PCs there used to be a lot greater diversity. Windows 3.1 had over 131 settings in it's SYSTEM.INI for various machines.

The Mac became a quite respectable machine once it had color, internal slots, a decent keyboard, and proper hard disk support. My point was just that the original ones didn't match up to Apple's lofty claims, and poor sales of them proved it.
 
The original Mac didn't have SCSI, the original external HDs were connected using the serial port (which was kind of fast for its day but much slower then a SCSI drive).
 
I thought the HD20 connected to the floppy port?
Apple used the floppy port, 3rd parties used the serial port (which is what Apple told them to use) and some used the floppy port as well. Who came out with what first I do not recall.
 
Another poster mentioned how Apple has at last succumbed to using an Intel architecture. By doing so, they essentially admitted that it was impossible to have a truly unique computer in this day and age.

Even among PCs there used to be a lot greater diversity. Windows 3.1 had over 131 settings in it's SYSTEM.INI for various machines.

The Mac became a quite respectable machine once it had color, internal slots, a decent keyboard, and proper hard disk support. My point was just that the original ones didn't match up to Apple's lofty claims, and poor sales of them proved it.

Actually, I'm fairly certain Mac switched to Intel because the PowerPC processor was too inefficient. It needed a good sized fan to keep it cool and they'd pretty much maxxed out the power they can get from it while keeping it small and without a huge fan. So, naturally, the switched to Intel, which has a smaller processor that doesn't need a complex cooling system to keep things going. Also, they are available at higher speeds, and dual core.

I think Apple's marketing was a bit leaned over to themselves, not accurately depicting what they really had. But how could one expect the first Macintosh machines to sell well? Apple had a good history, but the Macintosh was expensive and comparatively priced IBM compatables came with more. But once they got the idea and came out with the 512K(which didn't sell too well due to the 128K) and the Plus(which sold well, as did the ones after it) they had an established place in the market, and took off quite nicely.

Of course Windows offered a diverse amount of drivers for their O/Ses. There are many PC compatables out there and they have to make sure to be compatable with all they can. Mac is just Mac. They don't approve Mac compatables and make their O/S compatable with only what they ship. That makes it hard to install MacOS on a PC(although possible) and keeps them having all the money in that part of the Mac market, even though you can get 3rd party parts for the Mac.

--Jack
 
I think Apple's marketing was a bit leaned over to themselves, not accurately depicting what they really had. But how could one expect the first Macintosh machines to sell well? Apple had a good history, but the Macintosh was expensive and comparatively priced IBM compatables came with more. But once they got the idea and came out with the 512K(which didn't sell too well due to the 128K) and the Plus(which sold well, as did the ones after it) they had an established place in the market, and took off quite nicely.

To a large extent, Apple was trying to target the business market with the Mac, to the point where they discouraged people from developing games for it (eg. the Mac ports of Archon and Lode Runner), telling them to use the Apple II for gaming. Many of the deficiencies in the original Mac were Steve Jobs' fault. He wasn't against having a hard disk, but that meant the Mac would have to have a fan, which he rejected because of the noise.

It's ironic, because Steve Wozniak said that Jobs only wanted the Apple II to have two slots, because he thought you wouldn't ever need any more.

Of course Windows offered a diverse amount of drivers for their O/Ses. There are many PC compatables out there and they have to make sure to be compatable with all they can. Mac is just Mac. They don't approve Mac compatables and make their O/S compatable with only what they ship. That makes it hard to install MacOS on a PC(although possible) and keeps them having all the money in that part of the Mac market, even though you can get 3rd party parts for the Mac.

During the Windows 3.x era, Microsoft practically ripped their hair out trying to make sure that Windows would work on every one of the multitude of 286 and 386 PCs (a lot of machines that predated Windows 3.0 had compatibility problems). Of course, just as many users also ripped their hair out trying to get Windows to work.
 
The company was never large enough or powerful enough to greatly influence the course of computing the way Windows and Intel have been able to and they were relegated to the "We want to be different" crowd.

Everyone has an opinion and as someone that has been around the computer scene and worked with and on most platforms, that's mine.

Well, this may be your opinion, but I'd have to say that the part about Apple not influencing computing is ignoring some real world data. I've been in the computer industry since the early 1980s and, the data just doesn't support your opinion.

Who launched the first commercially successful GUI in 1984, that Microsoft didn't get close to right until the 4th iteration (Windows95)? Apple. Did they create the idea of GUI? Absolutely not. They just created a commercially successful product that the market is still trying to keep up with 25 years later.

Who created the modern laptop design by pushing the keyboard back and inserting a pointing device between palmrests, thereby creating the industrial design standard that every laptop maker has used ever since? Yeah, that would be Apple again. What company released the first commercially available laser printer that, when combined with WYSIWYG display and layout software helped create the entire digital publishing industry? Oh, that would be Apple.

I'm not saying that they got everything right, or even that they're the largest innovator in modern computing, but to say that they were never large enough to influence computing in the way that Microsoft or Intel has is ignoring a lot of real world data. As far as being big enough to be influential, it was actually Apple that was the first computer company to hit $1B in annual sales. That seems like a pretty big influence, especially when no one had ever done a fraction of that sales volume before.

Sure, Sony made some huge advances in thin laptop design, and Intel and IBM's pioneering of smaller and smaller chip die designs have been game-changing. Intel's multicore chips have allowed software developers to take advantages of processing power in ways no one could have predicted 20 years ago. Dell's innovation in "just in time" manufacturing revolutionized the way that computers are assembled and customized, allowing for huge reductions in cost and time to ship. These are just a few examples of innovations that I would call "influential".

All that said, I'm just saying that if you look at the companies that have been influential in modern computing, Apple has to be near the top of that list.
 
He wasn't against having a hard disk, but that meant the Mac would have to have a fan, which he rejected because of the noise.

Yeah and we all know what happens when you don't put a fan in when you need one, you get the Apple /// WARP-A-RAMA...

"Come on down folks and switch on one of these lovely $3,000 (minimum) machines and be awed by the undulations of this socketed motherboard, allowing the chips to acutally WALK out of the sockets. You won't see THIS feature on any other machine, I tell ya. When you're done with THAT, just lift up your expensive quality purchase and drop it 6 inches on to the desk. NO experience necessary"

Followed closely by the Lisa fiasco, Apple was on the chopping block until ol' Evil Bill rode to the rescue.

The old Mac AIOs, after that, weren't too bad, if you discount the fact that they mounted the flyback horizontally and they had a tendancy to break the solder connections on it. Free repair, right? Muhahaha.

After that, the Pizza Boxes. Variations on a theme, but, even then they were trying to make them Windows compatible.

Pick a mistake. It would have wiped out any other company that didn't have the equivalent of MacHeads, those do or die "it's ok, Steve, we forgive you (again)" crowd.
 
Back
Top