LOL. I'm looking forward to this thread. Ping me when you start it, I want the first reply.
"There are some who call me... Tim?"
Posted on 12/15/2003 1:17:02 PM PST by yankeedame
The Mac @ 20
Happy Birthday, Mac!
Quentin Hardy
12.15.03, 12:00 PM ET
It ought to be dead by now, beset by time and big competitors. Be grateful it isn't. For in all its iterations since it was introduced to the world in January 1984--the Macintosh, then such sequels as the Mac II, PowerBook, Power Mac, iMac--the world's most persistent computer brand has done the most for all computer users. Not through market share, of course--bad business decisions, bad luck and bad behavior from friends and foes ruled that out years ago. But the Mac, always built by the rule that good design is paramount, has challenged and inspired everyone in the digital world.
The most famous innovation, of course, is the original Mac's graphical user interface, which Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Windows appeared to copy over several generations. Microsoft, which denied this from 1985 on, paid Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) an undisclosed sum in 1997 to end allegations that it had poached Apple. Never mind that Apple was itself accused of poaching the interface from Xerox (nyse: XRX - news - people ). The Mac was key in the advent of desktop publishing, too. Wi-Fi, now one of the hottest things in networking, got its start in 1989, when Apple engineers were looking for a way to wirelessly connect the Mac to a printer.
Then there is the PDA. Maybe everybody was wrong to laugh at that Mac cousin, the Newton, which never took off but lingered on the market until the spring of 1998. Apple's hit product iPod is the first piece of hardware expressly built for the "digital lifestyle" (with the Mac at the hub) theme announced by Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs in 2001. Gateway (nyse: GTW - news - people ), Dell (nasdaq: DELL - news - people ) and Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ - news - people ) now talk about selling consumer gear and PC-centered media products, but Mac was there first. Even OS X, the Mac's newest operating system, is based on a Unix computing approach only now hitting PCs through the migration of Linux to the desktop.
How could one product line bring so much to the industry? Because the Mac team has always understood that really great design makes an object seem like a hitherto-unknown part of oneself, a new way to encounter and express yourself in the outside world. How that happens may be impossible to pin down, but you know it when you see it, and it is inspirational, it is emotional. PCs are functional, even well made, but they do not inspire.
Great design is not just about surfaces; it runs from deep function through outside aura. Engineers felt inspired by the guts of the first Mac, and its close ties of hardware and software that have always made it far easier to configure and upgrade. Ordinary users fell for touches like the smiling Mac icon that came on as the computer warmed up, as if the machine was relating to you, promising to be along in a minute. They liked the straightforward shape, with a desktop terminal almost the same length and width as a piece of paper. Marketers were spellbound by the first Mac ad, that famous "1984" spot where the sprinting woman threw a hammer through Big Brother's (read: Big Blue's) droning rant. It showed nationally once, but it still elicits passion.
One more thing about great design: It comes from a single vision, not a committee. The PC is Microsoft's operating system, Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) chips and a bunch of stuff from nameless factories in Taiwan, all hung together. It is a committee product. The Mac, even with chips manufactured by other sources, comes from a few people at Apple, sharing a common vision.
Most of the Mac's life, whoever was on team Mac could count on Steve Jobs standing behind them, telling them that their latest idea sucks, ranting that they'll have to do better. Love the guy or hate him, we have all benefited from his tyranny.
Too much at times is made of Jobs' genius, as when the iMac came out in several colors. A computer that wasn't beige! What a visionary! Really, this was more an indictment of Silicon Valley, 20 years into home computers, than a testimony to Steve's big brain. He did not always get it right the first time, either--the first Mac lacked enough memory, was a commercial failure and led not only to layoffs but to Jobs' own ouster in 1985. 2000's PowerMacG4 Cube was also a high-priced flop. But more than most, he learned and adapted, and drove his teams to improve--over the long haul, great design can handle the odd failure, but not the failure to learn.
