A Macintosh History 85.10(systemtalk.org)
systemtalk.org
A Macintosh History 85.10
https://systemtalk.org/post/macintosh-history-8510/
33 comments
This is so wonderful and sweet. Such a creative computer era. Thank you for bringing it to light!
Thanks.
A creative era when a mainstream Mac magazine has could cover everything from Excel to 68000 assembler, role-playing games to icon design, and Lisp to desktop publishing. Computers and their users have yet to be confined to silos.
A creative era when a mainstream Mac magazine has could cover everything from Excel to 68000 assembler, role-playing games to icon design, and Lisp to desktop publishing. Computers and their users have yet to be confined to silos.
The early MacUser was a fantastic publication. I can still visualize the Apple IIGS issue with its combination of admiration and insecurity about the color display.
“A Mac Of Another Color?”
“Why Apple’s New IIGS Is Going To Help The Mac”
https://vintageapple.org/macuser/pdf/MacUser_8612_December_1...
“Why Apple’s New IIGS Is Going To Help The Mac”
https://vintageapple.org/macuser/pdf/MacUser_8612_December_1...
Feed autodiscovery does not seem to work (at least with News Explorer). But the feed is there:
https://systemtalk.org/index.xml
https://systemtalk.org/index.xml
the sheer size of the spreadsheet gives you the feeling of wide open spaces. 16,384 rows are numbered sequentially from top to bottom and 256 columns go from A, around the alphabet eight times, to IV.
The Macintosh version is the original Excel; there was never an MS-DOS version.
The Macintosh version is the original Excel; there was never an MS-DOS version.
3D modeling with a GUI on 128k of RAM (or maybe it required 512k). People were undaunted by computational restraints!
Not merely undaunted — inspired. They knew what could be done, in theory, and were annoyed that the hardware wasn't there yet. So they did what they could with what they had. The software landscape was a wildly different place then, and I still wonder how many good ideas were attempted and left on the ground then which would be easy / practical to implement today.
I’ve always loved Garbage-Collected languages. Using twice the RAM and 1/3 of CPU to manage memory for us makes me feel like a posh lord who will never touch the soil, at huge expense. Every day I appreciate this luxury.
Think about it: At 128k RAM and small COU, you can’t even afford separation of concerns into application layers, and thus can’t delegate work to independent teams, because simply a method calling another one is a performance hit. Multitier architecture is already a posh, modern luxury.
Then came lambdas and Java streams, twice as slow as for-each loops, but look nicer, albeit with incomprehensible stacktraces. Luxury all around!
Then came Electron.
Looking forward to Docker-Driven Programming, where each function is a Docker Compose and gets rebuilt and rethrown at each exception.
Think about it: At 128k RAM and small COU, you can’t even afford separation of concerns into application layers, and thus can’t delegate work to independent teams, because simply a method calling another one is a performance hit. Multitier architecture is already a posh, modern luxury.
Then came lambdas and Java streams, twice as slow as for-each loops, but look nicer, albeit with incomprehensible stacktraces. Luxury all around!
Then came Electron.
Looking forward to Docker-Driven Programming, where each function is a Docker Compose and gets rebuilt and rethrown at each exception.
Golang is a good alternative and it doesn't need docker as it's statically linked.
This was fun, thank you for putting this together. Please keep going, I look forward to more of it. Apple history is always so fascinating.
Thank you. I’ve already started work on the December ‘85 post.
I've just published December 1985: https://systemtalk.org/post/macintosh-history-8512/
A few quotes from this issue:
"In the old days, the ignorant confused Lisp with 'Artificial Intelligence' - AI which doesn’t exist, but someday might."
"Vimco is what it sounds like and what it sounds like is as important as what it looks like. VMCO is the Visual/Vocal MAUG Conferencing Utility. It’s a communication program that integrates MacinTalk, Apple’s speech synthesis program, and the conferencing (or group meeting) software on CompuServe MAUG special interest group."
"Does Switcher allow multiple applications to actually run simultaneously? Switcher - lets multiple applications reside in memory simultaneously. It does not, by itself, allow those applications to actually be executing simultaneously..."
A few quotes from this issue:
"In the old days, the ignorant confused Lisp with 'Artificial Intelligence' - AI which doesn’t exist, but someday might."
"Vimco is what it sounds like and what it sounds like is as important as what it looks like. VMCO is the Visual/Vocal MAUG Conferencing Utility. It’s a communication program that integrates MacinTalk, Apple’s speech synthesis program, and the conferencing (or group meeting) software on CompuServe MAUG special interest group."
