25 Years of Mac: Hits and Misses

[Guest]

Apple's Macintosh brand has endured for 25 years, for better or worse. This month's anniversary inspired us to take a look back.

25 Years of Mac: Hits and Misses : Read more

 

[Guest]

"pride not only to the company, but also to Macintosh’s creator, Steve Jobs." ???
You mean co-creator. Have you forgoten about Steve Wozniak, who was the technical brains behind the product? Jobs was mostly about marketing....

 

[Guest]

Mac has always been a miss. MAC = marketing, that's all they have.

I love how everyone conveniently forgets the part where Microsoft injected millions of dollars into mac to keep them alive because they were failing so epicly that they wouldn't have survived another year.

MACs market is the computer handicapped, so naturally that market isn't very large.

 

[Algard]

i concur

 

[Tomsguiderachel]

[citation][nom]stevesjobs[/nom]Mac has always been a miss. MAC = marketing, that's all they have.I love how everyone conveniently forgets the part where Microsoft injected millions of dollars into mac to keep them alive because they were failing so epicly that they wouldn't have survived another year.MACs market is the computer handicapped, so naturally that market isn't very large.[/citation]
Hey,
I'm all for a critical discussion about Mac vs PC. But why do you resort to calling Mac users handi-capped? Nobody provoked you to do that and it just seems a little lame to me. Let's be more insightful with our critiques!

Thanks,

Rachel Rosmarin,
Editor of Tom's Guide

 

[waffle911]

The 20th anniversary Mac was a tremendous flop, and was actually sold up to a few years after the fact at discounted prices due to having so many leftovers. The G4 iMac was called the iLamp more because of its resemblance in form and function to the classic articulated desk lamp made (more) famous by Pixar Animation in its first short film and its logo.

 

[waffle911]

Sorry for double post - but the original iBook was also only offered in blueberry and orange, and later graphite, but never in the other three classic iMac colors: grape, strawberry, and lime. So it was not in fact offered in all the colors of it's desktop sibling of the time.

 

[Janus Daniels]

"... to Macintosh’s creator, Steve Jobs..."
Please check facts. Steve Jobs co-created Apple Inc., not the Mac. Minutes of search shows anyone that Jeff Raskin led the development team for Mac, and even he makes clear that depended on the team (and that, for the Mac, Jobs did what his subordinates persuaded him to do, including the famous trip to Xerox PARC).
For people who don't appreciate Macs: I've used & done tech sup for Wintel & for Mac. Everyone I know who works with both, prefers supporting Mac. As for use, sit down with experienced users of both, and watch them from boot, through most common applications, to shut down; till then, keep your mouths shut and your fingers still. I'll resort to the cliche, "Linux learning; Mac working; Wintel gaming."
I use Wintel for the same reason anyone with any choice uses Wintel: I need Wintel only apps (in my case, SR, speech recognition). Mac suits SR better than Wintel, and had a head start. Apple ignored and lost head starts for decades; you can google for lists.

 

[Guest]

The first Mac with color wasn't the Color Classic in 1993 as stated in the article, it was the Macintosh II in 1987. The LC you also mentioned was color-capable in 1990. The SE/30 (1989) was the first compact Mac to technically have color support: although you would have had to add a video card and external monitor to do it, it had the code for Color Quickdraw in its ROM, same as the Mac II.

And yes, the Mac supported multiple displays. In or before 1989. And it was more or less plug and chug.

Thankfully, factual accuracy in this article got better as the topics got more recent - although you forgot the Lime (green) iBooks.

Also, the iMac was more or less a runaway success at first. Sales dropped by the time Apple had been selling essentially the same damn machine for 4 years or more, but 800 thousand machines were sold in the first 139 days after introduction. It wasn't the iPhone, but many stores had trouble keeping them in stock.

http/www.apple.com/ca/press/1999/01/iMac_Sales.html

And it created an instant market for USB peripherals that hadn't existed previously.

Oh, and by the way - article/slideshows about 25 year anniversaries should darn well have 25 pages. (!)

 

[Guest]

I have all three major OS's running in my house, Windows, Mac and Linux(Fedora).... They all three are good at doing different things. If you like to "tinker" get Windows, if you want a simple, easy to use and efficient approach go to Mac and I'm only using Fedora because my ps3 will not allow windows to run on it.

