There Was No Comparison Between the First macOS and the PC
A recent article in MacWorld highlights a video by Noble Tech. The video celebrates the evolution of the Mac Operating System from the first system in the 1984 128k Mac to the 2022 macOS Ventura.
When Apple Computer introduced the original Mac in 1984, there was nothing else like it on the market. I’d worked with IBM PCs and learned to hate green text on dark screens, command lines, and arcane codes in programs to do formatting.
At that time, there was no Microsoft Windows (subsequently copied from the Mac). Computers didn’t have graphical user interfaces and a mouse to navigate. The text didn’t show on the screen as WYSIWYG, but all looked the same. Computer interfaces were ugly and not intuitive at all, apparently designed by computer geeks who had no sense of beauty or art. Everything was just functional.
In the fall of 1984, I went into a computer store in Minot, ND, and sat in front of a Mac. It was the first beautiful computer I had seen, a beige-colored plastic device with smooth lines and an artistic look about it. It had a small but sharp black-and-white screen built into it, a keyboard, and a mouse (the first one of those I had ever seen, also).
Within minutes after sitting, without any instruction, I was writing and formatting text on the Mac word-processing program called Write. Formatting was as easy as pointing to choices at the top of the program and selecting buttons and drop-down menus with a pointer controlled by a mouse.
I used that Mac for years to produce flyers, desktop-published 3-column brochures, course outlines, and much more. As the years went on the Mac Operating System and computers just got better.
Even now, when I use Windows, it feels like using a system 20 years behind the Mac. Although it looks much prettier than a PC in 1984, it’s still obviously designed by geeks with no sense of beauty or artistry. My read is that all the “pretty interface” has been grafted onto a system that is still living in 1984. It’s marketing, not what PC designers and system software engineers are really about.
I Still Find Joy in Using My Macs
It was a joy for me to watch the video and remember the progression of macOS through the years. The vast majority of Mac users today don’t have the advantage of experiencing what I did. They grew up with computers with mice and graphical user interfaces. They have no sense of how revolutionary the Mac was when it debuted.
This video is a great reminder of how far even the Mac has come. It amazes me that it just keeps on getting better every year. That realization makes me smile! I love using my Macs because they are beautifully designed user interfaces, enclosed in beautiful and artistic metal enclosures.