"Does Switcher allow multiple applications to actually run simultaneously? Switcher - lets multiple applications reside in memory simultaneously. It does not, by itself, allow those applications to actually be executing simultaneously..."
What hardware/software was used by the editors of the magazines which this Mac appeared in?
That’s an interesting question and one I don’t know the answer to. PageMaker is the first serious DTP package, but it wasn’t capable of laying out a magazine in 1985: for one thing MacUser is in colour! The Macintosh II with colour support didn’t appear until 1987.
Utter nitpick: the original 128k Mac had color support (http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/doc...)
Of course, the screen was monochrome black and white, so you’d have to print things to see them, and I’m not aware of any printer driver ever supporting it (Color QuickDraw, when it arrived, didn’t build on this, as far as I know).
Chances also are this part of the code was less well exercised than other parts. It may have been buggy.
On the plus side, colors were 32-bit (see http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/doc..., where both fgColor and bkColor are 32 bits), but as indicated in the first link, you could only record a fixed set of 8 colors in pictures.
(Links are to a 1996 book, but that info was present in the phone book edition of Inside Macintosh (https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...), too)
Of course, the screen was monochrome black and white, so you’d have to print things to see them, and I’m not aware of any printer driver ever supporting it (Color QuickDraw, when it arrived, didn’t build on this, as far as I know).
Chances also are this part of the code was less well exercised than other parts. It may have been buggy.
On the plus side, colors were 32-bit (see http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/doc..., where both fgColor and bkColor are 32 bits), but as indicated in the first link, you could only record a fixed set of 8 colors in pictures.
(Links are to a 1996 book, but that info was present in the phone book edition of Inside Macintosh (https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...), too)
Before DTP, paste up involve pasting content onto boards that were then photographed (with a stat camera) to create film negatives for printing plates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwrePe4-ID4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwrePe4-ID4
That's exactly how we made my high-school newspaper. Then about 1987, when I was a junior, the first day of Journalism class we walked into the room and discovered our world had changed forever. There were now two Macintosh computers (one with a gigantic 20MB hard drive).
We'd stepped into the future.
We'd stepped into the future.
The future back then was you printed the proofs on a LaserWriter and then took those to the dark room. And maybe had a halftone screen if your school was fancy.
What's not clear to me is what happens after. It looks to me like photographing the end result would result in a lot of visible artifacts from the glue and bits of paper? (I watched the video without audio, so maybe they explained this.)
Maybe this is just the process used for designing the layout, which is then used to re-flow and re-print all the "fragments" so they can be remounted and photographed cleanly?
Maybe this is just the process used for designing the layout, which is then used to re-flow and re-print all the "fragments" so they can be remounted and photographed cleanly?
The board shown was camera-ready and would be photographed like that, though maybe after cleaning off some glue with a rubber cement eraser. It's a monochrome camera that will only pick up blacks and reds, the lines are drawn with blue pencil so they won't be visible. It will photograph cleanly.
So the process would not work for full-colour magazines like MacUser?
Same process, you need to repeat it for each color that you would want printed.
This video shows a bit of the process such as the Rubylith sheets used to create masks for each color: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxddg3dNKgw
This video shows a bit of the process such as the Rubylith sheets used to create masks for each color: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxddg3dNKgw
A lot of magazines were in B/W in the 80's except for the cover.
For newspapers, even in late 90's a lot of them were just in B/W.
For newspapers, even in late 90's a lot of them were just in B/W.
I don't know specifically but this prepress history gives a qualitative idea of how it was probably done:
https://www.prepressure.com/prepress/history/events-1980
https://www.prepressure.com/prepress/history/events-1980
Color displays weren’t necessary for color offset printing.
Layout was not done with desktop publishing for magazines and newspapers in 1985, but some newsletters were laid out using Aldus PageMaker and Microsoft Word. Computers may have been used, though.
In 1982, I was in 6th grade, and my best friend's father was a graphic designer. I remember the computer he used, an Itek Quadritek, a very big thing with multiple cabinets taking up his whole office. It used the 8-inch floppies for storage. It was probably a mini computer, and he also had a high resolution monochrome imagesetter to output to developed paper.
In college in 1989, because the editor heard I was a CS major, I was tasked with modernizing the school newspaper production equipment to use Mac desktop publishing, installing the Macs, QuarkXPress and Photoshop software and new Linotype PostScript film imagesetters. What they were using before for a decade at least were Linotype terminals (and I expect for long before that, Linotype machines). I was not aware of what the terminals connected to, but there must have been a mini computer somewhere. The printing terminals used a markup language (not unlike html) to output copy in whatever type-size, fonts and justifications to a monochrome developed paper, which would be physically cut with razors and physically pasted with glue up on newspaper-sized paste sheets, and then those sheets were shot with a huge stat camera to go to film, then the film negative was developed and the image burned onto metal press plate with another huge machine called a platemaker.
