Happy Birthday Macintosh !

25

[swa66]

On Jan 24th, 1984 the mac was born.

It was announced by an expensive advertisement in the US during Super Bowl XVIII (2 days earlier):
[youtube.com...]

At the time I didn't like the Macintosh due it its very limited support for programming (I actually returned one). Today I couldn't do without my macs anymore.

Happy 25th birthday!

More info about the commercial:

Directed by Ridley Scott
Produced by Chiat/Day
Written by Lee Clow & Steve Hayden
Starring Anya Major & David Graham

On Jan 24th, Macintosh (people referred to it with out "the" in front back then) and Steve Jobs being together on stage is also archived:
[youtube.com...]
Note Steve isn't wearing his turtleneck, somebody stuck him in tux and bow tie.

[edited by: swa66 at 8:33 am (utc) on Jan. 24, 2009]

[bouncybunny]

Heh.

See, I liked them precisely because you didn't need to worry about programming.

"Ooh, look, there's a desktop and a folder. Let's put a file into the folder. Cool." :D

[swa66]

Some more background on the mac from a 1983 apple video tape has been put online as well:
Part 1: [youtube.com...]
Part 2: [youtube.com...]

Enjoy the blast from the past!

Part 1 e.g. explains how to cut&paste, part 2 starts with a very young Bill Gates being enthusiastic about Macintosh.

[bordering]

Makes me feel old. I couldn't afford one in '84, but picked up a secondhand 'Plus' around '86. Hardware was a bit pricey at the time. The 20mb (yes, that's 20 megabaytes) hard drive was £359 plus VAT. For assembling newspapers and magazines it was a serious improvement on a lightbox, scalpel, rule tapes and copy camera. A competitor came along a while later, but it wansn't all that good, and doesn't seem to have improved much since.

[conor]

Just bought a Macbook air so it looks like I became a beleiver 1 generation on ;)

[Lorel]

The first Mac I worked on had an 8 inch screen. don't know how I did it way back then.

[commanderW]

I hated computers and wanted to smash then all with a sledgehammer in 1984 Bo[
Now it's 2009 and I don't own an Apple
- it 0wnZ me 8 >]

[wolfadeus]

Does anyone know the global market share of macs these days? Is it still under 5 percent?

[poster_boy]

Does anyone know the global market share of macs these days? Is it still under 5 percent?

Yep, under 4% even...

Mac Market Share [systemshootouts.org]

[bouncybunny]

The first Mac I worked on had an 8 inch screen. don't know how I did it way back then.

I learned QuarkXpress and used to publish full colour publications using a mac Classic II. ;)

Does anyone know the global market share of macs these days? Is it still under 5 percent?

Weeeell, it depends on how you view the statistics, and we all know about them. I've seen figures ranging from 4% to nearly 8% (which I really don't believe).

[wolfadeus]

Besides, it's quality that matters for some niches, not quantity ;)

[commanderW]

In 2002 I bought a G3 iBook (my 1st and so far only computer.). In a local cafe full of laptops, mine was the only Apple. Yesterday I was in that same cafe. There were 10 laptops and they were all Apple. Only in San Francisco ?