Filed under: Odds and ends, Blast From the Past, Apple History
Blast from the Past: Original Macintosh manual
Here's a nice find. Peter Merholz recently got ahold of an original Mac User Manual from 1984 and has posted a bunch of pics along with commentary. The most interesting thing, of course, is seeing them trying to explain basic computing GUI concepts like click-and-drag and scrolling that we take so much for granted. Like Peter, I love the helpful simile that the "Finder is like a central hallway in the Macintosh house." You know, just looking at the thing makes me want a Mac classic!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Simon said 1:17PM on 9-02-2007
Personally, I think the most interesting thing about this is the fact that Apple were employing the "Water Table" effect even back then.
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Ryan Meyers said 1:31PM on 9-02-2007
@Simon
That was my initial thought as well. And here I thought the effect was somewhat new, I guess it just took this long for everyone to catch on.
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Jeff said 2:02PM on 9-02-2007
That's not a Mac Classic.
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shaun said 2:53PM on 9-02-2007
Have all the classic macs you want, I want leopard!
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Gar said 3:05PM on 9-02-2007
Interesting to look at this versus the iPhone 'manual'. Teaching people to use two finders on a touch screen. Sweeping, taping one finger versus two fingers and 'pinching'.
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Adrian vG said 3:09PM on 9-02-2007
It's Macintosh Plus, not a Macintosh Classic. Actually, it could be a Macintosh 128K or a Macintosh 512K.
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brooklynbob said 3:44PM on 9-02-2007
That's an original Mac since he bought the original user manual. I also believe the Mac Plus had the words Macintosh Plus on the front...
I had an original Mac and I remember the manual being something really special. The whole thing was -- the machine, the packaging, the manual. Sigh. I'm an old man... :)
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Kevin Woo said 6:25PM on 9-02-2007
That is not Macintosh Plus. Mac Plus had "Macintosh Plus" sign on the body, and the keyboard had numeric keypad. That manual can either be Mac 128K or Mac 512K (my first mac!)
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Kevin Woo said 6:27PM on 9-02-2007
Mac 512K used to be called "Fat" Mac... to show huge RAM (for standard machine of the day).
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webmaster said 7:54PM on 9-02-2007
Sorry, what's the "Water Table" effect?
I got my start on a lab full of Mac 512's in high school, so I remember the novelty at the time, but still, I had to laugh when I saw the chapter openings, where all these white males who look like they walked in from the Newport cigarette photo shoot next door, try to look sophisticated (and trying not to squint or hunch forward) while using a screen smaller than most ATMs have now. And the shot of the guy riding his bike through some Italian marketplace with the Mac in his front bike basket!?!?! The weight of it alone would probably cause him to do a face plant if he ran over so much as a small pebble!
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jonathan said 9:53PM on 9-02-2007
Wow, they even had the 'reflection' effect back then...
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layered said 10:25PM on 9-02-2007
My 512k Mac back in 1984 also came with a cartridge tape that led me through the first steps of using the computer, and there was also a Video tape or something (I can't remember) for exercises in "mousing around" to get used to the mouse. Opening and using my 512k Mac for the first time was a peak experience in my life.
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bacchus said 1:07AM on 9-03-2007
I have a collection with Fat Macs (512k) and original 128ks. When I bought my first Mac, a Plus, the price included a 3 hour one-on-one training session with the Apple sales rep who even installed the computer for me. I still have a stack of old manuals - the one that impressed me was the original user manual for Hypercard!
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Morgan Creek said 6:49AM on 9-03-2007
That "Italian market" is the Stanford Quad, where it probably wouldn't have been all that unusual at the time to see someone biking around with a Mac in a bike basket.
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south said 9:11AM on 9-03-2007
i don't know for sure either, but i'd say the "water table" effect is the vertical reflection effect, where the reflection under the image is a slightly dimmer mirror of the original. you can see it everywhere in apple products these days, from iWeb to coverflow. very subtle.
personally i think it's one of those steve jobs-isms that he brought back to the company and insisted on when he returned, so it's not surprising that he used it in the original mac manual.
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Aaron said 10:21AM on 9-03-2007
Huge manual, I am always surprised by what people keep around... I still have a few old DOS manuals myself.
-Aaron
http://aarondavidson.com
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Menlo Bob said 10:27AM on 9-03-2007
Speaking of the Stanford quad...around the time the first Mac came out I assisted on a photo shoot in the Stanford Quad. The shoot featured Steve Jobs and then CEO John Sculley. Jobs arrived alone and before anyone else--certainly a first. Sculley arrived late enough that he was noticably concerned about having to make Jobs wait. Other than a court trial it's the first time I've seen a CEO sweat. It wasn't the last time I've seen the Jobs effect.
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James said 4:16PM on 9-03-2007
In the mid-1980s people carted their macs with them EVERYWHERE. I remember hauling mine on the bus to the university twice a month for years to attend MUG meetings . . . we all did. The ability to actually "take" a computer somewhere was part of the allure of the mac. Try putting a TRS-80 from Radioshack in your bike basket . . . what did they weigh, half a tonne?
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Marcos said 5:55PM on 9-04-2007
Funny that a writer on an Apple blog would confuse the original Mac with a Mac Classic. In my head a Mac Classic is fairly recent (it released at the same time as the LC and the IIsi if my memory doesn't fail me... solidly in the era of color Macs and 68020/68030 processors).
I'm old.
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