Happy 20th, Mac! Take the day off, team. Chill, Steve. Just come back to work tomorrow.
I think it goes back further than that, to 1975 or 1976. I bought my Apple II in late 1977. And people were doing Mac-like things on the Apple II in the late 1970's / early 1980's, before the Apple Lisa showed up (the precursor to the Apple III and Mac - $10G if you could afford it). They're celebrating the 1984 debut of the original Mac. I was a member of the San Francisco Apple Core club back in the late 70's, and there were a few people demonstrating GUI software on the Apple II.
These guys were visionaries. There was a lot of stuff invented by Apple on their GUI that wasn't in the Xerox PARC version, and those Apple GUI ideas got ripped off by Microsoft and placed into Windows. One time I was pondering how to hook up an electric typewriter as a printer to my Apple II. It originally came without an interface (pretty much a motherboard without most interfaces taken for granted now). Andy Hertzfeld (co-inventer of the Mac) sketched out a design of a serial interface on a match-book cover for me, the parts costing less than a few bucks. Although I gave in to the dark side with Windows, I still have a couple Macs and my Apple II (still operational).
Well - it's pretty tough to put one together from scratch (although it's been done), but what a myth regarding "made by one company".
Let's see here - my PowerMac G4 Dual 1Ghz MDD machine has the following:
Motherboard - obviously Apple
Processors - Motorola
Hard Drives - Western Digital (1)and Maxtor (2)
Video Card - ATI
USB PCI Cards - IOGEAR - USB 2 4-port
SiiG - USB 1.1 4-port
"Superdrive" DVD-R/RW - Pioneer
CD/RW - Yamaha
In addition, all of the cooling fans are basically "off-the-shelf" items.
So, although the "core" parts (processor/mobo) are proprietary, most other components are not. In fact, the drives no longer even have an "Apple" ROM.
The thing is - it is the traditionally tight and proprietary manufacture of Apple products that has lent itself to reliability. What is interesting, even with the advent of non-Apple components, reliability has not suffered.
The Fink project has ported a bunch of network tools. I've used ethereal, it works great.
The quote I remember reading was that before Windows came out Jobs told Bill Gates: "You're just mad because you broke into a house and I already stole the TV."
Wrong, flat out wrong. Apple did not "steal" the "revolutionary ideas" developed at PARC. A business deal was struck between Apple and Xerox _before_ Xerox revealed their innovations to Apple.
The following excerpts are from "Inside The Apple Macintosh", written by Peter Norton and Jim Heid, published by Brady Books 'way back in 1989:
"If all these software innovations [the graphical interface developed at Xerox's PARC] took place in the 1970's, why didn't they show up on desktops until the early 80s? Several reasons. PARC researchers, from their vantage point in the ivory tower of R&D, failed to realize that people were anxious for any kind of personal computer, even if it didn't embody every PARC breakthrough. Xerox was hesitant to enter the microcomputer field, and when it did in 1981, its offering -- the 820 -- used an aging operating system, CP/M, and an aging 8-bit microprocessor chip, the Z-80. The 820 was technologically uninspiring, and when IBM announced its much more powerful PC later that year, the 820 died a quiet death. These events failed to convince Xerox that microcomputers were a great new frontier for profits."
"In 1979, Apple began work on a computer whose destination was vaguely described as "the office market". The machine was code-named Lisa. The Lisa was to use Motorola's then brand-new 68000 microprocessor -- arguably the most powerful microprocessor available at the time."
"As it worked on the Lisa project, Apple began looking for additional financial backing (its first public stock offering was a year away), preferably from a corporation with a presence in the office market. Apple cofounder Steve Jobs approached Xerox and offered its investment arm, the Xerox Development Corporation, a deal: Apple would sell Xerox a million dollars worth of stock if Xerox would part the curtain and show Apple what was going on at PARC. The trade press had reported that big things were happening there, and Jobs wanted a closer look. Xerox agreed, and later that year, Steve Jobs, Bill Atkinson (an Apple graphics programmer), and several other members of the Lisa team went to PARC."
