If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Posted on 09/23/2006 1:11:10 PM PDT by Swordmaker
It is amazing how far we have come in 22 years... especially on pricing.
This review of the Apple Macintosh appeared when the first units began shipping in 1984. The price of the first Mac was extremely competitive at $2,495, especially considering the Mac Lisa retailed for $9,995, the newly released Apple III+ was $3995, and IBM's newest offering, the PC AT was also $3995 in its base configuration without monitor.
If we look at the prices in 2006 dollars, the original Mac would have cost
After much anticipation and much ado, and alongside an advertising campaign the likes of which have never been seen in the microcomputer industry, Apple has finally done it--the Macintosh computer is a reality.
And it is quite an astonishing reality, indeed.
At $2495, Macintosh represents the cutting edge of Apple's bid to regain lost pre-eminence in the microcomputer field, IBM, which reared its big blue head a mere two years ago, has in that time very nearly pulled the carpet out from under Apple. Now it's all up to Macintosh.
Can the Mac return to Apple to the catbird seat? Judge for yourself. Mac is surely cute-looking and packs more punch than any other micro that fits in a rucksack. It is based on the 68000 microprocessor and as such qualifies as the first medium-priced micro with 32-bit architecture. It uses Sony 3.5" hardshell floppies, which are reliable, quiet, durable, and capable of storing 400K per side.
Screen display is monochrome, but graphics resolution is a superlative 512 x 342 pixels. A mouse peripheral is standard, as is a built-in battery-powered CMOS clock/Calendar.
While the Mac comes with 128K RAM standard, which may sound a bit chintz, it also sports 64K of machine language ROM. Much of the software used to drive the mouse and simulate a "desktop" environment using screen windows already resides in ROM, freeing up RAM for user storage.
And all of this comes to you for a manufacturer's sticker price of $2495. And, for a limited time, this price buys a system complete with bundled world processing and graphics programs for Apple.
Like the ground-breaking Lisa computer, which changed industry standards despite its initially mediocre sales showing, the Mac is designed with ease-of-use foremost in mind. Simply use the mouse to "point" to what you want to do; then press the button on top of the mouse. Breaking in a new software package? Chances are it operates along the same lines as the packages you already know. No longer need you be forced into memorizing numerous and confusing keyboard commands. As a training tool, even critics agree that the mouse is a valuable peripheral.
Universities nationwide have already embarked upon a love affair with the Mac. Twenty-four of the nation's leading colleges have joined the Apple University Consortium and have each pledged to purchase $2 million of Apple products--mainly Macintosh computers--over the next three years. Apple reports over $60 million in commitments to date from colleges and universities.
Any college student seriously interested in microcomputer technology will be attracted to the Mac. Its 68000 processor will not become obsolete quickly, and if you are going to make the supreme effort to learn assembler, you might as well commit to 68000 chip architecture. The MAc's 32-bit processor with 16-bit data bus makes it just about the fastest micro around.
The Mac has a built-in CRT and Sony microdrive and still comes in with a 10 x 10" footprint and under 17 lbs. It is lighter than the best-selling transportable computer. IT has four-voice, 12-octave sound synthesis capable of advanced music and speech applications. For $99 you can get the nylon Mac carrying case and join the height of Macfashion.
Other optional peripherals are as follows:
* Imagewriter printer--$595 ($495 if purchased with Macintosh).
* Numeric keypad--$129.
* 300 baud modem--$225.
* 1200 baud modem--$495.
* External microdrive--$495.
It is expected that Macintosh computers will be rather hard to come by at least until this summer, due to heavy backorder demand. Apple's new $20 million automated factory in Fremont, CA, can turn out a Mac every 27 seconds, however. So you should be able to find your own Macintosh computer relatively soon.
As for software, it will be a little slow in coming--at first. However, just about every prominent software manufacturer is developing software for the Mac, and Apple hopes to see at least 500 independent Mac packages by the end of the year. This includes packages from Lotus, Microsoft, and Digital Research.
Conclusions? We'll wait until we can get our sweaty palms on a unit here at the lab. But from what we have already learned, Apple might have a real shot at IBM with its new baby. Mac looks like a winner.
