Apple's First Public Demonstration of the Mac, Unseen Since 1984 [video]

http://techland.time.com/2014/01/25/steve-jobs-mac/

by technologizer • 12 years ago

173 87 12 years ago

techland.time.com

At the ~3 minute mark, Jobs says, "Apple and IBM emerge as the industry's strongest competitors. [...] It appears IBM wants it all. Apple is perceived to be the only hope. Dealers initially welcoming to IBM now fear an IBM-dominated future. They're increasingly turning back to Apple as the only force that can ensure their future freedom."

It's interesting how the future played out: users have rejected the notion that freedom is valuable. Perhaps something else was meant by "freedom" in those days, but it's hard to imagine something less free than the app store.

ekianjo• 12 years ago

"Freedom" is just a marketing element for Apple when they were still an underdog in the market. Jobs was never a real proponent of Freedom in computing anyway. The Mac had even its proprietary connectors at the time, and did not use any of the standards available. You were "free" to buy your peripherals only at official Mac resellers.

sambeau4• 12 years ago

The Mini-DIN (the main connector on moist early Macs) wasn't proprietary. Isn't it still what PCs use to connect the mouse & keyboard?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-DIN_connector

Even the 128k Mac had mostly standards-based connectors.

Mouse port, 1 eight-bit keyboard bus, 300 baud, RJ11 connector for the Macintosh Keyboard. Two RS-232/RS-422 serial ports, 230.4K baud maximum, DB-9 connector, and sound port for external audio amplifier or headphones.

http://applemuseum.bott.org/sections/computers/mac.html

BadassFractal• 12 years ago

Pretty sharp remark, thanks for shining light on that.

millstone• 12 years ago

It's clear Steve meant "freedom" in the sense of freedom of choice. If the industry were dominated by a single vendor, you have no freedom - you have to buy what that vendor is selling.

Steve got the story right, but the characters and timeline wrong. It wasn't IBM in the 80s, but Microsoft in the late 90s that threatened to dominate personal computing.

I remember these as rather dark times. Microsoft engaged in shady practices like per-processor licensing, which required OEMs to pay Microsoft for every machine sold, even if it didn't have Windows installed. Upstarts like Be couldn't get any traction, even with their technically superior OS. It all culminated in the US vs. Microsoft antitrust trial (which ended up going nowhere).

During this period, Apple was very much on the ropes ("beleaguered", they said), but Mac OS nevertheless remained a viable option for the average consumer - the only real alternative to Windows. In this way, Apple provided users with a mote of freedom.

yuhong• 12 years ago

My favorite is the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco, and keep in mind that OS/2 did not depend on DOS at all.

microtonal4• 12 years ago

In the late nineties, some of the Linux distributions were also already viable. E.g. I remember introducing SUSE Linux at my high school in ~1998, and back then it could be installed by a reasonably technical person. Which was not that much different than Windows 9x, given all the work that was usually required to install device drivers, etc.

We also had some desktops with KDE and most students had no trouble doing their usual work (web browsing, text processing, e-mailing, etc.).

I wonder if things improved that much. Yes, we now have Android and iOS, which have a limited scope (portable devices). But, on the desktop and laptop it's still Windows. Mac is only an option for the rich contingent of Western countries. Meanwhile, the Linux desktop has splintered into a market where there are no clear market leaders anymore - Red Hat abandoned the desktop, SUSE is not really visible anymore, and Canonical is working hard to get rid of its user community. That, plus a half a dozen desktops (GNOME, Unity, Mate, Cinnamon, KDE, Xfce). Frankly, it's a mess! However, what's perhaps more damaging is that 'the hope' is gone. There was a time where many people believed that the Linux desktop would eventually take over. Now nobody believes that there will ever be the year of Linux on the desktop and a large number of developers has left to OS X.

The only spark of hope are web applications, since they are platform independent and there is usually some competition. However, you never purchase or own an actual license. So, the vendor could go bankrupt, cancel development, remove features that are crucial, etc. You can never make the decision to stick with an older version, since you don't own a license. Moreover, usually you get a backup of your data in any easy way, let alone convert your data to a web app of a competitor.

tl;dr: mobile devices are not good computers yet, on general purpose machines one of the best competitors fragmented itself into oblivion, in platform-independent web apps you are dependent on the whims of the vendor and locked-in.

To end on a positive note: at least Android is mostly open and captured most of the smartphone market and will do the same on tablets. It's really good to see the work of the Cyanogenmod community, etc.

Edit: Downvoters: Is it because you believe that the Linux desktop hasn't fragmented? Do you disagree on the downsides of web applications?

