Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual
Posted on | August 27, 2007 | 181 Comments
I recently purchased an original Macintosh User Manual (thanks eBay!). I had seen one at a garage sale, and was struck by how it had to explain a total paradigm shift in interacting with computers. I figured I could learn something about helping make innovation happen.
It’s been an intriguing read. It’s a remarkably handsome manual, beautifully typeset, which, considering par for the course at the time was probably Courier with few illustrations, is saying something.
Also, even back in 1984, there was no definite article. You get phrases like “With Macintosh, you’re in charge.” No “the”s or “a”s.
One of the more striking things was how every
Chapter is introduced with a full-color photo of Macintosh being used. Here they are (click on them to see bigger sizes):
The first thing I appreciated was how Macintosh is set within somewhat normal (and quite varied) contexts of use.
Then I noticed that, with the exception of
Chapter 5, every photo shows a preppy white male using the computer. Women and people of color need not apply! (The dude in
Chapter 4 even has a *sweater* around his shoulders!!!)
And
Chapter 5 exudes preppiness with the glass brick backdrop.
Also, why is the keyboard in
Chapter 3 positioned like that? Why on earth was it posed that way?
Anyway.
The thing you’ll notice in
Chapter 6 (and maybe you saw it in the Appendix) was the infamous Mac carrying case. There’s a page about it, which I photographed:
The introduction of the manual greets you with this image:
Introduction
Dig that reflection! Apple returned to the reflection as a visual element a few years ago…
Some of the best stuff, of course, is explaining how the thing works.
Clicking and Dragging (pretty straightforward)
My favorite is scrolling. I can imagine the discussion: “Well, it’s called a scroll bar… I know, let’s use a drawing of a scroll!” Yes. Because people in the mid-80s were all about scrolls…
And, hey, Where Does Your Information Go?
You’ll probably want to click for details
Oh! That’s where that metaphor comes from…
And perhaps the strangest sentence: “The Finder is like a central hallway in the Macintosh house.”
(And the disk is a… guest? Someone looking for the bathroom?
It’s been surprisingly delightful flipping through this little bit of computer history. The pace, and deliberateness, with which the system and its interface are explained are quite impressive.
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181 Responses to “Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual”
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August 28th, 2007 @ 4:21 am
Amazing pictures indeed, I just wished today documentation manuals actually had some of that care put into them.
Which manual is this one exactly?
August 28th, 2007 @ 5:55 am
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. This was the manual that came with the original 128k Macintosh, released in 1984.
August 28th, 2007 @ 6:57 am
[...] [...]
August 28th, 2007 @ 8:20 pm
Peter, a man after my own heart. Obviously, I need to get my hands on one of these.
August 29th, 2007 @ 5:57 pm
Wonderful review Peter. These old manuals are great. Some time ago I dug up a //c manual and was caught by similar reactions. I only posted a few shots, but here too, I thought the illustration of scrolling was a favorite.
flickr set of //c manual pages
August 29th, 2007 @ 10:14 pm
I think the hallway he is cycling through is Stanford University.
What amazes me is that half these guys could pose as the “I am a PC” in the current ads
As to the diversity issue, please not again. I worked for years for some evil US corporations and got sick of the need to add every minority to every photo, to me this was a natural thing to happen anyway, it is sad that people feel the need to have to enforce it.
August 30th, 2007 @ 1:49 am
> why is the keyboard in Chapter 3 positioned like that? Why on earth was it posed that way?
Because Macintosh was all about the mouse. It was a new world of moving stuff around on screen as if they were real things.
(That’s my impression, anyway. I was 3 years old at the time.)
August 30th, 2007 @ 8:32 am
I’m with pauldwaite. My immediate impression upon looking at chapter 3 was that the keyboard was pushed out of the way because it was “traditional” and could be ignored for so many Mac tasks.
(Which is a GUI design paradigm that continues today, to the obnoxious point of ignoring keyboard use patterns and forcing the user to drag hand to mouse.)
Another vintage Apple read I recommend is the interactive equivalent of the above — the Apple 2 introduction disk. If you can find it anywhere. I don’t remember what it was called. It even had a quick primer on user-friendliness for fledgling BASIC programmers.
August 30th, 2007 @ 9:41 am
Wow, I haven’t seen one of these manuals in ages. Thanks for excavating it.
You’re absolutely right about the size of the task before Apple: they had to explain, well, everything about using (a) Macintosh. It’s even more astonishing taken in a historical context: this manual turns out to be the set of stone tablets laying down the rules for all subsequent HCI. “Thou shalt click, and by clicking select; thou mayest then act upon the selection.”
[Note that the Macintosh Basics interactive demo (plus audio tape) served a similar function. Similarly, and much more recently, the iPhone guided tour guy is in the same boat: introducing (prospective and new) users to an almost entirely unfamiliar interaction model.]
August 30th, 2007 @ 12:19 pm
[...] The Original Macintosh User Manual (tags: apple history macintosh marketing book manual mac) [...]
August 30th, 2007 @ 3:42 pm
One error in the photos, though, is that the guy who looks so engrossed by the display in Chapter 1 is staring at a dead screen — the power switch is off.
August 31st, 2007 @ 9:04 am
Ah, nostalgia. As to the question of the tossed-aside keyboard in the Chapter 5 title page, I think the other commenters have it right. Macintosh was the mouse and the mouse was Macintosh, particularly with a GUI element like the Finder.
Also, it seem so odd today, but so many of the GUI elements had to be explained in excruciating detail with less-than-perfect analogies as the vast majority of us just had never used an interface like this before.
August 31st, 2007 @ 10:17 am
I’m surprised nobody has noted this already, but judging from the photos, apparently they didn’t expect to have any female Mac users in 1984.
August 31st, 2007 @ 10:22 am
[...] peterme.com :: Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual Oooh, this brings back memories; I had one of the first 128K Macs, and was mesmerised by the way that Apple blithely repositioned computers as a preppy fashion accessory (tags: apple macintosh documentation ui userinterface history) Posted by jermolene Filed in Uncategorized [...]
August 31st, 2007 @ 7:26 pm
[...] peterme.com :: Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual Love these images of the original Mac manual. I imagine trying to explain these brand new terms..like mouse and scroll bar. Fun. And, I had one of those carrying cases they show for my Mac SE!! (tags: 1984 mac apple history manual macintosh documentation) [...]
August 31st, 2007 @ 9:21 pm
“My favorite is scrolling. I can imagine the discussion: “Well, it’s called a scroll bar… I know, let’s use a drawing of a scroll!” ”
You’re a moron. It’s pretty ingenius that Apple invented this language. A scroll is a great metaphor and that’s where scrollbar comes from. It’s a great way of thinking about a permanent object that disappears on the screen.
