The Mac Turns 40 (theverge.com) 135
Apple's longest-running product is an increasingly small part of the company's business. And yet, it's never been more successful. Jason Snell, writing for The Verge: Twenty years ago, on the Mac's 20th anniversary, I asked Steve Jobs if the Mac would still be relevant to Apple in the age of the iPod. He scoffed at the prospect of the Mac not being important: "of course" it would be. Yet, 10 years later, Apple's revenue was increasingly dominated by the iPhone, and the recent success of the new iPad had provided another banner product for the company. When I interviewed Apple exec Phil Schiller for the Mac's 30th anniversary, I found myself asking him about the Mac's relevance, too. He also scoffed: "Our view is, the Mac keeps going forever," he said.
Today marks 40 years since Jobs unveiled the original Macintosh at an event in Cupertino, and it once again feels right to ask what's next for the Mac. Next week, Apple will release financial results that will reinforce that Mac sales are among the best they've been in the product's history. Then, a day later, Apple will release a new device, the Vision Pro, that will join the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch in an ever-expanding lineup of which the Mac is only one small part. As the Mac turns 40, it's never been more successful -- or more irrelevant to Apple's bottom line. It's undergone massive changes in the past few years that ensure its survival but also lash it to a hardware design process dominated by the iPhone. Being middle-aged can be complicated.
Mac users -- and I've been one of them for 34 of those 40 years -- have been on the defensive for most of the platform's existence. The original Mac cost $2,495 (equivalent to more than $7,300 today), and it had to compete with Apple's own Apple II series, which was more affordable and wildly successful. The Mac was far from a sure thing, even at Apple: in the years after the Mac was first introduced, Apple released multiple new Apple II models. (One even had a mouse and ran a version of the Mac's Finder file manager.) It took a long time for the Mac to emerge from the Apple II's shadow. And as revolutionary as the Mac's interface was -- it was the first popular personal computer to have a mouse-driven, menu-oriented user interface rather than a simple command line -- it also had to overcome an enormous amount of resistance for being such an outlier. Once Microsoft truly embraced the Mac's interface style with Windows, it took over the world, leaving the Mac with measly market share and diminishing prospects. Further reading:
Apple Shares the Secret of Why the 40-Year-Old Mac Still Rules.
Greg Joswiak on the Mac's Enduring Appeal.
Mac at 40: The Eras Tour.
40 Years Later, the Original Mac is More Amazing Than Ever.
The Birth of the Mac: Rolling Stone's 1984 Feature on Steve Jobs and His Whiz Kids (March 1, 1984).
Today marks 40 years since Jobs unveiled the original Macintosh at an event in Cupertino, and it once again feels right to ask what's next for the Mac. Next week, Apple will release financial results that will reinforce that Mac sales are among the best they've been in the product's history. Then, a day later, Apple will release a new device, the Vision Pro, that will join the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch in an ever-expanding lineup of which the Mac is only one small part. As the Mac turns 40, it's never been more successful -- or more irrelevant to Apple's bottom line. It's undergone massive changes in the past few years that ensure its survival but also lash it to a hardware design process dominated by the iPhone. Being middle-aged can be complicated.
Mac users -- and I've been one of them for 34 of those 40 years -- have been on the defensive for most of the platform's existence. The original Mac cost $2,495 (equivalent to more than $7,300 today), and it had to compete with Apple's own Apple II series, which was more affordable and wildly successful. The Mac was far from a sure thing, even at Apple: in the years after the Mac was first introduced, Apple released multiple new Apple II models. (One even had a mouse and ran a version of the Mac's Finder file manager.) It took a long time for the Mac to emerge from the Apple II's shadow. And as revolutionary as the Mac's interface was -- it was the first popular personal computer to have a mouse-driven, menu-oriented user interface rather than a simple command line -- it also had to overcome an enormous amount of resistance for being such an outlier. Once Microsoft truly embraced the Mac's interface style with Windows, it took over the world, leaving the Mac with measly market share and diminishing prospects. Further reading:
Apple Shares the Secret of Why the 40-Year-Old Mac Still Rules.
Greg Joswiak on the Mac's Enduring Appeal.
Mac at 40: The Eras Tour.
40 Years Later, the Original Mac is More Amazing Than Ever.
The Birth of the Mac: Rolling Stone's 1984 Feature on Steve Jobs and His Whiz Kids (March 1, 1984).
Irony (Score:3, Funny)
Apple switching to computers that basically require 20/20 vision while the Mac is old enough to have presbyopia.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in 1984 I did encounter what likely was the first Mac in Sweden, it wasn't even in a 230V version but a 115V version and we had to use a reduction transformer to get it to run on the US voltage of 115V. Then someone forgot the transformer...
