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Thirty Years of Mac [video]

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Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#121
post #62
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I burst out laughing at "truly worldwide democratisation of creativity". Yes, that expensive personal computer, intentionally aimed for most of its career at media and education in western markets. That was a bad bit of copy. And, more the fault of my mind than the copy, but "a tool for exploring new fields [that I otherwise couldn't]" - the same could be said of a machete. :)

> I burst out laughing at "truly worldwide democratisation of creativity". Yes, that expensive personal computer, intentionally aimed for most of its career at media and education in western markets. Expensive compared to what? Because to do the things you can do with a $1000 PC, you needed $100,000 or more before depending on the field. Your personal typesetting engine? 128-channel audio recording? With effects? Vid…

You do realize most of those features didn't come from the Mac?

Apple ripped all of the features you describe straight from the Amiga. It could barely do sound because Apple Corps kept suing them for trademark infringement.

It's nice to look back at the Macintosh's history with rose-colored glasses. Unfortunately, it isn't true, nor is it even remotely indicative of the technology at the time.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#122

More 30 like years of personal computing...just dub "Mac" for "PC" and it's wouldn't be inaccurate except for the smiley faces. Just because these artists and engineers are talking about a Mac does not make their functions exclusive to the platform. Also, going back 30 years you have to endure some turd-Macs along the way (some brilliant ones too). Many jokes were had at the expense of our Mac brothers in the late mi…

> switch to Intel changed that The turnaround started with Mac OS X, in 2001. That's what really started turning heads. The intel macs five years later helped, but it really was the wow factor of having a great Mac- or Mac-like (considering Aqua was the most radical departure Apple had made from the System 6/7/8/9 UI lineage up until that point) interface on top of real Unix, with all of its tools. It put to bed all…

Early releases of Mac OSX were pretty bad. Pretty, but pretty bad too. (Too many uses of the word "pretty"?)

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#123
It is interesting to see that the gaming circle has decreased considerably in size over the years from 1984 to 2013 and has almost disappeared now.

What could be probable reasons for the same?

I'm referring to the 'What they did with it" section in Your First Mac page (https://www.apple.com/30-years/your-first-mac/).

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#124
post #66

Here's the list of people and things featured: - 1984, original Macintosh - 1985, Jon Appleton, pioneer in electro-acoustical music and key figure in the development of the digital synthesizer - 1986, April Greiman, seminal figure in the New Wave graphic design movement - 1987, Theodore Gray, co-founder of Wolfram Research - 1988, Ahn Sang-soo, pioneer in Korean typography - 1989, John Knoll, co-inventor of Photoshop…

If you did a list from the pc world, you would get a much longer one which would eclipse the achievement of these macloving people, who usually happen to be egomaniacs on top of that. Guess it fits with the Jobs image.

You forgot to type that in all-caps.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#126
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is certainly interesting to compare the full colour, hardware accelerated graphic, multitasking, large memory Amigas of the mid 80s with contemporary Macs... The future could have been very, very different (and arguably computing would be 5-10 years ahead of where it is now, as that was the lead Commodore had back then). Or the Acorn Archimedes of the time, which was turning in floating point benchmarks 10x faster…

What was responsible for the Amiga ultimately failing, if it was superior in all those ways?

The Amiga OS was very advanced in some ways, but extremely primitive in others. It was basically a hyper-advanced games console with a keyboard. The UI was minimally functional, limited to non-existent support for printers or peripherals, etc. It just wasn't intended to be used as anything other than a games machine and provided none of the features a business machine would need. I speak as a very proud owner of an Amiga 500 since 1989.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#127

Here's the list of people and things featured: - 1984, original Macintosh - 1985, Jon Appleton, pioneer in electro-acoustical music and key figure in the development of the digital synthesizer - 1986, April Greiman, seminal figure in the New Wave graphic design movement - 1987, Theodore Gray, co-founder of Wolfram Research - 1988, Ahn Sang-soo, pioneer in Korean typography - 1989, John Knoll, co-inventor of Photoshop…

25 men. 3 women. 2 machines.

> 25 men. 3 women. 2 machines.

Not that it's significantly better, but there are 5 women, not 3: April Greiman, Jane Metcalfe, Noemi Trainor, Es Devlin, and Dr. Pardis Sabeti. However, they did choose Rosetto instead of Metcalfe for 1997's main photo, so there's a case to be made for 4 (though Metcalfe is in the photos when you scroll down).

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#128
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was responsible for the Amiga ultimately failing, if it was superior in all those ways?

The Amiga OS was very advanced in some ways, but extremely primitive in others. It was basically a hyper-advanced games console with a keyboard. The UI was minimally functional, limited to non-existent support for printers or peripherals, etc. It just wasn't intended to be used as anything other than a games machine and provided none of the features a business machine would need. I speak as a very proud owner of an A…

The A1000, the 1985 original was a conventional 3-box design aimed at businesses who wanted to get into this new "multimedia" thing.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#129

Not sure if it's just me but I find this video remarkably uninspiring. It just seems to lack real content? Now I'm more than willing to accept that I'm not the exact target for this video, and that the subject matter of the following video makes it a slightly unfair comparison, but the contrast to the quality of the Steve Jobs tribute video is vast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y2WpieYRks The latter video literal…

well its all about people being creative and how the Mac helped them achieve it. Surprisingly, well maybe not, it never showed anyone using it for typical business work which pretty much sums up why Macs (OS X) never made it in the real business world.

I noticed on the timeline, that in 2013 the 2nd largest usage circle was for Business/Finance. There are no details about those circles but numbers would have been too ugly I guess.

Link: http://www.apple.com/30-years/your-first-mac/

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#130

It is interesting to see that the gaming circle has decreased considerably in size over the years from 1984 to 2013 and has almost disappeared now. What could be probable reasons for the same? I'm referring to the 'What they did with it" section in Your First Mac page ( https://www.apple.com/30-years/your-first-mac/ ).

> It is interesting to see that the gaming circle has decreased considerably in size over the years from 1984 to 2013 and has almost disappeared now.

>What could be probable reasons for the same?

The circles for each year are generated off of the results from the three-question survey Apple is conducting on that page (click the "Tell us about your first Mac" button below the lede). The questions are:

1. Which Mac was yours? (which determines the year)

2. Where were you? (which ostensibly determines which localized site your responses will count towards)

3. How did you use your Mac?

So the size of the gaming circle in a particular year is determined merely by the number of people who filled out that survey, self-reported that they bought their first Mac in that year, and said they used that first Mac for gaming.

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