Our buddy Larry Magid posted wrote this article for the LA Times way back in 1984. What’s he writing about? The $2,495 128K Mac from Apple. The computer is completely portable, provided you buy the $99 case, and weighs a total of 22 pounds. Sassy!
If you read Larry’s review you really come to understand why Apple got the reputation for being expensive and weird. The printer cost $495 when similar gear cost maybe $250 on a good day. But remember: this thing had a “mouse” and a “GUI” back when most of us were about ten years old. Now we basically define our entire computing experience by saying how far from that original 22 pound box we have come.
How about this little blast from the past?
Machine specific magazines help spread the excitement of a new computer. PC World Communications, Inc. (San Francisco) has already released the first issue of Macworld, an attractive and well written user magazine. The 145 page premier issue includes a photo essay on the Mac’s hardware, several software reviews, tips for using the new machine, and a behind the scenes series of profiles on the people responsible for “Making the Macintosh.” Within a few months there will be other magazines and scores of books about the new computer.
Damn.
Would you believe this was my first computer in college? A hand-me-down from my grandfather, a huge mac buff. It had been upgraded with 1 meg (!) of RAM, so you could create a ram disk when you booted it up. Typed all my papers on it my freshman year. I think it is still in the family somewhere.
I bought this computer (plus printer) at the West Coast Computer Faire in March of 1984 and having graduated with B.S. in Computer Science only two years earlier. It doesn’t like much now but I was absolutely amazed with this thing. During my freshman year in college we had to write all of our programs using punch cards!!! This computer in spite all of what is said about Apple stealing technology from PARC is a seminal event in computer science.
I just started my 25th year publishing my community newspaper, The Mountaintop Eagle. We had two Mac 512 computers, a Laserwriter and the MacWrite, MacDraw and MacPaint programs along with Pagemaker to produce our broadsheet newspaper. The Macs had a half meg of ram, no hard drive and 9 inch screens.
24 years later I have had as many new Macs over he years and recently upgraded with two new iMacs. They have 1 Terrabyte hard drives, 27 inch screens 4 Gigs of SDRAM and do pretty much the same things the original 1985 Macs did, but with gorgeous color screens and a whole lot faster. Thank you Apple for a lifetime of technology.