24 years ago today the public could, for the first time, buy themselves a Macintosh computer. This little computer, which cost $2500, changed the way people interact with machines on a very real level. It is also the reason that TUAW exists. Without the Macintosh 128k there would be no TUAW, no Mac, and (most likely) no Apple.Sound off in the comments if you bought one of those first Macs and share your story of how it impacted your life.
Thanks to everyone who reminded us about this.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
1-24-2008 @ 8:59PM
Michael Rose said...
I had one of those beige boxes. Can't say as it's had any real impact on my life... :-)
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1-24-2008 @ 10:11PM
matt little said...
I still have one these old boxes, mine actually still works! I pull it out on occasion to play with and to show guests. It changed my life because it was the first "Macintosh" that I owned. Before it i only had an Apple II. Come to think of it, I still have a working Apple II also!
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1-24-2008 @ 10:18PM
DS said...
I still own two mac classics II, do you think it worth something today? (fully functional) hehehe..
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1-24-2008 @ 10:19PM
Josh said...
My family got one these a few days after they came out. It wasn't $2500 either, more like $3200 if memory serves. I would have been 10 at the time. It trumped my Commodore 64 by quite a bit. Over the next few years I dove head first. Wrote my first app for the thing when I was 12. It was THE machine that got me into the tech industry and where I am today.
The machine now sits, fully functional, in my closet protected with tons of soft stuff. I've always wanted to get a small glass case for it just for nostalgia. Maybe I will some day.
It is definitely one of my most prized possessions. Occasionally I will pull it out to show an interested friend.
It always gets a wow.
A piece of history without any doubt at all....
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1-25-2008 @ 2:19AM
Josh said...
The unboxing and a quick video.
http://www.svrx.com/HelloMac/
1-24-2008 @ 10:21PM
Shawn said...
$2500. Wow, that's a fully loaded 15" Macbook pro. Times change...
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1-24-2008 @ 10:30PM
a ham sandwich said...
ur not kidding! and 128k?!
1-25-2008 @ 12:45AM
Rae said...
thats a 24" imac with a 2.8 core 2 extreme
1-25-2008 @ 1:18AM
KiltBear said...
What cost $2500 in 1984 would cost $4878.83 in 2006.
My story is that when I was in High School, Dad bought a Trash-80 with 64K memory, two floppy drives (everyone was using cassette tapes at the time) and a dot matrix printer that only printed in upper-case. We should have waited a bit and gotten an Epson...
The funny thing is that a friend bought a Macintosh, and showed it to me. I was completely at a loss. I was totally command line oriented. The idea of icons did not makes sense, I thought it was stupid... I just really didn't get it... I'd like to think that now I do.
1-24-2008 @ 10:29PM
csjk789 said...
The Apple 128k! The MacBook Air has almost as many features...
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1-24-2008 @ 10:38PM
JGO said...
Almost.... the 128k at least had a built in drive and was upgradeable!!!
1-24-2008 @ 11:39PM
Tom said...
It had a built-in drive because that was its *only* drive -- would be years before you could get one with a hard drive.
I saw my first Mac two years later as a freshman in college. Used them seriously circa 1989, when they were coming with two disk drives. You had the OS and your apps on one disk, and your documents on the 2nd. Can you imagine -- the full OS, plus Microsoft Word, on a 800K floppy? (true, the spell checking dictionary resided on disk 2).
'Course, we wore an onion on our belt those days, as was the custom of the time.
1-24-2008 @ 10:32PM
dTondro said...
I remember my dad bringing one home when it was released... those were the days. Grey scales graphics, a horrible square looking mouse, graphics programs like Mac the Knife, there was a tank game... ahh to be a kid again.
I thought it was called the "Lisa"...???
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1-24-2008 @ 11:55PM
thethirdmoose said...
The Lisa, if I recall correctly, was a very innovative, but very expensive ($8000) computer that came out before the Mac. Essentially the first with a mouse and GUI
1-25-2008 @ 1:38AM
dTondro said...
That was it... I remember my dad telling us how he could have bought a car for the same price and that he would kill my brother and me if anything happened to it. I still have the old manual for it somewhere on my bookshelf at home. I think I also have Lotus Notes for it... I wonder how much those are worth now?
It sure was an ugly machine compared to what we can all get out hands on now.
1-25-2008 @ 11:57AM
Tony said...
Lisa was the precursor to Mac, and was a business machine. It was also quite different. Lisa had multitasking, and was a document centric system, not a program centric system. For example, you never opened a "program" on the Lisa...you simply opened files, and whatever program was needed to work on that program was run so that you could work on the document.
Here's a great company demo of Lisa from 1984:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W35vpsPIwlU
Here's part 2 of the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtcmTKunNEQ
1-24-2008 @ 10:42PM
Jason said...
Wohoo! I wasn't born 24 years ago, but I must say I wish I was. Happy birthday Mac! I'm still trying to get my hands on a 128k Mac for my collection.
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1-24-2008 @ 10:43PM
Jason said...
I still have one of these old Macs on my desk. Works great. The loud clickity-clack of the keyboard is awesome.
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1-24-2008 @ 10:56PM
Rick Roberts said...
My love for the Mac got me into computers and on the path to a prosperous career. Thanks, Macintosh!
I used to have a classic startup sound that said, "Welcome to Macintosh, Honey!" I sure wish I could find that sound again. If anyone knows, please email me at rickr at mac.com.
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1-24-2008 @ 10:57PM
Robert said...
It was $2500 but everyone bought the Imagewriter dot matrix printer ($500) and a Mac carrying case. which pushed the price up. The external floppies ($500) weren't available on day one, which meant incessant disk swapping and putting up with the annoyingly slow duo-tone hum of the internal floppy.
And we loved every minute of MacPaint, Finder 1.0, we learned about a new word ('font') and played Daleks all night long.
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