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The 'mouse' and its many mutations
Since its inception in the mid-'60s, the "mouse," as it came to be known, has morphed and mutated into a diverse assortment of styles to accommodate efficiency, ergonomics and portability. In this week's Rewind we surf through the history of the device from its humble beginnings to its current futuristic incarnations.
Before Macintosh there was Lisa and its incredible demo video
Sitting in the shadow of the revolutionary Apple Macintosh is the Mac's lesser known sibling, the Lisa. The Pete Best of the Apple world, Lisa was released in 1983 and discontinued three years later, left behind in the dust of the Macintosh's overwhelming popularity. Its major failing was the insane $9,995 price tag, roughly $23,866 in todays dollars. Just one year later the similarly powered Macintosh 128K hit the market at just $2,495. Ultimately, the Lisa's price tag left it out of reach for most consumers. In spite of its powerful graphic capabilities, a number of odd quirks coupled with that crazy price tag kept it from ever truly picking up steam. While Lisa was eventually driven from the market by its more reasonably priced sibling, it's legacy lives on in this incredibly dated demo video. Set against a delightfully 80s John Carpenter-styled keyboard soundtrack, the Lisa demonstration video walks you through the work process of a well-manicured caricature of a business man. Just listen to him purr "you see, Lisa's screen is special." Our narrator wouldn't feel out of place in a Die Hard rip off, but the work he demonstrates shows a device already attuned to the needs of future office workers. Powerful spreadsheets that be translated into graphs? Heck, yes! Even while typing with only one finger from each hand, the Lisa allows him to do hours of work in no time flat. It's interesting to note that the video presents the idea that the increased productivity gains offered by computers would lead to more leisure time for workers. There's something adorable about that level of optimism. Even though the Lisa only lived a few short years, it's important she not be forgotten. RIP Lisa. You can watch the complete video below in two easy-to-view parts.
Weird and amazing Macs that aren't exactly Macs
If you haven't heard of the upcoming 1984-2014 Maciversary, well either you aren't paying attention or perhaps you have an actual life. Us? We've been going back and forth talking about this thing for the last month. And one of our most contentious issues involves what exactly counts as a Mac. Some systems are obviously Macs. This? This is a Mac. It's a happy Mac! This? This is not a Mac. It's an Apple II. And while many laypersons might not be able to differentiate between a Mac and an Apple II ("Most people now don't know the difference between an Apple and a Mac. Maybe the people reading our site, yes, but not an actual layman.") we can state for certain that this is completely and utterly not a Mac. This is a Macquarium, a phrase coined by Andy Ihnatko. It is not a Mac, although it is compatible with Objective Sea Life. This, on the other hand is basically a Mac. It's an Apple Lisa, the personal computer that preceded the Macintosh. In fact, the ultimate Lisa was sold as the Macintosh XL. The Lisa offered many of the same user interface features as the Mac and was targeted toward business users. This too, is basically a Mac.It's a Xerox Alto, designed at Xerox PARC and dates back to the early 1970s. It used a mouse-driven GUI-based system, and more or less inspired Apple Co-founder Steve Jobs during a site tour. It provided many of the same look and feel strengths that later showed up on the Mac. This is also basically a Mac. It is a NeXT cube. You don't see a screen in this image from Wikipedia, but if it were connected, you'd recognize a lot of the OS. That's because the NeXT basically ran OS X. It only took a bit over a decade for that technology to return to Apple after Jobs went on a quick run out to pick up some nacho chips and started a brand-new company before returning to Apple with orange fingers and the beginnings of OS X. While he was gone, someone at Apple built this. It's not a Mac. It's not even close to being a Mac. But eventually it inspired people who got around to shoving Mac's OS X operating system onto the iPhone (which, too, is a Mac). This is, of course, not to be confused with these, which are also Newtons but which offer far less computational efficiency. Certainly, this is not an exhaustive list of what is and is not a Mac. There were Power Computing Macs, Hackintoshes, retro bubble Macs, extremely beige Mac IIs and many, many more. All of them properly Macs. Today, we own our impossibly thin MacBook Airs, our super powerful Retina Pros and our beloved Mac minis. Here's looking forward to the next 30 years of Mac. Do you have any strong opinions on what is and is not a Mac? Share them in the comments. All images are courtesy of Wikipedia.
