The 25-Year-Old Dent
Amongst the more than 14 devices in MacForce’s Apple Museum is the computer that changed the course of computing forever. Diminutive in size but gigantic in concept, the beige box with the nine-inch black-and-white screen was introduced to the world 25 years ago, and it’s why MacForce exists. It is, of course, the Macintosh.
It had an 8MHz processor, 128K of RAM and featured a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive. But hardware didn’t define it; it was the interface that was revolutionary. Today we take drop down menus, icons, windows and mice for granted, but at the time it was technical magic. Command-line-only operating systems were swept from the consumer market and graphical user interfaces took their rightful place.
But Apple didn’t stop there. They also developed applications, like MacDraw and MacWrite that delivered true “What You See Is What You Get” desktop publishing. And they published interface guidelines so that all developers could develop applications with a consistent look and feel. In one fell swoop, they changed the world of computing, and thus the world.
So I raise my glass to Apple, a company that rarely looks back to celebrate it’s successes, for putting a dent in the universe in 1984. And for continuing to create the insanely great.
Tags: Apple, History, Mac, MacForce, Portland, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Sustainable
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