Macintosh Turns 35

[nihil0]

Sorry but honestly I believe that the fact your family's Macbooks have no issues means nothing. My new macbooks too are OK and I love them but that means nothing as well. The issues and the class actions are a fact. The stunning Apple stuff price risings are facts too, yes, more expensive stuff from Apple in exchange of more issues. Sincerely I cannot understand guys like you and others always ready to defend a big rich company. I love my Apple devices, I really love them, but in the end I believe that my interests conflicts with Apple ones and I find stupid to defend the money of a 1 trillion company against my single hard worked salary. You know what I think? In the end guys like me are the real incentive to push Apple to do better. I critic Apple because I love his products and I want Apple keep doing "wow" stuff. I don't mind that much about price tags as long as Apple products are like they were few years ago that is a really long time investment with no issues at all.
In one of my Macbook Apple care has expired. Now I live every day with the nightmare that one key of the keyboard fails and there is nothing I can do about it but throwing everything in the trash can. That's just ridicolous for a product concived for professionals!

If you are stating that something is indeed a fact, you should provide also proof. I am not saying there are no issues at all because all electronic can and will have issues at some point. But you are presenting it in a way that all of Macs are faulty and I find that hard to believe. I would really like to see actual numbers of faulty Macs vs overall number of Macs bought. If crtiticizing Apple for REAL issues brings some positive updates for all users then I believe it is helpful but usually on Macrumors and similar websites few people post their issues with tech and community blows it out of proportions. How many Macbooks and MBPs had problems with keyboard, for example? As I wrote, my wife has 2016 MB which has 1st or 2nd gen keyboard and it is all working fine. I am not from US so I don't understand the law there but class action law suit can also be started by 10 people. Or even if 100 would make that lawsuit it is still tiny number compares to all Macs sold.

 

[sidewinder3000]

What a joy that little thing was, and oh how it changed everything. Seminal moments like this are so rare. Mmm. So glad I was around to witness it.

 

[Aslak3]

I wasn't interested in Apple products at all until OS X. The Amiga and then Linux held my attention as far better systems. But I got tired of Linux and bought my first Apple Mac in 2006, an iBook G4. It was amazing: Unix with a decent graphics subsystem, an awesome trackpad (the competition's trackpads were basically junk), and suspend and resume that actually worked. A fantastic machine at a reasonably competitive price.

In 2010-ish I bought an upgrade: the first unibody MacBook. I bought that a day after they were released. Another great machine. Yeah the display was poor (the first gen glossy screen) but otherwise everything was better then the iBook, and the OS was getting noticeably better with each release. Simultaneously I replaced my Linux desktop with a Mac Mini. Great little machines. I upgraded it when the unibody Minis came out, and later upgraded the memory as well.

I'm typing this on my 3rd Mac lappy: an early 2015 Retina. Sadly this is going to be the last Mac for me. I have no interest in the newer models; the ports are basically gone, the keyboards are worse, the machines even less upgradeable/repairable. OS X (err macOS) is basically stagnant now. I was really excited about the new Minis (finally!), until I saw the price and the fact you can't get HDDs in them. My current Mini has 8GB and a 256GB HDD. To upgrade it, the price would be £1,339 for 16GB RAM with 512GB SSD. Thats pretty much double what I paid for the old one. No thanks. It looks like I'm going back to Linux on the desktop and portables, which is not what I want but I can see no alternative.

It's sad what's happened to Apple, but completely foreseeable. I am just glad the share price is finally reflecting what long time Mac users have known for years: the company is on the way down in a big way. Hopefully they will do something about it before it's too late.

 

[theluggage]

I wasn't interested in Apple products at all until OS X. The Amiga and then Linux held my attention as far better systems. But I got tired of Linux and bought my first Apple Mac in 2006, an iBook G4. It was amazing: Unix with a decent graphics subsystem

Yes, I remember years of magazine articles saying “this is going to be the year of Unix on the desktop” which came to naught, then hardly anybody seemed to notice when Apple actually achieved it.

I think this is where Apple have blown an opportunity - the Mac has the potential to be the go-to machine for “full stack” developers and techies, especially now the focus is less on windows “binary” development in lovingly hand-crafted Visual C++ and more on server/browser based development in platform-independent scripting languages. The fact that you can develop on a Unix workstation, with most of the usual Linux/Unix software available through brew/macports but with a nice, responsive GUI and the ability to run Adobe CS and MS Office to deal with “assets” is still a USP.

Now, that’s not going to sell boatloads of kit, but it is going to establish the Mac brand as a serious bit of kit used by the experts, what you buy if you want to do comp sci at college, and what your friend’s techie son recommends when you ask what computer to buy.