Time capsule containing Steve Jobs' mouse lost for 29 years
The other day, blogger Marcel Brown wrote about a cassette tape that had been found and given to him. That tape contained a recording of Steve Jobs speaking at the International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) in 1983, and has been widely reported as proof that Jobs was envisioning iPad and iPhone-like devices even back in those days. One other fun tidbit from Brown's post was the hint that Jobs had contributed something to a time capsule (no, not the Apple backup device) that was buried during the conference. Today, Brown posted a followup about the time capsule. Apparently, while Jobs was giving his talk at the IDCA, he was using an Apple Lisa that was connected to and controlling six slide projectors. Jobs was asked by one of the conference participants to donate an item to be buried in a time capsule for either 20 years or until the year 2000, so he thought about it for a second, then unplugged the Lisa's mouse and handed it to the man. Well, unfortunately nobody is quite sure where exactly the time capsule was buried. In order to dig up this piece of Jobs history, Brown is organizing an effort to recover it. If you or anyone you know attended the IDCA in 1983 and might have an inkling of where the time capsule is hiding, please contact Brown. With any luck, the mouse and other artifacts might be unearthed on the 30th anniversary of the conference.
The cost of Apple's products, adjusted for inflation
A site called VoucherCodes recently tried to figure out if the $499 entry-level iPad really is as good a deal as many have claimed. They analyzed the cost of several of Apple's products, adjusted for inflation, and some of the results are pretty astonishing. The first Apple computer ever created, the Apple I, cost $666.66 in 1976. Adjusted to 2010 dollars, that Apple I would cost $2,540, which isn't too bad. But the Apple Lisa, Apple's first stab at creating a computer with a Graphical User Interface, cost $9,995 in 1983, or a staggering $21,745 in today's dollars. Sure, the GUI was a cool bit of innovation, over $20,000 for a personal computer? Comparing the iPad to previous Apple portables is even more interesting. Apple's first portable computer cost $6,500 in 1989 -- which would be almost $11,400 today -- while the $699 Newton from 1993 would cost nearly $1,050 in today's dollars. Most intriguing of all is that the first iPod, released for $399 in 2001, cost $488 in today's dollars. That's just $11 under the cost of the iPad, a device that has far more storage, processing power, and access to more features than the first iPod could even dream of only nine and a half years ago. Apple's handhelds are cheaper than ever, even when you bring inflation into the mix. Within my lifetime alone, computers have gone from luxury items and objects of curiosity, something people would have to save several months of paychecks in order to buy, to something people buy on a whim, for a week's pay, and carry around with them in their pockets. It's not surprising that the cost of computers has come down over time, but when charts like the one at VoucherCodes drive home just how much prices have dropped in terms of the real value of the US dollar, it's pretty amazing.
Blast from the Past: Apple Lisa
It's 1984. Meet the Lisa. I'm warning you now, this video is not short. It starts with a nostalgic look back by the expert who more than twenty years earlier introduced the Lisa in a televised interview. He talks about the moment in time, the technology, and his rhinoplasty. You may want to skip a few minutes into the video. One of the things I love so much about this video is seeing the menus in their original forms. They're so familiar and at the same time, you're struck by the differences. It's also great to see the core set of Mac Apps that shipped with the Lisa and watch them in action, like the word processor and drawing programs. You get a sense while watching about how revolutionary the Mac leap forward was (and as an Alto and Smalltalk user, I assure you this was way beyond anything from Xerox). It's also fascinating to see how slow things were. Watch how long it takes for the calculator to load! And notice the 5MB hard drive enclosure on the top of the machine. What an amazing thing to have to think about the Lisa being able to run more than one program at a time, while the Mac could not. Of course, this was around the same time of the height of the Symbolics Lisp Machine, which could pwn the Lisa in almost every way possible, but was way beyond the Lisa in cost.
Lisa sales binder
The Lisa was Steve Job's pet project until he switched to the Mac (oh, Steve, how mercurial you can be!). It was a revolutionary device that didn't sell well for the same old reasons: lack of software, and price.However, Apple did try and sell a boatload of them (I mean, they wanted to make money). Charles Eicher has spent some time scanning in a Lisa marketing brochure so that we could all look back and ponder a world that might have been.Lisa picture from The Mac Geek.
