Apple Macintosh

10 Replies to “Apple Macintosh”

  1. I grew up with one of these machines. When Apple stopped using this classic design icon in their “happy Mac” and “sad Mac” symbols, it was a sad day indeed.

  2. It’s like seeing a first love again after all these years. This little box inspired me in my high-school years while working in a print shop. It was strictly off limits to me. I had a mad affair with this square. So concrete, secure and precise on the outside and completely malleable on the inside. Some would consider this the perfect lover.

  3. This is where the whole personal computer revolution began. If it wasn’t for this baby, we wouldn’t be running around with iPods, iPhones, digital music and movie downloads, home movie and music making and editing, iChatting and working with quite possibly the most intuitive OS around. And to think, my parents were given one of these original Macs at a cost of $11,000 (NZ) Ouch.

  4. I still hear the sound of it’s floppy drive! Back in the days I was working as a system support guy in a software company, we ran regular copy sessions to distribute all the serious and not-so serious (NetTrek) software out to all Mac owners in the company. Also have fond memories of creating a MacDraw diagram of the local area network of the company which spanned 20 screens horizontal and vertical at actual size.

  5. I remmeber when I used these as a student. We were always looking for paperclips in order to eject floppy disk. It is only a few month later that we discovered that rebooting with mouse down will lead to the same effect.

    More than 20 years later, this shortcut is still active (less needed). But still, there ‘s is almost no way of knowing it, unless a friend tells you.

  6. There is a lot to be said for taking what other people have done (e.g. Xerox PARC’s work) and turning it into something where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. That’s what Apple did there.

    (Sure, there are lots of things which are bad and stupid about the system IMHO, and Apple still makes bad UI mistakes IMHO, but overall they have the least amount of suck of any system.)

    I find it interesting to hear about the political and economic machinations that went on about the Lisa then the Mac vs. the Apple II which was actually making really decent money at the time. Mr. Jobs is an amazing person. As are the other main individual contributors who did the grunt work.

  7. Ah, the good ol’ Toaster!
    I did layout on the school paper in high school and these were what we used. Doing it by computer was kind of new at the time, and we were overjoyed. One small-but-great design feature was the built-in handle on the top rear (not visible from the front). It was a little thing, but it meant you could lay out all your pages, throw the keyboard and mouse in your backpack and carry the whole machine with you– on the subway– to the printers. Much easier than trying to deal with a dozen 1.4Mb floppies! (Remember, this was like 1992. And, public school.)

    Also, these babies had the best keyboards EVER. Not only did they feel awesome, they made the greatest clicky sound. It made you feel so productive somehow. It sounded like you were getting something DONE, even if you were only playing Tetris.

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