Products: Apple Macintosh (680X0-based system)
Today, the lowest price "all in one" Mac comes with 512MB RAM (4,000 times more memory), a 160 GB HD (~32,000 times more capacity), no floppies (2 fewer), and a 17" color monitor (53% larger) with 1440x900 resolution (~6.5 Times more)... and it is ~260 times faster than that original Mac... for only $999... or a about 13% of the cost of the original Mac in constant dollars.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
I had one, and I paid the $995 for a 512K memory upgrade.
Ping
That's actually a large understatement. At 1.83GHz the iMac's CPU at runs 230 times the frequency of the original Mac, but it's tremendously more efficient per cycle. I'd guess it's around 10,000 times faster overall. And that's just for one of the two cores. Go Moore!
I did my first research comparing grammatical forms with a Lisa hooked up to a database across campus in 1984.
That was replaced by 2 Mac 128s...the VT-100 terminal connecting with the Mainframe got less and less use.
Up in the attic at home there's a Mac 512 upgraded to a Mac Plus with a *20* Meg hard drive. It has no network connection, and the Option keys are dead. I used it till I brought home a Mac 2 in 1993. And a Quadra in 97. I should start a museum :)
I took 2 years off from college and was selling computers in 1982-1984. We sold IBM, Apple, HP. HP was a touchscreen, IBM was plain old green screen IBM 8086 to 8088, but LISA was light years ahead of anything out there, Motorola 68000. I sold only one LISA, to a law firm. The price was near $9,000 if I remember correctly. It was so strange, we sold to businesses only and all of them thought that a real computer had to be that awful green screen...LISA was amazing. It had word processing, spread sheet, a database, laser printing, and a GUI with a mouse. It took MS until 1995 before they had an operating system that was similar. 1984, when Mac came out I assumed Apple was going to own the PC market, and they would have if Jobs had released the operating system to developers as opposed to trying to protect its' secrets.
To go along with the 1984 Macintosh, there is also the famous Superbowl ad '1984' directed by Ridley Scott no less.
And today you can get one on eBay for as little as $7.00. You may be able to get as much as a few hundred, but it has to be in almost immaculate condition, with all the original packaging, manuals, etc. (Sometimes it almost seems like it's the packaging that's worth more than the machine. I just saw a 128k Mac with a busted floppy drive - usually only worth $35 or so at most - go for a little over $500, because it still had everything, down to the unused Apple stickers that are, of course, always included with every new Mac to this day.)
Back cover (I learned word processing on Leading Edge software!)
Actually, for about US$1,000 less than that original cost of the 128 KB Macintosh, you can get the current 20" widescreen display iMac with a 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 1 GB of RAM, 250 GB Serial ATA hard drive, an optical drive that plays and records most disc formats, ATI Radeon X1600 graphics, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless data support, and multiple I/O ports. Small wonder why Apple is selling as many as they can make.
I remember VT-100! I was forced to use one as recently as 1991.
At the present time, would you believe that my company, a Fortune 200 corporation, makes me use a VT-100 emulation for completing my time card?
Look how clean it is. This guy has quite a collection. I did a gig at a major Boston firm whose db of customer transactions likewise used the VT100 emulation.
That commercial made me angry and turned me against Apple for a long time. I was glad when the lost the war to IBM and its clones. They are a good music company, though...I am an iPoder.
It caught your attention... you saw the commercial only once and it made you angry?
Have you seen the version floating around the internet where someone has added an iPod to the girl runner with the hammer?
I have seen stills from the iPod commercial, not the video.
Single-sided 3 1/2 inch 400K floppy drive, with weirdo 524 byte sectors and MFS (folderless aka non-hierarchical), which was superseded by 512 byte sector HFS and double-sided drives (don't recall when). The 512K "Fat Mac" had a few improvements, such as cursor keys on the keyboard (the late J Raskin was an anti-cursor-key zealot). In 1985(?) the Mac Plus introduced SCSI port, but Lightspeed (if memory serves) had already pioneered an internal hard drive which used (if memory serves) internal connections to the external floppy port and power supply.
Ah, those were the days. Glad I got an Apple IIe instead. ;')
ROFLBO!
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