badmojo wrote:

I nicked this from slashdot but found it interesting - it's a long (90mins) video of a presentation led by Steve Jobs of the first Mac. Lots of good info about the hardware but the interesting part from me was seeing the software designers take the crowd through the various highlights, and listening to the crowd react to some of the features. Things that are mind numbingly simple by today's standards elicit cheers and loud applause - it really was an amazing machine back in the day.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/26/check-out-s … -in-1984-video/

His NEXTStep video is pretty good, too, if a little dry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gveTy4EmNyk

Marketing and promotion were what he did best.

Now compare it to this:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/01/two-step … e-2013-mac-pro/

I'm glad to see Apple finally dumped the old Powermac G5 aluminum case for something more modern.They kept that case in production for far too long.

unprecedented.

Id still prefer an classic pc chassis over an trashcan.

People coming from the Apple II world, and the PC world were only familiar with text based interfaces. So everything about a GUI was new and amazing.

We take much of it for granted now.

Here's an interesting fact about that Mac video. That is NOT a 128k Mac, though you would think so since it was the first model produced. I read someplace that a 128k Mac wasn't up to doing all the things he wanted to demonstrate so they made a special 512k version for Steve to use as the demo unit. With the price of RAM back then, a 512k machine would have been outrageously expensive which was why the first Mac only shipped with 128k. I would be interested to know if anyone has located the demo unit Steve used in this video and can confirm this.

sliderider wrote:

Here's an interesting fact about that Mac video. That is NOT a 128k Mac, though you would think so since it was the first model produced. I read someplace that a 128k Mac wasn't up to doing all the things he wanted to demonstrate so they made a special 512k version for Steve to use as the demo unit. With the price of RAM back then, a 512k machine would have been outrageously expensive which was why the first Mac only shipped with 128k. I would be interested to know if anyone has located the demo unit Steve used in this video and can confirm this.

I can confirm the 512K Mac proto story, what I don't know is if it was ever found later by Apple/collectors.
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project= … =Intro_Demo.txt

Andy Hertzfeld is Apple employee #435, on the Mac development team.

As far as I know, that specific Mac and demo disk were not seen again. There wasn't anything special about that Mac other than it was a prototype 512k Mac and was used at that first demo.

Stiletto wrote:

I can confirm the 512K Mac proto story, what I don't know is if it was ever found later by Apple/collectors. http://www.folklore […]
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sliderider wrote:

Here's an interesting fact about that Mac video. That is NOT a 128k Mac, though you would think so since it was the first model produced. I read someplace that a 128k Mac wasn't up to doing all the things he wanted to demonstrate so they made a special 512k version for Steve to use as the demo unit. With the price of RAM back then, a 512k machine would have been outrageously expensive which was why the first Mac only shipped with 128k. I would be interested to know if anyone has located the demo unit Steve used in this video and can confirm this.

I can confirm the 512K Mac proto story, what I don't know is if it was ever found later by Apple/collectors.
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project= … =Intro_Demo.txt

Andy Hertzfeld is Apple employee #435, on the Mac development team.

As far as I know, that specific Mac and demo disk were not seen again. There wasn't anything special about that Mac other than it was a prototype 512k Mac and was used at that first demo.

It would be a pity if someone upgraded it to a Plus not realizing the historical significance of what they had. 😢