Macintosh | Apple's Most Successful Failure

- This video is brought to you by Omaze. - On January 24, 1984, hundreds of people attending an Apple II shareholder conference saw the personal computer speak. After an hour of boring numbers and graphs, a clean and confident Steve Jobs had the floor, where he pulled this new device out of a duffel bag, a three and a half inch floppy disk from his front pocket and boldly announced " Today, for the first time, I would like to let Macintosh speak for itself." This is what he said. - "Hello, I'm Macintosh. I'm sure it's great. Since I'm not used to speaking in public, I would like to share with you a maxim that I thought the first time I encountered an IBM mainframe: never trust." a computer you can't lift.

Obviously, I can talk, but right now I'd like to sit and listen. So it is with great pride that I introduce you to a man who has been like a father to me, Steve Jobs. - People who were already familiar with the Apple II saw smoke and mirrors. But otherwise, it was al

most

as if the Apple II had created something sentient, had created life, a concept that only seemed possible in the 10 years of the Jetsons. Previously, now conceived just a couple of hours earlier, no one even knew what this device was, just something that baffled millions of people when it was first announced at the 1984 Super Bowl via an even more mysterious commercial.

It was just Macintosh. - We Will Prevail (Light Erupting) (People Vocalizing) - This was a turning point for Apple as a company. They had the new goal of challenging the corporate computer conglomerate IBM. It was taking over the world. Apple was different. The Macintosh was going to be a computer made by the people for the people, and that's what this commercial represented, a computer that anyone could use literally with the click of a button, rather than through some complicated command lines that Apparently only the

most

specialized nerds can understand, a computer that even children could use.

When the Breakfast Club was stopped Saturday in Shermer, Illinois, Sean Ono Lennon was celebrating his ninth birthday with Steve Jobs and Andy Warhol, playing Mac Paint. At first glance, the Macintosh, in retrospect, appears to be ten years ahead of its time. Honestly, it's crazy that a machine as sophisticated as this could have existed in the early 1980s, but as Apple II users saw at the time, this was smoke and mirrors talking. Despite all this, the Macintosh simply did not have the future that Steve Jobs hoped for. Instead, it simply decreased, but not as one would expect.

Macintosh, with its decline, created a series of butterfly effects, both detrimental and extremely culturally significant in the long term. He took so much from us, but he also gave us everything, how? This is a machine with a history filled with as many complexities as its own moving parts, a history that blurs the line between computer folklore and reality. (light erupting) This is the story of the Macintosh, and you'll see why 1984 wasn't like 1984. (spectral music) Getting a Macintosh would have been a nice gift in 1984, but what's even better is a Tesla. Model X, and you have a chance to win it thanks to Omaze.

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These charities are GivePower and 501CTHREE. GivePower is committed to helping the 2.2 billion people around the world who do not have access to clean water, using its deep expertise in solar energy to provide clean water, food security and light to communities around the world. 501CTHREE is dedicated to finding solutions to help us fight climate change and build a cleaner, more sustainable future for a younger generation. For your chance to win a Model X and support a great cause, visit omaze.com/nationsquid. The early phases of Mac development began at a time when technological ambition was sky-high. The 80s didn't enjoy seeing a new wave in music, but neither did it in computing, and it all started in 1977 with a little machine called the Apple II.

Although it was not technically the first of its kind, it was unique and revolutionary enough to be widely considered the first personal computer to become popular. Not only was the Apple II now at the top of the computing world, it was Apple's entry into the big leagues and sparked a movement in favor of personal computers as a legitimate and profitable market. Several large companies wanted to create the next great personal computer, and not long after, someone did. In 1981, a company that had only grown since the end of World War II entered the scene, a company so large that it was on its way to becoming a monopoly in the machinery industry, disparagingly nicknamed Big Blue for its blue mark. logo.

Here comes the IBM PC, a very easy-to-use machine compared to everything else available. It would become the first PC to dominate sales of the Apple II, and it only took a few months. Apple may have been riding the wave of the Apple II for quite some time, but technology was changing rapidly and this was a wake-up call. The Apple II was already four years old and small updates would not be enough. The company was no longer number one and they had to act quickly before falling further. Apple had to innovate once again. The launch of IBM marked a second wave in personal computing.

Steve Jobs was determined to create the industry's third standard machine. Priority was now given to a project that Apple had been working on for a few years, the Apple Lisa. This was going to be the computer that changed everything, because it surrounded a brilliant concept. What if you could do everything with the click of a button? Of course, we are talking about the mouse and the desktop environment, also known as the GUI. It was no longer necessary to know all these fancy commands to operate a computer. You can just click on whatever you want and type whatever you want.

