The Mac turns 40

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Aurelius

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Mar 22, 2003
Messages
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Want to feel old? Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Mac.

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You probably know the story: it was the first mainstream computer with a GUI (the Lisa's $10,000 price ruled it out). Yeah, Apple was riffing on Xerox PARC's work, but that was considerably cruder... and researchers weren't really focused on a shipping product. Apple established some interface fundamentals that are still in use today, and spurred Microsoft's development of Windows (although I'd argue Windows wasn't really competitive until 3.0).

Apple squandered its lead for a while. Prices climbed too high for the time (even Apple's current prices are reasonable in comparison). The lineup got confusing, and the company lagged behind in OS development during the 1990s. There have also been serious missteps this century, such as OS X's initially sluggish performance and inattentiveness toward some app segments (gaming is only just getting renewed interest). But I'd say Apple laid some important foundations that helped the entire industry, even if you never plan to touch one of its devices.
 
Aurelius said:
Want to feel old? Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Mac.

View attachment 629811

You probably know the story: it was the first mainstream computer with a GUI (the Lisa's $10,000 price ruled it out). Yeah, Apple was riffing on Xerox PARC's work, but that was considerably cruder... and researchers weren't really focused on a shipping product. Apple established some interface fundamentals that are still in use today, and spurred Microsoft's development of Windows (although I'd argue Windows wasn't really competitive until 3.0).

Apple squandered its lead for a while. Prices climbed too high for the time (even Apple's current prices are reasonable in comparison). The lineup got confusing, and the company lagged behind in OS development during the 1990s. There have also been serious missteps this century, such as OS X's initially sluggish performance and inattentiveness toward some app segments (gaming is only just getting renewed interest). But I'd say Apple laid some important foundations that helped the entire industry, even if you never plan to touch one of its devices.
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Yeah Xerox really dropped the ball on that one and not thinking that was something that could be a marketable product. And thus Macintosh and Windows was born and the rest is history.
 
Still have my IIfx. Will never give that up. Ever. Although I don't know if it will ever be worth what I bought it for once you adjust for inflation.
 
Mchart said:
Still have my IIfx. Will never give that up. Ever. Although I don't know if it will ever be worth what I bought it for once you adjust for inflation.
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No, but at least it's more valuable than basically any other 68K Mac.

I've always wanted one.

Viva NuBus!
 
DeadlyAura said:
Wow... 40 years ago I was... still a twinkle in my father's eye.

Ya'll are old.

Don't group me into this shit.

Old bastards.
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It feels old! And I didn’t use my first Mac until I was in high school (by which point even the Mac LCs were old).
 
Centauri said:
No, but at least it's more valuable than basically any other 68K Mac.

I've always wanted one.

Viva NuBus!
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The Quadra 950 would probably challenge the IIfx in terms of "ridiculous 68k Mac resale values" today, especially that one dude trying to flip some for $600, $700, even $1,000 with a PowerPC 601 upgrade over at VCF Midwest (and failing, because they're not Commodore Amigas where an A4000 at just $1,000 is a bargain and will also run 68k Mac software quite handily with a decent emulator).

That said, nobody was calling the Quadras "wicked fast" and giving them weird proprietary 64-pin SIMMs to help keep the CPU fed, either.

Honestly, I think older '90s Macs are the more fun ones - Classic Mac OS has a weird charm to it despite being horrifically dated under the hood (never had preemptive multitasking when AmigaOS did it in 1985 and Windows 95 brought that to PCs a decade later), there were actual games on Macs that were either noticeably enhanced ports or outright exclusive, you had DOS/PC Compatibility Card options to run PC software natively before the Intel switch simplified that with Boot Camp and VMs, and there wasn't all that damn iOS-ification that permeates modern macOS. These days, they might as well be weird fusions of NeXTcubes and Acorn RiscPCs without the expandability.
 
NamelessPFG said:
The Quadra 950 would probably challenge the IIfx in terms of "ridiculous 68k Mac resale values" today, especially that one dude trying to flip some for $600, $700, even $1,000 with a PowerPC 601 upgrade over at VCF Midwest (and failing, because they're not Commodore Amigas where an A4000 at just $1,000 is a bargain and will also run 68k Mac software quite handily with a decent emulator).