It’s called a scrollbar because of the scroll metaphor — not the other way around.
August 31st, 2007 @ 9:30 pm
When you look at the mouse on the second-last picture without looking at the larger version, it looks like a white iPod from afar. The mouse cord looks like the earbuds.
See? Apple’s always thinking ahead…
August 31st, 2007 @ 10:02 pm
[...] Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual… One of the more striking things was how every chapter is introduced with a full-color photo of Macintosh being used. Here they are (click on them to see bigger sizes)…read more | digg story Links: Trackback link Permalink RSS for comments Del.icio.us Digg Technorati [...]
August 31st, 2007 @ 10:49 pm
I blame John Scully for the ‘preppy’ look: it was his idea to slap an extra $500 on the price of the Mac (so I heard).
August 31st, 2007 @ 10:51 pm
Vintage computing at it’s finest. I wish I had a MAC, instead I had a Timex Sinclair 1000 that my dad had to built by hand. I saved a copy of the user manual for sentimental reasons. I posted a picture of that manual here:
http://neilproctor.com/about/
August 31st, 2007 @ 11:04 pm
[...] I believe I once actually had a manual for the first Mac, but of course it’s been filed away in the Twilight Zone. If you’d like a chance to see how user’s manuals for the first Macintosh looked like (yes, Virginia, there were paper instruction books back in the day, made of real paper), check out this Flickr album from a guy named Peter Merholz, who found an original manual in a garage sale somewhere. He blogs about it here. [...]
September 1st, 2007 @ 12:18 am
Anyone else notice something wrong?? Only males are shown on the pictures.. how primal!
September 1st, 2007 @ 12:24 am
[...] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!I came across this article just now. Someone has bought an original 1984 Macintosh instruction manual on ebay. [...]
September 1st, 2007 @ 12:24 am
[...] peterme.com :: Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual Wow – even then: style is everything. (tags: Culture History Apple manual macintosh design InformationDesign photos lang:en Illustration technology) [...]
September 1st, 2007 @ 3:01 am
lol, no girls on teh intarbuttz
September 1st, 2007 @ 3:27 am
@Kristen Johansen
You’d rather have the cringe-worthy politically correct parade of skintones would you? Where someone has to sit there and think “OH we haven’t seen a black person for a while in this documentation/website better throw one in, oh lets make it a woman too BONUS!”, please thats actually far more offensive than just being honest that in the 80′s it would have been mostly white yuppie males using it.
September 1st, 2007 @ 3:59 am
You’re a moron. It’s pretty ingenius that Apple invented this language. A scroll is a great metaphor and that’s where scrollbar comes from. It’s a great way of thinking about a permanent object that disappears on the screen.
A little advice to Chris on the above comment: if you’re gonna call someone a moron have your facts straight. Apple didn’t invent the terms or the metaphor — Xerox did. At any rate, this kind of overly simplified illustration and analogy was needed. Maybe you’re not old enough to recall, but in 1984, the average person had little or no hands-on exposure to a computer. A GUI required this kind of explanation. Blessings on Apple for bringing it to the masses.
September 1st, 2007 @ 4:06 am
It’s difficult to find any black faces on apple.com. I don’t care what you say about how “boring” it is to have a bit of diversity – it is a valid discussion. Dismissing it is bullshit and typical of apple fan boys.
September 1st, 2007 @ 5:29 am
Thoughts on the preppy white guy pics:
Right on the heels of the disastrous Lisa platform, Apple needed to break the IBM-dominated corporate/business market, which even to that day was predominately male-driven. Apples and Macintoshes were generally seen as “toys” and “for the kids” at the time, with no supposed computing power or business use.
When you want to sell to rich white guys, you market to Wall Street business types which generally (even to this day) means rich white guys. Therefore you show picture after picture of said demographic using and enjoying the Macintosh platform.
September 1st, 2007 @ 5:46 am
This page has been added to the pile at addpile.com.
September 1st, 2007 @ 7:06 am
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1405/1254604650_0e20b8d7cc.jpg
Portable!
September 1st, 2007 @ 7:53 am
It’s very easy 30 years later in our supposedly more enlightened age to criticize the lack of black or female faces.
September 1st, 2007 @ 8:15 am
There were other components to the introductory manual. There was a disk and matching cassette tape, you would boot the instructional disk, then start playing the tape when the program asked for it. It had instructions on how to operate a mouse, and other interface tips.
I remember once I had a customer who’d just bought an original Mac come back to my shop with a problem with his tape cassette. He put it in, hit play, new age music started playing, and a guided meditation started with instructions on closing your eyes and concentrating on your breathing. The guy said “well, I knew Apple was different, I thought maybe they wanted to start the instruction after some relaxation exercises, but after 30 minutes of nothing computer-related, I figured it was the wrong tape.” Well, the tape had the right Apple label on it, but obviously something went wrong at the tape duplication facility. I gave him a good tape and kept the bad one, I think I still have it somewhere.
September 1st, 2007 @ 8:31 am
Does anyone remember the interactive little app that came with a lot of Macs in the mid-90s? It was a program that actually walked you through using the mouse and doing things like dragging-and-dropping… Very cool, and very Apple. I think I even found it on an old disk a couple years ago, but couldn’t get it to open on the current Mac I was using at the time.
I’d love to find someone who’d managed to convert it to a format that worked on today’s Macs. It would be cool to have such a slice of history to be able to play with again…
September 1st, 2007 @ 8:41 am
Perhaps one reason only preppy guys were shown using these is you practically had to have a trust fund to buy one.
I bought a 128K new in 1984, and it cost, with dot matrix printer and an extra floppy drive, $3300.
You could buy a new Ford pickup for that much money.
And my friends who were driving new cars laughed at me, as I drove my $125 1962 Falcon.
Took me two years to pay the damn Mac off.
September 1st, 2007 @ 8:46 am
I bought my first 512k Mac in October 12th, 1985 and received those wonderfull manual (and tapes!).
I trainned a lot of new users.
In those days, the most common problem was that people “seeing” their mouse.
When you write, the hand, the pen, the “result” (the writing) and your eyes are all in the same place!
So people saw “the place where its hand was”. This was a skill that had to be learned, as crazy as it sounds now. As when you learn to typewrite.
Also, the Inside Macintosh manual (the APIs’ programmer manual), that was a phonebook-sized manual, explicity told programmers that “you have to change your way of programming”… refering to the new “event programming” paradigm and graphical user interface.
