Apple Macintosh Turns 30 154
snydeq writes "30 years ago today, Apple debuted the Macintosh. Here are some reviews of the early Mac models, including the Macintosh ('will be compared to other machines not only in terms of its features but also in the light of the lavish claims and promises made by Apple co-founder Steven Jobs'), the Mac SE ('contains some radical changes, including room for a second internal drive and even a fan'), the Mac IIx ('a chorus of yawns'), and the Mac Portable ('you may develop a bad case of the wannas for this lovable [16-lb.] luggable'). Plus insights on the Macintosh II's prospects from Bill Gates: 'If you look at a product like Mac Word III on that full-page display, it's pretty awesome. ... But the corporate buyer is never going to be a strong point for Apple.'"
iFixit got their hands on a Mac 128K and did a teardown, evaluating the old hardware for repairability. What will the Mac look like in another 30 years?
Re:The more things change the more they... change? (Score:5, Insightful)
You could hit the debugger switch, which was an add-on or semi-hidden piece, and get to a debug prompt. A very limited CLI.
The main thing, though, was that NOT having a CLI on the classic MacOS was a 'burning the ships behind' moment. By removing that as a fallback, applications had to be graphical and work without CLI install/diagnostic processes, Even minor utilities had to have some effort put into a proper user interface.
This worked, mostly. Some apps reimplemented command lines, and a lot of apps went to the super-limited interface, of course... but most stepped into the relatively new paradigms of the GUI (Apple not being the first, but popularizing it)
Re:The more things change the more they... change? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't like the movement of Apple towards a Microsoft-like business model where they care about their own corporate agenda more than their users
I was unaware that there was a time when that WASN'T the case.
The Computer for the Rest of Us (Score:3, Insightful)
That's how they pitched the Mac... that is to say, a computer that's not just for computer nerds.
"I think a nerd is a person who uses the telephone to talk to other people about telephones. And a computer nerd therefore is somebody who uses a computer in order to use a computer."
- Douglas Adams
Re:I find it amusing. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
It worked too - IBM retained control over the business market for quite a while, and didn't realise until OS/2 and microchannel that it had actually lost the control it thought it had kept.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:The more things change the more they... change? (Score:4, Insightful)
A mouse driven text editor is nice as a set of training wheels but kind of a drag if you ever get anywhere beyond total novice.
Usable the first time you sit down with it and usable 10 years later aren't always the same thing.
If you are too dumb to use the build in (and well defined over the whole platform) keyboard shortcuts of Mac text editors - how the hell are you going to use vi or Emacs?
Re:The more things change the more they... change? (Score:4, Insightful)
The mac wasn't aimed at your typical vim user in the same way a Toyota Corolla isn’t aimed at professional drivers.
Come on. We all know this. Its a 30 year old argument.
Re:Funny, there was no ./ article about The Ad (Score:4, Insightful)
These chains on your ankles and wrists aren't meant to restrain you but to keep you from falling off the side of the ship.
That is correct, or did you not notice they can be easily removed by anyone that knows how to swim?
Apple really doesn't care if you wander off the edge of the ship. They just don't want the 95% of people who would be harmed by doing so to accidentally do so. If you really want to help people, that's the right way to look at the problem at a large scale.
Re:Funny, there was no ./ article about The Ad (Score:2, Insightful)