That said, nobody was calling the Quadras "wicked fast" and giving them weird proprietary 64-pin SIMMs to help keep the CPU fed, either.

Honestly, I think older '90s Macs are the more fun ones - Classic Mac OS has a weird charm to it despite being horrifically dated under the hood (never had preemptive multitasking when AmigaOS did it in 1985 and Windows 95 brought that to PCs a decade later), there were actual games on Macs that were either noticeably enhanced ports or outright exclusive, you had DOS/PC Compatibility Card options to run PC software natively before the Intel switch simplified that with Boot Camp and VMs, and there wasn't all that damn iOS-ification that permeates modern macOS. These days, they might as well be weird fusions of NeXTcubes and Acorn RiscPCs without the expandability.
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Any of the Mac II era Macs are just generally the one’s worth collecting, mostly due to the classic design. Plus, something like the iifx can run system 6, which was early enough that it didn’t start getting bogged down on itself like system 7. System 7+ was really garbage until osx finally arrived.
 
Mchart said:
Any of the Mac II era Macs are just generally the one’s worth collecting, mostly due to the classic design. Plus, something like the iifx can run system 6, which was early enough that it didn’t start getting bogged down on itself like system 7. System 7+ was really garbage until osx finally arrived.
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Oh, right, hadn't put much thought into System 6, mostly because I'm way too used to the System 7-Mac OS 9 era and a lot of games outright require that.

Usually, if there's any OS compatibility that inflates Mac values, it's A/UX, which may be part of the reason people want to pay so much for early Quadras.

I did briefly have a Mac IIcx all boxed up and everything, inherited from a neighbor, but sold it off at VCF Southeast years ago because I couldn't fix whatever issue was keeping it from booting properly with more than 4 MB of RAM installed. Kept giving me the ol' Chimes of Death when fitting more SIMMs. Elegant system to work on and in, though, to the point that they kept the basic case design and layout for the IIci and Quadra 700.
 
NamelessPFG said:
Oh, right, hadn't put much thought into System 6, mostly because I'm way too used to the System 7-Mac OS 9 era and a lot of games outright require that.

Usually, if there's any OS compatibility that inflates Mac values, it's A/UX, which may be part of the reason people want to pay so much for early Quadras.

I did briefly have a Mac IIcx all boxed up and everything, inherited from a neighbor, but sold it off at VCF Southeast years ago because I couldn't fix whatever issue was keeping it from booting properly with more than 4 MB of RAM installed. Kept giving me the ol' Chimes of Death when fitting more SIMMs. Elegant system to work on and in, though, to the point that they kept the basic case design and layout for the IIci and Quadra 700.
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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8emaxHHedaE
 
I'd like to remember all of you that the real first Mac is called Lisa and so it's been 41. Yeah, I know, I'm older than you. I may turn 60 this year. 👨‍🦳 :)
An it was far from being my first computer I used and I knew..
 
My school mate got one from his wealthy grandma the following Christmas after release. It literally did nothing except run a series of demo disks and his original 128kb version required a disk swap continuously regardless of the task. But it had a mouse and what was considered an unbelievably high-rez monochrome 512x384? display that had us gasping at still images of a fish LoL!
You never forget the moment you get to experience a new tech. It's a bit of magic at that moment.
 
NamelessPFG said:
The Quadra 950 would probably challenge the IIfx in terms of "ridiculous 68k Mac resale values" today, especially that one dude trying to flip some for $600, $700, even $1,000 with a PowerPC 601 upgrade over at VCF Midwest (and failing, because they're not Commodore Amigas where an A4000 at just $1,000 is a bargain and will also run 68k Mac software quite handily with a decent emulator).

That said, nobody was calling the Quadras "wicked fast" and giving them weird proprietary 64-pin SIMMs to help keep the CPU fed, either.

Honestly, I think older '90s Macs are the more fun ones - Classic Mac OS has a weird charm to it despite being horrifically dated under the hood (never had preemptive multitasking when AmigaOS did it in 1985 and Windows 95 brought that to PCs a decade later), there were actual games on Macs that were either noticeably enhanced ports or outright exclusive, you had DOS/PC Compatibility Card options to run PC software natively before the Intel switch simplified that with Boot Camp and VMs, and there wasn't all that damn iOS-ification that permeates modern macOS. These days, they might as well be weird fusions of NeXTcubes and Acorn RiscPCs without the expandability.
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Aye. The 68040 was pretty amazing. You don't realize how amazing until you see a Quadra 950 doing web browsing in a basic (custom) browser, which basically nothing else of the period could even hope to do.

