Apple

The MacBook Air seems a long way off from the original Macintosh. But according to some, there remains some hereditary DNA from its 1984-era ancestor.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

What is a Macintosh?

After 25 years on the market, it's a good question, since someone with no knowledge of computers looking at, say, today's MacBook Pro, would not necessarily know that it evolved from 1984's original 128K Mac.

But evolve it did, and on the 25th anniversary of the release of that original machine (which is this Saturday), one might indeed wonder what hereditary DNA, if any, today's Macs retain from their much more humble ancestors.

The answer is some, but not that much, at least not when it comes to specific identifiable hardware features, according to two experts interviewed for this article.

One half of an ad for the original 128K Macintosh from 1984.

(Credit: Courtesy of the Digibarn Computer Museum)

"Very little, in terms of the hardware, remains," said Bruce Damer, co-founder of the Digibarn Computer Museum, "except for the fine-quality industrial design of the cases."

But there must be something linking the earliest Macs with today's models besides the name and company that produces them. Otherwise, the famous Macintosh community known by names like the "cult of Mac" or "MacHeads" wouldn't be such a powerful force.

"At its essence, you look at it where it (is) relative to what it was before," said Raines Cohen, the founder of the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, and "there's a sense that it's still a machine that you turn on and you do things (easily) with it. It's an interface that stays out of your way."

Basically, Cohen said, the Mac is all about ease of use and simplicity--as well as the continuity of a low-maintenance user experience.

"Recently, I had a chance to go back and use the old Mac," Cohen said. "The essential consistency was still the same. You could take a Mac user who has been on ice for the last quarter century and put them on a modern Mac, and they'd be up and using it within a matter of moments."

Perhaps that's because of a few software elements that today's Macs have that first appeared in the first versions of the computer.

"On the software side, the primary elements left from the original Mac OS come through in the user interface," said Damer. "The single menu stripe--File, Special, etc.--is a vestige of the original limited screen real estate of the 128K Mac."

The original Mac was a simple machine that changed the way everyday people saw computers. The machine helped open up desktop publishing to a mainstream audience.

(Credit: Courtesy of the Digibarn Computer Museum)

Damer said there are a few other recognizable holdovers as well. For one, the arrow-cursor remains almost identical today to its origins, and window-handling also has stayed the same. In other words, he said, today, as in 1984, you can only resize a window from the lower right corner.

Today's Mac OS X got its beginnings at NeXT, the company Steve Jobs built during his years in exile from Apple. When Apple bought NeXT and brought Jobs back, first to consult and then run the company, the NeXT OS came along with him and formed the basis for the future generations of Macs.

But Apple knew that its fans had an idea of what the Mac OS was supposed to look like, Damer suggested, and as a result, it found a way to maintain some of the consistency to which Cohen referred.

"In some sense, to try to keep some of the original look and feel of the old Mac OS, the Apple team 'dumbed down' the NeXT GUI," Damer said, "which was in some ways more powerful and flexible."

But all along, Cohen said, the Mac operating system has kept the basic elements of menu navigation and windowing more or less the same.

And that, aside from the much more abstract notion that a computer built by what is seen by many to be a company obsessed with design and a somewhat pirate-like mentality, may be what really makes a Mac a Mac.

"Apple's UI guidelines have been there all along," Cohen said, "so that programs have to be consistent and have that (high) level of consistency in order to be successful on the platform."

See the rest of our Mac anniversary coverage here.

See our special anniversary
coverage here.

January 24 marks the the 25th anniversary of the release of the original Macintosh, a computer that--with its whimsical design, innovative graphical user interface and all-in-one form factor--permanently changed personal computing.

Any student of the history of PCs should know that the Mac project was first championed by the late Jef Raskin and then brought to fruition by Steve Jobs. But the team that built the first Mac was, of course, much larger than those two. In fact, the team had a wide range of personalities and skill sets and seems universally to have been regarded as a singular experience in the professional lives of most who were there.

As part of our commemoration of the Mac's silver anniversary, CNET News asked a number of the team's earliest members to share some of their recollections of helping to change the world. Those memories--which are personal and may have evolved and blossomed over time--paint a revealing picture of what it took to make the Mac a reality, and who some of the people behind the project really were.

Joanna Hoffman was an early member of the Macintosh team. She recalls positioning the computer for the higher-education market in its earliest days.

(Credit: Courtesy of Joanna Hoffman)

Joanna Hoffman
"I was taking a leave of absence from the University of Chicago, and I happened to be listening to a couple lectures at Xerox PARC when I ran across Jef Raskin, who was at the time starting the Mac project. We got into a heated discussion after the lecture about what computers should look like and how they should improve people's lives, and he asked me to come interview at Apple."

"I worked on the business plan, and on defining some of the early markets, including the higher-ed market, which was the market which carried the Mac....When we first shipped it, it wasn't really suitable for the business market, which was obviously the most lucrative. But it wasn't ideally suited for that. So while it was going through its various gyrations and modifications, the higher-ed market was very kind to it. They really liked the product and lots of students bought them, so it really helped Mac into its transition before it discovered its niche in desktop publication and other applications which required graphics."

"I think this one hasn't been really told: When we were working on the Macintosh, all of a sudden, everybody was coming up with PCs. DEC had one, so did IBM and Osborne, and I remember we were sitting with our team and Steve Jobs and (marketing consultant) Regis McKenna in Regis' office, and he was trying to get us to articulate what our competition was. Steve was looking at our team, trying to get us to come up with answers. So of course, we piped up with DEC and IBM and everyone entering the field. And Regis walked up to the whiteboard and crossed everybody out and said, 'You have only one competitor, and that is IBM'...Of course it (ended up being) us against Microsoft, but in those days, it was IBM."

These days, Hoffman is married to fellow Macintosh team member Alain Rossmann, and is spending her time consulting with a series of nonprofits, helping them to run and focus their operations more effectively.

Ed Riddle, an early Mac team member, recalls his interview with Steve Jobs: sitting on a furniture-less floor, staring into each others' eyes--the two men shared a Zen master--followed by Jobs bowing and saying it had gone well.