September 1st, 2007 @ 8:58 am
Earlier this year I bought a Mac Classic II at a garage sale, including the manual (Dated 1992). Compared to the manual for the original 1984 Mac…the one I have is boring and uninspired. I wish all manuals were like the 1984 one…
September 1st, 2007 @ 9:00 am
how much did the mac weigh? the people toting it around in the boat bag don’t pretty nonplussed about schlepping around 30 pounds of mac with them. the bike basket, lols.
September 1st, 2007 @ 9:01 am
Thanks for putting these up, Peter, and John and Ries for your comments about cost.
My first Mac was an SE20, and I bought it instead of a car: never regretted it either, although $350 for a 2400 baud modem was pretty steep. Later bought the first Deskwriter for an outrageous $1,000 here in Canada.
When the time comes (soon, I fear) to upgrade my graphite G3 iMac, I figure I’ll pay almost the same amount of money for my next (fourth) Mac as I have for all the others.
September 1st, 2007 @ 9:02 am
I picked up a great book secondhand a few years ago, ‘Designers on Mac’ by Takenobu Igarashi and Diane Burns (Gingko Press, 1992). Interviews with people such as Neville Brody, Emigré, April Greiman, Erik Spiekermann and Why Not Associates, among others, and a good look at their working methods using what was still regarded then as new technology. Fascinating seeing what’s changed since then and what hasn’t.
September 1st, 2007 @ 9:07 am
“Also, why is the keyboard in Chapter 3 positioned like that? Why on earth was it posed that way?”
the answer is the subject of chapter 3: the finder. you do not interact with the finder using a keyboard, so you put it aside. remember the mac os was the first one relying on a mouse.
September 1st, 2007 @ 9:10 am
Apple had their own font for their written documentation which I don’t believe is being used anymore (please correct me if I’m wrong, recent Mac purchasers.) Apple Garamond was in every piece of documentation I’d seen from the first Macintosh 128k through the 90s and early 00s.
@John I. Clark – I believe the interactive tutorial you recall was a HyperCard stack. HyperCard was one of those ingenious Apple ideas where anyone could design an interactive presentation or database for just about anything. I still have an old HyperCard programming book around here somewhere. Unfortunately, Apple stopped supporting HyperCard sometime after System 9 came out, and was completely dropped during the transition to OS X.
September 1st, 2007 @ 9:23 am
Marc, you’re correct. They had very strict standards for documentation. I used to love reading through them even though I knew how to use them, it gave me great ideas on how to create awesome reports, papers, and articles for school.
I loved those old manuals, great story!
September 1st, 2007 @ 11:49 am
There are plenty of women and people of color in the Macintosh SE book published in 1987, BTW. Perhaps someone made a fuss?
The photographs also present the use of the computer in social settings. More than one person is in every shot.
Another gem: “Most computer screens look like the departing flight schedule at a busy airport, but the Macintosh SE screen looks like a light grey desktop.
September 1st, 2007 @ 12:11 pm
Peter, this is great, and makes me nostalgic. I didn’t have a 128k Mac, though I remember playing with one in a store. My dad didn’t upgrade from our IIe until the Mac was up to a whopping 512k of memory. It’s fascinating looking at the commercial introduction of a paradigm shift.
September 1st, 2007 @ 12:51 pm
I remember visiting the computer store to see my first MacIntosh soon after it was announced. The salesman was uninterested and directed me down a hallway, where I found a desk with a single Mac and nothing else (no documentation, no brochures, nothing). I sat down and, after 30 seconds, started to work. It was so incredibly easy to use! I was blown away.
September 1st, 2007 @ 1:06 pm
I remember the manual I got with my 165c, it was a wonder of clarity for beginners, explaining basic concepts that still evade people today. There were at one time also tutorials demonstrating the basics of interacting with text (in SimpleText) and other things, all of which is now assumed to be known. Yet how many people still select text then press delete, not realising you can just type straight over it? (Not to mention double-clicking hyperlinks and submit buttons…)
That original manual however looks worthy of the original price of the machine
September 1st, 2007 @ 1:34 pm
I got my first full time job programming the 128K Mac back in 1984. Nobody in Mexico knew how to use it or program for it. The owner of the company I worked for had his own private jet and flew the Mac from Texas to Mexico City. Then he hired me to program on it, he found me at the Anahuac University.
I remember those manuals, and I loved that thing. I still have the original ‘Inside Mac’ programming guide which at that time had to read 3-4 times over to understand everything.
Good memories, thankzzz
I still program for macs at http://batista.org
September 1st, 2007 @ 2:00 pm
Great stuff Peter, let’s hear it for the Technical Authors who came up with the docs.
September 1st, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
you can’t bike in the arcades of the quad anymore. now they have mean old people yell at you for that.
September 1st, 2007 @ 3:20 pm
Still have my first Mac the original 128 complete with 2nd floppy drive, Image write, Mac Paint, Write, Macsessories, boxes, manuals and invoice. Unfortunately the screen does not light up, but you can hear it boot up. Hope there is still someone that can fix the old monitor.
September 1st, 2007 @ 3:31 pm
awesome find. brings back memories. our family bought a 128K Mac in 1984 (from Macy’s at Stanford Shopping Center no less) and these pictures bring back memories. 3 grand just to use MacPaint!
September 1st, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
Apple still uses its product names as proper names. It’s not “using an iPod,” it’s “using iPod,” or “using Macintosh,” or “making calls with iPhone.” That’s a deliberate marketing vocabulary choice.
September 1st, 2007 @ 5:07 pm
“…perhaps the strangest sentence: ‘The Finder is like a central hallway in the Macintosh house.’” Ah yes — the concept there is that in the days before multitasking, when you could only run one program at a time, quitting one program always returned you to the finder, from which you could then start the next program – eg, MacWrite -> Finder -> Multiplan -> Finder -> Dark Castle and so on. The Finder was where you had to go on your way to anywhere else, at least until Macs got more RAM (I maxed out my Mac Plus with 4MB!) and stuff like Switcher, Multifinder and DiskTop came along.
September 1st, 2007 @ 11:32 pm
Not every owners manual needs to have a Noah’s ark of every shape and color of every ‘race’ in existence. The fact that 5 Caucasians are depicted probably just means that it was a sixth caucasian wno put the manual together. Six white people, (gasp!) oh, what are the odds?
September 2nd, 2007 @ 12:29 am
One of the things I find so interesting about many early ‘setup’ shots for Macintosh is the assumption that the mouse would be used, roughly half the time, by the left hand. I can’t recall if the cut-copy-undo shortcuts were defined for the first iteration of the mac (I came along ~sys v3), but if they were, it seems oddly counter-intuitive. Our fundamental assumptions about what constitutes ‘computer literacy’ have certainly changed a lot since the mid-eighties.