In any case I got to toy around with it a little and it was a quite weird experience with a GUI compared to the text oriented systems of 80x25 characters that I was used to.
Re: (Score:2)
The first Mac had many of the same characteristics as later Steve Jobs products.
Very little in the way of expansion, the engineers had to sneak it in. It was an appliance to Jobs. The OS was all about how it looked, not how it worked. For example, there was no pre-emptive multitasking. The CPU, the 68000, was designed to enable it, but Jobs didn't care about stuff like that.
It set the standard for the one button mouse too, which Apple has stuck with to this day.
The floppy drive had an electronic eject mecha
Re: (Score:2)
There was a great site with interviews with the engineers who worked on it, but I've lost the link.
https://www.folklore.org/0-index.html [folklore.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks, much appreciated.
Re: (Score:2)
the lisa which you could consider the mac prototype, had much of the same architecture, but the os had multitasking capabilities. the mac wasn't more than just a cut-cost model of the lisa, applied to everything, including the os (removing a lot of the features to make it easier to maintain).
Re: Irony (Score:2)
For example, there was no pre-emptive multitasking. The CPU, the 68000, was designed to enable it, but Jobs didn't care about stuff like that.
Yeah, but it also was designed around 128kB of RAM (itself an increase over the original plan to go with 64kB as I recall) so it's not like it could have run multiple apps if they wanted it to.
They were just trying to build one computer back then -- not a platform that would be in use in the future.
It set the standard for the one button mouse too, which Apple has stuck with to this day.
In fairness there was no consistency then as to what other buttons did, if anything, and it was confusing to people who already had to be taught what a mouse even was and how to use it. Also, Apple's mice ship fo
Re: (Score:2)
I mean other than having a paperclip around to eject the disk to avoid it booting off the media you didn't want it to, the auto-eject drives worked pretty well. It was a little annoying compared to a standard 3.5 with an eject switch, but livable, even if you had to work with many of them in a given day, as I did.
Tell them about the interrupt key if you want to blow some minds.
Re: Irony (Score:2)
Like I said, if a disk needs to be ejected at boot, you hold down the mouse button during boot and it should be ejected by the drive. This is even mentioned in the 128k's manual. The paperclip thing is only if nothing else works.
If the machine is already up, ejecting the disk normally should work fine as long as it isn't in use. If it is, you can close out whatever's using it or if it's already the boot disk, well, too late given that your issue was not wanting it to boot off that disk.
And yes, there were t
Re: (Score:2)
And you could configure sounds to be played on disk insert and eject. Our office comedians had a field day with that.
Re: Irony (Score:2)
The NeXT had two buttons on the mouse but they both acted like a left button. There was a user option defaulting to off to enable the right button. I figured software could ignore this, I was wrong the buttons were made identical deep in the OS. Steve Jobs déconstruit had a hate of multiple buttons.
Re: (Score:2)
It set the standard for the one button mouse too, which Apple has stuck with to this day.
It's funny - I haven't bought a Mac with a one button mouse since the 80's, yet heading on half a century later, that myth that Apple uses one button mice persists. It's like having discussions about how bad Windows 1.0 is.
My Apple mouse has right and left, scrolling and gestures. I can use that or any present day wired or wireless mouse. Works just like a real computer.
Re: (Score:2)
Their single-button mice carried on well through the 90's and all the way into the OS X era. I seem to recall using a third-party two-button serial mouse on a System 7 Mac and while the right-click didn't actually do anything in Finder, there were some games that supported it.
Even the latest generation of mice that ship with Macs carry forward with the single-button aesthetic, even if they readily offer right-clicking and various other gestures through the use of touch sensitivity.
Re: (Score:2)
Their single-button mice carried on well through the 90's and all the way into the OS X era. I seem to recall using a third-party two-button serial mouse on a System 7 Mac and while the right-click didn't actually do anything in Finder, there were some games that supported it.
Even the latest generation of mice that ship with Macs carry forward with the single-button aesthetic, even if they readily offer right-clicking and various other gestures through the use of touch sensitivity.
Explain what this single button aesthetic is? I use The three main OS's, Window, Unix Mac, and Linux, and I'll be darned if they don't seem the same. Left click, right click, scrolling, and gestures on my Macs. I press on the right side, I get a right click. Press on the left side, I get a left click, use a finger on the middle to scroll down, I get a scroll down. I use my wireless mac mouse interchangebly with a Microsoft camo mouse. There are a couple programs that I prefer the microsoft mouse zooming. It
Re: (Score:2)
The Magic Mouse has no visible buttons, but the entire thing is a capacitive-sensitive platform on top of a single mechanical button. It provides all the functionality of a multi-button mouse with a scrolling "wheel", but aesthetically, there's only one button.