Jobs came up with the idea in 1979 after visiting the Xerox Research Center in Palo Alto, California, where he came across the Xerox Alto, a 1973 computer with a keyboard and mouse. But considering the Alto cost $32,000 without adjusting for inflation and was never sold commercially, obviously almost no one had heard of it. The idea was still up in the air as to its viability. Jobs wanted to change that with Lisa. Now everyday businesses can get tons of work done without having to spend months learning code and reading manuals. The concept was brilliant, but during its production, corporate politics would soon enter the picture.

Jobs was very difficult to work with when creating Lisa, to the point that he was kicked off the project. Disagreement over how the computer should be designed and priced led to a very Game of Thrones-like move. Steve Jobs would lead his own project and recruit his own employees to help him create the computer he wanted to build, essentially competing with Lisa over who could build the best machine. Jobs resurrected a dormant Apple project called the Macintosh, a project created in 1979 by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and employee Jef Raskin. The name comes from Raskin's favorite fruit, a Macintosh

apple

, and he and Wozniak had a vision of making a computer that was cheap, simple and aimed at the average person.

This would be the perfect competitor for Lisa. Lisa's big selling point was its easy-to-use desktop environment, but what if you could make it even easier - so easy that anyone could use it, including your 85-year-old grandmother - a computer that would come with its own games, processor text editor, graphics editor, other programs provided by Microsoft, and I could even talk to you? Steve Jobs took the boldest marketing risk he could take and made his target audience everyone, trying to solve everyone's problems while also solving problems that people didn't even know existed yet. The Macintosh was born and Jobs made it very clear that this would be the third industrial standard for computing. - Today, one year after Lisa, we present the industry's third milestone product: Macintosh. (Audience applause) - Completely disregarding the new Commodore 64, which had just become the best-selling computer of all time, with its graphical user interface and mouse, the Macintosh would triumph over everything else.

Jobs was so confident in Mac's future that he convinced Pepsi president John Sculley to join his team because of how much he admired Sculley's marketing abilities, where Jobs reportedly told him: " Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?" The Lisa turned out to be a huge

failure

upon launch. With its slow speed, poor design, and a market price of $10,000, no one wanted to buy it. This only gave Jobs a greater advantage, because the Macintosh would do everything the Lisa could do, but much cheaper and more efficient.

Jobs' decision to hire Sculley proved

successful

. People were excited about this new machine. Jobs was so determined to break IBM's monopoly that nothing else mattered, including how practical the Macintosh was, and this would be deeply reflected in the product itself. The Mac launch did everything but exceed expectations. The media projected sales never seen before in the history of computers, and at first that's what they got. But when the machine finally had enough time to truly reveal itself, the rose-tinted glasses came off and things took a sharp turn. Considering how development went, it's easy to see in retrospect that the Macintosh was actually nothing more than a deeply flawed machine.

Steve Jobs' headstrong leadership created a product with an overconfident design, a slightly misleading marketing campaign, a high cost, and a lack of practical real-world use. There's a bit of a swaggering energy to the Macintosh, and that's intentional. I mean, his entire existence revolved around taking over a multinational corporation and becoming a domestic product. The Macintosh knew it was the coolest thing around, but did it really have the stuff to back it up? Although Apple thought at the time that this was a selling point, all it did was raise users' expectations, only to disappoint them. The Macintosh, in many ways, is literally an embodiment of Steve Jobs himself.

He really saw this not so much as an invention but as a work of art. The inner casing even contained the signature of everyone involved in its development, like the signature on a painting. It was an overconfident machine, a direct result of Jobs' overconfidence during development. The problems that caused the downfall of Lisa are very parallel to the problems present in the Macintosh: Jobs focused more on form than function and wanted to create a beautiful machine at a time when technologically it was not very realistic. When Apple II engineers told him that his ideas would compromise the machine's performance, he wouldn't listen, and it was this kind of thinking that got him kicked off the Lisa team, but he just continued doing this with the Macintosh.

He wanted the computer to be quiet, so it didn't include a fan, which was an open invitation to overheating from the simplest task. Because of this and the appearance of its floppy drive, the computer was nicknamed the Beige Toaster. This design choice created a machine that was severely underpowered and slow, even by 1984 standards. Not only was its cooling poor, but so were its parts, at least for what it was designed for. In 1984, people were excited about the idea of ​​mainstream 32-bit computers. Most computers like IBM or Commodore were 16-bit or eight-bit systems. All of these companies wanted to create 32-bit personal computers, but it was very expensive.