I worked in printing for years as a prepress operator, and all of those huge stat cameras and platemakers, the developing sinks, all of it, everywhere, were dragged into the parking lots of commercial printers to be hauled away to landfills or junk yards. I remember thinking it was throwing away a fortune, stat cameras alone were like $20K new, twice the cost of the new PostScript imagesetters.
The classic commercial printer bindery was a warehouse-sized room that included 20+ in staff, paper cutting machines, paper folding machines, collators, Cheshire machines, and other equipment like envelope stuffers and book binding machines. By 2003/4, a pdf file could be printed from a Mac or Windows desktop to a large, 50-foot long press that outputs perfect bound paperback books, nothing in between, the entire bindery built-in. But professional/commercial offset printing even today still often requires metal plates, so the pdf (what prepress has been generating for 25 years rather than film or plate) outputs direct to metal plate (DTP).
In 2001 I was working at a startup that involved pulling the digital feed directly from major newspapers around the world to make it available in a reader, idea was you could read the New York Times online appearing exactly like the printed edition about 5-7 hours before it hit the stands, sometimes late the day before depending on when copy went to press. Even in 2001, every single major newspaper used it's own proprietary digital system, though everything was moving to pdf, which had been standard for almost a decade at commercial printers. In 2001, the San Francisco Chronicle still had no desktop publishing nor digital output to film and were still using physical cut and paste layout and stat cameras. I expect they migrated to desktop publishing within a few years, but I nearly fell out of my chair when I discovered a major newspaper's production department was a decade behind all the others. Their production manager agreed with me that it was unbelieveable.
In 1982, I was in 6th grade, and my best friend's father was a graphic designer. I remember the computer he used, an Itek Quadritek, a very big thing with multiple cabinets taking up his whole office. It used the 8-inch floppies for storage. It was probably a mini computer, and he also had a high resolution monochrome imagesetter to output to developed paper.
In college in 1989, because the editor heard I was a CS major, I was tasked with modernizing the school newspaper production equipment to use Mac desktop publishing, installing the Macs, QuarkXPress and Photoshop software and new Linotype PostScript film imagesetters. What they were using before for a decade at least were Linotype terminals (and I expect for long before that, Linotype machines). I was not aware of what the terminals connected to, but there must have been a mini computer somewhere. The printing terminals used a markup language (not unlike html) to output copy in whatever type-size, fonts and justifications to a monochrome developed paper, which would be physically cut with razors and physically pasted with glue up on newspaper-sized paste sheets, and then those sheets were shot with a huge stat camera to go to film, then the film negative was developed and the image burned onto metal press plate with another huge machine called a platemaker.
I worked in printing for years as a prepress operator, and all of those huge stat cameras and platemakers, the developing sinks, all of it, everywhere, were dragged into the parking lots of commercial printers to be hauled away to landfills or junk yards. I remember thinking it was throwing away a fortune, stat cameras alone were like $20K new, twice the cost of the new PostScript imagesetters.
The classic commercial printer bindery was a warehouse-sized room that included 20+ in staff, paper cutting machines, paper folding machines, collators, Cheshire machines, and other equipment like envelope stuffers and book binding machines. By 2003/4, a pdf file could be printed from a Mac or Windows desktop to a large, 50-foot long press that outputs perfect bound paperback books, nothing in between, the entire bindery built-in. But professional/commercial offset printing even today still often requires metal plates, so the pdf (what prepress has been generating for 25 years rather than film or plate) outputs direct to metal plate (DTP).
In 2001 I was working at a startup that involved pulling the digital feed directly from major newspapers around the world to make it available in a reader, idea was you could read the New York Times online appearing exactly like the printed edition about 5-7 hours before it hit the stands, sometimes late the day before depending on when copy went to press. Even in 2001, every single major newspaper used it's own proprietary digital system, though everything was moving to pdf, which had been standard for almost a decade at commercial printers. In 2001, the San Francisco Chronicle still had no desktop publishing nor digital output to film and were still using physical cut and paste layout and stat cameras. I expect they migrated to desktop publishing within a few years, but I nearly fell out of my chair when I discovered a major newspaper's production department was a decade behind all the others. Their production manager agreed with me that it was unbelieveable.
> Computers may have been used, though.
Marvel Comics's former typesetter (and editor and technical artist and all-around production guy) Eliot R. Brown maintains a blog where he posts a number of pictures and stories from his time at Marvel in the '70s, '80s, and '90s.