(Credit: Courtesy of Ed Riddle)

Ed Riddle
"I was working just before (joining the Mac team) at a laser company called Coherent Radiation, as an engineer. I knew Rod Holt, and when he moved to Apple, when the Macintosh project started, he called me up and said I should come in. (The role) was not really specific. Originally, it was just that Rod thought I was a good guy, and that I could fit in somehow. (The team) had a really open atmosphere that way.

"We talked about things that I might do, and I thought I might work on the keyboard, because it was something nobody had gotten their hands on. So basically, I designed the keyboard, and the protocol that goes to the Mac, the little coil cord."

The team always allowed "people to express any creativity they might have. I always felt that was a quality of that group. It was really fun that way....I think it was unique. I worked at Atari for a while, and I felt that that there was some of that atmosphere there as well, that, 'Just think of something neat'...I just assumed that it was an Apple thing at the time. I thought it was a Steve Jobs kind of thing. It was a young, energetic, starlit kind of place. Everybody who worked there had a creative urgency. (And) the kind of thing Steve Jobs was trying to articulate (was) that he wanted something to be really neat."

"When I first arrived...the furniture hadn't arrived yet, except for a few benches and desks. It was pretty empty. I don't think there was even 10 or 15 involved.

"It was time for my job interview, and Steve (Jobs) wanted to be the first person to interview me. So we went into this office, and there was no furniture, so we sat on the floor. I said, we have an acquaintance, and I said that I knew his Zen master, Kobun Chino. We sat down cross-legged and made eye contact, and rather than talking, we just looked at each other for the longest time, and I don't think we actually said much of anything during the whole job interview. Mostly it was just making eye contact, and then at a certain point, he smiled, and he bowed, like a Japanese thing, and that was the end of the interview. We seemed to just connect. (Then he added), Well, you still have to run the gauntlet of the technical engineers."

Today, Riddle lives in Oregon, where he's retired and actively involved in local politics, as well as playing in a band.

Daniel Kottke was the first employee Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak hired at Apple. Later, he joined the Macintosh team as an engineer, the first full-time engineering job in his career.

(Credit: Courtesy of the Digibarn Computer Museum)

Daniel Kottke, Apple employee number one
"I was a technician on the Apple III, and I had been asking my management for years, how do I become an engineer? Can I be an engineer now? So I was just happy that Steve (Jobs) agreed to hire me as an engineer."

"As soon as Steve funded (the Mac project) what they did was movie it out of Mark LeBrun's cubicle, and he hired Suite B3, over at Stevens Creek Blvd. (in Cupertino, Calif.), the exact same suite that Apple had started in (after Jobs and co-founder Steve Wozniak moved the fledgling company out of Jobs' garage) and the same suite as the Lisa project started in. This is like this nondescript office complex, with a bunch of Realtors.

"And there was this sign on the door: 'Danger: Contagious Algorithm Research Area.' Nowadays, you couldn't even do that. People would call the police. I am absolutely sure that Burrell (Smith, a very early Mac team member) did it, because that was his sense of humor.

"I joined in January, 1981, just about the same week as Andy Hertzfeld. I think Andy was a day or two ahead of me in officially joining the team full-time. The very first meetings I went to, Jef (Raskin) would pull all these Nerf balls out of a box, just to get in shape for serious thinking. The very early meetings, we were kind of sitting around in beanbag chairs."

"The flavor of the early Mac group, the combination of the personalities of Jef, Burrell and Joanna, and Randy Wigginton, it definitely got the flavor of the rebel alliance....It was a happy time in all of our lives. It was exciting to work on that project. It's fairly rare, we all had the sense that we knew it was going to be successful--which wasn't as arrogant as it sounds. We had such a great collection of talent, and we were funded. And we knew we had a visionary leader in Steve."

Nowadays, Kottke is working on a start-up called Blinkenlabs, as well as developing co-housing in Palo Alto, Calif.

The signatures of the original Macintosh team members, circa February 1982, nearly two years before the computer was released to the public.

(Credit: Courtesy of the Digibarn Computer Museum)

See also: Special coverage: The Mac at 25

Click image for our special
anniversary coverage.

Twenty-five years after the debut of the Macintosh, the product that is the soul of Apple is not necessarily its vehicle to the future.

It was a quarter-century ago that Super Bowl XVIII viewers saw the now-famous introductory ad for Apple's Macintosh, formally released two days later. Apple had announced back in 1983 that the Macintosh was coming, but for many, that Sunday was their first look at the product that would drive Apple to new heights in the personal computer industry and usher in the graphical user interface as the standard way for regular people to interact with their computers.

These days, Apple is in a very different place. The company sold ten times as many iPods and iPhones in its first fiscal quarter as it did Macs; and it was a great year for the Mac. CEO Steve Jobs was so aware of this transformation in recent years that he announced in January 2007 that Apple Computer was no more; it's Apple Inc. these days.

More and more, it seems the iPhone is the future of Apple. Or, at least, the cutting-edge technology inside Apple, the project that everybody wants to work on, and that competitors strive to emulate. So what does that mean for the Mac over the next quarter century?

In all honesty, few of us know. Certainly it would have been difficult for most people in the late 1980s watching Michael Douglas in Wall Street talk into a "mobile" phone the size of Shaquille O'Neal's basketball shoe to envision using a sleek handheld phone with all the computing power of the PCs of the day, and then some.

But the Mac is still very much part of Apple's mission: it ends every press release with the stock paragraph declaring "Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications."

So let's consider the near-term future of the Mac; say 5 to 10 years from today.

Hardware
One look at our gallery of Macs through the years is enough to demonstrate just how far the personal computing industry has come from the days of bulky plastic and tiny screens to products like the MacBook Air.

Desktop computers seem likely to get smaller and larger; smaller in that people will consider even a Mac Mini too big for their home electronics cabinet, and larger in that they will get assimilated into various other household gadgets, such as televisions or home security systems. The other trend that will eventually come to roost is the home server, which is not for the faint of heart at the moment but seems eventually destined for every home. Apple will have some answer to that market as it develops, and they probably won't call it a server.

Smartphones like the iPhone are indeed all the rage, but they aren't going to displace notebook computers with real screens and real keyboards. Reasonable people can disagree on how big those screens and keyboards might be, but any real work or real entertainment will require something larger than a handheld gadget. The MacBook will continue to evolve with existing features like solid-state drives and multitouch gesture inputs joining science-fair projects like flexible displays and advanced voice-recognition technologies.