The Macintosh was a 32-bit computer and this was actually a huge advance at the time, but it wasn't the whole story. The Macintosh had a 32-bit processor, but a 16-bit data path, which meant that some parts of the CPU could only operate 16 bits of data at a time. So while the Macintosh could technically call itself a 32-bit system, it was more like a 16-bit one, not to mention that the machine's 128 kilobytes of memory were better suited for eight-bit systems. All this technical stuff can be a little confusing, but what you really need to know is that these were parts that were not verycompatible.

It was the computer equivalent of mixing oil and water, and what we got was a slow, confusingly designed machine with an identity crisis. (computer hum) And the worst part was that if you wanted to upgrade the RAM, you couldn't. Everything was soldered to the motherboard. This was a big problem. Back in the 1970s, computers were all about upgradeability. At the time, most people simply went to the hardware store, bought the parts they needed, and built their own PCs. Every PC was unique and remained that way until the Apple II came along and marketed pre-built machines. These values ​​were still graduated until the 1980s.

People who bought pre-made parts often incorporated their own parts over time. So what was the point of the Macintosh if it couldn't be updated? Where is the personal on the personal computer? All Jobs did was take Lisa's problems and the problems he had with Lisa's team and then simplify them. Almost all of the creative decisions made on the Macintosh were things that Lisa's team specifically told Jobs not to do. He took big steps back because he was trying so hard to be the computer of the future. Steve Jobs's impassive thinking about building the Macintosh permeated the marketing of it.

Macintosh, who trusted his design too much, also trusted his ability too much. The marketing of the Macintosh wasn't exactly the most honest, and people who owned an Apple II and followed the Lisa project realized this. The Macintosh campaign placed great emphasis on software. Many people thought this was because Apple wanted to hide the fact that they didn't want to build an upgradeable machine. Broken parts meant only Apple could fix them, which meant more money for Apple. Apple's excuse was that for the personal computer, customization is now primarily software. Apple was now focusing more on making computers like the Lisa and less on computers like the Apple II, which seemed like a step backwards.

I mean, everyone saw how Lisa did, so they didn't have much faith in Macintosh being history repeating itself. Apple computers were no longer going to be upgradable like they used to be, and to steer people away from that kind of thinking, Apple essentially overtook the Mac software. The commercials actually seemed to show a wide variety of different programs working at high speeds to really emphasize how easy it is to use, but the computer only came with two programs, MacWrite and MacPaint. Everything else had to be purchased separately and you only had a handful of options compared to other computers at the time.

And as we talked about, computer memory wasn't really designed for programs, so a lot of people complained about slow performance. The Mac demonstration at Apple's shareholder meeting is a perfect example of this deception. The computer you're looking at here is not actually the original Macintosh. It is the Macintosh 512K, which would not be released until nine months later. Even Jobs realized that the software would not work ideally on the actual device and he had to improvise. But that wasn't the only misleading factor, it was also the part that surprised everyone. - Hello, I'm Macintosh. - The oral part was possible thanks to a program called MacSpeak, also more commonly known as MacinTalk.

As impressive as it was, text-to-speech software wasn't exactly unknown in 1984. I mean, Speak and Spell was created by Texas Instruments just a couple of years earlier and could be purchased for $50 at any toy store in the city. corner. . MacinTalk was derived from an existing synthesizer called S.A.M. But what if you wanted it to say full sentences and paragraphs? That's why it was so cool to see it on a personal computer. It gave personality to the Macintosh. The original plan was to include MacinTalk in the system folder and ship it to all Macs on release day.

Unfortunately, this never happened. A big reason why Steve Jobs used the prototype 512K MAC for the demonstration was because the real Macintosh couldn't handle the program. Memory was too low. MacinTalk wouldn't be a big part of the operating system until 512K machines became more common in 1985, so Apple's big selling point in this demo was something Apple wasn't even selling. When reality set in, fewer people bought the Macintosh. Apple suffered a small case of marketing myopia. While Apple recognized the wants and needs of the average person, it did not recognize the salary of the average person. The Macintosh was priced much better than the Lisa, but was still very expensive for a personal computer.