InclinedPlane• 12 years ago

MS pulled some shady shit, no doubt about it, but I don't think MS has ever been the serious threat to freedom that other companies have. The PC has always been an incredibly open platform. That openness was taken advantage of by many competing operating systems, especially linux, over the years. And remember that the "PC" in this case extends to the server market as well. It's always been possible to build PCs from parts and put whatever OS you wanted on them, and MS has always been a part of that phenomenon while Apple and other companies preferred much more closed ecosystems. We should remember that, and give credit where it's due.

interpol_p5• 12 years ago

While I wouldn't suggest that the App Store is free, a lot of people take issue with it while ignoring many other similar stores.

For example, the online shop on the PS3 or any game console is a similar environment, even Steam on the PC is similar. These types of curated software services for specific devices have been around for a long time. No one seemed to take issue with them until the App Store. Why is that?

snom380• 12 years ago

People took issue mainly because the App Store is the only way to get apps on iOS devices. And they took even more issue with the often random and vague rejections.

dantheman• 12 years ago

Videogame consoles for the longest time have been a closed ecosystem. Steam is merely one way of adding computer games to a pc.

For the iphone the appstore is the only way to add applications. No one would care if they allowed competing marketplaces.

microtonal4• 12 years ago

Until not too long ago, the PS3 Store was a desert. There were some small games, but no blockbuster titles. This has only changed relatively recently, probably because the App Store is so popular.

It is a huge step backward. Before I could borrow games from friends or sell them. But I think there won't be a big outcry as long as most games are still available on a disk.

nly3• 12 years ago

I think Microsoft are partially to blame for the existence of these app stores. By ignoring package management they created an environment where software was hard to manage and frustrating to install for users.

I don't think I've ever met anyone over the age of 40, from a non-technical background, that has ever checked for service updates to a piece of non-Microsoft software, downloaded it, and then installed it. To this day most people don't bother beyond Windows Updates (and only install those because Windows screams at them about it).

I've met plenty of Windows 8 users who haven't noticed 8.1 is out.

lifeisstillgood• 12 years ago

That's really a definition problem. For most people I know outside of IT, the App Store is the magical wonderland that frees them to do things they previously could not - or even did not know was possible.

By the time most people find what I find practically unfree (inability to access sandboxed data) they ignore it as just one of those things or try looking for another app. By the time a mass of people find this ethically unfree I suspect the App Store will simply have vanished in commercial swamps.

sambeau4• 12 years ago

"it's hard to imagine something less free than the app store"

I would argue that if you are not safe you are not free.

The vast majority of App Store users are non-technical and therefore open to scams, viruses and malware. The walled garden may take some freedoms away from the highly-technical but it pays back freedom in spades to 'normal' people. (plus the highly technical can always choose to leave the walled garden if the want to either by jailbreaking or by buying an open device).

We geeks have only ourselves to blame — if we won't police ourselves someone else will have to police us. We gave these freedoms away by using our talents to cheat and scam our customers.

We're not the first to need it of course, if it wan't for Victorian scammers using suspect weights & measures and adulterating flour with dust and the like there's be no need for Trading Standards Officers.

Trading Standards Officers give us all the freedom to buy food & drink safely and I don't believe anyone would truly see us return to a world without them.

JackC• 12 years ago

I would argue that if you are not safe you are not free. The vast majority of App Store users are non-technical and therefore open to scams, viruses and malware.

That would make great sense, if there was a way for technical users to opt out of the walled garden. But it's the very opposite -- Apple spends a lot of time and money making it harder to jailbreak the phone, in ways that have nothing to do with defending against malware. If they do their best to make it impossible to opt out, then it's not about protecting your safety. It's about protecting the business model.

There's an argument for protecting the business model, of course -- making jailbreaking more difficult also makes piracy more difficult. The App Store has funneled a ton of money to developers, which in turn makes for better apps for everyone. But the notion that Apple has gone to absurd lengths to prevent jailbreaking because ... "We [developers] gave these freedoms away by using our talents to cheat and scam our customers"? No. That's not how freedom works. This is about money, plain and simple.

devcpp• 12 years ago

I would argue that if you are not safe you are not free.

Sounds like every politician who tries to justify the current methods of the wars against terrorism, against drugs, against pedophilia and the general move towards censorship and surveillance.

Look, safety is good, but if you believe in freedom, you should leave the choice. Just like the root user in Linux and Android, I should be able to unlock superuser abilities in iOS.

The same applies in real life. There should indeed be certifications for food and drinks, but it's not a reason to remove rat poison or bleach and ammonia from supermarkets. Just put the proper notices and safeties.

Choice is key.

w1ntermute• 12 years ago

They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

- Benjamin Franklin

With a population lacking this mindset, no wonder this country is going to the dogs.

Too• 12 years ago

An "App Store" is not a requirement for having a sandboxed environment.