The Mighty Mouse could be described very similarly, though it had the scroll ball and it had those weird side buttons. I think they activated Exposé. It also couldn't register simultaneous right and left clicks, which was lame. And that was what.
Re: Irony (Score:2)
For example, there was no pre-emptive multitasking. The CPU, the 68000, was designed to enable it, but Jobs didn't care about stuff like that.
This is not the same as having no multitasking. Macs had cooperative multitasking from the start, something that was rare on the PC side until Windows 3 in 1990.
Macs got preemptive multitasking in 2001 by adopting NextStep, which had it in 1989. Windows NT had preemptive multitasking in 1993, but the consumer OS didn't have it until Windows 2000.
Preemptive multitasking is much more complex to implement than cooperative, and it requires more resources, making it not a great choice for a 1984 consumer-grade P
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think that's true, preemptive multitasking has very low overhead. It's used in things like FreeRTOS, which runs on very low resource microcontrollers.
All you really need is an interrupt on a timer. It can be an existing timer like the screen vertical blank. Beyond that the overhead is minimal, just storage for CPU registers.
I know because I've written one from scratch. I've written cooperative multitasking too, only because it offers certain reliability guarantees.
Re: (Score:2)
Going by memory here, so please correct me:
The power switch that powered on the Mac came with the Mac II, Mac IIx, and those models. It wouldn't power the Mac off unexpectedly, but the power switch on the back of the Mac would. Maybe System 7-9 modified that functionality so the power key on the keyboard would power off. It was nice though, since you didn't have to reach around to power the machine on, just tap it on the keyboard (life was a lot easier with the 101 key keyboard, rather than the one witho
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The power switch is NOT on the keyboard.
Re: (Score:3)
I had noticed that as well. Intraocular lens implants of the adjustable variety for the presbyopia and lasik to fix the astigmatism, and only then I can pony up for the goggles.
I'll be missing this trend.
Re: Irony (Score:3)
Your monitor doesn't? Apple's headset thing has prescription lenses.
Re: (Score:2)
Are the lenses easily replaceable?
I've got prescription lenses for my Vive 2 and they are easy to swap out when others want to use the goggle.s. They work well but the problem is I have to always put my glasses back on to see the screen if I pop the VR goggles off for a minute to check something.
Re: (Score:2)
Spot on! The first thing I check with each new release of OSX is whether or not font scaling is anything close to being as nice as what Ubuntu/Gnome offers,... and then I walk away disappointed and also smug.
When will Apple ever offer a computer for the rest of us?
Re: (Score:2)
The Nikki Haley of computer operating systems (Score:5, Funny)
A strong second-place finish to Windows.
Re: The Nikki Haley of computer operating systems (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Classic MacOS really wasn't better than Windows in any way except being slightly easier to use (except it had no way to switch applications using the keyboard without third party software, which was a huge miss — there was no way to switch between full-screen applications.) Windows NT came out long, long, long before OSX, and was far superior to Classic MacOS. It wasn't until OSX that Mac OS was superior to Windows in any way but ease of use for people who could only handle one button on a mouse. And
Re: (Score:2)
Windows NT came out long, long, long before OSX, and was far superior to Classic MacOS. It wasn't until OSX that Mac OS was superior to Windows in any way but ease of use for people who could only handle one button on a mouse. And by then, it had become clear that you really needed at least two buttons, because you had to hold down a key (was it option?) to emulate an alternate click. By the time Apple finally offered a way to get that from the mouse, PCs had scroll wheels, and Apple was behind again.
Yes, it was Option-click, on the one button mouse.
I was using 2 button mice with scroll wheels on Mac since the 90's. And at the time that the PC state of the art was W 3.1. Also used an Amiga for video work, which was superior to them both in Operating system.
Re: The Nikki Haley of computer operating systems (Score:2)
Re: The Nikki Haley of computer operating system (Score:2)
I was a systems admin at an almost all Unix shop back before NT4 came out, and for it, DirectX. Before that NT offered absolutely no way to get direct access to video memory.
As a result it was ROCK SOLID.
In NT4, Microsoft merged the Kernel and GDI memory spaces in pursuit of greater video performance and the blue screen became common for the first time as applications could suddenly summon Satan all over the graphics driver.
IME the vast majority of blue screens throughout history have been failures of the v
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
History, misremembered. (Score:5, Informative)
One even had a mouse and ran a version of the Mac's Finder file manager.
Apple mice were available for all of the IIe, IIc and IIgs product lines. And GS/OS wasn't running Macintosh's Finder at all.