 

[hellwig]

[citation][nom]TomsGuideRachel[/nom]Hey,I'm all for a critical discussion about Mac vs PC. But why do you resort to calling Mac users handi-capped?...[/citation]
When I first read his post, I thought he was referring to handicapped computers, which they are. Not being able to upgrade to the hardware of your choosing sounds like a handicap to me. But as I re-read it, that wasn't what he was saying.

No iPod? The iPod is the only thing that kept Apple in business this decade. Sales of their computers certainly weren't doing the trick before the switch to Intel.

OSX was a nice upgrade, but it didn't spur many new computer sales, and Apple loves to tell people they're a hardware company, not a software comapny. The only reason Apple computers sell at all is because people want the OS, and Apple won't let you install the OS except on their hardware (and don't argue back about hacking OSX onto your PC, you EULA breakers you). You can think of it as if Coca Cola called themselves an aluminum can company, but the only way to get people to buy their cans is to put Coke into them.

 

[ravenware]

[citation][nom]stevesjobs[/nom]Mac has always been a miss. MAC = marketing, that's all they have.I love how everyone conveniently forgets the part where Microsoft injected millions of dollars into mac to keep them alive because they were failing so epicly that they wouldn't have survived another year.MACs market is the computer handicapped, so naturally that market isn't very large.[/citation]

http/news.cnet.com/2100-1001-202143.html

 

[Guest]

Macs have been about marketing, I'll agree with that. In my opinion, Windows is sturdy, but prone to bugs and needs frequent updates, you can edit many things, but theres also a wack of things that are offlimits. Mac is more shiny, though you can tweak windows to look pretty nice too, but I find Mac to be more closed, though I hear they are working to Improve that a bit. Linux on the other hand, is what I prefer, because everything is open to change, and its gotten to the point of being very much on par or better then Windows or Mac for looks and usage, besides of course, some major games.

 

[Guest]

Sure Apple did not invent the mouse but NEITHER did Xerox. It was invented in 1963 by Doug Engelbart. Now there was a visionary...

 

[Guest]

LOL at the TG editor being so quick to defend Macs and their users. The fact of the matter is that Macs haven't held any advantage whatsoever since the dual-G4 1.2 ghz days, so yes, Mac users are gullible people who succumb to marketing and empty their wallets for an inferior machine, so handicapped may not be too strong of a word. If Macs "just worked", Apple wouldn't have to resort to censoring bug reports in their forums, so if these "handicapped" Mac users would stop being so gullible and buying into this scam, the computing world would be better off without Apple.

 

[justjc]

@Icarus99: I agree Doug Engelbart created the mouse and was a great visionary, as can be seen in his 1968 demonstration http/sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html

However the Xerox thing isn't completely wrong either, as they were the first to ship a commercial computer using a mouse the Xerox 8010 Information System(aka. the Xerox Star(1981)).

 

[Guest]

I'm laughing at the stream of inaccuracies in this article. For crissake, at least check your facts against Wikipedia, no matter how confident you are of your Premium Intellect.

 

[rooket]

I may be wrong, but it seems like the Mac has brought innovation to the PC market. I remember seeing for the first time a mac with removable side panels, when PC's of the time had this big shroud covering the case you had to unscrew. Soon after, it was cloned and now practically every PC case is designed that way. Also I remember hearing at a time that Macs were expensive because it was all SCSI inside. I'm not sure if this is true since I have seen a number of IDE mac drives years ago.

Macs are good these days, but I don't know of any innovations in the desktops now. I have no need for a desktop mac, but I like the macbook pro because it looks sleek and has that natural earth magnet holding the power cord onto it so if you forget you're plugged in, it just comes off real easy and doesn't break any connectors. I should've bought a macbook pro instead of my dell laptop. I have been having a lot of trouble with it and I'm sure you can install vista or XP on a macbook if you don't like OSX. Or you can probably dual boot or emulate a microsoft o/s.

What kept me away from buying macs over the years wasn't only price but also that they have an inferior amount of software compared to a PC. But I think that doesn't amount to much any more since you can install windows on any of them that are out now. They're just intel based pc's now, not motorola any more.

 

[trevorvdw]

Amiga Forever!

 

[rooket]

I've never owned an Amiga. My parents were shopping for a new PC back around 1990 and they were selling Amigas at Macy's but for some reason my dad liked the PC clone a friend of his had so he bought us a 386 instead. I haven't really felt the need to even try out an Amiga system. Later on I bought a 486 upgrade, completely forgot about Amigas.