Thirty Years of Mac [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#81

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 1:11 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #62

vacri wrote: 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…

> Those are all things that existed only for high end workstations or specialized devices before the personal PC, and the Mac played a huge role in the development of this (it will take years for Windows to catch up.

In Europe, Atari ST and Amiga ruled in terms of music, DTP, 3D and video production at consumer level, before the PC got widespread.

Mac was always out of reach for most pockets.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#82

Post by berkut » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 1:14 PM UTC

danabramov wrote: post #24

javindo wrote: post #3

"Everyone is using this one system" - you're still not fooling anyone Apple. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...

This is true for creative industries (which the video is all about). Most design studios, musicians, 3D artists, etc, use Macs.

Most VFX for Film (at least by the big studios like ILM, Weta, SPI, MPC, Framestore) is done on Linux. Even Pixar are mostly Linux-based.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#83

Post by tambourine_man » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 1:15 PM UTC

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 accomplishments to prevent it from reinventing itself.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#84

Post by collyw » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 1:17 PM UTC

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #19

shootinputin wrote: post #13

How come people talk about 30 years of Mac but no one talks about 25+ years of Windows or Linux for that matter. I saw numerous blog posts of parroting this advertisement, even in my morning daily commute news paper.

Linux: I think because it's less of a 'concrete' thing (e.g. so many distros, very steady 'word of mouth' growth rather than a big launch) Windows: People just don't have the same affection for Windows: it tends to be something that's used, grudgingly, often for work, rather than something that people are genuinely pleased by. I'm sure people will disagree, of course, that's just a big generalisation. Also, since Win…

Mac users are annoyingly vocal.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#85

Post by kabdib » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 1:22 PM UTC

It's interesting (based on the poll "tell us about your first mac") that the Programming category essentially disappears in the early 90s.

This roughly corresponds to the decline and near extinction of the Mac. Having programmers leave your platform is a very, very bad thing.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#86

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 1:23 PM UTC

danabramov wrote: post #24

javindo wrote: post #3

"Everyone is using this one system" - you're still not fooling anyone Apple. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...

This is true for creative industries (which the video is all about). Most design studios, musicians, 3D artists, etc, use Macs.

There was a time when those industries belonged to Atari ST and Amiga systems.

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#87

Post by sandis » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 1:53 PM UTC

Void_ wrote: post #38

Art, art, art... Why can't they show programmers in an ad for once? Apple you can come film me at any time.

They've done it twice with their "one app at a time" videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOUfzyAEQHk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGtP6ZQ6Lt8

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#88

Post by huxley » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 1:55 PM UTC

kabdib wrote: post #85

It's interesting (based on the poll "tell us about your first mac") that the Programming category essentially disappears in the early 90s. This roughly corresponds to the decline and near extinction of the Mac. Having programmers leave your platform is a very, very bad thing.

Or you could read it as programmers being only subset of all people and computers were finally becoming mainstream enough that the ratio began to reflect that?

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#89

Post by mcormier » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 1:56 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #66

itafroma wrote: post #48

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.

Here is an article you should read...

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/21/5307992/inside-the-mind-of...

Re: Thirty Years of Mac [video]

#90

Post by jnazario » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 2:01 PM UTC

octotoad wrote: post #69

Yeah, Apple, among many other companies, helped usher in a new era of personal computing, but most of the use cases in this video can be achieved with a generic Wintel setup.

that's true now, but it wasn't at the time (1984).

apple didn't invent a lot of the technologies they're famous for - the mouse, the windowed GUI, postscript, desktop publishing, etc. they did, however, make it accessible. they took it from the research labs - PARC especially - and let us mere mortals use it.

i recall in the late 80s going in to my dad's engineering offices in middle school to type up papers and have them laser printed. that was revolutionary, a truly transformative moment in computing. it took MS quite some time to come to parity.