Happy 30th Birthday Macintosh!
It is hard to believe that today marks the 30th birthday of Apple’s Macintosh computer! Wow! 1984. 1984 — I was newly into quilt making (still hand piecing!), almost three years married, and I just started attending college at night while working during the day. I was listening to music like “Dancing in the Dark” by Bruce Springsteen, and songs by Prince, Billy Idol, Thompson Twins, Cyndi Lauper, Duran Duran, and newcomer Madonna. By way of movies, there was Ghostbusters, Star Trek III, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and, funny enough, Revenge of the Nerds.
Thirty years explains the older models that have piled up in the basement, including an SE in the original zippered canvas case. I keep trying to clean out some of the stuff, but I just can’t bring myself to toss anything with an Apple on it, such as the many rolled-up posters in closets and under my bed from various MacWorld launching events, the boxes of software, floppy disks, and manuals, and the like. And let me not get started on the years I worked part-time educating people on the original iMac (that was me working in Datavision on Fifth Avenue in NYC introducing the original Bondi Blue iMac when it was released August 15, 1998).
Here’s part of a four-page ad for the first Macintosh
That was 1984 — fast forward 30 years, and I suspect it’s only a fraction who cannot!
The MacMotherShip website has a collection of vintage Macintosh ads. I’ve kept some that I’ve torn out of Newsweek magazines. However, my collection is way far from complete!
Here is Steve Jobs introducing the first Macintosh.
While this commercial certainly isn’t 30 years old, the Think Different campaign was my favorite. In this video, Steve Jobs is narrating the ad. In the end, Apple used Richard Dreyfus’ voice because Jobs didn’t want people to relate the ad to him. Of course in the end, he’s all I can think about when I see it.
The Macintosh absolutely changed my life, to which to say Happy Birthday and thank you!
January 24th, 2014 at 12:42 pm
Oh my goodness, that took me back. I had forgotten just how small the screen was in those days. What a milestone.
January 24th, 2014 at 1:17 pm
It is! My brother was just here and reminded me … 1984 was the year of Van Halen and Jump! How could I forget that one!
January 24th, 2014 at 7:30 pm
So good to see that again — hard to believe how far we’ve come and how far Steve took the industry.
January 27th, 2014 at 11:58 pm
The Mac II was pretty whiz bang. Hard to believe that 8 Mb of RAM was leading edge and 250 Mb of hard disk space was sold as a high end machine. Pretty amazing.
January 28th, 2014 at 1:13 am
Susan, it is amazing! :)