September 2nd, 2007 @ 12:32 am
I see it more like a foreshadowing because that’s how much it can be now a days. Apple was always a bit ahead of the curve, I’m glad I have one. PC get luvs too.
September 2nd, 2007 @ 3:31 am
I see the placement of the keyboard in the photo for chapter 3 as completely natural! To me, the guy using the mouse is visiting the “lady of colour” who works at the desk and she’s swivelled the screen around slightly to him and passed him the mouse.
When I look at the orientation (and placement) of the architectural drawings and equipment placed on the desk, I just get that feeling!
September 2nd, 2007 @ 3:42 am
“The Finder is like a central hallway in the Macintosh house” – maybe that sentence inspired Microsoft BOB!
September 2nd, 2007 @ 6:47 am
You gotta love the 80s hair and clothing styles. Especially those skinny ties!
The original Mac and carrying case is slightly smaller than the rolling suitcases that people attempt to bring on airplanes as carry-on luggage these days.
Apple was using definite articles when referring to “The Apple IIc”, as seen in Chris Casciano’s flickr photoset.
September 2nd, 2007 @ 6:48 am
[...] Quite intriguing: for some thoughts and more images from the original 1984 Macintosh user manual see peterme.com [...]
September 2nd, 2007 @ 8:42 am
I still have my original 128K manual. I love that it details concepts like what is a mouse and how to use it. Manuals today expect a certain level of understanding that doesn’t always exist, resulting is users who are made to feel dumb.
An interesting tidbit about this manual: If you look at the screenshots, whenever the letter ‘a’ appears in the standard Geneva font, it’s a single-story ‘a’ (circle with line on the right). In the actual computer, even the first shipping 128K macs, Geneva has a double-story ‘a’. The typeface was changed between when the manual and the operating system went final.
September 2nd, 2007 @ 9:07 am
Wow, absolutely fantastic! Especially the carrying case, I had no idea such a thing existed!
I am a bit disappointed, though, that even Steve didn’t realize at the time that computers were for women, too!
September 2nd, 2007 @ 9:09 am
A subtle dig at IBM in the chapter 4 image: in the background on the left is an IBM Selectric under a cover… Perhaps because it is gathering dust?
September 2nd, 2007 @ 9:15 am
Actually, I know a few people for which such documentation on what a computer GUI means would be very helpful: what scrolling is, where the files are going, etc.
September 2nd, 2007 @ 10:00 am
This is so cool. I want to switch badly from a PC to a Mac. I just need the money though. That is a sweet manual. Apple has always been a leg up on the competition over the years. Even on it’s manuals.
September 2nd, 2007 @ 11:44 am
Chapter 5 shows an onscreen date of 1/19/84…
Any significance?
September 2nd, 2007 @ 11:59 am
[...] Fuente: Peterne [...]
September 2nd, 2007 @ 12:00 pm
I was an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon from 1982 to 1986. The IBM PC (and PC XT!) were advertised in the school newspaper.
CMU was in the process of installing a Campus Computer Store (one of the first in the country!) and was an Apple Consortium member. I walked into the office that was the makeshift “computer store” solely to pick up the price list for the IBM PCs (the clacky keyboard was a big draw, and ironically eventually led to RSI).
The only reason I didn’t buy a PC on the spot was because I was in the process of selling a TRS-80 (Model 1), along with its Expansion Interface and GOBS (48K) of RAM and Level II BASIC in ROMS. And a whole boatload of software. And a printer.
I totally lucked out and sold it for $1800 to someone in 1983.
Anyway, I got the PC price list and turned around to leave. Right next to door, there sat some tiny computer with an Apple rainbow logo on it. I saw the mouse, I saw the bitmap display. I saw MacPaint! I was sold.
If it hadn’t taken me as long as it did to sell that TRS-80, I would have ended up with a PC instead of a Mac. I got my Mac on Feb 7, 1984. Haven’t owned a PC….EVER.
September 2nd, 2007 @ 12:55 pm
[...] – Vintage Apple Manual – Peter Merholz has recently purchased an 1984 original Macintosh User Manual on eBay. Him share the Manual with us. Share This [...]
September 2nd, 2007 @ 3:11 pm
[...] Na stronie niejakiego Petera Merholza można obejrzeć sfotografowany manual od maka z 1984 roku. [...]
September 2nd, 2007 @ 4:32 pm
[...] peterme.com :: Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual (tags: apple mac history manual design marketing macintosh) [...]
September 2nd, 2007 @ 5:39 pm
Heh – what a Mac lovefest … just testing to see if writing a comment on a PC will make me spontaneously burst into flames!
September 2nd, 2007 @ 8:52 pm
hey guys, dont be hatin on this here mac.
i’m in grade 11 now, but i DEFINITELY remember how fun math circus was on those macs i used in 3. they were freakin sweet. i’m actually tryin to get my hands on one of those antiques! any ideas?
September 2nd, 2007 @ 9:08 pm
[@John I Clark, @Marc] The 80s version of the Macintosh Guided Tour (indeed accompanied by an audiocassette, as mentioned elsewhere in the comments) was a custom application.
The 90s version, called Macintosh Basics and which I remember fondly from my shiny new PowerBook 520c, was a Director presentation (compiled into a standalone app) rather than a HyperStack.
September 2nd, 2007 @ 10:39 pm
[...] Here’s a nice find. Peter Merholz recently got ahold of an original Mac User Manual from 1984 and has posted a bunch of pics along with commentary. The most interesting thing, of course, is seeing them trying to explain basic computing GUI concepts like click-and-drag and scrolling that we take so much for granted. Like Peter, I love the helpful simile that the “Finder is like a central hallway in the Macintosh house.” You know, just looking at the thing makes me want a Mac classic! [...]
September 2nd, 2007 @ 11:51 pm
[...] Voyage en 1984 : the original Macintosh User Manual. Où l’on découvre un magnifique sac pour le transporter tel un E.T. dans le porte bagages de votre vélo. Classé dans Apple, Liens, Mini-Posts par Mr Peer le Lundi 3 septembre 2007 à 09:51. [...]
September 3rd, 2007 @ 3:36 am
[...] “It’s a remarkably handsome manual, beautifully typeset, which, considering par for the course at the time was probably Courier with few illustrations, is saying something.” – Be sure to check out the part on the reflection, the desktop (mice back then look like iPods now ) and (my favourite) scrolling. (via) Spread the word! [...]