Unfortunately, Apple now seems to see a “pro” market consisting solely of 4K video editors and 3D artists, and a mass market of people who want a Facebook terminal that matches their Tesla X... and they’d much rather sell them an iPad.

...oh, and Mac Mini co-location people for some bizarre reason (about the only explanation for the bizarre design choices made with the new Mac Mini).

 

[VulchR]

One of the changes in the Mac user base over the years is the eagerness to upgrade early. One of the traits I use to see and admire among your traditional Mac user was how long they kept their Mac. These days, it’s about having the latest and greatest. We need to go back to that era where a Printshop kept using the same Mac for 10 years without worrying about needing the latest.

The longevity of the machines is one of the reason people are willing to pay higher prices for them. I'm old school - I think a machine should be used until it no longer functions (quite apart from anything, until we learn to recycle the machines better, it's better for the planet). This is one of the reasons I think Apple has taken a wrong turn pursuing thinness - their using glue and solder which is making repairing and upgrading a nightmare.

I'm still rocking an iPhone 4S...

 

[ikseoj]

My Dad's still works like a charm! It actually boots up more quickly than many newer computers. No Windows bloatware on this baby. And completely immune to viruses and trojans without any way to connect to the new-fangled Interweb. There's nothing like a good startup chime in the morning!

Here's me being VERY productive at work today with my family's original 128k Mac.

Anyone know how to get an ImageWriter on the company network to print to?

No, but you might find some useful ideas here:

http://mac128.com/

It’s possible to print to a postscript file you can transfer to your modern Mac and print on your networked printer.

That 128k appears to have a SCSI drive attached? Has it been upgraded to a 512ke or Plus with a SCSI port?

Yep, my Dad got a Brainstorm upgrade for it back in the day which I think bumped the 128k to 512k with a SCSI port on the back and 4MB!!! of ram. I want to say it has a double-sided 800k floppy drive now too.

That must be why it's so fast at launching MacPaint! What's crazy is that as a kid I remember much time spent swapping 2, 3, even 4 floppy disks back and forth to install larger programs, until the hard drive came along. I think that's a 20MB!!! hard drive. What a time saver.

The thing that stood out to me while using it yesterday was how familiar it all still was. The word processor, the Get Info, the mouse. Not being color or even greyscale it used patterns for everything, especially in MacPaint. It's amazing how adaptable we are to working with whatever is available to us. Technology is great but it's only ever been a crude manifestation of the amazing complexities that we cook up in our imaginations every day.

 

[daveedjackson]

I mean I wouldn’t be as surprised with the mbp, but the almost £8k I spent on my macpro, it I wouldn’t expect this.

Hmmm, the list of joys I've had with my 2017 MBP (ntb).
1. Display dead one week after purchase.
2. Key caps started to fall off after about 1 year.
3. dust bunnies preventing the keys from working correctly (though it could be due to stray carbon atoms getting in the way)
4. Complete motherboard and display self destruction.

Through dealing with the above, the only original parts to my laptop are the speakers and the bottom plate.

Now I read that the cable connecting the screen to the motherboard has a tendency to fail.
Finally I've found that the USB-C ports are so fragile that just a slight bump against the cable will result in the device being disconnected. This is primarily an issue because I have to dual boot from an external drive.

 

[satchmo]

$2495- in 1984
It's good to be reminded how much these things used to cost when we baulk at prices today.

Back then, Apple prices were still overpriced in comparison to the likes of Amiga 1000 and Atari 520ST's.
So, nothing's changed.

 

[theluggage]

Back then, Apple prices were still overpriced in comparison to the likes of Amiga 1000 and Atari 520ST's.
So, nothing's changed.

Except, in 1983/84, an IBM PC XT cost about $4000 (with a hard drive that probably accounted for $1000+ of that) so the Mac was pretty much in the same price bracket as the main competition. Large business, at the time, was completely dominated by the IBM PC and that's what Apple were aiming for - a "home computer" like the Atari or Amiga wouldn't have been taken seriously by the suits (for no particularly good reason - the Amiga was very powerful, and the ST was, er, very cheap* - but "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" - a pity because the PC was a particularly mediocre and non-innovative bucket of standard parts).

(*I had one for a while... certainly good value, but not as sophisticated as the lawyer-baitingly Mac-like interface superficially suggested.)

 

[satchmo]

Except, in 1983/84, an IBM PC XT cost about $4000 (with a hard drive that probably accounted for $1000+ of that) so the Mac was pretty much in the same price bracket as the main competition. Large business, at the time, was completely dominated by the IBM PC and that's what Apple were aiming for - a "home computer" like the Atari or Amiga wouldn't have been taken seriously by the suits (for no particularly good reason - the Amiga was very powerful, and the ST was, er, very cheap* - but "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" - a pity because the PC was a particularly mediocre and non-innovative bucket of standard parts).