What killed the Apple II lineup was the IIgs: it was a better colour Macintosh than the colour Macintoshes, had 32 channel stereo sound thanks to its integrated Ensoniq DOC, was open architecture, was cheaper, and most importantly... it infuriated the Mac camp at Apple.
Re: (Score:3)
What killed the Apple II lineup was the IIgs: it was a better colour Macintosh than the colour Macintoshes
The Macintosh II had a 68020@16 MHz, the IIgs had a 65C816 @ 2.8 MHz. The IIgs was arguably a better value, but it was not a better machine. Agreed that the Macintosh didn't kill the Apple II line, though, which includes the IIgs. Cheap PC clones did that. Most people didn't need great graphics to get work done at the time. Hell, for business use, most people didn't need graphics period.
Re: (Score:3)
While Apple crippled the GS by keeping the CPU at 2.8MHz, there were accelerator cards up to 8MHz, or even 18.75 MHZ, http://retro-treasures.blogspo... [blogspot.com] making the GS a better Mac then the Mac, with colour and expand-ability.
Re: History, misremembered. (Score:2)
There were 68040 accelerators for Macintoshes (from Daystar) before you could buy a quadra, too. The Macs also had a superior system bus to the IIgs. The IIgs was inferior to color Macs (the topic at hand, I may remind you) in every way but price.
Still love my Quadra 700 w/ M68040 (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Curious, is A/UX year 2000 complaint ? I ask because I had a 16 bit UNIX (IN/ix) running on an 8086 at the time and I had to hack it when 2000 came around.
Being stupid, I tossed the machine over 15 years ago when I had to move to a smaller apartment :(
Re: (Score:2)
Too expensive to become mainstream (Score:2)
They're just not a little bit more expensive because of good quality parts but way too expensive to compete with anything else in the market.
I'm still sticking to my 2012 iMac.
The Ridley Scott commercial (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Ridley Scott commercial (Score:5, Insightful)
Crazy how they foreshadowed their own business practices.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
All it took was massive piles of cash. Works every time.
Long time Mac user here, but .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite getting on-board with Macs as my primary machines I used both at my workplace and home back in 2000-2001? I'm starting to reach the stage where I'm having a hard time justifying continuing on with them. The much touted "halo effect" is certainly real; I keep my appointments in iCal and they sync to all my Apple devices via iCloud. My daily driver car uses Apple CarPlay and relies on it for the navigation system. I've got all my contacts in Apple's Address Book, and I love the ease of various tasks like clipping parts of a screen to shoot over to someone on their phone via iMesage from my Mac. I have the Apple Watch and it integrates nicely with everything else.
My biggest issue has become the cost for any machines Apple considers "Pro" quality. (Let's be honest here. Apple likes to market their higher spec'd systems as tools for "professionals" but in reality, you're simply buying a machine you can appreciate as a computer enthusiast.) You couldn't even get anything from Apple with a dedicated GPU suitable for any kind of 3D gaming without buying a "Pro" system.
I was generally ok with all of this until a few years ago. For example? I bought an iMac Pro when it was released. I was able to get it for $1000 off retail pricing, by buying it off the shelf from Micro Center when they ran a special sale/promo. And then? The 3 year AppleCare extended warranty wasn't even too costly to add on, because Apple was letting you use the same one they sold for basic consumer iMacs on the iMac Pro! I still have that iMac Pro and use it daily to work with projects I send to my 3D printers. And long before that, I owned multiple versions of the Mac Pro towers -- all of which were certainly expensive, but justified their cost with how long I was able to keep using them as my primary machines, and how much work I got done with them.
But we're at the point now where prices have really come down for solid state disk storage, yet Apple commands insane premiums. And unlike in the "old days", you've got everything soldered onto the logic boards now, so you can't just upgrade your SSD in a Macbook Pro. (I think I was quoted $400 to configure one with 2TB of storage vs 1TB!) And with the M series processor essentially combining the RAM, the CPU and the GPU on one big piece of silicon? You're stuck paying up-front for the configuration the machine will forever have with all of that, too. That's a problem when you want to "future proof" your big new computer purchase and the total price tag with 64GB or RAM, the better video configuration and a decent sized SSD comes in at well over $5000!
Apple's sky-high pricing on the latest incarnation of the Mac Pro tower was just laughable. Literally nobody was purchasing one except for businesses and self-employed people in fields who could bill so much for their work, they justified the computer's cost that way. The Mac Studio feels like Apple's "band aid" for that problem, except it's still got the problem of the crazy high price once you start custom configuring it with better specs. And with Apple doing their upgrades "out of sync" with each other lately? There's all the uncertainty and confusion about spending all that coin on a Mac Studio with an M2 series processor, while the latest Macbook Pro has the M3 series processor in it.
