Apple's First Public Demonstration of the Mac, Unseen Since 1984 [video]

This is a full-length, 1 hour 36 minute demo.<p>Paint demo is around 42 minute. At one point when Paint was demonstrated I heard a background noise &quot;that&#x27;s incredible&quot;. That&#x27;s how incredible and how shocking people found when computer was no longer a terminal, but with a mouse and a control menu.<p>The Mac Writer (around 51 minute) was also very simple yet efficient. For example, once the writer entered the format mode, the options for line space is right on the top and easy to click. Then I thought &quot;geesh, we can&#x27;t even fit anything on the screen with all the buttons in Word unless we hide them into a drop-down list.&quot; I always have trouble locating the line space option in OpenOffice or Word. Having used Word 2003, I rather go back to 2003 and stay that way.<p>What have we done to our software? The tools we use are becoming so complex.<p>History note: being the first Macintosh, this is an expensive equipment. The sale didn&#x27;t go very well because it was very expensive...<p>Here is the teardown of the 128K Mac; <a href="http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Macintosh+128K+Teardown/21422" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ifixit.com&#x2F;Teardown&#x2F;Macintosh+128K+Teardown&#x2F;21422</a>

At the ~3 minute mark, Jobs says, &quot;Apple and IBM emerge as the industry&#x27;s strongest competitors. [...] It appears IBM wants it all. Apple is perceived to be the only hope. Dealers initially welcoming to IBM now fear an IBM-dominated future. They&#x27;re increasingly turning back to Apple as the only force that can ensure their future freedom.&quot;<p>It&#x27;s interesting how the future played out: users have rejected the notion that freedom is valuable. Perhaps something else was meant by &quot;freedom&quot; in those days, but it&#x27;s hard to imagine something less free than the app store.

Might as well work out what $2495.00 in 1984 equates to today...<p>I used this site:<p><a href="http://www.usinflationcalculator.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usinflationcalculator.com</a><p>$2495 in 1984 inflates to a hard to swallow $5,594.11, an increase of 124.2%.<p>Being a limey this this is hard for me to comprehend. So I looked at this page:<p><a href="http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/EXUSUK.txt" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;research.stlouisfed.org&#x2F;fred2&#x2F;data&#x2F;EXUSUK.txt</a><p>There were $1.4076 per £1 in January 1984, which roughly equates as £0.71 per $1. So if I wanted to buy a brand new Mac 30 years ago, I would have had to cough up around £3974 in today&#x27;s money.<p>A quick browse for IMac prices, around £1300 (~$2135, the dollar had a higher value compared to the pound in 1984 than today).<p>My father&#x27;s IMac boasts a 2Ghz processor. How many of your vital organs would you have to sell on Ebay to buy 2Ghz of kick in 1984?<p>Here is a picture of a Cray X-MP:<p><a href="http://images.tribe.net/tribe/upload/photo/8c4/74c/8c474c54-5c11-43ed-840e-f7ecf617a5d4" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;images.tribe.net&#x2F;tribe&#x2F;upload&#x2F;photo&#x2F;8c4&#x2F;74c&#x2F;8c474c54-...</a><p>A Cray X-MP in 1984 would cost about $15,000,000 for 105Mhz, so I would require 19 Crays, costing a total of $285,000,000. Taking into account inflation, today that would be a bank-breaking $639,006,208.<p>I&#x27;m trying to remember the source, but I think the CDC 7600 packed 512Kb of memory back in 1969. The Mac had a comparable amount but cost about a 1000 times less.

Steve demoing NeXTSTEP 3.0 in 1992. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gveTy4EmNyk" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=gveTy4EmNyk</a><p>Fascinating to see the Mac heritage in NeXTSTEP carry through the acquisition and transformation into OSX.<p>It&#x27;s hard to remember, but in 1992 Microsoft had just released Windows 3.1 - NeXT was light-years ahead of Microsoft.

My favorite part is Bill Atkinson&#x27;s MacPaint demo at 42 minutes. I laughed seeing him mention how everyone thinks the paint bucket tool looks like a graduation cap - I always thought the same thing using it as a kid and never saw it as a paint bucket.

Questions that the audience asked:<p>- Is there a version of BASIC?<p>- Is there a version of SmallTalk?<p>- After you become an expert, would the mouse became a feature or a handicap.<p>I really take the ability to write in almost any mainstream programming language on my Mac for granted.

This is very, very interesting.<p>The first 15min more or less are what (most of us) know. Skip that<p>After that, they will show the real stuff. The manufacture of the Macintosh, and a lot of other things.<p>The deeper stuff. The laughable (now) things. A successful company yes, but still very vulnerable. A less experienced Steve Jobs.

I still remember when my dad brought home a Mac. He got rid of it and lamented that he had. I found him a Mac plus and gave him for his 64th birthday this fall. Thing still works. Great machine.

A few minutes in you see that famous tv commercial for the Mac. What I heard was that they only had to show it once, during the ad break for a football game.

Steve Wozniak seems to have been omitted from the credits in the slideshow that starts at about 20:40, and yet he appears in it at about 29:28. I wonder why he wasn&#x27;t listed.

FYI: If you don&#x27;t do flash youtube-dl (in homebrew) will get this video without problems.

Woz is on stage starting at 1:04 in the video.