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Steve Jobs' First Public Demonstration of the Macintosh, Hidden Since 1984

Watabou said:
Wow, watching the audience go crazy when Bill Atkinson was showing MacPaint for the first time was so cool.
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VPrime said:
I liked how when someone asked about coloured display Steve briefly mentioned a book like computer with an LCD :D
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The lack of color brings back memories of a home computer show at the Raleigh, North Carolina fairgrounds around a year later in 1985.

There were all sorts of setups being shown, and MacPaint with a mouse and B&W printer was just about the most popular demo.

At least, until someone brought in a Tandy Color Computer running CoCoMax (a MacPaint clone) on a color monitor, with an X-Pad digitizer tablet for pen drawing input, and a color ink-jet printer.

Another show a couple of months later had the new Amiga, which drew even more crowds.

The Mac OS didn't get color support for another two years.
 
I honestly believe if you took Steve THEN forward in time to show him how Apple is now he would be horrified.

The young man with dreams about freedom and breaking the chains of control by the large corporations, turning into what Apple is today, over controlling money making machine not offering people choice, but making people want what you make. The total opposite of most other things we buy in life.

It is sad, and they say about you can often end up becoming the thing you most despised.

It's such a shame to see what Apple have become when they could of been less about how much money they could make, and more about giving the people the things they want.
 
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east85 said:
Loved watching this! Had a real ragtag vibe to it, like trailblazers doing something fundamentally radical for the times. The whole thing just reeks of genuine enthusiasm and passion, stuff you don't really see too often these days in more rehearsed, controlled and regimented product presentations. Extended Q&A along with the intermingling after the presentation kills it, wish Apple and other companies brought Q&A to their product presentations more often.
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I enjoyed watching this, as well. It brought me back to when I first got to see and use a Mac soon after its introduction in 1984. It was also great to see Steve: a little less polished, with a touch of humility.

As you say, corporate presentations nowadays are much more choreographed and controlled, with no substantive comments about unreleased products. In his BCS presentation, Steve essentially pre-announced the LaserWriter (he called it a "breakthrough in laser Xerographic printing"), which wasn't formally announced until a year later and didn't ship until March 1985.
 
Steve

I love that Apple celebrated the Mac but am disappointed at the obvious absence of any reference to Steve. Seems powers that be are not winning to recognize his huge role in our having Macs today.

I watched some videos of Steve introducing the Mac for the anniversary. Good to see this one. Thanks MacRumors!
 
I can't explain it, but he was the only person that could really keep my attention in a keynote.

He loved what he did and it showed. He could have politican..:D
 
Roller said:
I enjoyed watching this, as well. It brought me back to when I first got to see and use a Mac soon after its introduction in 1984. It was also great to see Steve: a little less polished, with a touch of humility.

As you say, corporate presentations nowadays are much more choreographed and controlled, with no substantive comments about unreleased products. In his BCS presentation, Steve essentially pre-announced the LaserWriter (he called it a "breakthrough in laser Xerographic printing"), which wasn't formally announced until a year later and didn't ship until March 1985.
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That's because project heads don't generally introduce their products themselves, instead it's handed off to a higher exec. Steve was project lead and the Macintosh was his baby; that's why you can feel the enthusiasm through the screen. If you watch some game developers, for example, talk about their games, that passion is again evident. Chris Roberts with Star Citizen is probably the most obvious instance of this today.
 
Traverse said:
I can't explain it, but he was the only person that could really keep my attention in a keynote.

He loved what he did and it showed. He could have politican..:D
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Ah, but there is a difference in Jobs and your average politician: Jobs actually believed in what he was selling and he usually only introduced notable products. The only real embarrassments I can think of were first iPod accessories: the socks, the speaker, and the $100 or whatever leather case.

And NO FREAKING WAY could Jobs have been a politician. Compromise was absolutely not his thing. If he was a U.S. Senator he would have been king of the filibuster. Also he demanded close to perfection and most legislation is swiss cheese.
 
Ironic that flash is required to watch this video.

Is there a way to download this video on my Mac so I can covert it and watch it on my iPhone later?
 