One of the main questions around the Mac in 2008 was whether or not Apple would bow to a coming recession by either cutting the price of its MacBooks or introducing a so-called Netbook. It's hard to imagine Apple fighting with its PC counterparts on the bargain shelves with the basic MacBook lineup, but if the cost of computing power continues to decline as performance flatlines, cost-cutting might happen on its own without poisoning Apple's margins. And few would be surprised to see Apple come out with its own take on the Netbook if the trend toward that style of computing keeps going, recent comments notwithstanding.

Software
There doesn't seem to be anyone able to step up and play third-fiddle to Microsoft and Apple in the personal computing operating system market within the next three to five years. These days, Linux development seems concentrated on the smartphone market, where it can be found at the heart of new products such as Google's Android, LiMo's software, and Palm's WebOS.

One of the strongest selling points for the Mac at present is the iLife suite, and it will be interesting to watch how Apple evolves that set of software. As the way we use computers evolves, Apple will need to tackle those new usage models in iLife: iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand will probably stick around, but iWeb and iDVD already seem like they could be replaced with more forward-looking products that help manage your home or car, for example.

Also, Apple will need to continue to improve the way its software works with the Internet, expanding on concepts like MobileMe. It's not hard to imagine the Mac of the future as a relatively thin client that does most of its work over a high-speed Internet connection, backed up by the aforementioned home server appliance that stores everything. Simplifying that kind of setup could be a huge part of iLife '12.

To be clear, these are all pretty safe evolutionary bets. That's sort of the point: the Mac is already a mature product, and over time it becomes harder to make revolutionary changes to products that have entrenched usage patterns.

That kind of action is happening in the mobile computing market, as the iPhone and iPod Touch turn into Apple's most influential products. Apple's recent decision to file for a trademark on the term "OS X," as distinct from Mac OS X, shows that in the future the company wants to draw an even clearer line between the Mac and the rest of its computers.

But what do you think? How will the Mac evolve over the next 25 years? Or is the Mac of the future today's iPhone? Please leave your suggestions below, and also check out the rest of our package on the 25th anniversary of the Mac, complete with reader stories, memories from the original Mac team, and pictures of Macs throughout the years.

Photos: Mac through the years

See the rest of our Mac anniversary coverage here.

See our special anniversary
coverage here.

As the Mac celebrates its 25th birthday, we asked CNET readers to send us stories of their most vivid memories of the groundbreaking computer. Here are some of the stories we received.

Mac as typesetter
I was working at an ad agency and had just left a client who was complaining bitterly about the high cost of typesetting changes on his catalog. The agency's typesetter was a $100,000 state-of-the-art unit that was an art director's dream but could not manage a simple change from page 23 to page 34.

On the way back to the agency, I stopped in to see a friend who was working at a computer shop. "You've got to see the new Apple Macintosh," he declared. He proceeded to show me a little box with the cool mouse...and page make-up software that could lift changes from page 23 to page 34 with two mouse clicks. The cost? About $2,500. I raced back to the agency to talk to our vice president of print production. "I have seen the future and its name is Mac," I declared. His reply? "Nah, computers will never deliver production-quality type." Five years later, Macs were everywhere and the $100,000 typesetter was a doorstop.
--Christopher Ritter
Worcester, Mass.

A call from Steve Jobs himself
So, it's 2000 and I've just purchased my third Mac, an insanely cool and insanely expensive G4 Cube with a 15" flat panel to match. Only my new computer, designed to be as much art as a tool, has what appear to be cracks in its see-through case. This displeases me greatly.

Much frustrating back-and-forth with Apple's tech support ensues, including skeptical dismissals and promises of replacements that never materialize.

Power Mac G4 Cube

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News)

In a fit of pique, I fax a letter to Steve Jobs and Fred Anderson demanding satisfaction. I promise to do all I can to publicize the flaws in my Cube--which it turns out were a systemic problem--and time my effort to coincide with Apple's upcoming earnings announcement so it will do maximum damage. Catharsis achieved.

To my surprise, I get a call from someone at Apple claiming to be from "executive relations." They offer to replace my machine. Sure, I say. That's all I want. Case closed, I think.

It's a Sunday morning several days later. I was out the night before; I am barely awake and not particularly perky. My cell phone rings. In this corner of San Francisco, I get horrible cell service. The caller identifies himself through the static: "Hi, this is Steve Jobs."

"Eh? Who?"

"It's Steve Jobs and I'm calling about the letter you sent me."

I wait for the laugh track to start or my housemate to come out from behind the door holding his phone and snickering.

"If you're not happy, you can just send the computer back and we'll give you a refund."

"Um, okay, but you guys already offered to replace it."

"We did? OK, and is that doing it for you? Are you happy with it?"

Still struggling to accept what's happening, I mutter something about being satisfied.

"Good, cause it's a great computer," says Jobs. And then he's gone.

My new machine arrives a week later. It's got the same cracks in the same places. I give up.

Pui-Wing Tam of The Wall Street Journal writes a story about my experience. I give Jobs credit for caring enough to call a customer at home. I don't mention that I wimped out when I talked to him. The story gets picked up far and wide. Nobody really believes it.

That Cube survived until 2004, much modified, but always loved. Then, in a puff of acrid blue smoke, it died a horrible death. I still have its lifeless corpse.
--Kevin Pedraja
Seattle

A wish granted
When I was 18 (1990) and entering my freshman year of college, I was diagnosed with cancer, had just lost all kidney function, and was living on dialysis. I learned about a great organization called The Make-a-Wish Foundation, which grants wishes to sick children. I wished for a Mac IIcx, and my wish was granted. After getting the machine, I returned to college on dialysis, and my cancer went into remission. I started a business in college doing resumes for others on my Mac. I was one of the very few students who had an actual computer in their dorm room.