And the truth is? The Mac just isn't making such a strong case for being worth the premium price of sticking with it for the "better software", anymore. Remember when people really loved Apple's "iWork" suite as a nice alternative to using Microsoft Office? Yeah -- now Pages, Keynote and Numbers simply feel like they're primarily there for iPad users with Mac counterparts still offered just to make the files portable between the two. Final Cut Pro X is still a solid product for video editing but that's only of interest to a very specific group of people. And Logic Pro X? Well, it's a similarly solid product for computer musicians out there -- but Apple had to buy that one out and take it over as their own. They didn't build that in-house
Re: (Score:2)
The Mac just isn't making such a strong case for being worth the premium price of sticking with it for the "better software", anymore.
They shat that bed with their aggressive architectural changes. There was once a time when Macs were the "artists" choice, right up until the point where Mac was the proud owner of the title where Adobe's industry dominant products didn't have any 64bit versions on Mac.
There was once a time where it was absurd to think that a professional audio studio could use windows software due to the shittyness of Windows's audio subsystem, but those days were gone. There was once a time where Windows could not reliabl
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Cheap enough (Score:2, Insightful)
Everyone bitches about price. You can get a Mac laptop that is plenty enough for what most people need for only $1000.
Sure, maybe you can get a Dell or something with 5x the specs for fifty cents. Who cares? The Mac is only $1000. I mean, ONLY $1000! Unless you're on welfare, that ain't much money.
So...in summary...fuck the haters.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
So you are offering to buy people a Mac? Cool ! /s
Apple can Fuck off with soldered in RAM, soldered in SSD, and price gouging for RAM upgrades.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Most people don't care about that shit. There could be a miniature Indian generating smoke signals in there powering the whole thing for all most people care, just as long as it does what they want it to do.
In 2014, I bought a Mac Mini with "soldered in" RAM and SSD. It was my primary device until a couple of months ago. That's 9 years. It still works JUST FINE with that soldered in shit. I could continue to use it for YEARS if I wanted to. I only decided to replace it because I'm going to die soon and I di
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and I don't know if this is a Windows thing, but somehow a macOS install continues to work for years. Have to remind myself I'm on a seven year old laptop at the moment. Of course, updates will stop altogether. But the installation doesn't degrade. Is that the same on Windows? Honest question.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Cheap enough (Score:5, Funny)
"I only decided to replace it because I'm going to die soon" - Registrations_suck, Jan 2024
Re: (Score:2)
I dunno....but I'm gonna die before that computer does. I plan to set it up in my 7 year old's room. I'm sure he will be thrilled to have it.
Re:Cheap enough (Score:5, Informative)
"Most people don't care about that shit."
ALL CUSTOMERS CARE ABOUT THAT SHIT.
"...just as long as it does what they want it to do."
PCs do what customers what them to do.
"So I spent $1700 or so and got her something she can easily use for the next 10 years. That's less than $200/year. That's NOTHING."
It's $200/year more than required by your own standards. Go fuck yourself, you lying piece of shit.
Re: (Score:2)
If they cared, they wouldn't be buying Apple stuff.
What's Apple's market share again? Was it fuck, or all?
Re: (Score:2)
If they cared, they wouldn't be buying Apple stuff.
What's Apple's market share again? Was it fuck, or all?
What's Apple's net profit and market cap again? How many billions of dollars are people spending on their shit? Plenty.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
$1000 USD may be "cheap" as you arrogantly put it in the US (for a comparitively slow and entry level machine btw, where many people need the higher up models, and the prices skyrocket - do yourself a favour and go look at the apple.com configurator and see how the consumer is ripped off, or go look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]) - but that is very very expensive anywhere else in the world. I'm not a hater, I love Apple (mac, iwatch, ipad, iphone), but I hate that folks like you bitch about peo
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
I wasn't talking about "the rest of the world". They can use an abacus.
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone bitches about price. You can get a Mac laptop that is plenty enough for what most people need for only $1000.
I got a PC laptop that is plenty enough for what most people need for $300. It's got 2C4T, came with 4GB RAM, and has a nice bright 720p display. It is adequate for the average user.
Unlike a Mac, I was able to double the ram and quadruple the storage for a few bucks with used parts. I'm about $345 into it having upgraded it from 4/128 to 8/512, to use the Apple parlance (albeit back when they started using that notation it was in MB, not GB.) And it even looks like a Macbook, same sort of silver color stuff
Re: (Score:2)
I got a PC laptop that is plenty enough for what most people need for $300. It's got 2C4T, came with 4GB RAM, and has a nice bright 720p display. It is adequate for the average user.
