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20 Years Of Macintosh

Lileks linked to the original Macintosh commercial yesterday. I was eleven years old when this thing aired for the first time, and I suppose I was too enthralled with BYTE Magazine and my Dad’s Victor 9000 to notice the development. We laughed at Macs then–cuisinarts, we called them–just as we laughed at CGA and the Hercules Graphics Adapter that fell so short of the Victor’s built-in 800×400 monochrome graphics. (HGA was a few dozen pixels off of that, if you’ll recall. Something like 750×350, which is a huge technological inferiority when you’re a paranoid defender of an underdog platform. Never again. Never again…)

Anyway, my newfound affection for the platform hasn’t diminished in recent months. I appreciate the commercial much more now than I would have five, ten, or even twenty years ago. I’ll have me one of those boxes at some point, I think.

Say, was our Macintosh heroine wearing an iPod in the original? I’m guessing not.

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  • Posted by Tim on Thursday, January 22, 2004 at 8:38:18 am PST
  • Category: Miscellany
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9 Responses to “20 Years Of Macintosh”

  1. Theognome says:

    My first computer was a vic 20. How’s that for a memory jog?

    Theognome

    Comment Permalink | Posted on January 22nd, 2004 at 7:53 pm |
  2. Tim Berglund says:

    As was mine! I learned BASIC on it, my first language. Then came my Dad’s Victor, then a Commodore 128, then an Amiga 500. Never one for the computing mainstream, was I?

    Comment Permalink | Posted on January 22nd, 2004 at 9:16 pm |
  3. Adeodatus says:

    First computer: Apple II+, with the 64k expansion card. Then in college: Mac 512. Oh, how I longed for one of those slic 2meg external drives! But it was cool enough to zip around using a single-button mouse and icons. The mouse I use now has 5 buttons. You think 15 years from now it’ll have 25?

    Comment Permalink | Posted on January 23rd, 2004 at 1:30 pm |
  4. Tim Berglund says:

    Just maybe.

    I remember a review in BYTE of a very-multi-button mouse–in the neighborhood of 25 buttons or so–back in the day when mice were still novelties on PCs. Tellingly, it didn’t go far.

    I’m still holding out for that four-blade razor, though.

    Comment Permalink | Posted on January 23rd, 2004 at 3:57 pm |
  5. Theognome says:

    Yeah, I learned basic on that ol’ vic, Too. I got me a Commodore 128 when I first joined the Navy and used it during my first tech schools, but sold it when I went to my first ship. I recall the game Bard’s Tale was quite fun on it, as well as another game (I can’t recall the name of it) that was a strategy game where you had to unite medieval brittain through placing armies and jousting and such. I didn’t have another computer for many years, which was a 386.

    Theognome

    Comment Permalink | Posted on January 23rd, 2004 at 11:56 pm |
  6. Tim Berglund says:

    Oooooh, Bard’s Tale! I need to download that sucker for my C64 emulator now. The boy must…play…Bard’s…Tale…

    I’m gonna hit myself in the forehead pretty hard when I think of the name of the game you’re talking about. I always played it at a friend’s house in his Amiga 1000, if it’s the same game. There was probably a C64 version of the same, but the name isn’t happening here.

    Comment Permalink | Posted on January 24th, 2004 at 9:17 am |
  7. Carmon Friedrich says:

    Yes! Buy a Mac! My hubby develops software on Macs, and we want Apple to stay in business ;-) .

    No, she was not wearing an iPod :-) …my husband showed me the commercial and had to point out to unobservant little me what the difference was. In 1986, he was working for Apple and we went to their 10th anniversary party, decked out in formal duds. It was at the Santa Clara Convention Center, and the entire place was decorated like the Land of Oz. Different rooms had food from different countries. Huey Lewis and the News was the entertainment (this was when “Back to the Future” was a big deal), as well as Ella Fitzgerald.

    How the mighty have fallen. But they still make great stuff. My husband bought me an iBook for our anniversary (which I get in lots of trouble with) and he gave me his iPod when he saw me eyeing it longingly after he brought it home. I’m spoiled.

    Comment Permalink | Posted on January 24th, 2004 at 10:31 pm |
  8. Tim Berglund says:

    Carmon:

    What kind of software does your husband write? Software guys are always appreciated around here!

    Comment Permalink | Posted on January 27th, 2004 at 6:04 am |
  9. Carmon Friedrich says:

    Tim, not to brag or anything, but he writes the kind that nobody else can write and untangles the very hardest software problems.

    He is contracting for Intuit, doing the QuickBooks software for the Mac. He is one of the lead programmers on the project and also did last year’s update. They called that project Space Cowboys (my hubby picked the name) because it was a bunch of “old-school engineers whose grasp of outdated technology makes them the only ones able to rebuild the primitive, outdated software that hopes to revive Mac accounting…the true story of ‘the ripe stuff.’

    All this with NO college degree! Gasp! He and Theo are good examples of self-taught, genius, culturemaking, patriarchal, goodnatured, adored-by-their-wives studmuffins (I guess that’s who Prairie Muffins marry).

    ‘Nuff said ;-) .

    Comment Permalink | Posted on January 27th, 2004 at 3:03 pm |
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