When I graduated in 1994, I received a kidney transplant and met my wife in an AOL chatroom. I am 37 now, healthy, have two wonderful children and an amazing wife. My Mac changed my life.
--Brian Rubash

No regrets over a lusty Performa
In the late '80s as a little kid I remember going to Macy's with my parents to shop and I would always stop by the electronics department. I used to admire the computers they had--especially the Apple machines; there was something that made them stand out. I grew up and didn't pay much attention to computers until, one day, I decided I wanted a computer, so I went to P.C. Richard & Son and fell in love with a Performa 6116cd. It was pricey, but I just loved the way it looked, and the operating system was so easy to use and quite elegant in my opinion. When I looked at the price I had a second thought, but my lust over this beautiful computer took over and I purchased it with a credit card owned by my dad. I remember I must have paid for that computer at least four years. With the interest, I think I ended up paying about four grand, but I do not regret it one bit.
--Johany Marin
Richmond Hill, N.Y.

Filling a niche
Back in 1984 I went from being an unemployed kid with no future to a Macintosh programmer at a major college. The engineering department had been working on a networking project for home computers because staff members were purchasing them to avoid using the mainframe. There was a smorgasbord of various "microcomputers" on the market back then, and nobody really knew which one was going to take off, if any.

The professor in charge of the project was having difficulty getting students interested in working on the project. The problem was further complicated by the fact that the Macintosh had just come out and it had no terminal emulator software, which was needed to attach to his "network." The network he was working on was really more like a BBS system, if you can remember those things. Anyway, he told my brother all of this at the church they both belonged to. My brother told him about a terminal emulator program I had written from my TRS-80 at home, so a week or so later I was working at the best job I ever had.
--Jeff Ritter
West Chester, Penn.

Finding first love with Lisa
I got my first Mac a long time ago--so long in fact that it wasn't even called a Mac; it was a Lisa. Apparently Mac was to be the business model and the Lisa was the home model. Well, after a few months of using my Lisa in my parents' bedroom, we got the notice from Apple that they were recalling the Lisa and they would replace it with the Mac Plus (we opted for the 1MB external hard drive that was the exact dimension of the computer so it could be used as a stand for the Plus.) Since then, I have worked my way through a Mac Plus, a Mac II, a Mac IIci, the first color laptop that Mac released, and after a brief, and regrettable venture into the realm of PCs, I am back with my MacBook. Which is my favorite? What can I say? They keep getting better and better.
--Charles Hamilton

Who needs a keyboard?
I bought my first Macintosh, a Quadra 650, in the fall of 1993. Once, someone took the keyboard home overnight but left the mouse. I plugged the mouse into the Apple Desktop Bus port on the back of the computer and turned the computer on. The desktop and mouse pointer came up. I went to the Apple menu and pulled down the keyboard or keycaps application. To my surprise, I could click the letters on the on-screen keyboard and type. I then launched Microsoft Word and typed a letter that I needed to write.

What a tremendous point-and-click GUI.
--Michael Lopez
Florida

A missed opportunity in Cupertino
I left design school in the winter of 1974 and came to San Francisco. I signed with an agent who convinced me to go freelance so I could concentrate on graphic design and the "Big Idea" while she brought in the business.

Her first project referral to me was a packaging job with an eccentric young guy in Burlingame. He had created a radio-controlled model airplane made entirely out of corrugated cardboard, and he needed some graphics help. I was to meet Jef at his home in Brisbane. He wore wrinkled khaki pants that coordinated nicely with his furry house slippers and print pajama top.

As I worked on the cardboard package at Jef's house for a few weeks, I saw the many sides of him. Neighborhood kids came in for music lessons, his radio-controlled glider club, and a magic lesson or two. Jef even had an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art showcasing the corrugated cardboard building blocks that he designed.

Finally the packaging project was finished, and as we said our good-byes, Jef asked if I wanted to come work with him in Cupertino. He had a couple of friends who were building computers and he needed a graphic designer on his team.

I lived two hours away from Cupertino, and without asking the smart questions I should have, I declined. And with that, I shrugged off the opportunity to follow Jef to his next project.

That decision would come back to me years later as my greatest missed opportunity. Jef Raskin was going to Cupertino to design the operating system for the first Macintosh computer with his friends Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. I didn't learn until much later about the fate of this most creative thinker, who touched all of us with his innovative design of the Mac's user interface, including double-clicking, pull-down menus, dragging and dropping, and icons.
--Bruce Koren
San Anselmo, Calif.

Computer as community
Some of the more interesting projects were the annual MacCentral Mosaics. A sliver of an adjoining tile would be sent to someone via e-mail. The recipient had to create a tile of his/her own, based upon that sliver. Here's a link to the site showing the final result of one of the Mosaic projects. Participants hailed from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Dublin, Ireland; New Zealand; Hawaii; USA; and Canada--all brought together by their love of creating, and having fun, with their Macs. The people ranged in age from very old to very young. There were doctors, scientists, housewives, retirees, students, musicians, artists, graphic designers, web designers, photographers, a cancer researcher, a farmer, a firefighter, etc...Many of us have met in person over the years.

The community that grew up around the Mac is even more amazing than the Mac itself!
--Donna Benevides
Harwich, Mass.

The power of OS X
I am currently a junior in college, but I will never forget my freshman year in high school, the year I discovered the Mac. I was a complete upgrade-it-yourself PC nerd when I started my freshman year in high school. I joined our school's cinematography club and was first introduced to our club's Quicksilver G4, OS X, and iMovie. I had only used OS 9 up to that point and when I saw what OS X could do I remember turning to our teacher and asking him, "What kind of computer is this?"

I couldn't believe it was an Apple. I fell in love and spent the rest of that year drooling over all of Apple's offerings online until one day in our local mall I saw it, our very own Apple Store. The staff was polite, helpful, and friendly and the idea of an on-hand Mac Genius minutes away from my house made the sell to my parents that much easier. Two PowerBooks, an iMac, and a MacBook Pro later, I work for the very company I fell in love with.
--Nick V.
Boston

Being part of something insanely great
It was 1984, and I had started a small company in Canada, designing, manufacturing, and selling Cordura camera cases (not a very unique idea then) when the first Mac commercial--where you saw the Mac bag before the computer--sent me in a different direction. Long story short, I got in early and had a well-accepted product line selling in Canada and lucked into an invite to InCider Magazine's hospitality suite during the first Macworld Expo in San Francisco. It was held in two penthouse suites at the Sir Francis Drake with a double doorway joining the two suites: one suite held all the marketing/sales personnel and the other room was the programmers/techies. That doorway was a real "dimensional portal" if you will. When Steve Jobs entered the room (on the marketing side), you could literally feel his presence before you saw him. That was the one and only time I had the opportunity to meet him and shake his hand.