One of his articles concerns the typesetting computer he used at the time... it's well worth a read: https://www.eliotrbrown.com/wp/one-shot-erbs-custom-typesett... (there's a picture of it in the article)
> The miracle of type that you could do in your own office was quite a while in coming. But for Marvel, it took place in 1982. There was a first “digital” typesetting computer, but you wouldn’t believe how it worked. To really appreciate it, I would have to draw diagrams. You still might not really believe it—such a wild contraption. But then Marvel got a Mergenthaller Linotype Print Maker and paid a low $15,000 if I remember correctly. Mergenthaller used to make the hot type monstrosities and were probably sighing in relief when cold type came to be. There's a picture in the article
> ‘Cold’ here means, simple black type on white paper. You do a little typing, press the ‘go’ button and remove the paper cassette from the machine, put the cassette in the light-tight chemical processor and bang, in as little as 3-4 minutes, cool, calm and collected—there’s your type.
> There were several “tricks” here. There was a high-resolution CRT tube (just like a TV set, but about an inch across and able to resolve 2400 lines per inch) and a primitive digital computer. It ran on DOS. The machine was an inert piece of junk until you loaded in the “operating system” via a disk. Disk Operating System meant the whole shootin’ match of a program was on a 5.25” floppy disk.
> And you had to load that program every time you turned the machine on. It forgot how to be a typesetting machine every power-down.
> I kid you not. No “hard drive.”
> This was an early computer. It had a green monochrome monitor that was a whole 9” across! No mouse. Only arrow buttons to move the cursor around. It also used a series of commands that would make font changes, from regular to bold or italic. But don’t forget to change it back—because you did not see a representation of that type style. In fact, you really had to pay attention. For one thing, the monitor displayed letters in a grid. Very simple. All the same size, from periods to the letter “M.” I used to quip, “Every letterspace counted.”
Marvel Comics's former typesetter (and editor and technical artist and all-around production guy) Eliot R. Brown maintains a blog where he posts a number of pictures and stories from his time at Marvel in the '70s, '80s, and '90s.
One of his articles concerns the typesetting computer he used at the time... it's well worth a read: https://www.eliotrbrown.com/wp/one-shot-erbs-custom-typesett... (there's a picture of it in the article)
> The miracle of type that you could do in your own office was quite a while in coming. But for Marvel, it took place in 1982. There was a first “digital” typesetting computer, but you wouldn’t believe how it worked. To really appreciate it, I would have to draw diagrams. You still might not really believe it—such a wild contraption. But then Marvel got a Mergenthaller Linotype Print Maker and paid a low $15,000 if I remember correctly. Mergenthaller used to make the hot type monstrosities and were probably sighing in relief when cold type came to be. There's a picture in the article
> ‘Cold’ here means, simple black type on white paper. You do a little typing, press the ‘go’ button and remove the paper cassette from the machine, put the cassette in the light-tight chemical processor and bang, in as little as 3-4 minutes, cool, calm and collected—there’s your type.
> There were several “tricks” here. There was a high-resolution CRT tube (just like a TV set, but about an inch across and able to resolve 2400 lines per inch) and a primitive digital computer. It ran on DOS. The machine was an inert piece of junk until you loaded in the “operating system” via a disk. Disk Operating System meant the whole shootin’ match of a program was on a 5.25” floppy disk.
> And you had to load that program every time you turned the machine on. It forgot how to be a typesetting machine every power-down.
> I kid you not. No “hard drive.”
> This was an early computer. It had a green monochrome monitor that was a whole 9” across! No mouse. Only arrow buttons to move the cursor around. It also used a series of commands that would make font changes, from regular to bold or italic. But don’t forget to change it back—because you did not see a representation of that type style. In fact, you really had to pay attention. For one thing, the monitor displayed letters in a grid. Very simple. All the same size, from periods to the letter “M.” I used to quip, “Every letterspace counted.”
>The best analogy is Zork. In Zork, you wander around trying to figure things out and dying frequently. ExperLisp is no different. You try to figure things out and die frequently.
And Hack (now in bsdgames)/Nethack and variants like Slashem, OFC.
On Ultima IV, it's a must on any platform, too. Even the C64 version was good enough and the world felt huge.
And Hack (now in bsdgames)/Nethack and variants like Slashem, OFC.
On Ultima IV, it's a must on any platform, too. Even the C64 version was good enough and the world felt huge.
The post discusses ExperLisp for Macintosh, but I’ve never managed to find a copy. If anyone knows the whereabouts of an ExperLisp binary, I’d love to try running it.
I’ve only written about two months so far, but more will follow soon. Let me know if you have any suggestions or corrections.