Posted on 01/06/2004 2:57:26 PM PST by quidnunc
Personal computers were invented in the early 1970s, but the computer as we know it today — a vehicle of creativity, communication and entertainment — began on January 24, 1984.
In a college lecture hall in Cupertino, California, a young, fresh-faced Apple executive called Steven P. Jobs introduced a gathering of Apple's shareholders to a quirky little beige box called the Macintosh.
The fruit of $80 million and several years' research, the Mac was the antithesis of most computers of its era.
Designed for ordinary people, not programmers, it dispensed with blinking cursors and inscrutable instructions for a child-friendly interface navigated by a simple and intuitive pointing device, the mouse.
Right from the get-go, it was built as a tool of creativity, not number crunching. Instead of programming tools, the Mac shipped with software for writing and drawing.
It looked good. Instead of a utilitarian enclosure and a big, unwieldy monitor, the Mac came in a dinky little plastic case, monitor and all, and in a beautiful shade of beige, no less.
The Mac had personality. It played music, drew pictures and could speak for itself in a synthesized voice. As it booted up, a friendly, smiley face shone from the screen.
Not only was the technology a good 10 years before its time — Windows 95 debuted a decade later — but the launch of the Mac was also an early taste of Apple's special magical formula: a unique ability to blend cutting-edge technology with great design and memorable marketing. (The Mac's 1984 Super Bowl ad aired only once but became one of the most famous in advertising history).
When it debuted, the Mac impressed some, but many were unmoved. It was widely dismissed as childlike and trivial: a toy. (The Mac took off several years later, when married to a laser printer and desktop publishing software).
But 20 years on, it's obvious the machine has had the most profound impact. Although Apple is now a relative minnow in the PC industry, it is fair to say that every personal computer these days is essentially a Macintosh clone, even if it runs Microsoft's Windows. Windows, after all, is the sincerest compliment Microsoft has paid to Apple.
"It's real easy to see that every computer in the world's a Macintosh," said Steve Wozniak, Apple's co-founder, in an interview with the Baltimore Sun. "There was a time when Windows wasn't Windows. They had Microsoft DOS, and DOS was lines you had to type… And the funny thing is, when they switched over — Windows 95, Windows 98 — now they've got a Macintosh."
Twenty years ago, the Mac pointed the way forward for the PC industry, and Apple continues to lead to this day. The company’s products are still a couple of years ahead of the rest of the industry, and in many ways set the standards that all the others adopt. If Apple embraces a technology, the industry usually follows suit down the line. Examples abound – the graphical user interface, Ethernet, USB, WiFi and Bluetooth, which hasn’t taken off yet, but will.
To mark the Mac's 20th birthday, Wired News asked several technologists and pundits for their assessment of the machine's impact on technology, as well as the wider culture.
Bill Joy, cofounder of Sun and co-creator of Berkeley Unix, which underlies Mac OS X: "What I had always wanted was to combine the reliability and beauty of Unix with the user interface genius that was Xerox. Apple got the interface part right with the Mac, but it wasn't until Unix was underneath it, with Mac OS X that it became all that I wanted. It took 20 years, but it was worth the wait.
"I would have taken it sooner, of course, but with the alternative being using Windows — the OS equivalent of junk food — I am sure glad that I have the choice of Mac. I recommend it for all human beings, and other creatures as well."
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at wired.com ...
BTW, the Amiga was a better computer than the Mac will ever be.
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The Wright brothers took technology from DaVinci... and it flew...
Apple made the Mac fly!
My latest PC (Toshiba Satellite P25-S607
Yep. Our department had one of those. I seem to recall the price was several thousand dollars and the only application that I can remember being available on it was a drawing program that we used for making viewgraphs (which was why we had it). Its most remarkable feature was the fact that one could become an expert user without reading the manual.
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