My company is long since gone, but I've always had a Mac--and just about one of each series, if not models, over the years--not as a devotee, but there was always something about most of them that was unique and better in functionality to anything a Windows machine could do. Today I still use both platforms, plus Linux, in business.

Those early days were something to be part of, where the energy and entrepreneurial spirit was contagious and you really felt that you or your idea could be part of something bigger that was destined to be insanely great.
--Kurc Buzdegan

Through a child's eyes
I have been an Apple/Mac user since 1986. Before the days of the big mega stores, the Best Buys and such, there were the little strip mall geeky/techy businesses that had very little inventory but tons of support and conversation.

Macintosh II

(Credit: Courtesy of the Computer History Museum)

One business was called "Mr. Micro" in Dallas, Texas. My son was three years old at the time. My wife, my daughter, my son, and I walked in and started to look around. I vividly recall watching my son walk up to a MS-DOS-based computer and tap around on the keyboard. There was no mouse as I recall. All he saw was a command line with a blinking cursor, otherwise a blank screen.

He then walked over to a little Apple IIGS and maneuvered the mouse to open the hard-drive. His face lit up! The GUI hooked him at such a young age. I recall seeing lawyers standing in line to use the Apple laser printer and a Classic Mac to print out all kinds of documents/proposals and such. Remember, this was before Kinko's and such.That day I spent in excess of $3,000!

The IIGS used a brutally slow (compared to today!) Motorola 68000 chipset. It came with 256K of RAM, and an additional 256K cost an extra $499! No hard drive, just 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 floppy drives, and a 16 pin dot-matrix printer that had a cool feature of sleeping until it was needed. I bought a copy of Clarisworks/Appleworks, which was a suite of basic apps. I also bought Print Shop, Quicken, and Reader Rabbit. I was in heaven! I eventually bought a custom-made (by Kensington) command center that matched the dimensions and color of the IIGS.
--Emsy Robinson II

One fine-looking document
In 1984 I worked for Four-Phase Systems in Cupertino, Calif., right across the street from Apple. My assignment was to document my company's product life cycle. My buddy had just purchased the very first Macintosh, the Mac 128K, and the ImageWriter printer. He said this little Mac could far surpass anything I had at work or at home.

This first Mac had a tiny 9-inch black and white screen, 128K of memory, no hard disk, one 400K 3.5-inch floppy drive, and a thing called a "mouse." That's it! No hard disk, no external floppy drive. The system software came on a floppy disk, as did the applications MacWrite and MacPaint.

The user interface was nothing like I had ever seen. I was accustomed to a PC running WordStar. This little Mac was nothing like a PC. While not a PC, the little Mac was not without its challenges. With so little memory and storage I had to work hard to avoid repetitive strain. "Floppy in, floppy out," again and again. My document was stored on the floppy that held the OS, as I recall. There were at least three floppies in play at all times, one with the OS and my file, one with MacWrite, and the other with MacPaint. Every time I wanted to "save," I had to eject the application floppy and insert the OS floppy repeatedly as the 128K of memory in the Mac strained to coordinate between the OS, the applications, and my paper. By far, printing was the most tedious of all efforts, requiring additional insert-eject repetitions throughout the print job. With such little memory and storage, such a task would be impossible today, but this first Mac succeeded gloriously.

Even though the Mac 128K retailed for more than $2,400, it was worth every penny. My 34-page final product "wowed" everyone. There were typefaces and graphics that none of our in-house systems could produce, and the print quality of the first ImageWriter dot-matrix printer outclassed everything. My company's policy was to produce in-house documents with their own high-end systems, but this paper was so fine it was allowed to remain as it was.
--Steve Cowart
Mountain View, Calif.

A Netbook ahead of its time
I just finished crawling into my attic to unbox what perhaps was a unique machine that was ahead of its time. I speak of the Apple eMate 300 which, now that I think of it, seems like a Netbook or OLPC that was a few years ahead of its time. This tiny portable computer ran the Newton OS but featured a full keyboard and a clamshell design similar to some iBooks of the late '90s.

I used this to take notes in my first year of graduate school during 1998. From my understanding, when Steve Jobs returned to the helm at Apple, he made it clear that he hated the Newton and he quickly kicked it to the curb. I loved this device, as I was able to surf the Web (kinda, sorta) and pull e-mail (definitely) as well as store notes and documents for all of my classes.
--Guillermo Haas-Thompson
Knightdale, N.C.

Going on faith
In 1987 I wanted to get into desktop publishing for Founders Ministries, a nonprofit organization. I researched the options, settled on Adobe Pagemaker, Microsoft Word, and an IBM XT 286. A friend, who had recently won an award as a top IBM salesman, offered to purchase the hardware at his discount, but asked me to stop by his home first. On his desk was a Macintosh Plus. He said, "This is the computer you need." It looked like a toy, but at his recommendation, I did more research and took the plunge. Since then we have purchased over 50 Macs and I remain a die-hard Machead today.
--Tom Ascol
Cape Coral, Fla.

Drawing a dream
In late December 1984 while stationed in Germany, I took my family to the U.S. Army Recreation Center at Garmisch. We went to visit an old friend of mine stationed there.

At the time I was thinking about buying a computer, and being in the Army gave me the chance to try out a variety of computers and operating systems. Trouble was, I just couldn't get into command line interfaces. Teaching myself a bit of Basic did I create a simple program for a little used PC in our office that mildly impressed my superiors but I hated the effort I had to make to get things to work. Imagine creating a bar chart by blindly entering grid coordinates to define the corners of a rectangle then rendering the image to see if you got it right! There had to be a better way.