Consider these examples:

1. Your web browser. 2. Java and .NET programs can be run in different trust-modes only allowing certain functions from the standard library, and obviously disallowing external libraries then. This is mostly used on servers to isolate websites on the same server today but if given a better user interface could have been used to secure desktop programs. 3. User permission levels in operating systems

jsz0• 12 years ago

Perhaps something else was meant by "freedom" in those days

Yes it did. This 30 year old quote has nothing to do with the App Store policies. IBM had a significant presence in every single piece of information technology in those days. Mainframes, typewriters, satellite communication, telecom equipment, etc. When they failed to move quickly on micro-computers / personal computers there was a lot of hope that at least one other major player could rise up and challenge IBM's ability to totally dominate every part of information technology systems. After they finally released the IBM PC they started to attack companies like Compaq who were making IBM compatible computers. For a period in the early 80s it looked as though IBM was going to totally dominate everything For this quote to apply to Apple we have to invent an alternative reality. A reality where about 85-90% of all information technology in use today has some direct dependency on Apple software/technologies/hardware/services. They don't even have that type of dominance in mobile today much less the entire industry.

kalleboo2• 12 years ago

My favorite part is Bill Atkinson's MacPaint demo at 42 minutes. I laughed seeing him mention how everyone thinks the paint bucket tool looks like a graduation cap - I always thought the same thing using it as a kid and never saw it as a paint bucket.

raverbashing4• 12 years ago

My favorite part is the demo. In the stricter definition of Demo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demo_%28computer_programming%29

NAFV_P4• 12 years ago

A few minutes in you see that famous tv commercial for the Mac. What I heard was that they only had to show it once, during the ad break for a football game.

esusatyo2• 12 years ago

Live in public I guess, those two demonstration are very closed and it was not available publicly wasn't it?

Someone• 12 years ago

It also was broadcast in 1983, in twin Falls, Idaho and was broadcast a few times more after the 1984 Super Bowl (http://mentalfloss.com/article/29867/how-apples-1984-ad-was-..., http://mentalfloss.com/article/29911/true-story-apples-1984-...)

NAFV_P4• 12 years ago

Thank you for correcting me.

Beltiras• 12 years ago

I still remember when my dad brought home a Mac. He got rid of it and lamented that he had. I found him a Mac plus and gave him for his 64th birthday this fall. Thing still works. Great machine.

yeukhon2• 12 years ago

This is a full-length, 1 hour 36 minute demo.

Paint demo is around 42 minute. At one point when Paint was demonstrated I heard a background noise "that's incredible". That's how incredible and how shocking people found when computer was no longer a terminal, but with a mouse and a control menu.

The Mac Writer (around 51 minute) was also very simple yet efficient. For example, once the writer entered the format mode, the options for line space is right on the top and easy to click. Then I thought "geesh, we can't even fit anything on the screen with all the buttons in Word unless we hide them into a drop-down list." I always have trouble locating the line space option in OpenOffice or Word. Having used Word 2003, I rather go back to 2003 and stay that way.

What have we done to our software? The tools we use are becoming so complex.

History note: being the first Macintosh, this is an expensive equipment. The sale didn't go very well because it was very expensive...

Here is the teardown of the 128K Mac; http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Macintosh+128K+Teardown/21422

arrrg• 12 years ago

I liked how they reacted to the guy asking questions about Mac Writer. It showed both what the mentality and expectations of software at the time were and what a step forward compared to those Macintosh was.

He first asked if it is possible to center only part of the document instead of the whole document as demoed and then he asked whether select-and-replace worked only for replacing equally lengthy text. Both of those questions were followed by laughter at – what I assume – was the demo that both of that was no problem on the screen.

nly3• 12 years ago

What have we done to our software? The tools we use are becoming so complex.

You'd like GNOME. They remove a feature every release.

m_mueller• 12 years ago

Whenever I see those classic demos like Engelbart's in the 60ies or the first Mac, I feel a bit ashamed for our profession. Computer Software really doesn't seem to have developed much in the last 50 years. We have turned working academic prototypes and concepts from back then into products, not even to the full extent they were perceived. Other than that everything seems to have turned in circles. The minicomputer, the PC, the LAN, the Web, mobile devices - it all brought cool new hardware capabilities, but when it comes to software it was just reinventing the wheel again. The hardware has usually dictated the way the device is to be operated instead of the other way round. Mac and iPhone have been notable exceptions to this.

yeukhon2• 12 years ago

While I agree with you, we should view it this way: we started out with nothing and so any progress we made back then would been incredible. Now we have so much progress we are just looking at how to fine tune things and so there aren't much surprising, revolutionary ideas out there. And because there are so many tools to turn people's idea into reality (which increases competitions), there is little room for surprise. The truly surprising technology that we start utilizing and making big progress would be 3D printing. It has been around for many years but now we finally start using it...

NAFV_P4• 12 years ago

Might as well work out what $2495.00 in 1984 equates to today...

