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A Blast From The Past: Mac Review From 1984.
What were the reviews like back then? How does the original Mac compare to today’s iMac? The Mac Mothership pointed us to a review of the original Mac, just days after the launch in early 1984. Lawrence Magid, then writing for the Los Angeles Times, January 29, 1984, gushed praise for Apple’s new computer in a lengthy review of the original Mac. Mac360’s Tera Patricks bought one of the original Macs, as did our trusty sys admin, Ron McElfresh. I wasn’t old enough to purchase such an exotic toy back in those days. It was just days ago when Mac360 questioned a survey’s results that said Mac users are older than PC users. Here we are blasting back to the past with memories of Mac Genesis. Magid’s original article is full of wonderfully gushing and praiseworthy quotes.
“Apple’s Macintosh, officially introduced last Tuesday, has started a fever in Silicon Valley that’s hard not to catch. My symptoms started when I talked with some devotees from Apple and the various companies that produce software, hardware and literature to enhance the new computer. By the time I got my hands on the little computer and its omni-present mouse, I was hooked. Apple has a winner.”
As anyone will tell you, it’s what you can get the computer to do that’s important, and the early days of the Mac pointed out the need for a suite of applications to make the computer perform. It’s not just the OS, right? Can you say, “BeOS?”
“Of course any computer’s real value is based on what you can do with it. For the first 100 days, Apple is including two valuable programs, MacPaint and MacWrite free with the machine. MacWrite has most basic word processing features with one outstanding addition. It can vary the size and style of your type on the screen and on paper, when used with Apple’s new $495 Image Writer printer.”
What’s quite striking about the review of the original 1984 Mac is how little and how much has changed since then. Magid was all ga ga over MacPaint and MacWord, both of which, when compared to today’s Mac tools, were all about eye candy. The visual focus was on the Mac’s tiny screen, the mouse pointer, and proportional fonts. What struck me right away was the price tag. Think about it. The original Mac cost buyers $2,495. No color. No hard drive. No iLife ‘84. Apple’s original Mac printer was the $495 ImageWriter-- pure dot matrix. If you don’t know what that is, ask some of the older Mac crowd. There’s more. Remember, there was a time when Apple dominated, or, at the very least, was a major player in the personal computer industry. Magid points out that their reign ended in 1981 with the introduction of the IBM PC.
“Until 1981, Apple, with some competition from Radio Shack, dominated the personal computer industry with its Apple II. The current version of that machine is still very popular. Apple started to loose market in 1981 when IBM introduced the first popular 16 bit computer. The IBM PC soon became an industry standard. Meanwhile the Apple Apple III was an unqualified dud and sales for its 32 bit Lisa were disappointing. Some analysists thought that Apple was a dying company.”
So, the Mac never dominated the market for personal computers. Never. As in “ever.” Why not? As far as 1984 was concerned, the Mac was not a success. Steve Jobs left Apple because of disappointing Mac sales. For years, the Apple II was the company’s bread and butter machine. But the future had been sown, and the Mac’s graphical user interface was the future. What about software for the Mac? Magid nailed the problem in his review.
“Available software is critical to the success of any new computer system and Apple is counting on broad support since the machine can’t run software written for MS-DOS or any other standard operating system. The machine’s inability to run MS-DOS could be its salvation or its downfall.”
I mentioned the original Mac’s price. At $2,495 it was no bargain, though much cheaper than the original Lisa’s $10,000 price tag. Steve Jobs had no problem asking the public to cough up big dollars for Apple’s dream machines. Today, $2,495 gets you the most honkin’ 24-inch iMac loaded with software, a super computer compared to anything on the market back then. One final note from Magid’s view of the Mac’s world back in 1984:
“Whether Apple can take a byte of out IBM’s sales remains to be seen. But the new Macintosh has gotten off to a delicious start.”
The Mac didn’t get off to a delicious start, Apple didn’t take a bite out of IBM’s sales back then, but IBM doesn’t make personal computers anymore. Where were you when Apple launched the Mac in 1984? What was your first Mac and when? As always, share with other Mac360 readers in the Comments section below. • Article by Bambi Brannan • Published on Sunday, May 18, 2008
• Category: Hardware • 17 Reader comment(s) • Email This • Digg This • Shop Now
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Talk Back to Kate, Ron & the Mac360 staff Jonathan Richard says:
My first Mac was the original Mac. I think I bought it in February of 1984. Of course bought the printer, but did that a month later so that my wife wouldn’t have a cow! $3000 was a lot for a Resident in his 2nd year of training, making $22k a year! I spent hours playing with MacPaint. Wish I had kept my MacWorld magazines from that time! Anyone remember the “Thunderscan” (http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Thunderscan.txt&topic=Hardware Design&sortOrder=Sort by Date&detail=medium)? — Posted on Fri May 23 at 6:13 pm by Jonathan Richard
jason Packer says:
Think that $2500 was expensive for how little you got compared to today? Now consider that that was $2500 in 1984 dollars. About $5000 in 2008 dollars, or a very nice Mac Pro with the 30” Apple Cinema Display. — Posted on Mon May 19 at 1:53 pm by jason Packer
willy wonka says:
Pro dude. You misunderstand. The first Mac had 128k of RAM. That’s 12.8% of 1 meg. Later in the year Apple introduced a 512k Mac. A couple of years later the Mac SE was a whopping 1 meg of RAM. Upgrades to 2 or 4 megs of RAM cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars. We live in good times. — Posted on Mon May 19 at 12:08 pm by willy wonka
PRO~DUAL~INTEL~3/GIGAHERTZ says:
1 m.b.???????????? are you serious? WOW. Makes me wonder what ten years from now holds and how people will laugh at my 4 gigs. — Posted on Mon May 19 at 7:30 am by PRO~DUAL~INTEL~3/GIGAHERTZ
LKern says:
My first mac was a Plus. I remember getting 1MB of RAM installed. Cost 900 bucks and I had to send the whole machine to Philadelphia, 700 miles away. But when I got it back it “screamed”. — Posted on Mon May 19 at 7:26 am by LKern
Art says:
My dad was really impressed by the new computer revolution and we just couldn’t be left out. We started with an Atari and had a lot of fun with that. Then one day he came home and said, “I just bought that new Mac.” I didn’t even know what he was talking about. A few minutes with that first Mac and I was hooked. We also bought the imagewriter and later, some neat video camera software so we could alter everyone’s pics. The were really fun years and I think back and am amazed at how much we did with that little machine. — Posted on Mon May 19 at 1:15 am by Art
PRO~DUAL~INTEL~3/GIGAHERTZ says:
My first Mac was the “color classic” I bought this computer at a used computer store for about ten bucks, this was about ten years ago. I was a p.c. guy still then and just wanted to play around with it. I ended up giving it away witch I regret. The last I heard, the person I gave it to wrote a book on it, got it published and moved to MN and is a famous author now. True story, I think I really should have kept that thing. The fame was meant for me. I switched to Mac permnanetly 13 months ago. I own a Mac Pro Desk top with dual intel running at 3 gigahertz with L4 cache and lot’s of ram and hard drive space. Also have a Mac/Book. Never going back to p.c. — Posted on Sat Jan 26 at 4:37 am by PRO~DUAL~INTEL~3/GIGAHERTZ
Arthur mcbeth says:
I was thinking about the Mac learning programs this weekend while I was playing Wii Play. I realized that the game, a pack of 9 mini-games, is really just a tool for learning how to use the Wii Remote. The cycle repeats. — Posted on Thu Aug 02 at 5:13 am by Arthur mcbeth
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Few computers changed the course of computing history like Apple’s diminutive Macintosh circa 1984.
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