I’m the proud owner of a Mac SE/30 with 8MB of RAM with a 30MB hard disk. Incredible how even then that was considered a high end mac with a price tag most firms couldn’t afford. I think i paid 70 bucks for it. Its mind blowing to think that the latest of todays pc/mac tech simply can’t do what will be considered entry level hardware/software 30 years from now. A $4000 PC/Mac setup will be on eBay as a vintage item for little money.
That's awesome! I'm not as lucky though, here at my local vintage stores the price for every old tech skyrocketed to mindblowing proportions, historic or not
It’s actually funny because my school had IBM PS/2s. They were all over the place back then. PS/2 was a fairly common thing to hear and say if you were in to computers at all. When the Sony PlayStation 2 came out, I guess I felt the same as you.
Also, the standard computer keyboard and mouse connector types before USB was called PS/2. Those little round connectors on older peripherals. You’ve probably seen them a million times.
And then later on, in the 1990s sometime, IBM released a range of home-oriented machines called the “PS/1”. It was just as much a failure as all their other home-oriented efforts.
22:16 Luckily, that couldn’t happen, because an important -restriction- feature of MultiFinder is that you could not launch more than one instance of an application at the same time. I forget what happened in pre-System-7 days, if you tried to double-click a document belonging to an already-running application; maybe the Finder just threw up an error message. System 7 added the “AppleEvent” mechanism, and running apps that supported this would get a notification that they were being asked to open another document.
17:55 MultiFinder was very useful, but it was such a hack. Windows belonging to different applications were kept in separate “layers”, and only those belonging to the foreground application could be moved/resized/interacted with. The ones in the background were effectively just painted onto the desktop, not real windows at all. Interestingly, this “layer” concept seemed to carry over to some extent to OS X, which you’d think, being a true multitasking OS, wouldn’t be bound by such obsolete restrictions. While OS X let you interleave windows belonging to different applications, it had this weird quirk where, when you closed the frontmost window, the next window to come to the front would come from _the same application_ (if there was such a window), in preference to one from another application, even if the latter was next in stacking order. I think this limitation still exists in OS X/macOS today.
classic macos was multitasking, but cooperative and not preemptive. this led to massive problems, as you mentioned. it's not like they were technically limited either. amiga managed preemptive multitasking on the same processor and managed to do it in style with less than a meg of ram. as for osx, nope. it's unix based, as it's basically a variant of nextstep. it's true preemptive, but older apps had to be ported over in order to take advantage of it, either via carbon in the short term, or starting from scratch with cocoa.
I wanted to get a Macintosh computer in the 1980s yet I couldn't afford one at the time, so I bought an Atari 800XL personal home computer system in those days. My Atari had a decent DOS which had fine graphics, but those graphics just couldn't compare with a Macintosh.
Back in '98 I worked for a bank in the UK, when laser printers even then would cost £3000+, they bought one for everyone coz they couldn't be bothered networking them.
A deal with russia for a russian version of their software just to be able to sell more pc's to russia,but they dit it also for political reasons offcourse. The 586 proccesor was later renamed the pentium 1 proccesor to mark ot's new generation of proccesors.
If Apple had a database application for its Macintosh computers today, I may consider using an Apple computer, instead of Windows computer. Apple computers are user-friendly. Windows computers have copied Apple.
Apple does have a database application for its Macintosh computers today (and back in the 80s too), it’s called 📂FileMaker Pro by Claris, an Apple Company.
4:04 -- He's on fire! AHHHH!
2 MB of memory. Shut up and take my money.
Remember, this was back when the DOS/Windows world was still struggling with the 640K limit.
2mb? 😂
I’m the proud owner of a Mac SE/30 with 8MB of RAM with a 30MB hard disk. Incredible how even then that was considered a high end mac with a price tag most firms couldn’t afford. I think i paid 70 bucks for it. Its mind blowing to think that the latest of todays pc/mac tech simply can’t do what will be considered entry level hardware/software 30 years from now. A $4000 PC/Mac setup will be on eBay as a vintage item for little money.
