Discussion on:

It is official (Dinosaur Sighting: The original Apple Macintosh Classic)

What applications did you run on your Apple Macintosh? How may years did you keep it?

Talk about a pack rat. These are in my drawer here at work:
Multi-Plan (spreadsheet)
MacPaint
MacWrite
Some helicopter game
Folkker Triplane

I actually have 2 of these in the attic in soft cases. One has an external 20 Meg hard drive! One is the original with the signitures i=on the plastic case. the other is a PLUS! wow - real power . . .

I remember my computer science instructor using a MAC during the summer of 1986, 4 years before the featured Classic. What makes that MAC different than the Classic?

Remember the famous commercial?

The tag line was something like "Why 1984 won't be like 1984"

And, that's "Mac", not "MAC".

To answer your question, the Mac was first introduced in
January 1984, when the infamous 'Big Brother' commercial
was supposed to run during the 1984 super bowl.

Just about anything you want to know about the various
Mac models can be found on this site:
http://everymac.com/

The site is always up to date and includes information on
pretty much any Apple product you can name.

I believe (if I remember correctly) the Mac 'Classic' was the
Mini of its day. Apple was trying to address the 'Macs cost
more than PCs crowd'.

The Classic was, essentially, a repackaged Mac SE brought
in at a lower price point. When I purchased my SE in
1987, it cost roughly $3700. I had to take out a student
loan to purchase it.

The classic in 1990 Cost between $1000 and $1500. Quite
a difference. If you compare the specs for those two
models, you?ll see they are very, very close.

As I recall, Apple caught some flack from Mac users
because the 68030 processors were already widely in use
(as well as a lower cost 68020) and many people
complained that Apple could have released a retooled
SE/30
(http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classic/st
ats/mac_se30.html) with its more advanced features, for
the same price as the Classic.

But, the 68030 was a no show until the ?Classic II? in
1991. And of course, the Classic II opened up a whole
nother can of beans. .

The whole thing was pretty much about money. Macs have
traditionally been more expensive than PCs for simple
reasons. Apple generally doesn't buy motherboards and
proprietary chips off the rack. They have to recoup the
money they spend in development costs for hardware and
software since they control the platform so closely.

Sorry if this was more than you wanted.

I still have my Mac Classic in the closet! Not sure if it even would boot up!

I actually still have 1 of these that still operates with the bag and all. Was a great little system, and mine still looks and works like new. Cool!

Mine was the 512K "Fat Mac".
I still have it, bag and all. It has the signatures of the engineers on the inside of the case. I bought and enternal 3-1/2 and an Imagewriter and the total cost was $4200.00. I still have lots of software.

I have one just like it...

Boy, what memories. I was in charge of a community college lab with 30 Mac Classics. We started with System 6 and eventually upgraded to System 7. However, you didn't "crack it open"! They are tricky unless you know where all the screws are! I opened them all - upgrade memory, replace the occasional defunct hard drive and minor surgery. Unfortunately, I don't have one of them, but I do have a working SE with System 4. Also have a lime green IMac and now a MacPro. I appreciate the present technology, but somehow...I miss the old guys!

I worked in an office that used Macs exclusively until I brought in a paint-by-numbers PC clone. The Macs needed a power card replaced at a rate of about one every six weeks, at a cost of $149 each. They ran the company with their word processing and terminal emulation, and were easily networked to a $4K Canon mono laser printer, but they couldn't do any real work due to lack of application software.

It's a rumor I've heard before Even by 1990, most computer users were expecting color.

By 1990 standards, the Mac Classic was a fairly speedy machine for the money, and the MacOS UI (which, I believe at this point in time, still resided about half in ROM, half on the computer's hard drive) did beat the Windows 3.0 user interface hands down.

Any chance of ever doing one of these stories on the Epson QX-10? (I've got my mother-in-law's old machine sitting on a shelf in the garage, along with all the CP/M Valdocs floppies...)

Any chance of ever doing one of these stories on the Epson QX-10? (I've got my mother-in-law's old machine sitting on a shelf in the garage, along with all the CP/M Valdocs floppies...)

So what is the gooey stuff coming out of the back?