Jobs wanted to make the computer as cheap as possible, but he was in a sort of war with Sculley. Because the Super Bowl commercial was so expensive, Sculley raised the price to 2,495 from Jobs' 1995 price. Jobs would cite this as a big reason why the Macintosh did not sell well. No one wanted to buy such an expensive personal computer, especially when its true capabilities were finally revealed. - Apple computers are very underpowered and very high priced, and that applies to all Apple products. - When you combine these three problems, you end up with a product that lacked practical use in 1984.

The software was very limited and the things that were available were not particularly useful at the time. A graphics editor was great for five minutes, and even less so when it's just black and white. The Commodore 64, the IBM PC, the Tandy 1000, and even the Apple II all had word processors, more software support, were upgradable, and were even in color. Why get a Macintosh when you could buy one of these other machines for more capability and customization at a much more affordable price? Now, the Macintosh didn't die, but its sales were nowhere near what was expected. Not only did she put herself in danger, but also Apple.

His goal of taking on IBM failed. Apple's top brass was quick to start pointing fingers. Jobs blamed the high price. Sculley blamed Jobs. His unrealistic thinking and the way he treated his employees blamed him. Sculley wanted to create more products like the Apple II. Jobs wanted to give Macintosh another chance. Because of this entire ordeal, the board of directors either kicked Jobs out of the company in 1985, or voluntarily left him, depending on which side you're on. Jobs was no longer with the company he had founded, but this did not discourage him. Although the creation of the third industry-standard machine did not go as planned, he was determined to do it right the fourth time and create the next industry-standard machine.

In fact, that was the name of his new company, NeXT, to represent this goal. - And we decided that we wanted to start a company that had a lot to do with education and, in particular, higher education, colleges and universities. - Now, the full story of NeXT Computer and Jobs' time away from Apple will be a separate video, so I'll just provide a general summary for now. In 1985, Apple was very divided. You had Team Sculley and you had Team Jobs. NeXT was the company created by Team Jobs to compete directly with Apple and everyone else. - That's exactly my point.

We have a person here who said you can make a word processor in six months. It has taken three years. - Well, George, I can't change the world, you know? What do you want me to do? What is the solution? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to hear that just because we screwed up last time, we're going to screw up this time. (overlapping speech) What I want is probably irrelevant. - Instead of personal computers, NeXT was creating highly advanced workstations, aimed not at people, but at companies and universities with high financial resources. This would eliminate the high cost problem that the Macintosh had.

The computers would have an emphasis on simulations and 3D graphics, and would run their GUI operating system called NeXTSTEP. The NeXT computers did not sell well, but the software did. NeXTSTEP was incredibly influential due to its GUI design and its use of object-oriented programming. That's why it can run 3D simulations so well. Eventually, NeXT would discontinue its line of computers and exclusively sell its software. Because he worked so much with technology, Jobs wanted to explore the world of 3D design even further. He would later purchase a company from George Lucas called Computer Graphics Lab. The company's name would change to Pixar and for the next decade it would focus on making films using exclusively 3D animation.

Through all of this, Apple barely survived. Their innovation faded away and they relied primarily on making corrective updates to the Macintosh line throughout the 1990s. It was not clear that Apple would still be around come the millennium. - The art festival, wow! It was sponsored by that Apple computer guy. - What computers? (Homer complains) - With big losses in the last quarter and shrinking profit margins, Apple seems destined for an acquisition. -Sculley had long since left the company and it was clear that Jobs was doing much better without them. And in the most desperate of decisions, Apple bought Jobs in 1997.

They would acquire all rights to the NeXTSTEP software and elect Jobs as CEO. Your first order of business is to renew the Macintosh. To compete with all other computers during the prevalence of a new technology called the Internet, Jobs replaced the decrepit original Mac OS with a new version based on NeXTSTEP. The iMac was born and Apple would only go uphill from there. Thanks to the original Macintosh, we now have Toy Story and Mac OS10, seriously. What was originally mocked, belittled and called nothing more than a toy by its contemporaries ended up becoming the most influential invention in human history.

The Macintosh was both inept and misunderstood. He was ahead and behind his time. But as his parts get older, his attitude becomes younger. The message was now clear. Computers could no longer be confusing if they wanted to become more powerful. The only way to maximize your capabilities is to maximize your audience to attract all kinds of people who can share all kinds of perspectives, ideas, new information, be continually innovative and forward-thinking, be Macintosh, the computer for the rest. of us. - Be sure to visit omaze.com/nationsquid for your chance to win a Tesla Model X.

Shut up. - Thanks so much for looking. If you enjoyed watching, please subscribe and click the notification bell so you don't miss any future videos.