On visiting my friend he showed me his new computer called a Macintosh. I had heard of them but hadn't considered buying one as they weren't sold in the Post Exchange. As I sat down at the little 128k Mac and took that funny mouse in my hand, I literally had an epistle (with angelic choir). I could draw a rectangle with two clicks and a wave of my hand--amazing! I was so absorbed with the thing that eventually everybody went to lunch and left me there alone on the Mac. With no more than a few words from my friend, I spent the next two hours in MacDraw making a sketch of the house that my wife and I had been talking about building. The next month I bought my first Mac (at the Canadian Post Exchange). And we did build that house largely based on that first MacDraw sketch.
--Hank Lavagnini

Decades of freedom
When I was growing up, Apple had their "Apples for the students" program going full-swing. Every week, I had the opportunity to sit down with a 512k Macintosh and an Apple IIe with dual floppy disk drives and that lovely black-and-green monochrome screen.

I have a form of muscular dystrophy and for the first time in my life, doing schoolwork or just playing a game was a physical possibility for me thanks to those early Apple computers. They laid the foundation that brought me into the PC world, three Macs and a career in information technology. I owe Apple my livelihood and my direction in life; they opened new doors and showed me opportunities that I never saw possible.

Jump ahead 20 years and Apple gives me my dream computer, the MacBook Air and it was finally a notebook that I could carry around independently and gave me a sense of freedom that is lost of many other people. Before the MBA, a notebook was simply a slimmed down desktop for me, and now I have freedom.

I owe Apple my endless gratitude, for giving me a career and improving my life in ways that simply were not possible before my first experience with that beige, monochrome Macintosh.
--Terrance Dizard
Bothell, Wash.

Sneaking a Mac into work
In 1983, I was the "PC analyst" in the MIS department of a Silicon Valley semiconductor company. MIS bought all the PCs in the company and whoever wanted one had to justify to me why they needed it, i.e., why the MIS computers couldn't generate the reports they were looking for. I also ran what was called the "Information Center", a small team of people who taught people how to use WordPerfect, dBase II, and Lotus 123.

The woman I hired to be the word processing trainer (we had an IBM centralized word processing computer) bought a first-generation Mac and brought it in to show us. We all drooled over it. Everyone loved the mouse, the GUI, and especially all the fonts and the laser printer. We decided to create our course catalog on the Mac so that it would be eye-catching.

She had to bring her Mac in every day to work on the course catalog because there was no such thing as telecommuting back in those days. At one point she asked if the company could buy one since we were clearly using it for work purposes. No, I said. It wasn't the company standard! The IBM PC was the company standard because we wanted to offer training on a standard set of software and that was PC software. It was more efficient that way.

That goes to show you how dumb we MIS types were in those days. I suppose there was a lot of merit in having one file format for spreadsheets and word processors so that documents could be shared. But in those days, everything was printed and sent out in interoffice envelopes so file formats weren't that important. There was some merit in supporting one end-user programming language, but very few people actually created dBase II programs so that wasn't really that important. But we had set a standard and by God we were sticking to it.

The Mac software was easier to use and therefore took less training. AppleTalk was far better than any PC networking technology at the time, especially because it let you share Apple laser printers. With HP Laser printers we had to use parallel cables and switch boxes. If we really cared about users and their productivity, we would have thrown out the PC and standardized on Macs. But such was the power of those three letters "IBM" in the MIS world in 1984.
--Mike Glish
Belmont, Calif.

Publishing platform
1984 - While working in Denver for the U.S. Department of the Interior, I saw a newspaper ad for a "Macintosh" (strange name for a computer) and dropped in at a small strip mall store to see it. I was impressed. Although it was simple-looking, cute, and superficially laughable, I knew the GUI approach was significant. It could walk all over the clumsy DOS competition when it came to usefulness. The next day, I went to the head of purchasing for the 500-person organization I worked for and asked him to get one. His response was, "Mac what?" It wasn't listed by the GSA and therefore couldn't be bought. I "encouraged him" to try harder and he eventually got one, which led to several more, GSA approval or not. It was a hit.

1986 - Teaching at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, CO, I was the only person in my department that had and appreciated a Mac. The rest of the faculty either didn't use computers or were DOS or Unix addicts, much smarter than the rest of us, of course. By this time, I was pretty Mac proficient and had a small lab at CSU with staff and a couple of grad students. I regularly taught courses on geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing and the new GPS technology.

1988 - There was a growing community of academic and research GIS professionals worldwide that communicated mostly via bitnet or one its offshoots, in addition to FTS (Federal Telecommunications System) phones. There was no GIS publication except for a struggling new technical journal in Britain. So, having been smitten by the Mac bug, I decided to start a GIS newsletter, 6x per year on my personal Mac 128k, complete with one floppy drive inside and one outside. External hard drives for Macs were starting to appear but I couldn't afford one. Besides, who needed one? Floppies were cheap! (In fact, Apple later loaned me both a hard drive and a Laserwriter while I was getting started).

1989 - My plan was to charge $98 a year for my newsletter, which I named "GIS World" and take no ads. Before the first issue was mailed I had almost 400 subscribers, and by the second, I had been talked into taking ads. I moved to full color after five issues, with the printing bill paid for by a MasterCard. The rest is history, as they say. By 1992, GIS World was distributed worldwide (120 countries) and I started three more GIS publications in succession: GIS Europe (UK), GIS Asia Pacific (Singapore), and Business Geographics (US). GIS World was a success and it was developed and produced solely on Macs. My peak staff of 50 people each had their own Mac, used for everything from office mail to all aspects of full color graphics, layout and publication. Between 1984 and 2009, I bought over 100 machines.

GIS World Inc. is gone now. I sold in 1994 to Pearson and it has changed hands twice since. Someone changed the name to Geoworld, not a smart move, and now its just a shadow of GIS World at its peak. The Mac allowed an inexperienced "publisher" to learn how to create successful publications from the technical content side, instead of journalism or publishing. It worked quite well but could not have gotten off the ground without the Macintosh and Apple's support. ( I have to wonder how many similar stories are out there...?)
--Denny Parker
Lake Wales, Fla.

