Falling far from the tree: 40 years of the Mac computer

Jef Raskin’s favourite fruit was a tart red-and-green apple originally bred by a Canadian farmer named John McIntosh, in 1811.

In 1979, Raskin was Apple Computers’ 31st employee, and its director of publications and new product review, which meant he was hugely influential when it came to product design.

In many ways, he was the archetypal ’70s and ’80s programmer. He had a Master’s in Computer Science from Pennsylvania State University (which he concealed from colleagues because the hobbyist nerd culture at Apple then was quite hostile to academics); he created a music application in 1968, as part of his Master’s thesis; he taught art, photography and computer science at University of California, San Diego (UCSD); developed a programming language for teaching computer science to arts and humanities students; and announced his resignation from UCSD from a hot air balloon flown over the university chancellor’s residence.
Apple was a good fit. Raskin, a strong advocate of the personal computer as a consumer good, soon began working with a small team to develop a computer based on his vision. He named it after the McIntosh apple.
The initial members of the team were hardware engineer Burrell Smith and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Raskin repeatedly bypassed Steve Jobs to get approvals and funding directly from the board. He then wrote the vision document for the new computer, called Book of Macintosh.
At this time, Apple was riding high on the success of its Apple II computer, and Jobs was overseeing the next major release, the Lisa.
Jobs had visited Xerox and become fascinated by the “desktop metaphor” user interface (UI) they were researching. The Lisa, named after his daughter, was Apple’s attempt to build a new kind of computer using Xerox’s advancements with a graphical, mouse-driven UI.
While the Apple II had a major impact as the first computer that was affordable to both schools and middle-class families, it was clear that the real money lay in the business market, and IBM was already in the process of building a personal computer that could target both homes and offices. Lisa was to be Apple’s response: a computer that did not need complicated manuals or dedicated engineers to set up and use.
But development of the Lisa was troubled. Jobs’s famously abrasive nature put him at odds with the team. He reportedly ran the project like a personal fiefdom, making what developers felt were unreasonable demands and throwing tantrums when things didn’t unfold as he wanted.
By January 1981, the board had had enough, and Jobs was removed from the Lisa project.
A month later, Wozniak crashed a plane he was flying and suffered severe injuries, including anterograde amnesia, which keeps one from forming new memories. He decided not to return to Apple.
Jobs used Wozniak’s absence to take control of the McIntosh project, and deliver the vision he originally had for the Lisa. The end result was thus the combination of two visions, sometimes at odds with each other, that somehow came together harmoniously in the final product.
Biting into the hype
On January 22, 1984, during a commercial break in the third quarter of the Super Bowl, Apple aired its seminal ad for this new computer. Directed by Ridley Scott, it was broadcast only twice, the first time being on New Year’s Eve, 1983, to make it eligible for the Clio Awards. Hailed as a masterpiece, it drew on themes of rebellion and George Orwell’s 1984, to position itself as colourful, creative, and revolutionary — and as an alternative to the soulless conformism of computing’s Big Brother, IBM.
When the Mac was released to the public two days later, reception was ecstatic. In a short time, it garnered some extraordinary evangelists: Andy Warhol, Jeff Goldblum, Mick Jagger. The second person to buy a Mac in Europe was Stephen Fry. The first? Douglas Adams.
The computer’s support for fonts and graphics made it a favourite with creative people, including makers of art and music.
Application support came fast. Adobe’s PageMaker, then called Aldus PageMaker, was first released for the Mac. Microsoft Excel, arguably the world’s most popular business application, was too. Microsoft’s Word for the Mac operating system predates its Windows version.
The Mac wasn’t perfect, of course. Even by the standards of the time, it was underpowered. It soon acquired a reputation for being good for individual use and desktop publishing, but unfit to compete with IBM-compatible PCs in other areas. Sales suffered. Disputes over marketing budgets famously led to Jobs’s departure from Apple in 1985.
His exit and triumphant return in 1996 are part of Silicon Valley lore, as are the successes of the iPod, iPhone and iPad, which made Apple a darling of consumers and investors, leading to the computer maker becoming the most valuable company of all time in 2011. This is all quite a change from 1997, when Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple to save it from bankruptcy.
Today, Apple’s products are aspirational. They are status symbols for the relatively affluent; a far cry from the creative cult following they had in the 1980s. Being the biggest company in the world also means one cannot play the role of underdog anymore.
In May this year, Apple released another ad that had everyone talking. It showed books, paints, statues, musical instruments and other creative tools being destroyed, leaving, eventually, only the super-slim new iPad Pro (to represent all the things that device can now do). It faced a widespread backlash, and was described as the antithesis of the 1984 advertisement.
It does represent Apple, though. The behemoth has dominated markets and reframed the rules, even as product development has shifted from revolutionary to iterative and safe.
The company has faced legal action over monopolistic behaviour, and been accused of slowing down older products to force users to upgrade.
“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” applies to companies as well. Perhaps more often than it does to individuals.