Unlike a Mac, I was able to double the ram and quadruple the storage for a few bucks with used parts. I'm about $345 into it having upgraded it from 4/128 to 8/512, to use the Apple parlance (albeit back when they started using that notation it was in MB, not GB.) And it even looks like a Macbook, same sort of silver color stuff.
So, what's your point? Yes, cheaper and upgradable shit is available. Big deal.
Apple makes luxury products. People pay more for a luxury product. They can get the non-luxury version of ANYTHING, for cheaper than the luxury version. I really don't understand why people find this so objectionable. There are entire companies that simply should not exist, on the basis of "but people can buy the non-luxury version of what they make for a lot cheaper!" or "they can buy a version they can work on themselves". A
Re: (Score:2)
My point is that Apple charges outrageous prices for storage and RAM. With a PC I have the option to get the low memory platform and upgrade it myself. With Apple devices you no longer get that option. You have to overpay Apple up front for mediocre parts, even on so-called "pro" models. That's not pro! That's a con, on multiple levels.
Re: (Score:2)
I reserve hate for people who cut you off at the last minute when if they pulled their head out of their asshole and checked their rear view once in a while they could have seen you coming and passed that car fucking ages ago, then speed up when they merge back into the right lane. Two tons of steel and they know fuck-all about how to drive, fuck those fucking fucks.
I thought it was just me. ACC helps keep my BP at safe levels.
Re: (Score:2)
Who cares? The Mac is only $1000. I mean, ONLY $1000! Unless you're on welfare, that ain't much money.
I am sorry, but WHAT? Earth is a big place and for the large majority of people living on Earth, $1000 is a large sum of money.
Re: (Score:2)
The majority of people on Earth don't really need a Mac, or any other computer.
It was OK until Amiga Workbench arrived (Score:2)
MacOS was cute, until the Amiga came along, with a multitasking OS, more advanced GUI, higher resolution, prettier icons (and more colours) longer filenames... the list goes on.
But hey, it's all ancient history now, and the Amiga exists only in the the memories of those who used it... and, let's be honest, in those who were forced to listen to Amiga users banging on about how great the Amiga was :-)
Re: (Score:2)
br> As a system operation tool and functionality of the machine, the Amiga had the Mac beaten. A lot of the "20 years since/30 years since/40 years since..."-style articles completely miss the reality on the ground at that time. It wasn't a battle between IBM and Apple, Apple were completely outsold by Commodore and took to simply lying about sales figures. But C
Re: (Score:2)
Workbench itself was never great. MacOS from an interface point of view had it beat.
Strongly disagree on both points. MacOS' interface was easier to use, but that is literally only because it didn't do as much. It didn't even support switching between full screen applications! Also, AmigaOS 2.x and later absolutely spanked MacOS in every conceivable way. Speaking as someone who used both systems regularly at the time (I had an Amiga 500 and a little later a 2000, and my mother had a Macintosh IIci) the Macintosh always felt horribly dated, limiting, and slow in that period. Things I could
Re: (Score:2)
I used to share a house with two Amiga owners while I had an ST (see post below), and also worked a weekend/summer job selling 16 bit computers and computer games. The Amigas were clearly the machines to beat. They weren't necessarily the friendliest option tho
Re: (Score:2)
They would have had to add memory protection to it, and that would have made a lot of older software incompatible, but then the MacOS didn't have any either until what, 8? 9? And they went through their own compatibility problems with the move to 32 bit clean applications.
I'm speculating here, but I think memory protection would have come pretty naturally - the later Motorola 680x0s had it, and these were already widespread in Amiga accelerator cards at the time. It wouldn't have been "trivial" to implement, but it seems like something that could have been added, e.g with dual-boot or emulation. Even back then it wasn't unheard of to use multiple Kickstart ROMs to allow compatibility with certain esoteric software. (The contemporary Kickstart swapper I remember was called Re
Re: (Score:2)
It wasn't that it would be "hard" to add memory protection to the OS, it's that it would break a lot of software which depended on it not existing.
Re: (Score:2)
If not for Commodore's management being frankly terrible towards the end (and being why it ended) the Amiga might have continued to be a thing.
I've heard nothing but terrible things about Commodore's management. Apparently their execs were paying themselves more than the IBM execs were at the time, so it wasn't just incompetence, there was plenty of greed too. There was even an easter egg in some Amiga models that called out the management that "fucked it up." https://theamigamuseum.com/ami... [theamigamuseum.com]
I think a few ex-Commodore engineers still read Slashdot now and again, I'm sure they have some tales to tell.
