20 years ago today, the world of computing was changed. Sure, a few years earlier the IBM Personal Computer was released that would eventually become the dominate platform, but it would be many years before the PC with it's DOS interface and annoyingly green screen would become user friendly.
The Apple Macintosh was introduced with a ton of fanfare, including an ad that truly made the Superbowl the television experience it is today. That commercial, a take on 1984 truly showed the hype a product, which wasn't even shown in the ad, could have.
I remember seeing my first Macintosh later that year when a local computing store had one on display. The all-in-one box wasn't unusual to me, as our family had a much larger, and less powerful Commodore PET in the house, with it's CRT screen perched on top of its steel body. The beige plastic was different, as was the square box with the clicker button on it. The perception I had was it was a specialized game machine, especially because the most notable program on it was MacDraw.
Besides as an expensive typewriter, computers were useful to a teenager for two things, a game machine, and to see what you could make it do, through programming. I was fluent in BASIC, but not in PASCAL, the language Apple favored on its Apple II's. I was also a fan of the Atari Computers which not only had games, but also had color and sound. My friend jim and I would create 20 animation shorts with wherever our BASIC programming skills could take us. he was always the better programmer, though. His logic was more solid than my dreamer mentality.
The Macintosh was promoted as a personal machine for all uses, home, business and creativity. the problem was, there wasn't much for it to do. Even BBS's were still in their infancy, and hard disk storage was the realm of the very rich. It wasn't until programs like PageMaker and Microsoft Word did the Macintosh start gaining steam. It had already lost it's chance in becoming a business machine.
The innovations in the Mac had actually already come out in Apple's failed LISA machine released a few years earlier. The LISA was a larger beige box, also with it's own small screen, but it was expensive, much more than the still expensive Mac, but the software wasn't quite right. How do I know? My fraternity actually owned a LISA. It sat in the back of the frat room, good for writing a paper, and throwing it on a 5 and a half inch floppy. The Mac was smaller, used a three and a half inch floppy and improved on the true difference between it and PCs, the interface.
The Mac, with it's small footprint was called a desktop machine, but it's operating system was also called a desk-top, with the idea that the screen represented your desk's blotter, and on it you had files and objects. With your "mouse" pointing device you could point and choose these objects. Sure, even this wasn't Apple's doing, scientists at Xerox's computer labs created the concept, and Steve Jobs and company, actually working on the LISA machine got a look at what they were working on. Amazingly, Xerox didn't sue the hell out of Apple, and the way we interact with our computers was changed because Apple brought a viable version of the concept to the marketplace.
It took Microsoft many more years to realize that it had already taken over the majority of the world's computers with the DOS operating system, and that they too could create a visual, graphics oriented interface.
I go to work and I work on a PC. It's some sort of Compaq with a Pentium in it and it runs Windows 2000, because the company isn't ready to move to XP. It's serviceable, but it doesn't inspire any love with me. I spend hours with that computer, and strangely, everyday I go and look at Apple rumor sites. Why? Well, for one thing, they aren't blocked. For the other, I'm an Apple enthusiast.
I didn't start out that way. I had the Commodore, I had Atari and Coleco game systems. I had an Atari 800XL computer that I loved, and still runs, except for the fact that the floppies that have all of the software have degraded and can't be read. I ought to put it on EBay. The Atari also has the prestige of being the first computer I had with a modem, 300 baud. I started with BBS's, including Houston's Matchmaker BBS, were I actually first started exploring my sexuality, chatting, slowly, with other gay men. The distance helped the process.
My first Mac was a Macintosh LC II, the pizza box looking, entry level machine, running System 7. My dad helped my buy it in college so I could bring my page layout assignments from the yearbook home with me. On floppies, no doubt! Even then I would see what i could do with sound using the recording features and a simple editor. I would draw with a tablet I bought. I also had a 1400 baud modem that I used to access the university mainframe, learning how to get the VAX machine to access all of those alt.something.something newsgroups.
Eventually that machine became to old, so it's been replaced with a grey iMac that taught me about managing music with iTunes and my iPod, an iBook that taught me how to use WiFi and a flat-paneled iMac that ends up being where most of my blogging occurs, as well as being my window to the world as the web browser has become my source for news and information, leaving the TV for pure entertainment. it also has become an avenue for connections, from advertising yourself on the web to chatting and passing pictures and webcam information between people, certainly only a few steps away from that experience on the old Matchmaker BBS.
Of course, there's always on-line porn. The true use for computers in the 21st century.
The computer has become an ubiquitous part of everyday life. In my recent travel it was mentioned that I didn't open my iBook laptop, but still, I used a cell phone network to connect to computers, got cash from an ATM and used a credit card that accessed computers to make sure the money, or in this case credit, was available. There are few places in north america that you can actually get away from any computer interaction.
I'll admit, I'm an Apple fanatic, always trying to sell their computers as being better, and easier to use, especially because I'm not a computer programmer, just a user. I also see that there are uses where a PC is better, but when I come home, I'd rather not have the same clunky PC box as I do at work. I love my Mac and just like being a Texan, if you know me, you'll never have to ask, I'll let you know. sure, I pay more for the computer, but I get what I want.
The Macintosh has it's legion of fans, it's a small group but their vocal, and they encourage Apple to do more, to try harder, and even with their small market share, it's the company everyone watches. The company is built to change computing, not to make sure it's what everyone has. There's an old company slogan, "the computer for the rest of us" that, though off putting to some, seems to embody the maverick, spirit of trying something new. More press is generated by an Apple announcement than any new Microsoft product. Microsoft gets more press on the latest patch than a new version of Office.
Of course, computing would be totally different if it wasn't for Apple CEO Steve Jobs. An arrogant, but visionary man, he almost stopped the production of the Macintosh, since he was much more invested in his project, the LISA. The Mac was being produced by another team, but it wasn't until Jobs finally scrapped the LISA and got behind the fledgling Mac that the revolution was ignited, even Bill Gates, who's original Microsoft Word appeared on the Mac, not a PC, has to give Jobs and his teams the tip of the hat for making computing what it is today.
A week from now is the Superbowl, here in Houston. There will be a commercial that involves Apple, but not necessarily the Macintosh, as Pepsi announces the giveaway of downloadable songs through Apple's iTunes software. Once again apple is going into new territory, but the computer itself is the vehicle, not the product. It's yet another world out there and it will be interesting to see where the innovations of 1984 take us in the next 20 years.
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