Apple celebrates nearly three decades of Macintosh
Thursday marks exactly 29 years to the day since Apple co-founder Steve Jobs unveiled the first Macintosh ? a computer that would forever change the world of computing.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook acknowledged the anniversary in his company's quarterly earnings call on Wednesday. The CEO took the opportunity to make opening remarks in which he marked the nearly three decades since the Macintosh "revolution" began.
"On January 24, 1984, Steve introduced the first Macintosh right here at a shareholder meeting in Cupertino," Cook said. "On the evening news that night, they said it was supposed to be one of the easiest computers to use, and thanks to the new mouse, you hardly had to touch the keyboard.
"We've come a long way since 1984, but we rely on the same spirit and drive that brought the original Mac and other revolutionary products like the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad into the world."
The now-iconic presentation from company co-founder Steve Jobs given in 1984 featured the Macintosh 128K cloaked within a bag, adding an element of mystery to the proceedings. Jobs then removed the Macintosh and its accompanying mouse from the bag, and pulled a 3.5-inch floppy disk from the inside of his jacket pocket to boot the machine, drawing laughs and applause from the audience.
Upon starting, the Macintosh began to play the theme song from "Chariots of Fire" and scrolled the word "MACINTOSH" across the screen. The demonstration also had Jobs's signature phrase, "insanely great," written out in cursive on the Macintosh display.
Other features demonstrated showed word processing, fonts, graphics editing, a calculator, and a chess game. But the biggest surprise came at the end of the presentation.
"Now we've done a lot of talking about Macintosh recently, but today, for the first time ever, I'd like to let Macintosh speak for itself," Jobs said before the computer's text-to-speech functionality was showcased.
"Hello, I'm Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag," the machine read aloud, drawing huge cheers from those in attendance at the shareholder meeting.
The presentation also featured a jab at IBM, the company that was then Apple's chief rival, as the Macintosh told the audience to "never trust a computer you can't lift!"
Now, almost 30 years later, Apple's current CEO vowed that his company is still focused on making the best possible products for consumers. Cook said on Wednesday that the most important thing to Apple is that customers love the products the company makes.
"Everyone at Apple has their eyes on the future ? a future driven by the incredible hard work and dedication of the most talented and creative team on earth," he said, "who all share a common purpose of continuing to create the world's best products, and in doing so enrich the lives of our customers."
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook acknowledged the anniversary in his company's quarterly earnings call on Wednesday. The CEO took the opportunity to make opening remarks in which he marked the nearly three decades since the Macintosh "revolution" began.
"On January 24, 1984, Steve introduced the first Macintosh right here at a shareholder meeting in Cupertino," Cook said. "On the evening news that night, they said it was supposed to be one of the easiest computers to use, and thanks to the new mouse, you hardly had to touch the keyboard.
"We've come a long way since 1984, but we rely on the same spirit and drive that brought the original Mac and other revolutionary products like the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad into the world."
The now-iconic presentation from company co-founder Steve Jobs given in 1984 featured the Macintosh 128K cloaked within a bag, adding an element of mystery to the proceedings. Jobs then removed the Macintosh and its accompanying mouse from the bag, and pulled a 3.5-inch floppy disk from the inside of his jacket pocket to boot the machine, drawing laughs and applause from the audience.
Upon starting, the Macintosh began to play the theme song from "Chariots of Fire" and scrolled the word "MACINTOSH" across the screen. The demonstration also had Jobs's signature phrase, "insanely great," written out in cursive on the Macintosh display.
Other features demonstrated showed word processing, fonts, graphics editing, a calculator, and a chess game. But the biggest surprise came at the end of the presentation.
"Now we've done a lot of talking about Macintosh recently, but today, for the first time ever, I'd like to let Macintosh speak for itself," Jobs said before the computer's text-to-speech functionality was showcased.
"Hello, I'm Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag," the machine read aloud, drawing huge cheers from those in attendance at the shareholder meeting.