That's awesome! I'm not as lucky though, here at my local vintage stores the price for every old tech skyrocketed to mindblowing proportions, historic or not
You lucked out, I think vintage stuff like that has gone up in price tremendously in last few years.
24:23 Wow, the PS2 was really ahead of it's time for being released in the 80s.
Ikr! when Sony ps2 came out I was confused because I used a ps2 in the 80s lol
It’s actually funny because my school had IBM PS/2s. They were all over the place back then. PS/2 was a fairly common thing to hear and say if you were in to computers at all. When the Sony PlayStation 2 came out, I guess I felt the same as you.
Also, the standard computer keyboard and mouse connector types before USB was called PS/2. Those little round connectors on older peripherals. You’ve probably seen them a million times.
And then later on, in the 1990s sometime, IBM released a range of home-oriented machines called the “PS/1”. It was just as much a failure as all their other home-oriented efforts.
22:16 Luckily, that couldn’t happen, because an important -restriction- feature of MultiFinder is that you could not launch more than one instance of an application at the same time.
I forget what happened in pre-System-7 days, if you tried to double-click a document belonging to an already-running application; maybe the Finder just threw up an error message. System 7 added the “AppleEvent” mechanism, and running apps that supported this would get a notification that they were being asked to open another document.
4:04 sending files through a modem used to make a steam fire.
10:50 Ah, I remember that Adobe Illustrator demo disk, with the Brandenburg 6th soundtrack ... and my first exposure to interactive Bézier curves ...
17:55 MultiFinder was very useful, but it was such a hack. Windows belonging to different applications were kept in separate “layers”, and only those belonging to the foreground application could be moved/resized/interacted with. The ones in the background were effectively just painted onto the desktop, not real windows at all.
Interestingly, this “layer” concept seemed to carry over to some extent to OS X, which you’d think, being a true multitasking OS, wouldn’t be bound by such obsolete restrictions. While OS X let you interleave windows belonging to different applications, it had this weird quirk where, when you closed the frontmost window, the next window to come to the front would come from _the same application_ (if there was such a window), in preference to one from another application, even if the latter was next in stacking order.
I think this limitation still exists in OS X/macOS today.
classic macos was multitasking, but cooperative and not preemptive. this led to massive problems, as you mentioned. it's not like they were technically limited either. amiga managed preemptive multitasking on the same processor and managed to do it in style with less than a meg of ram.
as for osx, nope. it's unix based, as it's basically a variant of nextstep. it's true preemptive, but older apps had to be ported over in order to take advantage of it, either via carbon in the short term, or starting from scratch with cocoa.
I wanted to get a Macintosh computer in the 1980s yet I couldn't afford one at the time, so I bought an Atari 800XL personal home computer system in those days. My Atari had a decent DOS which had fine graphics, but those graphics just couldn't compare with a Macintosh.
I love 1980s office decor. Like a mix of 1970s brown and plants and 1980s tech,
A laser printer in 1987 probably cost a company $25,000.
I think they had said on a previous show, they were about $3000 at that point.
Back in '98 I worked for a bank in the UK, when laser printers even then would cost £3000+, they bought one for everyone coz they couldn't be bothered networking them.
What I would give to have laser printers not ink jet as the home standard.
Not sure what you mean - consumer laser desktops can be bought for less than $100.
A deal with russia for a russian version of their software just to be able to sell more pc's to russia,but they dit it also for political reasons offcourse.
The 586 proccesor was later renamed the pentium 1 proccesor to mark ot's new generation of proccesors.
If Apple had a database application for its Macintosh computers today, I may consider using an Apple computer, instead of Windows computer. Apple computers are user-friendly. Windows computers have copied Apple.
Apple does have a database application for its Macintosh computers today (and back in the 80s too), it’s called 📂FileMaker Pro by Claris, an Apple Company.
Today Mr. Schindler would be tarred and feathered for using the terms 'Master' and 'Slave'. Oh, the horror!