[Info-vax] Happy 25th birthday Macintosh !

[Neil Rieck]

On Jan 25, 4:16 pm, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam... at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> january 24 was the 25th anniversary of the launch of Apple's Macintosh.
>
> What is most puzzling is that the Apple web site has no mention of it,
> no splash no advertising. Very un-Apple.
>
> Perhaps Steve Job's health much more critical than made public and Apple
> isn't in the mood to celebrate.
>
> At least, many media outlets have noted this anniversary.
>
> For those with access to youtube:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8&NR=1
>
> Back then, Digital and Apple were very much alike: trying to break the
> IBM "automaton" hold on people who were unable to choose for themselves
> and just went with IBM "because nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM".
>
> But it does put some perspective on the lack of exposure vMS got on its
> 30th anniversary. At least VMS did get a small splash on the HP
> enterprise web page (albeit a couple weeks late) as well as a few other
> goodies that Sue managed to get done.
>
> I took apart my MacPlus. (not quite 25 yet :-).
>
> The motherboard is surprisingly small. The striking difference is the
> connectors on the chips. They were much bigger and much less dense than
> today's electronics which have very very fine legs that are extremely
> closely spaced. Everyone has mentioned the increased density of the
> contents of the chips, but few have talked about soldering imporvements
> that have allowed current chip mounting technology/designs. Back then,
> chips were either plugged into a socket, or had the pins go through the
> circuit board. Today, they just have "flat feet" that welded on the
> surface of the board.
>
> The clock is at 15.66666mh for the MacPlus.  CPU manufactured by
> Hitachi. 680000.  As I recall, the all mighty Microax II was at 40mhz
> circa a year or two later.
>
> Of interest  in my mac is the inside of the casing. It bears etchings of
> many signatures, including that of Steve Jobs.

I owned a first-gen Mac too and it only had 128k of RAM. My main
reason for the purchase was to learn 68k assembly language but I was
more committed to Motorola chips than Apple and so never jumped to
Macs based upon POWER-PC or x86-64, etc. It is surprising to me how
Apple has managed to hang on to their customer base every time they
have forced their customers to jump to a new technology. I suppose
this is a good example of brand-power becoming religious dogma.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/01/25-years-of-macintosh.ars

ps-1: I was a committed Apple fanatic in the 8-bit days but really
think the shine came off Apple after The Woz (Stephen Wozniac) crashed
his plane and then was pushed aside. I always wonder what Apple would
look like today had The Woz stayed in Apple engineering.

ps-2: While it is not cool to bash the sick or dying, I have recently
wondered if Steve Jobs is receiving some payback for the bad Karma he
generated during the Woz debacle

Neil Rieck
Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/