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116 Comments
- Beamish, on 10/10/2007, -2/+42When "PC" meant "Printed Circuit" and nothing else...
- MasterThief117, on 10/10/2007, -2/+41At $666.66, its a price even the devil cannot refuse.
- Odiwan, on 10/10/2007, -3/+41I'm impressed to see that various aspects of their philosophy today was the same back then. "Less switches!", "Combine the computer and video terminal on the same board!", etc.
But what's with the price of $666.66? Droll. - Angostura, on 10/10/2007, -2/+36I still use one of these. It works fine, though I still use OS X 10.3 on it - 10.4 bogs it down a bit. Takes a while to boot, and it was tricky implementing firewire using the breadboard area.
- Huevoos, on 10/10/2007, -4/+33They Sure knew how to advertise back then.
- bobcrotch, on 10/10/2007, -1/+25This picture might help people understand why older geeks are so pretentious, look at all the technical information that most people today still don't understand. You don't get advertising like that anymore, the tech specs aren't even the main selling points of machines these days!
- ginjuro, on 10/10/2007, -0/+21You gotta remember, back then, computer ads weren't aimed at the mainstream market, but rather at the hard-core tinkerers and hobbyists, not to mention, tech-heads in the business world. These guys were not totally different from, say, ham radio operators... very nichey. This specific ad most likely ran in an industry trade journal or magazine (as opposed to Time or Life or whatever), so it was really pretty well-crafted for its target audience.
- REM333, on 10/10/2007, -2/+21That was a time when advertising actually informed the reader about their products. Nowadays, there is little written content and much more eye candy.
- aydoubleyou, on 10/10/2007, -0/+17I actually remember seeing this ad as a kid. That shows you it's effectiveness.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+15and the 24 rows of text looks amazing on a 30" cinema display!
- UCFartstudntJON, on 10/10/2007, -0/+13Apparently somebody, who shall remain nameless, made some sort of deal with the robot devil.
- dview, on 10/10/2007, -3/+16Dugg for the revolutionizing built-in video terminal. Had never thought that actually getting text to appear on your screen meant such an hassle back then.
When was this ad displayed actually? - ThomasOkken, on 10/10/2007, -0/+13Good times!
It seems hard to believe these days, when even a low-end hand-held or cell phone has dozens of megabytes of RAM and a 32-bit CPU running at hundreds of MHz, but back then, a machine with a 1 MHz 6502 and 8 kilobytes of RAM was the coolest thing on the planet. I lost count of the number of evenings and weekends I spent with friends, playing with machines like the Apple II and the Commodore PET, and writing programs for them, first in BASIC, later in *gasp* Assembly Language. I'm telling you, it was a thrill like flying a plane!
Ahhh, good times. :-) - MrCoke, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13its nice to see that they weren't a fan of shared video even from the start!
- wiifm69, on 10/10/2007, -9/+21Even the new macs are just shiny covers around this beast
- nextbgates95, on 10/10/2007, -2/+13darn. i wanted to see the first microsoft ad for the first apple computer. :(
- mattmcm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11It's called sarcasm.
- TheRealToma, on 10/10/2007, -3/+13Gosh that breadboard area looks fun. *Rubs hands with an evil grin*
- knelto, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10"But what's with the price of $666.66? Droll."
I read somewhere that Woz is a big fan of repeating numbers. So I suppose $666.66 was probably just a good price to make a profit as opposed to $555.55 or $777.77 - spinchange, on 10/10/2007, -0/+81976
- dacomputerfreak, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Back then we actually used them for math, it's amazing to me how much things have shifted over the years. They are now used less for mathematical computations and solving complex problems and now used primarily for an entertainment and multimedia platform by the general public. They are just merely entertainment devices now to the average "Computer" owner. Any true enthusiast will still build their own systems and know the specs of their equipment.
- mrblue182, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9that computer is probably faster than the ones at my school >
- NoOneButMe, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Actually, Woz said something about trying to be more efficient in his designs, rather then going for fewer chips. There's a story in iWoz about him and a representative from Intel discussing memory that's pretty interesting to read.
- tinygibbles, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Yeah, ads back then were basically "our product is better than product X because...". Then came advertising based on the emotions of fear, guilt, and inadequacy which we still have today.
- 2shae, on 10/10/2007, -8/+14How could they develop anything on only 8KB of Ram ?!?!?!?
Incredible...compared to Vista :) - lharrod, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Fanboy or not, you need to recognize a piece of computer history. When this piece of tech was created, there was no Apple fanboys, there was no Microsoft fanboys, because there was no consumer computer industry.
- kiduk, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Oh wow, a video terminal.