The long walk to Mac
As a family, we were early adopters. That meant a "fat" 512K Mac in 1985, which I eventually inherited, requiring a System disk (!) to boot, coupled to a 20Mb DataFrame hard drive. Said HD was the size of 2 personal pizzas, and needed a minute or so to spin up. Upon going to college in 1990, I was presented with a Mac SE/30, something that was nice and tidy and fast. A year or so after purchase, I added memory--my first time. I wore a grounding strap...it was a big deal. I even bought a carrying case and lugged the heavy thing around on flights. Memorably, someone pointed to it at LAX and said "Mac SE," to which I replied "30!" Other elements in the family graduated to the Mac IIci, and to various versions of the Mac LC. The IIci was a speed demon, much faster than the IIcx. I remember keeping tabs on pricing throughout college, and distinctly remember NeXT (precursor to OS X) at the UCLA computer store. A good friend at college withdrew $1,000 (1989 dollars) from his Westwood, Calif., bank and walked the mile or so to the store to buy his Mac SE. He said that that was the longest walk of his life.
--Patrick Achord
Upton, N.Y.

Don't tread on Mac
I was working at an architecture firm here in Toronto back in '91 and they were big Mac fans. We had all the latest hardware, like the FX, the fastest Mac at the time. We needed it to run AutoCad for the Mac.

Macintosh Portable

(Credit: Courtesy of the Computer History Museum)

Anyway, one of the partners heard about this portable Mac, and had to have it. I guess he thought it would be great to show clients drawings of projects, etc.

As you might know, the portable Mac turned out to be pretty heavy, (15.8 lbs.) with a tiny monochrome 9.8" display.

So one day this guy was leaving his house, getting into his car. He put the Mac Portable on his roof as he negotiated his keys and car door. He got in and pulled out of his driveway, completely oblivious to the new computer on his roof. The computer promptly slides off the roof, off the car, and falls on the driveway. He hears the crash, and panics. Instinctively, he puts the car in drive and pulls forward. Then he hears another frightening sound. He has driven OVER the computer, leaving a fat tread mark on the case.

He arrives at the office, fully embarrassed, and freaked out about the computer. He gives it to us (the office computer guys). We see the tire mark, and parts of the case missing. We can barely contain ourselves. We set it up, and carefully tilt open the screen. More bits of plastic fall. We get it plugged in and stand there for a minute, not knowing what to expect.

I hit the startup button, and the room is silent. A few seconds go by, and by golly, the thing boots up!! We can't believe it. We see the Mac logo on the screen, and we are speechless. The thing actually booted up.

The partner never used the portable after that. I think he was scared of it, like it had a soul that would not die. The office jokes lasted for months, but I can tell you, it was a proud day to be a Mac owner.
--Peter McClelland
Toronto

All the bytes in the world
Eric, my brother, then 11, and me, freshly 8, sat in the newly anointed "Computer Room" in our house. Dad was fit to burst in front of a computer that was not even on. As if we were to embark on our greatest adventure, Dad addressed us. It was March 12, 1987. We had a new Macintosh computer, filled with what must have been internal paint for all I knew. How else was I to use the colorful drawing program I so coveted? Eric knew what he was doing and simply waited patiently until the computer was booted up so he could show up Dad. Alas, the future was then, and then still feels like now. Dad held authoritatively that evening an impossibility. "Boys," he said, vigorously emphasizing our new destiny, "in your lifetimes you will never...--he paused, never losing eye contact, though conceivably calculating the last scrap of potential squashed assuredly with doubt--"EVER see this computer's 20-megabyte hard drive filled to capacity." And with that stunning declaration, certainly on par with "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," Dad pressed Power.
--Danny Rehr
Columbia, Md.

A family of Macs
I was 5 in 1991 when my dad first introduced my family and I to a personal computer. It was a Macintosh SE and he mainly bought it to use the graphic programs and design some ad photos, but it essentially taught my brothers and I how to use and understand what a computer is. Sure, we were entertained by our Nintendo system with our TV, but we knew a computer would be a big part of our lives one day. Going from PC to PC shortly there after was a nightmare. The constant hassle of installing and reinstalling of programs are what drove us away from seeing computers as an easy way to run our lifestyles. Then the iMac was introduced in the late '90s. It was awesome to us. It looked cool, it had power, it gave us the ability to go online for the first time, and it was faster then our one-year-old PC in the house. My brothers and I fought over controlling rights because of some killer app that came out, some game, some tool. It was fun. In 2003, we made another upgrade to the iMac with the swivel neck. Much like the commercial that ran, I stuck my tongue out at the machine whenever I ejected a CD (or for the first time a DVD). Now in 2008, we'll be upgrading the main hardware in March to the latest installment of the iMac. Even though my brothers and I are all on MacBooks now in college, we'll definitely be enjoying the new machine as in a way, it grew up with us as much as we grew up with it.
--Ricardo Perez
Sacramento, Calif.

Speaking of the Mac
My most significant Macintosh was my first. I got it in the summer of 1984. It was just called "Macintosh," had 128k of RAM, and that cute little screen that just barely fit the width of a MacWrite document. It had a single-sided 400k 3.5 inch floppy, which was big considering the normal PC of the time came with a double-sided 5.25 floppy that only held 360k. My first box of ten 3.5 inch single-sided diskettes cost $50. The bit-mapped display, showing fonts as they would print and inserted graphics was a great leap for a computer that cost less than $10,000 (aka the Lisa).

There were two great features of the original keyboard--no built-in numeric keypad to force the mouse outside of the comfort zone--and a caps lock key that "locked" down when pressed, unlocked when pressed again. Because you could feel the difference between the caps lock and surrounding keys, it prevented the accidental swap of caps and lower-case that happens so easily with our "modern" keyboards.

I entered law school shortly after I got it, and hauled it across San Francisco on a bus many times to work on class outlines with a colleague. I didn't have an outline program so I wrote them in MacWrite, used a bunch of rulers to indent paragraphs (the tip came in one of the early MacWorld issues). Could only get about 5 pages because of all the rulers and then the file filled RAM, so I'd save that part, and begin the next.

In the summer of '85, I got a third-party memory upgrade so it became a 512k Mac. Later ('86?) it got the bigger ROMs, and a double-sided 800k floppy. That and software improvements kept it going until the LC came out. Never even bothered getting an external floppy.

An early program that few seem to remember was called Switcher. Story was it was written by Andy Hertzfeld at the request of John Sculley, so that the 512k Mac could switch between several programs running in virtual 128k machines. Very cool.