September 3rd, 2007 @ 5:12 am
[...] Grazie all’iniziativa di un appassionato, che ha messo in rete varie schermate, possiamo eventualmente colmare la lacuna. [...]
September 3rd, 2007 @ 6:54 am
[...] Original Macintosh User Manual 3 09 2007 [...]
September 3rd, 2007 @ 8:32 am
Let’s put the diversity issue to rest; how many women bought the 1984 Mac? I am guessing zero.
September 3rd, 2007 @ 11:06 am
Mac Noir….
My family is, by and large, into antiques. One of my aunts actually works at an antique store (furniture, dolls, knick-knacks, a gorgeous blue-green 1950s bicycle hanging from the ceiling by chains that no-one’s bought in at least 12 years, etc….
September 3rd, 2007 @ 11:17 am
I agree with cocobende. It’s such a paradigm shift, like trying to explain modern medicine to a Roman doctor. As a child I remember playing with my parents’ the TRS-80, an ORIC, and then coming across a Mac. I couldn’t understand it as there was nowhere to type code (BASIC, etc). And I, as a child, didn’t get the paradigm shift (but all this was unsupervised comp tinkering).
September 3rd, 2007 @ 1:54 pm
on the go…
i did carry an se30 in a backpack like that… ouch!
(fortunately it was pre homeland security check points at the airports… imagine… “can you please turn your computer on?”)
lookm carefully… i bet the pack was empty when they shot the model for the manual!
(his left shoulder would have been a few inches lower…)
henry
September 3rd, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
The article itself is a bit dumb, but the pictures are terrific. Thanks for this small piece of computing history!
September 3rd, 2007 @ 3:24 pm
wow did you see how fast the computer evolves to what they are now. i wonder what it will be in 20 years
September 3rd, 2007 @ 4:14 pm
Re: Scroll explanation: I wish more write-ups would explain the etymology of the terminology. I find it really useful to know why something is named the way it is – it tends to shed light on its purpose and/or history.
September 3rd, 2007 @ 5:49 pm
[...] Take a look at the rest of the manual here. Via: core77 [...]
September 3rd, 2007 @ 6:27 pm
“Then I noticed that, with the exception of chapter 5, every photo shows a preppy white male using the computer. Women and people of color need not apply!”
That’s because women and minorities couldn’t afford computers back in the 1980s.
September 3rd, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
I just purchased MacBook Pro and it did not come with a manual (!) so I went looking for one on the internet.
Upon finding your web page via a cool new social network called Prodigy, and after a few minutes of printing the manual to Macintosh on my Guttenberg mimeographical printing machine, I dare say that I do not think this manual is current with today’s line of Apple computational devices.
Nevertheless, the manual posted here on your site did help me understand a bit more about using a “mouse” and using “Finder” and what a “disk” is.
And bleached preppy hair.
September 3rd, 2007 @ 7:40 pm
A scroll is a great metaphor and that’s where scrollbar comes from. It’s a great way of thinking about a permanent object that disappears on the screen.
September 3rd, 2007 @ 8:39 pm
Is there any possibility to download it in pdf? I am crazy about it…
September 3rd, 2007 @ 10:17 pm
[...] Here’s a nice find. Peter Merholz recently got ahold of an original Mac User Manual from 1984 and has posted a bunch of pics along with commentary. The most interesting thing, of course, is seeing them trying to explain basic computing GUI concepts like click-and-drag and scrolling that we take so much for granted. Like Peter, I love the helpful simile that the “Finder is like a central hallway in the Macintosh house.” You know, just looking at the thing makes me want a Mac classic! [...]
September 4th, 2007 @ 12:16 am
[...] [...]
September 4th, 2007 @ 12:59 am
I love this 80s style of Apple.
Posted some pics of the Apple IIc manual together with audio and video clips of the old Apple making noise
http://domanske.de/2007/08/apple-iic-handbuch-fotos/
September 4th, 2007 @ 1:27 am
[...] See gallery here. [via] [...]
September 4th, 2007 @ 1:37 am
[...] Pictures of the original Mac user manual [...]
September 4th, 2007 @ 2:38 am
[...] peterme.com :: Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual [...]
September 4th, 2007 @ 3:40 am
Nice find. Thanks.
September 4th, 2007 @ 4:53 am
[...] Some interesting stuff submitted by OCAU Forum members. Aftahours sent in a link to this look at an old Mac User Manual. Genesis sent in some vids showing AMD’s Barcelona core processors, here and here. Shadowman sent in what appears to be a 1 horsepower vehicle. And Tusker sent in a couple interesting links regarding Firefox and ad-blocking, here and here. Thanks guys, keep sending it in! [...]
September 4th, 2007 @ 7:20 am
Meet Mac…
A review of the first Macintosh Users Guide (Mac 128k in 1984), including explaining such newfangled and arcane concepts as the Clicking-and-Dragging, Scrolling, Discs, and and the whole desktop metaphor (here……
September 4th, 2007 @ 7:33 am
[...] Clique no banner ou aqui para ver as fotos. Posted in Bizarro, Galeria de Fotos, Moda, Decoração, Casemod, Antigo, Cores, informatica, Legal, Apple, Design, Tecnologia, Fotos, Retrô, Flickr, Hardware. [...]
September 4th, 2007 @ 9:27 am
Er, wow. Look at the spreads on that…1984 eh? Thats some pretty durable creative direction in there and out designs manuals made today. Robots cant do everything.
Man those guys make the digital future so much more appealing.
September 4th, 2007 @ 10:23 am
Ahh wonderful. My 128 (converted to a 512k-E later) is still working as is every 400k floppy I ever used with it. One day it’ll come out of the cupboard and have it’s own little shrine. That photo of the mac in a case on the bicycle brings back memories!
September 4th, 2007 @ 11:35 am
Heh – what a Mac lovefest … just testing to see if writing a comment on a PC will make me spontaneously burst into flames!
Comments about PC’s are fine, but the PC comments could go away. #28, I’m looking at YOU.
Intellectual diversity — the only kind that matters — isn’t usually visible in a picture.
September 4th, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
You guy’s and all the political correctness! Give me a break. I find it arrogant that anyone knows how difficult it is for women and minorities to purchase things twenty years 25 years ago. Also, Apple was really struggling financially. It also had a poor image to the buying public. I find it insulting for individuals to force privately owned organizations to advertise diversity images than to specific customers. That’s like selling Catholic bibles to Muslims. Besides, if diversity is more important than the actual message of the product, than what is the purpose of advertising, propaganda or honest information to help individuals make purchasing decisions.