Re: (Score:2)
the mac naver made much sense to me, if you wanted to ultimate machine, you got an Amiga for less. if you just wanted the power, but not the price, you could have gone for an atari st. both of those machines were able to emulate a mac btw.
Re: (Score:2)
Despite that, I eventually got a Mac LC at the tail end of System 6, although mostly I spent my time on System 7. The
Re: (Score:2)
both of those machines were able to emulate a mac btw.
Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about the emulation. On the Amiga I think it was called "Shapeshifter." I didn't use it much myself (I like my GUI to have TWO mouse buttons!) but I got the impression it was pretty stable.
Where is the mention of Lisa?? (Score:2)
Without Apple learning from the "failed" Lisa would the Mac been as successful?
> it was the first popular personal computer to have a mouse-driven
Then why does Wikipedia say it was the Lisa's [wikipedia.org] mouse driven GUI predates the Mac??
Apple Pointing Devices [wikipedia.org] says the Lisa's mouse predates the Mac.
Someone is viewi
The Lisa wasn't popular (Score:2)
The key word is "popular". The Lisa wasn't ever popular. It was basically a market failure. It wasn't "mass market", either - it was priced way too high for a home or school computer, relegating it to businesses that could justify it. You initially needed a Lisa to develop software for the Mac using a cross build environment, but it wasn't long before self-hosted Mac development tools became available, which meant there was even less reason to have a Lisa.
The Lisa wasn't the first computer with a GUI an
Re: (Score:2)
the lisa was uber expensive, but the mac wasn't much better, i mean +$7k in today money! would you buy such an expensive computer for home (and which school could afford something like that), certainly not in 1984. the lisa being more expensive doesn't even matter, as the mac was already priced outside most people's range.
Re: (Score:2)
I went to schools which had Macs... one or two of them, in a lab full of Apple 2s. Weirdly, my Jr. High had a PC Jr lab, I took a class in LOGO there. Those were not exactly cheap machines either. For a while there were grants for schools to get computers, at least in California. No money for music programs, though.
Re: The Lisa wasn't popular (Score:2)
The Xerox Alto was the internally used research project. The Xerox Star was marketed commercially but had way too steep a price to assemble a useful system -- since it basically required a small LAN of multiple machines and a laser printer -- for hardly anyone to buy.
Love it, but (Score:2)
However, it's:
- staggeringly and hopelessly expensive
- impossible to repair
- impossible to upgrade
- parts are eye-wateringly expensive
- (intel based versions at least) overheat constantly with screaming fans, I'm hopeful that when I can afford an M* upgrade, this is addressed
- (intel based versions at least) apps are slow to open, ditto
- the finder is a piece of crap compared to windows file explorer (I can't
Re: (Score:2)
The butterfly keyboard has been like doing self flagellation with a blunt fork. After five years I started to get used to it.
Re: (Score:2)
I use an old MacBook at home, but this issue has to be the most galling to me. Apple knows overheating is an issue. But they don't want to put proper cooling into the machines because it will gasp make the form factor unappealing or something. So instead, when the machine inevitably gets too hot it will actually slow down the processor to compensate. Seriously?
The Xerox Alto turns 50 on 1st March 2024 (Score:3, Insightful)
Credit to the cool original engineers not the nasty marketeers of the spinoffs.
Credit to the Wozes not the Jobses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto
Genius, maybe? (Score:2)
The introduction of the Mac in 1984 was a piece of genius but I don't think anyone really realized it until later. I think it was Steve Jobs years later who noted in some interview I saw a long time ago that because the GUI of the original 128k Mac required a faster and more sophisticated processor in order to make it responsive enough (and certainly more responsive than the ill-fated Lisa, it gave programmers the opportunity to write more sophisticated programs designed to make use of it. Certainly it wa
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You're saying it was "genius" of Apple to choose the 68K? LOL
IBM negotiated to use the 68K in the PC, but had to use the 8088 instead because Moto couldn't commit to the volumes. If it was genius, it was IBM's genius first.
Your "realize it later" is simply ignorant fanboys making up stories. What would Steve Jobs know about "more sophisticated processors"? His skills were ripping off his partners, denying paternity and stealing organs from more deserving patients on their death beds.
"Certainly it was th
Re: (Score:2)
I beg to differ as I'm not a particular Steve Jobs fanboi. He was an arrogant and egotistical prick who somehow had a instinct for what a good, workable idea was. You have to know what a good idea is before you steal or build upon it. But I said it was "instinct", not "brains." But it's obvious that you hate Steve Jobs' guts which tells me that your opinions about him are heavily biased against him and perhaps not even worth being deb
Switched a decade ago... and now? (Score:3)
The cost of a mac? - there was a time when you could "silence the haters" with some decently put together specs and cost comparisons.