"By then, Larry Tesler had become PARC's personal computer expert and proponent. A neighbor of Tesler's had dragged him to some meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, a band of build-it-yourself computer hobbyists, a few years earlier. Initially, Tesler was skeptical, but eventually he saw the potential and increasing momentum of personal computers. Because he was one of the few researchers at PARC who felt that way, he was assigned to show Jobs and his entourage the Alto [Xerox's experimental design utilizing a then-new graphical interface]."
"The Apple contingent was awed. They loved the way the Alto's sharp graphics allowed it to mimic a desktop and the documents on it. They loved how the mouse and icons supplanted the keyboard for issuing commands. Bill Atkinson, who was working on the graphics routines that drove the Lisa's display, gazed at the screen from a distance of a few inches. Jobs was impressed, and decided that Apple would build an Alto for the masses."
"Tesler, too, was impressed, and believed that Apple could do it. He liked the enthusiasm the Apple people expressed toward the Alto. He liked the questions they asked. And he liked the fact that they wanted to take PARC's advancements out of the labs and put them on people's desktops. A few months later, Larry Tesler was working for Apple."
John speaking:
There is no denying that the researchers at Xerox developed some of the initial ideas that went into the "Alto" (the first computer to use a graphical interface). But -- acknowledging that -- XEROX seemed to have no idea what to _do_ with the innovations they had in their hands. They had no inclination that there was a world out there hungering for personal computers that were easy to use.
It was _Apple's_ idea that such graphical elements could be merged into a "personal" computer that made the revolution possible and brought it to fruition.
But they DID NOT "steal" XEROX's ideas, they BARGAINED for them with a stock exchange. Let's get the record straight.
Cheers!
- John
So true. I was working on a pilot project in the mid-90's with a few others. We had integrated hand-held Newton palm computers with wireless transmitters and thermal printers. We had the blessing of the San Francisco Police Department to do trial runs with motorcycle cops. Nobody else had a system like this. A cop could instantly look up information during traffic stops (linked wirelessly to police mainframe databases), run mugshots, do fingerprint checks, have the culprit sign his signature on the Newton, and print a traffic ticket from the thermal printer. All in a compact package. After a thorough study, the Newton was deemed the best overall for the job. During our pilot testing, Apple pulled the plug on the Newton, and the project was scrapped. Just when the Newton was getting really powerful, Apple kills it. Later on, Palm hit the market without any real competition.
Sounds like our experiences are similar. I have nothing against Mac, I just don't want to pay for it. I've used VAX/VMS, UNIX/Xwindows (Amdahl, IBM, Cray), MS Dos, Windows 2.x (the closest thing to a software version of a sack of crap that I've ever seen) 3.x, 95, 98, Me, 2000, and XP, and Mac OS 7 thru 10. If your not afraid of getting your hands dirty, a PC running windows will do anything a Mac can do. Macs are loved by people who don't want to have to think about their computer. You see the same kinda thing with people who get in their car without understanding the basics of the internal combustion engine. They just want it to work and they don't care how. Those people are willing to pay a premium for for their illusion of reliability. But just try sometime to get a Mac to do something unusual.
My parents have an iMac, and I was attempting to get their old postscript printer to work (should be simple). The machine would not recognize the driver. I installed it manually, and the Mac crashed. It took me over an hour to find the reset button. You have to stick a paperclip into a small hole in the I/O panel on the back of the machine. My parents have more trouble with their iMac than I've ever had with my home built PC.
I never put mine away. My 800xl with 2 daisy-chained 1050 drives and 500 software titles is still setup in a corner of my "playroom".
Ever play "Excalibur" or "Universe"? Great stuff, that.
LOL. I'm looking forward to this thread. Ping me when you start it, I want the first reply.
"There are some who call me... Tim?"
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