(*I had one for a while... certainly good value, but not as sophisticated as the lawyer-baitingly Mac-like interface superficially suggested.)

Well, yes IBM PC’s were expensive too. But in some ways could justify it’s price to corporations given the wealth of available business software. It certainly wasn’t the hardware (recall IBM had its share of duds - the PC Jr. with that horrendous chiclet keyboard!)

The Mac was never going to make serious inroads into corporations. Even to this very day. iPhones may have permeated but not Macs. And coincidentally it’s for the same reasons - price.

I never gravitated to Ataris but did have access to Amigas at school. And despite 4096 colours vs black and white, I still paid an arm and a leg for a 512ke Mac...floppy drive model only!

 

[theluggage]

Well, yes IBM PC’s were expensive too. But in some ways could justify it’s price to corporations given the wealth of available business software.

There wasn't a "wealth of business software" specifically for the IBM PC when it launched - just the existing wealth of business software for CP/M-86 (CP/M was the pre-IBM 'standard' OS for business PCs that PC fanbois like to forget existed) - PC-DOS was a clone of CPM/86 - the 16-bit version of CP/M to which the migration was already well under way. The glowing reviews at the time were highly suspicious - I don't think journalists wanted to be the ones to bet against IBM, plus they'd probably cut their teeth on IBM electronic typewriters, so they loved the keyboard...

There were a bunch of other CP/M 86/MS-DOS computers around at the same time - the IBM PC would have been an also-ran in that race - except it had those three magic letters on the front, and "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" - plus of course, IBM was already a massive supplier of business electronics with nasty monopolistic habits that already had contracts with most big corporations... and corporates trust suits over polo-necks any day.

Trouble is, CP/M only gave compatibility at a basic 'command line utility' level so most software came with a 'patch' program that let you (or your hardware vendor) configure it to work with your display (by either telling it the size and location of the video RAM or programming in the control codes needed to move the cursor). Happy memories of patching Wordstar... That wasn't such as big a deal as it sounds today, but as the IBM PC started to dominate , software publishers could forget making their programs patchable and target the IBM hardware/firmware directly - so, good bye CP/M.

There's a lot of nonsense talked about the IBM PC being a much-needed "open standard" - true, it was "open" relative to the restrictive practices of the mainframe industry, which frequently forbade the sale or use of third-party accessories or expansions - but that was already the norm in the personal computer business. You couldn't make your own 100% IBM compatible PC any more than you could make your own Apple II - because the firmware was closed and copyrighted.

Of course, the Mac was no better in that respect... but at least it was an innovative new approach to computing rather than a warmed-over CP/M box that anchored personal computing in its stone age for years.

It was only when some enterprising chaps found a legal end-run around IBM by producing a 'clean room' functional clone of the firmware (...good thing software patents weren't a thing then, or that would never have happened) that IBM PC clones became affordable, the components to build them became mass commodities and the PC (mostly) stomped on the other home/niche systems.

I like to think there's an alternative universe in which someone hit the management of Xerox with the clue stick, and they worked with Apple on the Lisa, Mac and Laserwriter (it was the combination of GUIs and an easily shared laser printer that was the real killer app), and marketed the hell out of it to their photocopier customers. If there was anybody big enough and ugly enough (at the time) to go toe to toe with IBM, it was Xerox - and, lets face it, Xerox PARC labs invented half of modern computing.

 

[MacManiac1]

DIY. My first Mac was a 128k, I soldered a ram upgrade for 512, added two Shugart drives (manual eject) and an A+ optical mouse. Check my Avatar. Needed 512k RAM to run the new LaserWriter. Worked until I got an SE30. Best machines ever were the Ci and Cx, one screw and every thing poped right out. Gasee championed the "open Mac."

I had a IICX with a Portrait Monitor. Beautiful system. Monitor same size and shape as a piece of paper. Brutally expensive back then.

It was made for manufacturing since it only had one internal screw and everything clipped or snapped into place like you said. My how things have changed!

 

[satchmo]

Best machines ever were the Ci and Cx, one screw and every thing poped right out. Gasee championed the "open Mac."

Even up to the G4 Cube, Apple was still pretty open to...openness. Flip the thing over and with one button, you were in.

Now, of course it was limited given the size, but there was a willingness to allow users access to the internals.

Someone, I don’t know who, started the trend to using glue instead of screws.

 

[scubachap]

I had a IICX with a Portrait Monitor. Beautiful system. Monitor same size and shape as a piece of paper. Brutally expensive back then.

It was made for manufacturing since it only had one internal screw and everything clipped or snapped into place like you said. My how things have changed!

Weren't there the Radius Monitors that you could rotate for when you were working on a spread.? Happy days!