Macintosh - Happy 30th birthday

[gordo]

This was my experience with my first MAC: The Print Guide: The Wayback View – My 25th Anniversary with the Apple Macintosh

Here's CNN's take: Thirty years of the Macintosh - CNN.com

Gordo

 

[Duncan Hyde]

God I feel old now Lol!

 

[prwhite]

Gordo,
I enjoyed your Mac perspective. This takes me back to when I was VP of Mktg and Apple's first Unix (AUx) developer - Bedford. We ported our industry first page makeup system (featuring integrated text, graphics (with our own ripped fonts) and output directly to paper plates. At that time, we were showing complete WYSIWYG in real time on the Mac. For professional page make up, this was an industry first. A bit later, we also did another industry first: interfacing with a Hell Graphic System, designing the page layout, ripping fonts and sending this to the Hell System for insertion of the 4-color graphics and final output. This was done at a Canadian design firm in Toronto, called Batten Graphics.

 

[Dan Roll]

I bought a 512 Mac, a 20 mg hard drive and a laser printer (with a two digit serial number) in late 1986 to produce material safety data sheets in order to save (what turned out to be lot of) money. These three pieces of equipment cost almost ten thousand dollars and the 20 meg hard drive looked like an infinite, un-fillable vista. I met one of the HyperCard developers on an airplane and he gave me a copy of Danny Goodman's Hypercard Handbook in one of those change your life moments. It took a whole weekend to write my first successful script (to make a production batch ticket of any size from a formula) and a few more weeks of spare time to write all of the other software I could think of to facilitate formulating. I still use this software today even though it requires I maintain an old (mac Mini) and system 10.3.9 in order to run HyperCard, as Apple stopped supporting HyperCard years ago. All of my friends an co-workers thought I was crazy for not running IBM equipment (remember when the non-Mac technology was referred to as IBM?) but I found the whole Mac experience to be empowering in a very practical way.

 

[gordo]

My first computer was a Commodore VIC 20 - bought in 1982. I bought it to try and understand what computers were all about figuring that if I couldn't find a business use for it then at least I'd have a machine to play video games on.
The applications came in the firm of machine code published in computer magazines that had to be entered into the VIC and compiled before they could be used. That's how I learned what a word processor was and about creating graphics.
When it came to buying a "real" computer I went to the Xerox store and looked at the IBMs. But they all worked pretty much the same as my VIC20 so there didn't seem to be much point in spending all that money on one of those. The MAC was quite different - very similar to the $100,000 Xerox Star publishing system. For me, as a graphic designer that was heaven. For example, I could draw a perfect ellipse with MacPaint at a time when the technology for doing that consisted of three thumbtacks and a piece of string or tracing through a hole cut out of a plastic template.
I had my first epiphany when I brought the MAC home and my wife strated playing in MacPaint. She's left-handed but, since I'm right-handed, the mouse was to the right of the MAC. She grabbed the mouse and drew a croissant on the screen. My epiphany was seeing that the computer effectively disappeared - it was just her mind's eye creating the art.
In 1985 I had unauthorized surgery on my MAC which brought it from 128k up to a whopping 512k. That cost me about $1,000.
Because I was the only person who was using the MAC for graphics, I was able to cut out all the middlemen in production (who were making all the profit) but still charge as if I was using them. That allowed me, over the course of 12 montgs to get enough cash to buy my first house. And for that I am eternally grateful to Apple.

Gordo

 

[MacTwidget]

Useless Trivia…
did you know that the 1984 commercial ran first on December 31st, 1983 in Twin Falls, Idaho?
This was so it would be eligible of all of the advertising award programs for that year.

 

[gordo]

Useless Trivia…
did you know that the 1984 commercial ran first on December 31st, 1983 in Twin Falls, Idaho?
This was so it would be eligible of all of the advertising award programs for that year.

I guess they figured that if it was shown in Twin Falls Idaho that no one would be there to see it so the secret of the ad would be preserved.

(I'm sure that Twin Falls is a wonderful place) :-D

Gordo