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Thirty Years of Mac [video]

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Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#171

Post by hnriot »

I like the video a lot and am glad Apple continue to make these kinds of high budget videos, but it started out with the claim that in '84 a computer with pictures and not the size of a mainframe was something new, but I had been using a zx81 for 3 years by then, drawing pictures, writing games and playing "music" (albeit very CTFTPA)

I found this also annoying reading iWoz, it was as though there were no other computers out there at the time, but the Tandy Trash80, the Pet and Sinclair's computers were all doing very nicely when Woz was "inventing" the computer.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#172

Post by chipotle_coyote »

kunai wrote: post #121
coldtea wrote: post #62

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. 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.

The history of both desktop publishing and image processing, at least, is very intimately tied to the Macintosh via Aldus Pagemaker and Adobe Photoshop, respectively. There really wasn't anything like them before they shipped -- there were typesetting programs like TeX and "paint" programs like Deluxe Paint (and for that matter, MacPaint!), but TeX and competitors used a much more arcane non-GUI paradigm and, as good as Deluxe Paint was for what it was, it was not designed for the kind of image retouching work that Photoshop could do out of the gate.

I see comments sneering about the "democratization" claim, and while I wouldn't have chosen that word, it's worth keeping in mind that Pagemaker and Photoshop enabled Macs to rival $25K+ dedicated, single-task workstations of the day. They really did revolutionize industries. And they both started their lives as Mac exclusives.

I liked the Amiga, too, and it really was ahead of its time in certain respects, most notably video processing. And it kicked the Mac's ass for years in anything relating to multitasking. And it really did revolutionize video production the same way the Mac revolutionized DTP and image processing. But let's not go overboard and claim that everything the Mac was doing by 1986-87 was somehow "ripped off" from the Amiga. The Amiga certainly got capable layout and image software, but that software wasn't creating markets the way the Toaster was -- or the way Pagemaker and Photoshop did.

(As for sound, well. There's no one hardware/software combination that strikes me as a real paradigm shift in the music sequencing or recording field, certainly not in that era; cheap MIDI interfaces drove that across all platforms. Apple didn't make sound software back then but that certainly didn't mean the Mac wasn't used extensively for it with third-party tools.)

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#174

Post by coldtea »

vacri wrote: post #164
coldtea wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stop being so elitist. How much money do you need to be creative? Enough to buy a musical instrument? To purchase paint and canvas? That's not a relevant question. It depends on what you want to do. If you want to play acoustic guitar on the streets, sure, you don't need much. That doesn't meant that everybody wanted to be creative in that way. Some people (milions) wanted to make records like the Beatles or Kraftw…

Your rebuttals are making no sense at all. My criticism was of the copy in a puff piece on the Mac, in the context of the video provided. My original comment makes this clear it's about Macs when it talks of the targetting of the education and media markets in the western world. The Unices and Windows happily moved into non-western markets, and certainly targeted things other than education and media, such as busines…

>Your rebuttals on the other hand, seem to have retreated into a defence of personal computers in general.

Well, the personal computers in general were lead into the path by the Mac -- the GUI, the image/video/editing capabilities were first emerged in a usable form there (with the notable mention of Atari (for MIDI) and Amiga (for graphics), though those were more fringe machines.

It's only around Windows 95 that PC people started getting into this game on somewhat equal footing (and worse usability for quite a while afterwards).

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#175

Post by valleyer »

tambourine_man wrote: post #83

Beautiful site, nice memories and all, but I find this a bit worrisome. The Mac's 25th anniversary went by rather unremarkably under Steve's management, if I remember correctly. He famously gave the Apple's museum to Stanford as soon as he returned. A company as old (for this industry) and successful as Apple must always look relentlessly to the future in order not to fall too much in love with its own accomplishment…

I'm pretty sure one day of celebration every ten years is relatively OK.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#176

Post by valleyer »

ksk wrote: post #152
peterkelly wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most extreme I can think of was one reported by Raymond Chen on his "The Old New Thing" blog which I can't find the specific link for, but is discussed in an article by Joel Spolsky: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html To quote: "I first heard about this from one of the developers of the hit game SimCity, who told me that there was a critical bug in his application: it used memory right after freei…

You picked a particularly poor example. The application compatibility layer does not incredibly hamper the OS whatsoever. First of all the ACL is only active when known executables that have problems with the newer versions are running. As an educated guess it would not take more than a millisecond to ID the .exe. Secondly what the ACL does is fairly benign - what it amounts to in simple terms is that it simply uses…

Plus if you don't think every consumer OS does this to a certain extent, you're uninformed.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#177

Post by coldtea »

kunai wrote: post #121
coldtea wrote: post #62

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. 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.

>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.

Good try, but no. Graphics and DTP professionals used the Mac. Heck, Photoshop debutted there -- it took several years to even be released for Windows, and several more to be used by proffesional studios on that platform.

Very few used the Amiga. It was mostly used for title work in small TV/video productions in Europe.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#178

Post by gonzo »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #172
kunai wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The history of both desktop publishing and image processing, at least, is very intimately tied to the Macintosh via Aldus Pagemaker and Adobe Photoshop, respectively. There really wasn't anything like them before they shipped -- there were typesetting programs like TeX and "paint" programs like Deluxe Paint (and for that matter, MacPaint!), but TeX and competitors used a much more arcane non-GUI paradigm and, as good…

Comparing TeX to desktop publishing is pure category error.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#179

Post by mamcx »

csmithuk wrote: post #120
mamcx wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unix is 45 years old. Stuff still compiles and runs from circa 1974. Ergo, mac?

No. OS X is a bastardisation of Mach, FreeBSD and OpenStep. A completely new Frankenstein's monster.

Almost the description of any unix to date. Is not as if exist a single unix, ever. And OSX bastard?
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