The presentation also featured a jab at IBM, the company that was then Apple's chief rival, as the Macintosh told the audience to "never trust a computer you can't lift!"
Now, almost 30 years later, Apple's current CEO vowed that his company is still focused on making the best possible products for consumers. Cook said on Wednesday that the most important thing to Apple is that customers love the products the company makes.
"Everyone at Apple has their eyes on the future ? a future driven by the incredible hard work and dedication of the most talented and creative team on earth," he said, "who all share a common purpose of continuing to create the world's best products, and in doing so enrich the lives of our customers."
Comments
EDIT: I see it's corrected now, it's not 30 years (yet)!!
Three decades? 0 is 1 and 1 is 2. By mac computing standards its 31 years. LOL.
"The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse.' There is no evidence that people want to use these things. What businessman knows about point sizes on typefaces or the value of variable point sizes ? Who out there in the general marketplace even knows what a 'font' is ?
The whole concept and attitude towards icons and hieroglyphs is actually counterrevolutionary — it's a language that is hardly 'user friendly'. This type of machine was developed by hardware hackers working out of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. It has yet to find popular success. There seems to be some mysterious user resistance to this type of machine."
— John C. Dvorak on why the Macintosh would fail, San Francisco Examiner, 1984/02/19.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." — Ken Olson, president/founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.
What a tool.
His only use is to give hope to the brain dead that they can succeed in this world.
Strange fella, this Dvorak person. Also looks like some animated character from a movie I've seen...
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2358684,00.asp
Why did they make them with such ugly color plastic?
Funny thing is if you took it apart, you would see that even back then it used a Samsung display.
Originally Posted by mstone
Why did they make them with such ugly color plastic?
Everyone made beige boxes back then. It was the "Ford-esque favorite color" of the time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
Strange fella, this Dvorak person.
It does never cease to amaze how little understanding so many people who are paid to write about technology actually have of it. Dvorak being an obvious, and not atypical, example.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Originally Posted by mstone
Why did they make them with such ugly color plastic?
Everyone made beige boxes back then. It was the "Ford-esque favorite color" of the time.
I think they changed it to the standard lighter beige color around the SE model. This color reminds me of baby poop.
I believe the appropriate response is: oh, snap!
Why does this from Wikipedia cracks me up?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Everyone made beige boxes back then. It was the "Ford-esque favorite color" of the time.
I think it was initially HP's influence. They had wonderful desktop calculators and computers.
That's also where Jobs (and everyone else) got the idea for all-in-one boxes, like was used for the Apple II.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
Three decades of highly configurable and upgradable Macs that Tim Cook completely ruined with this last iMac update¡
Even back then you needed special tools to open the machine. Mac Cracker kit. You could upgrade the ram to 4 MB if you had an extra $6,000 to spare
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
Even back then you needed special tools to open the machine. Mac Cracker kit. You could upgrade the ram to 4 MB if you had an extra $6,000 to spare
My first Apple product was the 128K Mac. When the Mac Plus came out with 1 Meg it seemed like a ton of memory: Eight times the first Mac's memory. I don't think you could put 4 Mb in a Mac until the Mac II. Then it cost me $880 for the RAM and I didn't buy the RAM from Apple where it cost a lot more.
What I remember most about the original Mac was all the fonts! Most Mac owner's MacWrite output looked a lot like a ransom note due to the overuse of font types. It was just nearly impossible NOT to resist the temptation to use multiple fonts. The other thing I remember was listening to the single 400K drive swapping out bits of program with the RAM to get anything done... Reeer, reeer, Reeer, reeer, Reeer, reeer... It was a much more patient world back then.
Anyone happen to have a link to a non-YouTube version of this clip? Living in Germany, I'm not allowed to view it on YouTube because of the music it contains.
That could be a direct quote from an internal Microsoft memo. On the subject of their entire decade of "moderate" Windows tablet sales. Except, of course, that in Microsoft's case, the quote would be correct. In Dvorak's case, not so much.