Category: Mac at 40

Last night, the Computer History Museum put on a two-hour event honoring the Macintosh. I know how I’m spending my evening:

Harry McCracken has written an interesting column about the ways the original Mac was and wasn’t influential in its day:

Compared to other PCs of the time, the Mac’s small size and unified design offered several benefits. First, it took up little desk space and made the computer easy to tote around: It even sported a handle for that purpose. Second, ensuring that every Mac user had the same crisp 9-inch monochrome display gave the experience a consistency that was lacking in most other computers, which users plugged into whatever monitor (or TV set) they chose.

Beyond those advantages, the Mac was just plain approachable, back when many competitors still had a faint whiff of industrial equipment to them. Remember, most people had never touched a computer in 1984, and more than a few were intimidated by the prospect. The Mac’s unassuming hardware mirrored the user-friendliness of its software.

What the first Mac didn’t turn out to be was timeless. Thanks in part to its success and influence, computers didn’t stay scary forever. More and more people craved ones with larger displays, room for expansion, and new features such as CD-ROM drives—attributes that were at odds with the Mac’s diminutive sealed case. As laptops became popular (including Apple’s own PowerBooks), the whole notion of a desktop computer needing to be small felt outdated.

Jason Snell:

Before I started writing my piece on the Mac’s 40th anniversary for The Verge, I was thinking of different ways to plot out the arc of the Mac’s history. I ended up going with the fact that the Mac has been the underdog for most of its existence, but I also considered plotting the Mac’s history as defined by the Mac’s four distinct processor eras.

I’m sure everyone reading this has seen this ad before, but damn, it’s still so cool:

In contrast, the company’s 1985 Super Bowl ad was a real fall from grace:

Macintosh Office is a story for a different time, but that ad wasn’t a great start to things.

The Steve Jobs Archive has a new email out today:¹

When photographer Norman Seeff arrived at Apple’s offices in January 1984, he didn’t know what to expect. An editor at Rolling Stone had told him only that this was a “weird company” full of hippies making computers. Now Seeff, along with reporter Steven Levy, was covering these “whiz kids” as they prepared to launch their latest product—a new machine called Macintosh.

The atmosphere inside the office was a world away from the power suits and perms typical of 1980s corporate America. An expensive Bӧsendorfer grand piano sat in the lobby; employees often played it during breaks. Nearby stood a first-generation Sony CD player hooked up to a gigantic pair of speakers. There were scooters. Pets. Babies. Everyone wore jeans; some even had bare feet.

“It looked like a commune,” says Seeff. “It was so alive.”

I love this photo:

Top to bottom, from left: Rony Sebok, Susan Kare, Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, Owen Densmore, Jerome Coonen, Bruce Horn, Steve Capps, Larry Kenyon, Donn Denman, Tracie Kenyon and Patti Kenyon.

Dan Moren, writing over at Macworld:

Forty years. In the world of technology, where many devices seem to evaporate after only a matter of months, lasting for a decade is an accomplishment—but four of them? It’s nearly unheard of.

And yet today marks the 40th anniversary of the Macintosh. While it has certainly seen its ups and downs over the intervening years, it’s a device that has nevertheless been in constant production since the day Apple co-founder Steve Jobs first took the wraps off it back in 1984.

In that time, it’s run on four different processor architectures and two major operating systems, making it a bit of a computer of Theseus. It’s seen challengers rise and fall, and been threatened with extinction more than once, and yet for all of that has emerged in recent years revitalized and stronger than ever.

Jason Snell has a big feature over at The Verge today:

This week, I asked Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, the same question I asked Jobs for the Mac’s 20th anniversary and Schiller for the Mac’s 30th: as Apple adds yet more platforms and priorities, what does the Mac’s future look like?

No surprise, Joswiak gave me pretty much the same answer: “The Mac is the foundation of Apple… and today 40 years later it remains a critical part of our business,” he said. “The Mac will always be part of Apple. It’s a product that runs deep within the company, and defines who we are.”

This video from the January 1984 Boston Computer Society meeting is really special:

The machine was actually introduced a few days before at Apple’s annual shareholders meeting, but the Boston Computer video is of higher quality, and includes a panel made up of Steve Capps, Andy Hertzfeld, Randy Wigginton, Bill Atkinson, Bruce Horn, Burrell Smith, Owen Densmore and Rony Sebok, taking questions from the audience. There’s a spicy one about the Apple III in there that’s a lot of fun.

Jonathan Zufi has put together something really special to mark today:

To celebrate this milestone, mac40th.com showcases every Macintosh desktop and portable Apple has ever made with hundreds of the photos taken as part of the work creating the coffee table book ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation (3rd edition now available up to date as of the end of 2023). The site also includes photos taken by Kevin Taylor, Forest McMullin and others (including video) that I’ve collected over the past 14 years.

The site is easy to use: you’ll see a continuous stream of random Macs – just keep clicking ‘Show me more Macs’ and that’s what you’ll get. If you’re a hard core Mac fan, this site should keep you busy for a very long time. If you see any mislabelled products, don’t be shy.

Steve Levy, writing at Wired, got to speak with a bunch of folks at Apple:

Before our video conference ends, I pop a final question: Will Apple be selling Macintoshes 40 years from now?

“It’s hard to imagine there being an Apple and not having a Mac,” says [Greg] Joswiak. “It is in our blood — it’s a product that defines who we are.” [Craig] Federighi takes a shot at explaining why, in an industry where the standard is ephemeral, the machine that Steve Jobs introduced might be immortal. “The Mac has been able to absorb and integrate the industry’s innovations,” he says. “With each major technology wave, from graphical computing to the internet to even creating tools for mobile, the Mac has taken potential and turned it into intuitive creative tools for the rest of us. With seemingly disruptive waves like spatial computing and AI, the Mac will renew itself over and over.”

In April 1984, the first issue of Macworld went on sale, with Steve Jobs on the cover:

The entire thing is safe and sound over on the Internet Archive, and I suggest you spend some time flipping through it. Andrew Fluegelman’s feature on the making of the machine starts on page 126 and includes writing from Andy Hertzfeld, Joanna Hoffman, Bill Atkinson, Chris Espinosa, Susan Kare, Burrell Smith and more.