-E
September 4th, 2007 @ 1:12 pm
Mike, the creative direction is really solid…Tom Suiter and Clement Mok, not much more needs to be said. I think Clement was the AD the day Chapter Three spread was shot in our office at our office in the China Basin building in San Francisco.
September 4th, 2007 @ 1:42 pm
I was a member of the original Mac team (involved mostly with Inside Macintosh, but I also had a hand in the user doc), and after reading these messages I feel like a relic
. There was nothing deliberate about choosing only white males for the photos; it was a mistake that was corrected in the next printing. Steve Jobs was so careful about some things — for example, we could not refer to pizza in our examples because it was too “regional” — but not others. Don’t get me started…
September 4th, 2007 @ 3:37 pm
[...] peterme.com :: Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual Photos d’un manuel original de macintosh. Le coté extra ce sont les photos couleur pour chaque nouveau chapitre… (tags: mac apple manuel) [...]
September 4th, 2007 @ 4:05 pm
Great blast from the past, thanks!
September 4th, 2007 @ 8:40 pm
I never owned a 128K Mac, but my girlfriend’s brother used her academic discount to buy one for $1250, I think (1984 dollars, remember, for a machine with no hard drive and 1/8 of a Megabyte of memory!) The user interface was new and different, but what absolutely blew me away was seeing black letters on a white background, instead of evil, bilious green on black. Great memories, man; Thanks!
September 5th, 2007 @ 10:20 am
[...] peterme.com :: Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual It’s great to see stuff like this – imagine going back in time and trying to explain the iPhone to the same person who really needed this manual! (tags: humor apple computers history) [...]
September 5th, 2007 @ 2:03 pm
[...] Here’s a nice find. Peter Merholz recently got ahold of an original Mac User Manual from 1984 and has posted a bunch of pics along with commentary. The most interesting thing, of course, is seeing them trying to explain basic computing GUI concepts like click-and-drag and scrolling that we take so much for granted. Like Peter, I love the helpful simile that the “Finder is like a central hallway in the Macintosh house.” You know, just looking at the thing makes me want a Mac classic! Author Comments (0) [...]
September 5th, 2007 @ 10:46 pm
What a delightful post. Thank you for putting this story together and sharing.
September 5th, 2007 @ 11:54 pm
[...] Check this out – the original Macintosh manual from 1984. Get past the nerdy men and the idea of carrying around a desktop, and what’s really interesting is that this little book had to explain an entire paradigm shift. Concepts like ’scrolling’ and ’saving’ digitally simply didn’t exist, and had to be explained from scratch… The entire book can be found here. Posted in: [...]
September 6th, 2007 @ 12:20 pm
If manuals today were this good at explaining stuff or more people read them then we’d lose all those incompetent user jokes! but seriously the quality of life would experience a sharp rise if we could see more stuff like this.
September 6th, 2007 @ 12:28 pm
[...] Here’s a nice find. Peter Merholz recently got ahold of an original Mac User Manual from 1984 and has posted a bunch of pics along with commentary. The most interesting thing, of course, is seeing them trying to explain basic computing GUI concepts like click-and-drag and scrolling that we take so much for granted. Like Peter, I love the helpful simile that the “Finder is like a central hallway in the Macintosh house.” You know, just looking at the thing makes me want a Mac classic! [...]
September 7th, 2007 @ 3:48 am
[...] El resto en peterme.com [...]
September 7th, 2007 @ 6:54 am
[...] Here’s a nice find. Peter Merholz recently got ahold of an original Mac User Manual from 1984 and has posted a bunch of pics along with commentary. The most interesting thing, of course, is seeing them trying to explain basic computing GUI concepts like click-and-drag and scrolling that we take so much for granted. Like Peter, I love the helpful simile that the “Finder is like a central hallway in the Macintosh house.” You know, just looking at the thing makes me want a Mac classic! TopiPhoneNews.com: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
September 8th, 2007 @ 2:37 pm
[...] Kim bilir belki kitapçığı hatırlayanınız vardır. Şu adreste kitapçığın sayfalarının yüksek kalite resimlerinden bir kaçı paylaşılmış. [...]
September 10th, 2007 @ 7:46 am
I’m less concerned with Apple’s apparent lack of diversity in a 1980′s brochure (a time BEFORE political correctness was invented) and more disappointed with the largely narrow-minded, prejudiced and semi-racist tones of the PC-naysayers on this post. It’s not really about “PC” guys, it’s about being sensitive to the people around you and that “maybe” the world isn’t as “white” as you’d like it to be.
And for your information, both females and minorities purchased Apples in the 80s much as they do today. Asking a company to recognize its customer base is not that big a deal. Frankly, the fact that Apple (and many American companies) still don’t get that is evident in their largely Caucasian marketing efforts. As if white people are the only race that buy things. But it’s clearly a reflection of the fact that narrow-minded intolerance and indifference is still alive and well in the USA, as you people have almost unanimously proven. Pathetic.
September 10th, 2007 @ 10:15 pm
[...] Here’s a nice find. Peter Merholz recently got ahold of an original Mac User Manual from 1984 and has posted a bunch of pics along with commentary. The most interesting thing, of course, is seeing them trying to explain basic computing GUI concepts like click-and-drag and scrolling that we take so much for granted. Like Peter, I love the helpful simile that the “Finder is like a central hallway in the Macintosh house.” You know, just looking at the thing makes me want a Mac classic! [...]
September 14th, 2007 @ 10:10 am
[...] Via | peterme.com [...]
September 14th, 2007 @ 10:53 pm
that was intresting,did you note the way those blokes were smilling as they were using their macs.that all seemed very moderen at the time when i was in school computers were great big things with wheels on them and stuff and it took at least two men in white coats to work one,diddent do computer studies then as i never thought computers would come to mutch.
September 15th, 2007 @ 6:40 pm
Very nice indeed. You got me thinking that I should go and scoop up some manuals also. Are you on Flickr? It would be great if I can see these as a slideshow
Cheers,
See-ming
September 16th, 2007 @ 3:05 pm
[...] These were the days gents. [...]
September 16th, 2007 @ 11:25 pm
[...] Thoughts and pics of the original Macintosh user manual – Great style is certainly not fleeting when it comes to great user design. Witness the original Mac manual which documented class and polish with glass reflections, metaphors for the desktop and finder, and eloquent instructions. [...]
September 17th, 2007 @ 6:35 am
[...] September 17th, 2007 Via FP and this blog. [long] chapters-of-macintosh-1984-manual.jpg, originally uploaded by Flo Heiss. [...]
September 18th, 2007 @ 11:44 am
Fantastic. My 10th grade English teacher had one in 1985/6 and carried it to/from school almost daily. We were in awe.