( Not mocking it, just fun to see how far we have come) - semiotix, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6It does kind of put things in perspective. Emacs? vi? No thanks, I'll just do my programming with a soldering iron.
- PartlySean, on 10/10/2007, -3/+8"But what's with the price of $666.66? Droll."
I think it was meant as a joke. It was released on April Fools Day after all. - celkin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Hello, I'm an Apple I.
And I'm a... - obxjdt, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5WOZ!!!
- Protonomoto, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Wait for the update, safari will feel snappier!
- Raian, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4You would be correct according to iWoz.
- spinchange, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6They (the Steves) were "connecting the dots" even back then. This is the foundation for the present. We wouldn't have the ubiquity of connectivity, were not for the ubiquity of "microcomputing" (localized personal computing) ... Computational Horsepower (Moore's Law) has just finally got to where things are really cool.
- propagandhi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Cut grass all summer to buy one of these.
- solistus, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5To add to what others said:
The usual piece of Apple lore about the $666.66 price:
When Jobs set that number, Woz raised the concern that it may alienate some people due to the Satanic implication. Jobs said they could raise it to $777.77 if Woz wanted so it would be a lucky number instead. Woz didn't want to raise the price, so he acquiesced.
Hard to say if the story is true, but it's amusing and adds to the 'legendary' personas of the two Steves. - lharrod, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5What an ignorant crybaby you are. Modern personal computers all started with that ancient machine, and all you can focus on is the tired Mac-vs-PC crap.
- madmage, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4If you read iWoz, you learn that for back then, displaying text on a screen was difficult. The characters being read out had to be converted to their actual shapes, then a specific timing chip had to be used to get it to send the signal at the right frequency.
- lharrod, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Well, sorta. See, that's the kind of statement that gets Apple-haters riled up. Apple was the first to introduce computers to mainstream consumers, meaning not just enthusiast consumers. Before then, if an ordinary citizen had a computer, it was like having a HAM radio. It was big and technical, and only hardcore enthusiasts had them. Apple was the first to offer computers to the average joe. Then they were then the first to offer a GUI to consumers (Macintosh). Yes, geeks will remind us that Xerox actually created the GUI, but it was never meant for consumers. It was designed to be utilized in Xerox industrial machines. It's common for industries to have proprietary interfaces more advanced than what's available to the rest of us (for example, airline engineers use heads-up displays mounted on goggles, for when they crawl deep into the guts of a plane). But the heads of Xerox rejected the idea of a GUI, and sent an open invitation to all computer companies to have a looksee, a technology exchange. Only Apple had the foresight to realize that it could potentially change the computer industry forever by allowing ordinary people to use computers in their homes.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Compare against the competition:
http://www.computercloset.org/MITSAltair8800.htm
The only input and output was through the serial port. - ThinkBox, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3people were more akin to gaining information by reading
- Rhinodog8, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3people from today are so ignorant to what life was like back then
- AnalogAssassin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I remember the Apple II and IIe, but I had no idea they put BREADBOARDS in the early ones. Jeez, did you just re-wire the thing when you wanted it to do something different?
- Laxaloot, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2see:the movie Idiocracy (ok digg me down for being off topic)
- blobert, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2It is because the general public is getting exponentially dumber and dumber each generation....
- FluffyArmada, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Yes. You can still build your own laptop system. The only difference is that the case and screen have to be bundled with the motherboard. Everything else can be of your own choosing.
- DelMonte, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2But the Xerox Alto was the size of a mini-fridge. What you mainly see on your picture is the monitor and keyboard, the computer itself can be seen on the lower right, extending all the way to the ground.
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/Shustek/37-Xerox-Alto.gif
You couldn't connect it to a TV, it wasn't a commercial product, it was used for research. If sold commercially it would probably have cost $50,000+ at the time. So you couldn't consider it as "competition" to the Apple I.
And while the Alto had a nice modular OS architecture, the Alto GUI was very primitive. No scroll-bar, no pull-down menus, many GUI elements that are still present in modern OSes were not found in the Alto interface. These were brought later by Apple when they were working on the Lisa and Mac, and obviously by Xerox themselves while they worked on the Alto's successor, the Xerox Star.
Many concepts were openly shared by the two teams, arguably a lot of stuff on the Lisa and Mac came from Xerox, as part of their team went to work for Apple, but the reverse is also true to a certain extent: some of the Apple GUI concepts were integrated in later versions of the Xerox Star OS. - ragonamuffin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Try 5 years.
- neonsox, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2The wording of the Ad is similar to Apple's wording today, conveying confidence in the product as if it's the next wave of the future.
Guess they had something there. - spinchange, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Altair 8800
http://www.google.com/search?q=altair+8800&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a -
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