This was the first modem I got for my Apple IIc. I remember being crushed when I tried to log in to a particular bulletin board system and it came back with: “300 baud? Yeah right, come back when you’re at least at 1200.”
“My Apple’s telephone just called up the home office!”
The exciting world of telecomputing. With a Hayes system, you just plug it in! Communicating is so easy with a complete telecomputing system from Hayes. Hayes Smartmodem 300™ is a direct-connect modem for the new Apple IIc. Hayes Micromodem IIe installs easily in an expansion slot in the Apple II, IIe, III and Apple Plus. Packaged with Smartcom I™ companion software, both are complete systems. Best of all, both systems are from Hayes, the established telecomputing leader. Just plug in-and the world is your Apple!
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The Mac had only been out for six months and already the fanboy trope was already in full effect.
“I’ve already experienced what happens when one is less than enthusiastic about Macintosh: the Mactribesmen descend in force with fire and sword.”
COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR
The AT&T Computers
Jerry Pournelle holds a doctorate in psychology and is a science-fiction writer who also earns a comfortable living writing about computers present and future.
I’ve just come back from COMDEX Winter in the Los Angeles Exposition Center, where I got to play with the new AT&T computers.
Like, Wow!
When AT&T announced a computer line, there was a bit of panic on Wall Street; after the prices were announced, the excitement died away. Too expensive. Who’s worried about a computer line whose lowest-cost item is a $9950 desktop? How can that affect the micro world? That’s what many Wall Street analysts said, anyway.
Dream on.
I don’t own any computer stock—the conflict of interest is obvious—but if 1 did, I’d give that analysis a lot of thought. People, that AT&T desktop computer is one hell of a machine.
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In 1982 Martin Amis, yes that one, wrote a book about video game culture called “Invasion of The Space Invaders”. In it he included a Steve Jobs quote from when he was still an Atari employee. It is classic Jobs:
“The computer,” says Atari’s Steve Jobs, “is one of the pinnacles of Western rational thought. They bring together physics, electronics, chemistry and mathematics; they bring logic, and philosophy, information theory, all that. And the people working on these computers possess a passion about the discovery and creation of something. It’s a passion that I have only seen matched in people pursuing what they consider to be the truth of their existence. It’s the same purity of spirit I have experienced in monks.”
Also check out his thoughts in this interview with Byte Magazine done when the Macintosh was introduced.
The hip young heroes of Atari, for instance, are convinced that they stand on the very brink of evolutionary breakthrough. The development of the video games is seen as roughly equivalent to mankind’s slow crawl from the primal broth of creation. Any day now, it seems, homo sapiens will once more be toweling himself down on the fresh dunes of tomorrow. “The computer,” says Atari’s Steve Jobs, “is one of the pinnacles of Western rational thought. They bring together physics, electronics, chemistry and mathematics; they bring logic, and philosophy, information theory, all that. And the people working on these computers possess a passion about the discovery and creation of something. It’s a passion that I have only seen matched in people pursuing what they consider to be the truth of their existence. It’s the same purity of spirit I have experienced in monks.” So perhaps the foul-mouthed, grimacing youths of the arcades aren’t just improving their geometrical and spatial awareness: what they’re really doing is searching for the meaning of life.
When I was kid I had a subscription where I would get disks full of software from MECC every month. I loved their stuff.
“31,000 student hours later, we still love Apple Computer”
- Dr. Kenneth Brumbaugh. Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium
When the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium recommended Apple Computer to the state’s school districts—well, it started something big.
Today there are hundreds of Apple Computers in use in 35% of Minnesota’s elementary and secondary schools, and nearly all of the colleges and universities in the state. Most communicate with the Consortium’s CYBER 73 mainframe in a state-wide educational computer network. Read the rest of this entry »
Yes, that is Steve Jobs on a motorcycle.
Also be sure to check out the other great computer article from this issue: “The Chip”
HIGH TECH, HIGH RISK, AND HIGH LIFE IN Silicon Valley
By MOIRA JOHNSTON
Photographs by CHARLES O’REAR
SILICON VALLEY appears on no map, but this former California prune patch, an hour’s drive south of San Francisco, is the heartland of an electronics revolution that may prove as far-reaching as the industrial revolution of the 19th century.
It is a place where fast fortunes are made, corporate head-hunting is profitable sport, and seven-day workweeks send cutting-edge technology tumbling over itself in its competitive rush to the marketplace.