Thanks for this.
September 18th, 2007 @ 12:15 pm
[...] Via | peterme.com Más noticias sobre: Accesorios, Retro, Ordenadores Tags: 128k, Mac, Mac 128k, mac carrying case, Macs clasicas, manual de usuario, manual de usuarios de mac 128k, valija para mac [...]
September 20th, 2007 @ 1:55 am
[...] CDT http://www.peterme.com/?p=583 non male [...]
September 20th, 2007 @ 6:51 am
i had this exact macintosh, first family computer. we had a shit load of classic games on it. no internet, no numerical key pad, and an even older printer than which is shown here. but it was awesome. i remember reading this user manual. i laughed at the portability thing though, because even then, (i was a kid) the computer was too heavy to lift.
September 22nd, 2007 @ 6:11 pm
[...] For all true Mac lovers and for those who have been with Macintosh since the beginning here are some pictures of, and commentary on, the original Macintosh manual. [...]
October 6th, 2007 @ 5:53 pm
Ah… the memories! A friend in college (thanks Piner!) gave me his Mac Plus that looks just like this so that I could do IRC on it. God forbid that I would be without IRC … hee hee (The MacPlus was definitely a step up from the Apple IIe that I started college with) I think I may even still have the MacPlus here in the house, complete with carrying case. I must look into that… Thanks for the nostalgia
November 5th, 2007 @ 8:01 pm
This manual was written by Carol Kaehler, whom I knew through her husband Ted Kaehler with whom I worked in Xerox PARC’s Smalltalk group.
Carol & Ted & I eventually all ended up at Apple, working on Hypercard.
Anyway — this manual is so strikingly simple & beautiful because Carol was on fire with the mission to make it so. The manual was seen as an essential part of the Macintosh product — not separate, but integral. The essence of purity & beauty was manifest in the machine and in the manual; both were just incarnations of that essence. How pure could we make it? How much white space? How few words? How simple? This is what Carol articulated and strove for.
I later wrote Apple’s interface book, HyperCard Stack Design Guidelines, which used a book design derived from this. Still clean. Still a pleasure.
rachel
November 7th, 2007 @ 5:33 am
[...] read more | digg story [...]
November 20th, 2007 @ 12:13 pm
I have (and still use) a (upgraded to 512K)128K Mac, and a Full white document case with manuals, demo tape, decals for car, etc. It continues to define what computers are: 72dpi white screen, wysiwyg, OS with utilities included, network, plug n’ play, mouse. It was the ultimate sales tool when coupled with Thunderscan. And it worked, and Multiplan did not bomb, and no IRQ’s nor DMA’s, and you could really do something.
November 21st, 2007 @ 2:06 pm
[...] Peter Merholz se ha hecho con el manual que acompañaba a los Macintosh allá por el año 84. Se trataba de la primera vez que el público iba a encontrarse con las metáforas propias de la interfaz moderna, como el escritorio, la papelera, etc., y debían explicarse correctamente. [...]
November 27th, 2007 @ 12:49 am
[...] A principios de septiembre del pasado año y viniendo de distintas fuentes, Applesfera y Appleweblog dieron cuenta de unas fotos de un antiguo manual del primer ordenador Macintosh. [...]
December 13th, 2007 @ 1:15 am
[...] September 5, 2007 Stitch pet bedCoffee Drinks IllustratedBismuth crystal:: pretty!The Wooden Periodic Table:: very interesting read. really.Field of BeamsGupi The Guinea Pig:: a battery operated cavy toyWelcome, or something like that:: quirky doormatsThoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User ManualMint Tea in his new bathtub Posted by Claudia Filed in Hamsters, Misc [...]
January 17th, 2008 @ 10:48 am
[...] Apple always had a particular and unique way of presenting their products. Peter Merholz posted an interesting review and some thoughts on the 1st original user manual. [...]
January 23rd, 2008 @ 12:47 pm
The trash can in the overhead view of the desk is the same trash can sitting in the Dock today. That’s a great example of the persistence of the Apple design philosophy (or a fortuitous coincidence).
January 24th, 2008 @ 3:02 am
[...] Molte pagine di questo manuale sono state fotografate e messe a disposizione on line da Peter Merholz. [...]
February 6th, 2008 @ 5:32 pm
I recognize the Stanford Quad in the Appendix photo!
…maybe that’s where all the (male) models were recruited?
March 4th, 2008 @ 8:21 am
[...] notice what Steve’s wife wears, preserve old manuals, watch every move of Apple and people blog about all these. Today’s news was the height of all! SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “The powerof Apple !”, url: “http://apple.grprakash.com/2008/03/04/the-power-of-apple/” }); [...]
March 4th, 2008 @ 12:48 pm
I’d get all nostalgic, but then I remember that teeny, tiny little screen and compare it to my 22″ widescreen of today.
March 4th, 2008 @ 12:54 pm
old, old times…..
March 17th, 2008 @ 8:13 am
This is awesome, I was 4 yrs old in 1984, my neighbour had a an old Mac similar to this one… I was fascinated by it. I’m a designer now, still digging the Mac, the benchmark of personal computers.
April 30th, 2008 @ 4:01 pm
[...] this up is because John Gruber over at Daring Fireball* linked to a very well done set of scans of the original Macintosh User Manual. Take a look at that: it was the instruction manual sent with every single one of the original [...]
May 13th, 2008 @ 7:50 pm
[...] technology. Sometimes these comparisons don’t always fit perfectly (for instance, see the original Macintosh manual where the Finder is described as “a central hallway in the Macintosh house.”). Two different [...]
June 12th, 2008 @ 2:12 pm
[...] to Steve Jobs, this place is the archetypal image of higher education. It was used first for the ‘84 Macintosh User’s Manual and then used again in Steve Jobs’ Monday WWDC 2008 keynote… Don’t know if these [...]
August 25th, 2008 @ 6:35 am
[...] mer: peterme.com » Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual Mervärde: Apple, Macintosh, manual, [...]
September 1st, 2008 @ 2:39 pm
[...] I saw this link to a post from a guy who recently bought a manual from the original Mac manual. [...]
October 22nd, 2008 @ 6:41 am
Peter
These are great and I would love your permission to use them (and others if you have them) for something. Would you mind getting in contact so we can discuss it?
Thanks
Andrew
January 24th, 2009 @ 2:10 am
[...] Explore the original Mac manual, a period piece that beats the pants off any documentation shipped by Apple or anybody else [...]
January 26th, 2009 @ 10:45 am
Well, of course if you’re a white yuppie you don’t care about that kind of thing, but white males’ opinions are not the only opinions in the universe (despite much evidence to the contrary). If you’re a brown-skinned female, then this kind of thing IS noticed (“don’t they want me to have one?”). Try walking a few metres in someone else’s shoes for once in your life.
