Today marks the 35th anniversary of Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs unveiling the original Macintosh.
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Jobs pulled the Macintosh out of a bag during Apple's annual shareholders meeting on January 24, 1984 at the Flint Center in Cupertino, California, grinning from ear to ear as the crowd erupted in applause.
Macintosh's very first words:
Hello, I'm Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag.
Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I'd like to share with you a maxim I thought of the first time I met an IBM mainframe: NEVER TRUST A COMPUTER YOU CAN'T LIFT!
Obviously, I can talk, but right now I'd like to sit back and listen. So, it is with considerable pride that I introduce a man who's been like a father to me… STEVE JOBS.
Two days earlier, Apple teased the Macintosh's introduction with its iconic "1984" ad during Super Bowl XVIII on CBS:
And here's a lesser-known video of Jobs introducing the Macintosh to the Boston Computer Society on January 30, 1984:
The original Macintosh was priced at $2,495 in the United States, equivalent to just over $6,000 today, and was a big deal because of its graphical user interface rather than command-line interface. Tech specs included an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 processor, 128 KB of RAM, and a 400 KB floppy disk drive.
Update: Apple CEO Tim Cook has tweeted in celebration of the Macintosh turning 35.
35 years ago, Macintosh said hello. It changed the way we think about computers and went on to change the world. We love the Mac, and today we’re proud that more people than ever are using it to follow their passions and create the future. pic.twitter.com/oUQDJN3jRU — Tim Cook (@tim_cook) January 24, 2019
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Their entire product portfolio right now is the result of corporate groupthink and brazen nickel-and-diming.
Sad how they became everything they were standing against.
1984 was not like 1984 but 2019 is.
I’ve been riddled with problems since day one. I’m yet to have a display which doesn’t glitch. New GFXBench cards and still glitches. Took to store to be told “we don’t have 4K displays to test”. What’s the point.
Lmaooo what are you even talking about?
Nope. It's not (just) about price. There was a time you could justify the "Apple Tax". Products were pricy but great. Before they started pushing trashy anaemic laptops with awful keyboards and gimmicky emojibars that can't connect to anything out of the box, outdated desktop Macs with default spinning drives in 2019, pre-bent iPads, €1200 phones with no fast chargers and plugs/earpieces that aren't compatible with Macs etc. Apple products had quality, elegance and interoperability other vendors could only dream of.Apple products have always been more expensive than the competition. Apple has always been first to get rid of a port/drive.
The current products are great. Of course there are annoyances, but to say everything they do sucks... Thats just dumb.
Not THAT long ago it wasn’t a problem to pay 399 for iPods, 499 for iPhones, 1599 for iMacs and so on. The product lines were clear and each upgrade provided immediate utility and value. Right now they are complicated, annoying and overpriced. That's exactly what got Apple nearly killed in ‘90 before Steve came back.
Was amazed by Apple employee signatures embossed inside the cover.
Seeing quality and beauty, of course I fell in love with Apple.