But my favorite Mac, is my current MacBook. White, powerful, and up to date. (Although I do sometimes miss the simplicity of system 7 on the LC; OS X is powerful, but a pain-in-the-butt when things go wrong.)

I look forward to another 25 years of improvements. Perhaps voice recognition and artificial intelligence will finally advance to where a keyboard will seem--as engineer Scott said--quaint.
--William R. Brown
Menlo Park, Calif.

Love at first sight
My first Mac was the 128K job, you know, the one with the small footprint. My sister-in-law was going to Columbia University at the time and used the connection to snag me the student discount.

I loved my Mac. There was no Internet, and its computing power was puny by today's standards. A single Word document today would have used up everything it had and more. What did we know? I remember wondering if this new company, name of Microsoft, was ever going to come out with applications for it.

I loved my Mac. It was 1984, I was 30, I was in love. I spent many a late hour gazing into its tiny black-and-white screen in the guest room of the first-ever house I owned, in North Jersey. I designed greeting cards for fun using MacDraw to create freehand images. I wrote. I explored every square inch of that baby and became a sort of computer expert, wowing friends and family with my amazing skills and even writing for computer magazines.
--Michael Finneran
Newport News, Va.

Another Macalyte converts
At the obvious end of another life span of a PC laptop in 2008 and the looming possibility of only getting a computer loaded with an OS that left a lot to be desired, I turned my sights on something very exciting: the prospect of a rebirth of sorts, my first Mac.

MacBook (late 2008)

(Credit: CNET)

Never knowing anyone personally that ever had one, I asked around a bit and perused the Apple Web site. The collective response is that people love their Macs. There were just as many similar reasons as different ones, but the resounding response is that I would not regret it.

I find I have become part of something that makes me different, apart from the crowd of cookie cutter PCs with their various idiosyncrasies. Conversely, I find I am part of a prominent multitude of wonderful Mac people and that I am never alone.

The curious stares and furtive glances of onlookers at places I drag my MacBook to are noticed. After all, I used to look up, see someone with a Mac, and wonder about it all.

Functional and undemanding things and what they can realistically do, draws my attention. I drive an Element, I rescue Italian greyhounds, I work in a cube, I go to school online, and I possess a MacBook. This computer has found its way into my heart and my life. Happy Birthday Mac!
--Patti Bibe
Fort Wayne, Ind.

Way before Psystar...
Back in 1991 my dad and I searched high and low to find a Mac when it came time to replace our Commodore 64. Big step up! We found a place and dropped close to $3,000 on an LC III. My 13-year-old mind thought this was a great investment; my dad didn't know any better. The LC III wasn't good for much more than displaying the Mac OS hourglass, but it did allow me to punk a classmate in classic Mac style. I fancied myself a budding graphic artist and endeavored to create the perfect fake $1 bill. I think I spent a week on the thing, and used all 128 colors in my basic paint program. The result was a stunning, if lime-yellowish, fake buck produced on an inkjet printer and crumpled up to give it that authentic look (and hide the many flaws I refused to concede). I left the bill under the desk of a friend I loved to torment and waited for him to take the bait. It didn't take long. He at first looked at the bill, then decided to go in for the kill and picked it up. It took him much too long to figure out the bill was a fake. When he did, he dropped the bill back where he found it and pretended he'd never found it. Ha!
--Josh Belzman
Seattle

Pictures more than words
When the Macintosh was announced back in 1984, I scoffed. "What was Apple thinking?" The Apple IIe had color; this new thing was black and white. I didn't see why anybody would pay good money for it.

However, in mid-1987, I had the opportunity to sit down at a Mac SE. There must have been Kool-Aid on the keyboard because I finally got it. It's why the early cavemen painted images on the walls--a way to tell a story without words. Images, pictures, icons--the first written language.

As I delved deeper into this fascinating computer system, making such rich discoveries as ResEdit, I knew that nothing else could compare to the powerful simplicity contained in that little box. My fascination carried me further, learning of the Usenet groups for discussing the Macintosh. When our department acquired a virus, I found in this pre-web "internet" the means to remove the infection and vaccinate all our computers against this intruder--using nothing more than ResEdit.

The director of the department had noticed the hours I'd spent of my own time learning the Macs, and decided that meant I could do graphics. Turns out he was right. I was ordering Kool-Aid by the gallon, and have never once strayed. My Mac is my muse, my creative wellspring.

And to think I once saw no use in it at all...
--Dave Martin
Austin, Texas

Maze of twisty passages
When I think of my first encounters with a Mac I am always reminded of the thrill I had when I first typed the command to "open the mailbox" on an original Macintosh while playing Zork and seeing the game come alive (at least as alive as a text based game can get). That was our first computer and it was shared by all of us. But what really puts a smile on my face is remembering driving home with what was my first computer of my very own a few years later. It was a Mac IIci and I distinctly remember thinking, "Wow, 5 megs of RAM and a 40 megs hard drive; I'll never need more than this!" Obviously, I was oh so very wrong. It has been a fun ride since then as I, and now the family of my own, are all Mac users the same as I have been ever since the very beginning. I know I will still be just as thrilled as I was on those days when I unpack the new Mac (whichever one it will be) to replace the G4 Mac Mini I am composing this on sometime later this year. Never a regret nor a desire for another platform.
--Michael Leitao
Los Angeles, Calif.

(See even more reader stories in the TalkBack of our request last week.)

Photos: Mac through the years

See the rest of our Mac anniversary coverage here.

What was your favorite Mac? The original iMac, maybe, introduced by Steve Jobs in 1998?

(Credit: Apple)

Next week marks the 25th anniversary of the debut of Apple's Macintosh--and we'd like to hear from you.

We're putting together a package to mark the 25th anniversary of the Macintosh, and if you'd like to be included, send us your stories, pictures, and thoughts by the end of this week. It could be your first Mac, your favorite Mac, and the Mac you still can't stop laughing about (we're looking at you, Cube).

Please try to keep submissions down to around 250-300 words if you'd like to be considered. We'd especially love to see any photos you have of old Macs that you'd be willing to let us use as part of our package.

You can e-mail me directly at tom.krazit@cnet.com or post your stories in the comments below. Please have everything into me, or in this post, by the close of business Friday to be considered for next week's package.