Generally, whilst a mac may have come out maybe 15 to 20 percent over the price of an equivalently specced PC, the quality of the hardware, the compactness of it, how it all just "worked" in a relatively seamless way - that was the selling point.
Those days have gone, long gone. Apple Silicon has put multiple nails in the coffin of an "affordable mac", simply because you are stuck with the spec you buy and the cost of Apple's RAM and Storage is quite frankly criminal.
The moment storage got soldered onto the board is the moment buying a mac started to make less sense.
I started moving to macOS on a hackintosh about 12 years back. I wanted an OS with Unix under the hood but one which could run the software I used on a daily basis - I do code and graphics.
I couldn't afford a mac at the time.
It was only when I was issued a mac at work and then managed to convince the IT department to give me an old 5.1 cheesegrater mac that was being thrown out, that I made the switch to Apple hardware.
12 years later, I have a mac Mini M1, but it's probably the last mac I'll buy.
I suspect I'll switch to Desktop Linux in the coming years.
Re: (Score:2)
1st Mac (Score:3)
I bought a "Fat MAC" in 1985 (Score:2)
Worst mistake I ever made.
A rich uncle had died so I could afford it, but I should have bought apple stock instead.
The following year I bought an Amiga 1000 , it was way better, even with WB1.2
In 1988 I sold the mac for about 20% of what I paid for it - I haven't bought anything apple since then.
Ah... nostalgia creeps in. (Score:2)
From 1992 to 1997 I was running a tech repair centre inside a retail store. I was a certified Apple technician (among my many certifications).
I replaced a lot of Mac Plus power supplies... cold solder joints were a constant failure. I don't know how many Quantum SCSI drives got a sharp blow to dislodge the platters and let them spin up one last time to copy the data. But my favorite thing from the era was the easy repair Apple products offered.
The PowerBook lineup could be disassembled in seconds, right up
Macintosh Firsts (Score:3)
Native scalable fonts (TrueType, which is what you are using right now)
Integrated color management (Via ICC, which everyone uses now)
A standardized multimedia framework (QuickTime, the container format for which is the basis for the MP4 container format)
Standardized system-wide scripting (AppleScript)
Integrated speech recognition and synthesis
Server-less file and printer sharing (AppleTalk)
Plug and play expansion cards (NuBus)
Software controlled power
Unified data access connectors (DAM, pre-ODBC)
Password management (Keychain)
System-wide multilingual support (WorldScript, bits of which formed the basis of Unicode)
Bits of these technologies could be bolted into early versions of Windows, IRIS or Solaris, but none were integrated into their respective OSes until later. Also, some technologies were available on big iron (JCL could script nearly anything on a S/370) but this was generally unavailable on a PC. And before someone says batch files or csh scripts, not all applications supported deep functionality through their CLIs like Mac apps did with AppleScript. For example, you could batch color-correct TIFFs in Photoshop then tell XPress to import and save them as poster templates.
Re: (Score:2)
My wife adored her 27" imac retina until the motherboard borked itself.
I replaced it with a macbook pro + 40" 4k OLED monitor. She would still prefer the 27" imac though.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
"What the Mac brought was a separation of the OS and the application. "
LOL wut? A historian you are not.
Re: (Score:2)
System # never featured any memory protection, even with later 680X0 processors with MMU's
It also lacked preemptive multitasking, instead featuring cooperative multitasking.
Logical separation of OS and Application only occured in the filesystem. I was always fond of System # FS simplicity and neatness. The resource and data forks file model greatly simplified the OS. An application would be a single file, containing code, configuration, and dependencies.
A bootable OS consisted of handful of files in a Syst
Re: (Score:2)
a separation of the OS and the application
As a user of an Apple IIgs back in the day, I remember there were certain OS functions that required booting up the computer using the OS floppy disk. For example, making a copy of a disk required first booting up using the OS floppy disk. The OS floppy also contained a "how to use an Apple computer" game intro thing which I remember was set in a jungle and would have been a fun game if they had built it out more.
If you didn't need those certain OS functions, then you just put in whatever floppy for whate
Re: (Score:3)
"Microsoft introduced preemptive multitasking to the "first popular personal computer" in 1987"
You may have overlooked The Amiga 1000 and 500 (AmigaOS/Exec) that featured "preemptive" multitasking, not the "cooperative" multitasking that earlier version of Windows and Apple's "System" OS provided.
As any Amiga user would remember getting frustrated with a buggy apps in Windows or Apple's "System" OS rendering the system unusable with their inferior cooperative multitasking.
Jobs could have technically achieve