Not surprisingly, flying—fast, challenging, and risky—is a sport that appeals powerfully to Silicon Valley men such as Bob Noyce, who snatches every chance to fly his twin-engine Turbo Commander to Aspen to ski, to his Intel plant in Phoenix, or just to wheel in the sky around Silicon Valley. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a pretty fantastic article. It’s really amazing how forward thinking these guys were. I loved how Jobs kept pointing out the fact that the Macintosh was designed so well that it actually had less chips than a standard IBM video card. It’s also pretty incredible to see how Steve Jobs’ devotion to making designs that are as simple and elegant as possible was exactly the same as it is today. This quote could just as easily have come from an article about the iPhone:
“Jobs: If you read the Apple’s first brochure, the headline was “Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication.” What we meant by that was that when you first attack a problem it seems really simple because you don’t understand it. Then when you start to really understand it, you come up with these very complicated solutions because it’s really hairy. Most people stop there. But a few people keep burning the midnight oil and finally understand the underlying principles of the problem and come up with an elegantly simple solution for it. But very few people go the distance to get there”.
By the way, if you liked this article you really have to check out folklore.org. It’s a site created by Andy Hertzfeld that’s full wonderful stories about the creation of the Macintosh by the people who created it.
He also wrote a great book covering the same subject called Revolution in The Valley
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An Interview: The Macintosh Design Team – The making of Macintosh
On October 14, 1983, the design team for Apple Computer Inc.’s new Macintosh computer met with BYTE Managing Editor Phil Lemmons at the company’s Cupertino, California, headquarters. In the dialogue that followed, Bill Atkinson, Steve fobs, Andy Hertzfeld, Larry Kenyon, Joanna Hoffman, Burrell Smith, Dave Egner, Chris Espinosa, Steve Capps, Jerry Manock, Bruce Horn, and George Crowe discussed the evolution of their brainchild.
BYTE: How did the Macintosh project begin?
Jobs: What turns on Andy and Burrell and Chris and Bill and Larry and everyone else here is building something really inexpensive so that everyone can afford it. It’s not very many years ago that most of us in this room couldn’t have afforded a $5000 computer. We realized that we could build a supercheap computer that would run Bill Atkinson’s amazing Quickdraw and have a mouse on it— in essence, build a really cheap implementation of Lisa’s technology that would use some of that software technology. That’s when the Macintosh as we know it was started.
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Mac Draw was originally called Mackelangelo? Yeah, I think they made the right choice there.
Also if you look at the text sample on page 17 you can see that they hadn’t even picked the font names yet. Geneva Chicago is called System.
The Apple Macintosh Computer
Mouse-window-desktop technology arrives for under $2500
by Gregg Williams
Apple established itself as one of the leading innovators in personal computing technology a year ago by introducing the Lisa, a synthesis and extension of human-interface technology that has since been widely imitated. Now the company has strengthened that reputation with a new machine, the Macintosh (above). In terms of technological sophistication and probable effect on the marketplace, the Macintosh will outdistance the Lisa as much as the Lisa has outdistanced its predecessors.
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I think this is the first time I’ve seen one of our regular commenter’s name mentioned in an article I scanned. Rick is the guy who modified the Apple II ROM for the IIe!
Apple’s Enhanced Computer, the Apple IIe
It’s like having an Apple II with all the extras built in.
It all began in the summer of 1977 at the West Coast Computer Faire. A fledgling computer company with an unusual name—Apple Computer— introduced a new hobby computer called the Apple II. The new Apple II was an impressive machine. It had BASIC in ROM (read-only memory), a built-in Teletype-style keyboard, high-resolution color graphics, and, once the new 16K-bit semiconductor memory devices became available, its memory could be expanded all the way up to 48K bytes. One of the first true home computers, it was completely self-contained, needing only a TV set for a display and a common cassette recorder for data storage.
Today, almost everyone is familiar with the Apple II. It can be found in homes, schools, laboratories, and businesses, and is being used in a wide variety of ways. During the past five years, an entire subindustry has sprung up around it that has, in turn, stimulated further Apple II sales.
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Also check out this article from the same issue: A behind-the-scenes look at the development of Apple’s Lisa.
Next week I have similar reviews coming for the Apple //e and the original Macintosh.
The Lisa Computer System – Apple designs a new kind of machine
Gregg Williams Senior Editor
I had an interesting conversation with an engineer on a recent flight from San Francisco to New York. He knew only a little about microcomputers, but he was aware that their presence is slowly becoming more common in the workplace. “Sure, the industry is healthy, but it’s still only reaching a few people,” he said. “Most people won’t use computers — they’re afraid of them, they don’t know what to use them for, or it’s too much trouble to use them. Before computers become really profitable, they’re going to have to be very easy to use. They have to be simpler. They’ve got to be useful in the office.”
He continued, “We’ve got to stop using paper — which means the computer has to do word processing, filing, electronic mail, everything — or it’ll be too much trouble having some things on the computer and others on paper. Then you’ve got to be able to talk to other computers — other computers like yours and some big corporate computer that’s halfway across the country. Sure, it’s a lot of stuff, but when you get all that together, then you’ll see computers really take off.”
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