I used this site:

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com

$2495 in 1984 inflates to a hard to swallow $5,594.11, an increase of 124.2%.

Being a limey this this is hard for me to comprehend. So I looked at this page:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/EXUSUK.txt

There were $1.4076 per £1 in January 1984, which roughly equates as £0.71 per $1. So if I wanted to buy a brand new Mac 30 years ago, I would have had to cough up around £3974 in today's money.

A quick browse for IMac prices, around £1300 (~$2135, the dollar had a higher value compared to the pound in 1984 than today).

My father's IMac boasts a 2Ghz processor. How many of your vital organs would you have to sell on Ebay to buy 2Ghz of kick in 1984?

Here is a picture of a Cray X-MP:

http://images.tribe.net/tribe/upload/photo/8c4/74c/8c474c54-...

A Cray X-MP in 1984 would cost about $15,000,000 for 105Mhz, so I would require 19 Crays, costing a total of $285,000,000. Taking into account inflation, today that would be a bank-breaking $639,006,208.

I'm trying to remember the source, but I think the CDC 7600 packed 512Kb of memory back in 1969. The Mac had a comparable amount but cost about a 1000 times less.

nly3• 12 years ago

The price of such a thing made my mind boggle as well. It makes me wonder what equivalent devices exist today in the '10x what is affordable' price bracket which we will all be enjoying and taking for granted in 30 years.

Any guesses?

NAFV_P4• 12 years ago

Any guesses?

I'm guessing a small proportion of the Earth's population will be cyborgs, but I am a Ghost In The Shell fan.

Thought I'd work out how much mass in UK copper coins would be required to buy 19 Crays ...

just over 72,000 tons, you'd need about 10 class 37 freight trains to haul that.

exodust• 12 years ago

Mac Pro, 6-Core... AU $5,299

In the box:

* Mac Pro * Power cord

Can not afford.

wbhart• 12 years ago

Steve Wozniak seems to have been omitted from the credits in the slideshow that starts at about 20:40, and yet he appears in it at about 29:28. I wonder why he wasn't listed.

chockablock• 12 years ago

He comes on stage later (Jobs says that Woz had just flown in from Seattle) and answers an audience member question about "The future of the Apple II" at 1:10:45."

harywilke• 12 years ago

He wasn't on the Macintosh team.

esusatyo2• 12 years ago

Questions that the audience asked:

- Is there a version of BASIC?

- Is there a version of SmallTalk?

- After you become an expert, would the mouse became a feature or a handicap.

I really take the ability to write in almost any mainstream programming language on my Mac for granted.

kalleboo2• 12 years ago

I really take the ability to write in almost any mainstream programming language on my Mac for granted.

Thank Stallman

eropple2• 12 years ago

Why? NeXTSTEP was a Unix and had multiple programming languages available to it--in 1989, without FSF-related anythings. Apple packs GCC with OS X, but it's pretty jokey to think they wouldn't just have packed BSD's compiler instead (and now Clang, which exists in no small part because Stallman and company decided it was a great idea to make extending the compiler hard because ideology).

raverbashing4• 12 years ago

This is very, very interesting.

The first 15min more or less are what (most of us) know. Skip that

After that, they will show the real stuff. The manufacture of the Macintosh, and a lot of other things.

The deeper stuff. The laughable (now) things. A successful company yes, but still very vulnerable. A less experienced Steve Jobs.

bestham• 12 years ago

FYI: If you don't do flash youtube-dl (in homebrew) will get this video without problems.

MattRogish• 12 years ago

Steve demoing NeXTSTEP 3.0 in 1992. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gveTy4EmNyk

Fascinating to see the Mac heritage in NeXTSTEP carry through the acquisition and transformation into OSX.

It's hard to remember, but in 1992 Microsoft had just released Windows 3.1 - NeXT was light-years ahead of Microsoft.

mratzloff• 12 years ago

The thing that amazes me about Jobs is how he could present in such a way that it seemed so off-the-cuff and at the same time so polished. Anyone who has had to do presentations like these can learn a lot from watching him at work.

In the NeXT video, for example, he's very good at tying everything together into a cohesive whole, and speaking to his audience in terms they'll understand. He uses practically no filler words ("uh", "um", "basically", etc.).

Here's another presentation he did in 1980 that shows he had these skills almost from the very beginning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lvMgMrNDlg

Edmond• 12 years ago

I think an advantage he had was time. Bill Gates does similarly well on his presentations from that era.

Unfortunately we don't have the chance to do 35 minutes presentations anymore. Now everyone has to squeeze their pitch into 30 seconds information-free commercials :)

How do you get meaningful ideas across if no one has the time to listen? Only the most superficial ideas can be put across in an elevator pitch.

frik• 12 years ago

Woz is on stage starting at 1:04 in the video.

Apple's First Public Demonstration of the Mac, Unseen Since 1984 [video]

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