Filed under: Hardware, Humor, Apple History
TUAW 1986
Luxo Jr. gets Academy Award nomination
Even though Steve Jobs is no longer with Apple, we're still interested in what he's doing. You'll remember that he bought a computer graphics company from director George Lucas last year (for a rumored $10 million), which he named "Pixar."
We don't know how many units of the $135,000 Pixar Image Computer they've sold, but Pixar animator John Lasseter has put it to good use. The short film he produced, "Luxo, Jr." has been nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Animated Short Film category. Good luck, Pixar!
Lisa gets the axe
After several revisions and price cuts, the Lisa has been officially discontinued by Apple Computer. When it was released three years ago with an astounding price tag of $9,995 (Heck, the Tandy 600 is only $1599!) we were blown away. Not only by the cost, but by the machine itself. The mouse, the icons on the screen, that awesome trash can!
Sales have declined over the past 12 months, and even a re-branding as the Macintosh XL last January didn't help. The Macintosh has been selling like hotcakes since its introduction two years ago, even though it lacks many of the Lisa's features, like protected memory, expansion slots and support for an impressive 2 megabytes of RAM.
Goodbye, Lisa! We'll remember you.
The AppleColor RGB Monitor is totally awesome at $499
There are now several monitors available from Apple, and the granddaddy of them all is the AppleColor RGB Monitor at $499. This 12" analog monitor was designed for the Apple IIgs, and supports a resolution of 640x480 (Nice!). Those of you with a Macintosh II can also use this monitor, provided that you have the Apple High Resolution Display Video Card.
The Apple Monochrome Monitor was introduced earlier this year for $129.The Macintosh Plus rocks
Finally, we've got to talk about the Macintosh Plus. With a 8MHz Motorola 68000 processor and 1 megabyte of RAM (expandable to 4 megabytes), we're excited about this machine. Of course, the big news is the SCSI (or "Small Computer System Interface") peripheral bus and the new 3.5 inch double-sided 800 KB floppy drive.
The SCSI port will allow for a nice collection of new ad-ons, like hard disks and tape drives. Of course, the double-sided floppies have twice the storage capacity as their predecessors while the drive itself is backwards compatible with older disks.
Customers will find the software programs MacPaint and MacWrite bundled with their Macintosh Plus, which is great! You can pick up your very own for $2,599.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
waiownsyou said 11:20AM on 4-01-2009
This is a pretty corny April Fool's joke. I want to laugh, not be eduamakatud!
Reply
Johnny said 12:12PM on 4-01-2009
Although it really isn't funny, I found it amusing.
Dorv said 2:15PM on 4-01-2009
And you completely missed the point. Its not an April Fool's Joke, its a 'special' for Apple's Birthday.
mabhatter said 4:06PM on 4-01-2009
what's really the problem is that the 1986 and 1996 Apple reviews read like April Fool's Day jokes looking back.
Wow is 2006 and even 2009 a whole different story!!!
I predict:
Steve and that Pixar square looking computer thing will never workout.
That Lasseter guy won't make any more funny movies, digital animation won't catch on.
Apple won't sell a $129 or even a $499 monitor again!
iBearTouch said 11:24AM on 4-01-2009
So you guys managed to find that DeLorean that can go back in time. Some of the details make me want to blush, sort of like the fact that I owned rugby pants and topsiders. Hello McFlyyyy!!!
Reply