Video of Steve Jobs's first public demo of the Mac resurfaces after 30 years
A video of late Apple chief Steve Jobs demonstrating the then-new Macintosh to a gathering of the Boston Computer Society in 1984 has been digitized and made available online, providing a unique insight into the machine's early life.
The Boston demonstration came one week after the Mac's more well-known unveiling to a group of Apple investors at Cupertino's Flint Center and mirrors the content of the earlier presentation, though with a more polished feel. Boston-area videographer Glenn Koenig preserved and digitized the footage, which was first published by Time's Harry McCracken.
One difference from the Cupertino staging comes toward the end of the 90-minute video, when a group of original Mac team members take the stage for a question-and-answer session. Jobs is joined by Bill Atkinson, Steve Capps, Owen Densmore, Andy Hertzfeld, Bruce Horn, Rony Sebok, Burrell Smith and Randy Wigginton.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak --?who famously was not part of the Mac team --?was also present.
Jobs was characteristically immodest during the question-and-answer portion, telling an audience member who queried the group about the status of the Apple III that "I wouldn't have called on you if I'd known that was your question."
At one point, Jobs even compared the invention of the Mac to the invention of the telephone:
The Boston demonstration came one week after the Mac's more well-known unveiling to a group of Apple investors at Cupertino's Flint Center and mirrors the content of the earlier presentation, though with a more polished feel. Boston-area videographer Glenn Koenig preserved and digitized the footage, which was first published by Time's Harry McCracken.
One difference from the Cupertino staging comes toward the end of the 90-minute video, when a group of original Mac team members take the stage for a question-and-answer session. Jobs is joined by Bill Atkinson, Steve Capps, Owen Densmore, Andy Hertzfeld, Bruce Horn, Rony Sebok, Burrell Smith and Randy Wigginton.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak --?who famously was not part of the Mac team --?was also present.
Jobs was characteristically immodest during the question-and-answer portion, telling an audience member who queried the group about the status of the Apple III that "I wouldn't have called on you if I'd known that was your question."
At one point, Jobs even compared the invention of the Mac to the invention of the telephone:
The video ran for the first time this century at a 30th anniversary reunion of former Mac team members last week, and an edited version will be preserved by the Computer History Museum and made available --?along with videos of other Boston Computer Society meetings --?on the museum's website.And there were some people that talked about putting a telegraph machine on every desk in America to improve productivity. Now what those people didn't know was that about the same time, Alexander Graham Bell filed the original patents for the telephone -- a breakthrough in technology. Because putting a telegraph on every desk in America to improve technology wouldn't have worked. People wouldn't have spent the twenty to forty to a hundred hours to learn Morse code. They just wouldn't have done it.
But with the telephone, within ten years there were over 200,000 telephones on desks in America. It was a breakthrough, because people already knew how to use it. It performed the same basic function, but radical ease of use. And in addition to just letting you type in the words or click in the words, it let you sing. It let you intone your sentences to really get your meaning across.
And what we think we have here is the first telephone. And in addition to letting you do the old spreadsheets and word processing, it lets you sing. It lets you make pictures. It lets you make diagrams where you cut them and past them into your documents. It lets you put that sentence in Bold Helvetica or Old English, if that's the way you want to express yourself.
Comments
He would have been more right to say that it was as important as the telephone and Gutenberg's printing with moveable type combined, seeing as how the thinking behind the Mac led straight to desktop publishing and to the iPhone, with the equivalent of a library in your pocket, and a telephone you could bury your head into for hours and hours each day. It was all about the pointing device.
Now to watch the videos, if I can find them with my iPad.
And to all those haters, when you saw that genius demoing the drawing tools that was the master mimd behind the tech. The yard stick you clowns simply don't appreciate.
I said it before, Apple is a TRUE engineering company at its core. Not fancy advertising and hype. PURE ENGINEERING!!!!!
Would love to add this to my iTunes collection. Any chance Glenn Koenig or Harry McCracken will post it for free on iTunes?
PS: I have an original Macintosh bag (picked it up at a flea market) and found one of the original multi-color Apple decals in my files as well.
Steve was a true master.
And I kinda get goosebumps hearing the crowd cheer when the demo shows the eraser too or the zoom-in pixel editing! Concepts that happen so easily today that we barely remember we even do them.
edit: wrong non Flash video link posted earlier
Something so special to watch, and the fools put it on the net in Flash. Jeez Glenn...
I can imagine Steve commenting on that one!
Every article I’ve seen of it has it load for me as an MP4.
Can you post a link please?
Steve says, "next time you're using a Mac, remember these are the people who made it, they're hanging out somewhere in the ROM".
I widened my focus out from the video frame to look at my whole iMac and kinda got goosebumps!
Can you post a link please?
Haven't found a non-Flash video yet but found this website, http://allaboutstevejobs.com/movies/stevejobskeynotes.php. The first keynote from 1984 isn't available. This site looks really nice with plenty of videos and photos. I'll keep looking.
I think this should work. It’s the direct URL link I was given when I right-clicked the video above. It might auto-download, it might open centered in a grey window like other QuickTime movies do. I just downloaded it and watched it when I first saw it on 9to5M?c.
I widened my focus out from the video frame to look at my whole iMac and kinda got goosebumps!
Reminds me a lot of Mr. Macintosh. I wish they’d implement him in the modern OS.
Thanks. It downloads the 337MB video.
Cheers mate
"immodest"
Well, this is a marketing dog and pony after all. But I'd say that he was prescient in this case. When you look at the screen and see that he's interacting with a visual representation and a mouse, and the competition had a DOS prompt where you could press an arrow key and press another key combination to select a block of type -- and you could forget about graphics. Yeah, this is the Gutenberg press, the phone and the entire future of how people do work -- right there.
The next big moment will be a computer saying; "Momma, Dadda?" And someone will say to them; "well, this is a big deal, but the inventor is no Steve Jobs."
The next big moment will be a computer saying; "Momma, Dadda?" And someone will say to them; "well, this is a big deal, but the inventor is no Steve Jobs."
And then I rip its PSU out through its throat because nothing good will come of sapient machinery.
Can you post a link please?
here is the MP4 link provided by click2flash.
http://timeinc.brightcove.com.edgesuite.net/rtmp_uds/293884104/201401/3530/293884104_3106072393001_BCS-January-1984-640x480.mp4