I grew up a Mac head, 68k and PowerPC era machines, but I felt like a lot of the magic was lost with the switch to industry standard I/O, then to Intel - and then the stagnation of OS X in general. I jumped ship about 12 years ago to the PC side and haven't been back since.
 
I'm younger than most of you apparently. When I was a kid, we had those transparent differently colored iMacs in school. I always thought it was cool how you could see the inside. The hockey puck mice were god awful though.

The only dumb part about that school computer lab was everyone had the same password. It was "cat".
 
Sir Beregond said:
I'm younger than most of you apparently. When I was a kid, we had those transparent differently colored iMacs in school. I always thought it was cool how you could see the inside. The hockey puck mice were god awful though.

The only dumb part about that school computer lab was everyone had the same password. It was "cat".
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My parents bought one of those for my brother when he went off to college. Then he flunked out and I got to play with it when he came home. Good times.
 
Sir Beregond said:
I'm younger than most of you apparently. When I was a kid, we had those transparent differently colored iMacs in school. I always thought it was cool how you could see the inside. The hockey puck mice were god awful though.

The only dumb part about that school computer lab was everyone had the same password. It was "cat".
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Pretty much when Mac stopped being the best. Although I don't question the design/business decision because it was needed. However, the glory days of Mac was really when they were at their worst financially in the mid-90's. Those were the most powerful and upgradeable computers on the market during that time, and truly built for power users. However, that's also why the company was months away from failing and required an injection of cash from Microsoft and bringing Jobs back to save it.
 
I guess I'm pretty old because my schools totally bypassed the Mac. We went from Apple II's to PC's. 386's I think. Those Apple II's were older than hell when we finally ditched them, although we went through a few generations of them. I guess Apple used to heavily discount their computers to schools to "win the hearts and minds of the kids" and hopefully convince mom and dad to buy one. Whenever that promotion ended, our computer teacher went with PC's instead.
 
We had trash 80's in the classroom, never saw a Mac until college and by then it was already "writing on the wall" time for Commodore, Atari, and all the other "non-Clone PC manufacturers".....back in the late 80's Begun, the Clone Wars had........
 
Mchart said:
Pretty much when Mac stopped being the best. Although I don't question the design/business decision because it was needed. However, the glory days of Mac was really when they were at their worst financially in the mid-90's. Those were the most powerful and upgradeable computers on the market during that time, and truly built for power users. However, that's also why the company was months away from failing and required an injection of cash from Microsoft and bringing Jobs back to save it.
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Mac had glory days?
 
Mchart said:
Pretty much when Mac stopped being the best. Although I don't question the design/business decision because it was needed. However, the glory days of Mac was really when they were at their worst financially in the mid-90's. Those were the most powerful and upgradeable computers on the market during that time, and truly built for power users. However, that's also why the company was months away from failing and required an injection of cash from Microsoft and bringing Jobs back to save it.
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I would say the glory days is when Apple was on x86, because at least you had options. For a while you could upgrade ram and storage as well. The 90's is why Apple fell apart because the IBM PC and compatibles took the market by storm. The reason why we have modern computing is because of things like Intel Pentium, Windows 95, and AOL. In this time period we had Apple go from Motorola 6800 to IBM G series, with an OS transition from Macintosh to MacOSX. Apple was such a mess compared to PC where things stayed compatible, plus the Macintosh OS was super unstable. Apple was desperately trying to fix this by trying to acquire a stable OS, which was eventually NeXT but wasn't their first choice. Apple wanted Be OS to replace OS9, but NeXT was the cheapest next option. Considering that Microsoft had Windows NT 4.0 with protected memory by 1996 while Mac OSX with protected memory took until 2001, it's amazing that Apple was still profitable. The story behind NeXT is very interesting, but both companies were ready for bankruptcy.


View: https://youtu.be/Bn7qIl59MAQ?si=yf3Mp7geFWl81o9w
 
I wish I would have bought a quadra 950 with the powerpc upgrade card and a dos compatibility card before they skyrocketed.
 
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