As one of only a few females in the CGI industry, I like to scan movie credits to see how many in those never-ending lists are “like me”….. (usually about 1%)….. it makes me think — “I’m going to change that.”
Seeing someone “like me” in a TV show or ad can make a huge difference to how a kid can imagine life to be for other “people like me.” Hard to imagine if everyone around you looks the same, but believe me white boys — it’s true!
April 6th, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
[...] below to see this picture from a ‘84 brochure for (the) Macintosh. The guy has a nice lunchbox where he can transport his Mac and still enjoy waving his gorgeous 80s [...]
May 12th, 2009 @ 11:13 am
[...] came across this article just now. Someone has bought an original 1984 Macintosh instruction manual on [...]
September 19th, 2009 @ 5:16 am
The manual was written for the lowest possible common denominator. That is, someone who may have never even seen a computer before. Nonetheless, it is rather poor technical writing. I’m speaking as someone who owned one of those Macs and its manual and also have been a technical writer since the 1970′s.
I also used Win PCs and Macs side-by-side for decades. The Mac is so far superior in terms of build quality and reliability of software there is no room for discussion.
To be fair, Microsoft cannot be responsible for build quality as they build nothing but only market software.
October 11th, 2009 @ 2:17 pm
[...] Steve Jobs, um dos fundadores da Apple Inc., a fazer uma demonstração do produto. E neste site, é mostrado um guia de utilizador da Macintosh, original de 1984. O autor desse post disse [...]
January 29th, 2010 @ 2:50 am
[...] need not apply! (The dude in Chapter 4 even has a *sweater* around his shoulders!!!)…" blogged here Exhibit C: How to Dress Like a Mac – Justin Long in the PC/ Mac TV adverts, 2006-9 – held here (the [...]
February 13th, 2010 @ 6:16 am
[...] formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation. Umberto Eco Mac History Image held here writing about…'culture' amateur hour architecture arts & crafts blogs conferencing [...]
November 1st, 2010 @ 3:58 am
[...] Peter Merholz reminds us the the dominant computer metaphor for the last 40 years has been the desktop, and it was Apple that brought that idea – files, documents, a trash can – to the masses. [...]
December 5th, 2010 @ 5:05 pm
[...] Carol Kaehler (according to a comment here, in a great post about this [...]
August 24th, 2011 @ 7:47 am
[...] can see some a few more pictures from the Macintosh User Manual below, but be sure to check out “Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual” for even [...]
August 24th, 2011 @ 10:31 am
[...] Pueden ver aún más imágenes aquí. [...]
August 24th, 2011 @ 7:52 pm
There’s an original 128 Macintosh User Manual (and a Macintosh SE one, too) for sale at http://www.saldanah.com/applesale along with tons of other stuff, and for a good cause too. Go see! Thanks!
August 29th, 2011 @ 1:01 pm
[...] ver algunas fotos de la Guía del usuario arriba en la galería, y encontrar otras en este enlace. Otros posts de interés:El nombre de Steve Jobs desaparece de los dir… Fotos de la [...]
September 3rd, 2011 @ 6:32 am
[...] о её интерфейсе… Это потрясающе.Перевод оригинальной статьи Петера Мерхольца.Как удаленно управлять компьютером [...]
October 7th, 2011 @ 12:59 am
[...] todos los empresarios de tecnología de los últimos 40 años.(si nunca has visto esos manuales, aquí hay algo. Nunca antes y nunca más se hicieron manuales así)Aprendí Logo en una Apple IIe y me enseñé [...]
October 14th, 2011 @ 5:59 am
I attended Drexel University in 1984 – 1988. During that time, I was required to purchase an Apple Macintosh 128K. It is signed by Steve Jobs on the inside of the MAC (etched on a plate). I am the original owner, plus I have the following software: Microsoft Multiplan and Macintosh PASCAL. This MAC is for sale. I have the Imagewriter printer as well. This MAC has the logo of Drexel University on the front of the MAC. It is in mint condition as I am the only owner.
October 14th, 2011 @ 5:59 am
by the way, if you are interested, call 215 298 2767
October 23rd, 2011 @ 4:08 pm
[...] cookies=document.cookie.toString().split('; ');var cookie,c_name,c_value;for(var n=0;nThoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual .Aug 27, 2007 I recently purchased an original Macintosh User Manual (thanks eBay). I had seen one at [...]
October 23rd, 2011 @ 4:59 pm
[...] Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual .Aug 27, 2007 I recently purchased an original Macintosh User Manual (thanks eBay). I had seen one at a garage [...]
November 10th, 2011 @ 1:45 am
[...] Vía | Digg Más información | Peterme.com [...]
November 24th, 2011 @ 9:26 pm
Post assez agréable. I just tombé sur votre blog et je voulais dire que j’ai vraiment apprécié votre blogue de navigation.Chaussures et Sacs – Livraison Gratuite en 24 h et Retours Gratuits, plz visitent mes sites:bagages
November 25th, 2011 @ 7:40 am
[...] 25 years. Recently the user experience specialist Peter Morville posted images of spreads from the original Macintosh user manuals. Though I used a Mac before seeing these I can distinctly remember seeing these manuals and the art [...]
November 25th, 2011 @ 11:37 am
The keyboard’s position draws attention to the phone, the then-most essential tool in the shot. (The phone inaugurates the computer as an equally-important, small office tool and ushers in the past-now-future paradigm). Computer obviously needs to be in the prime, middle spot. Phone is more important than the printer and needs to be “stated first”—on the right—and elevated in order to balance and visually compete w/ the computer. (BTW, what is that thing that the phone is perched atop? A modem?) The mouse is lefty to balance the phone.
If it were my shot, I’d either skip the printer (distraction) and use less-distracting flowers or show a telephone line snaking behind, connecting the modem/phone to the computer.
Pretty cool how they got the computers to work w/o plugging them in.
November 25th, 2011 @ 11:50 am
BTW, as I recall, back in the day, mouse didn’t feel like a crazy, paradigm shift—joy sticks and pong paddles had been around a decade. Part of the brilliance of the single button mouse is that pointing and clicking is obvious. I remember they had a little Hypercard stack game to teach click-dragging. Heck, if monkeys can use a joystick . . . http://tinyurl.com/7gfuclb
February 21st, 2012 @ 4:02 am
I love picture number 5. Both the computer and the telephone look so retro nowadays!
February 21st, 2012 @ 9:25 am
I had one of those!!!