MacRumors said:
The Boston Computer Society introduction, which runs for 90 minutes, has gone virtually unseen since it took place. Time reporter Harry McCracken managed to track down the tape, locating a Boston-area videographer who had the original tapes in storage on a now-obsolete format called U-matic.
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Hundreds of audio mastering engineers disagree with this. Still the format used by some CD manufacturing companies for masters.
 
casperes1996 said:
He wanted to put a Mac in a book... A MacBook... Damn Steve, you really were a visionary.
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What timestamp? Thanks!

Book computers were the hot prediction at the time.

The year before, Jobs had talked about cramming the $10,000 Apple Lisa into a book shape with a radio link, and eventually being able to sell it for $1,000.

He predicted this would be available within 5 to 7 years ... that is, by the year 2000.
 
kdarling said:
The lack of color brings back memories of a home computer show at the Raleigh, North Carolina fairgrounds around a year later in 1985.

There were all sorts of setups being shown, and MacPaint with a mouse and B&W printer was just about the most popular demo.

At least, until someone brought in a Tandy Color Computer running CoCoMax (a MacPaint clone) on a color monitor, with an X-Pad digitizer tablet for pen drawing input, and a color ink-jet printer.

Another show a couple of months later had the new Amiga, which drew even more crowds.

The Mac OS didn't get color support for another two years.
Click to expand...

CoCoMax is probably the closest clone of MacPaint ever released, which is impressive in itself as it was running on a 64k 8-bit 6809 computer at less than 1Mhz.

But to be fair, it ran much slower for things like scrolling and flood fill despite running at 256x192 vs. 512x342 and only supported 4 colours, two of them (blue and red) only appeared on NTSC TVs as "artifacts" at an effective 96 pixels horizontal resolution. Also, red and blue were swapped randomly 1/2 of the time when you booted a CoCo. The full canvas size was also much smaller on the CoCo (256x384 vs. 576x720 on the Mac).

It's also much easier to make a single program that sports a GUI compared to make a complete OS, especially when all the GUI design has been done for you and you just have to clone functionality and look.

CoCoMax actually made me want a Mac even more. I wanted my whole computing experience to be like that.
 
kdarling said:
The lack of color brings back memories of a home computer show at the Raleigh, North Carolina fairgrounds around a year later in 1985.

There were all sorts of setups being shown, and MacPaint with a mouse and B&W printer was just about the most popular demo.

At least, until someone brought in a Tandy Color Computer running CoCoMax (a MacPaint clone) on a color monitor, with an X-Pad digitizer tablet for pen drawing input, and a color ink-jet printer.

Another show a couple of months later had the new Amiga, which drew even more crowds.

The Mac OS didn't get color support for another two years.
Click to expand...

Also those names bring back memories too, Tandy, Amiga, I enjoyed the home computing era from the early 80s on. Kind of funny to see how fast companies like Tandy and Commodore disappeared completely and only a few names from those years have remained.
 
Casiotone said:
Well it doesn't show up on iOS. ClickToFlash in certain cases can actually create its own HTML5 video player if it can find the .mp4 source, even when the site itself doesn't provide one.
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Does clicking on the link I provided work in iOS? I only have my MacBook handy...

Edit: Ninja edit!

Since it works on iOS - maybe Jordan can put the link in the article...
 
I like how he talks about the goal to make a computer as ubiquitous as the phone and the key insight was that you have to make the computer simple to use. The Mac was Apple's answer to the question, how do you make a computer so great that everyone wants (or needs) to have one? And it still is.

It's also kind of funny how what sounds like an almost insane goal in 1984 -- computers as common as phones! -- turned out. Not only have personal computers done that, they're out-right replacing phones.

(Not all Apple's doing, of course, but obviously they had a lot to do with it. Directly in the form of the Mac and i-devices and indirectly in terms of settings Microsoft, Google, etc. on the right track.)
 
Piggie said:
I honestly believe if you took Steve THEN forward in time to show him how Apple is now he would be horrified.
[...]
It is sad, and they say about you can often end up becoming the thing you most despised.
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I think that is a very interesting and original thought you have there. Unfortunately I don't agree with your conclusion. I wonder how many others would come to your same conclusion. I think your conclusion may telegraph your potential inner feelings of Apple.

I don't think Steve was against big business. Apple was pretty big in 1984. I think he was against that mentality of designing from the board level perspective instead of designing from the user perspective. This is what this video and BCS piece was about (the contrast between presentations).

BTW, I think the video has been fireballed.
 
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