Today, January 24, marks the 36th anniversary of Steve Jobs unveiling the Macintosh. In 1984, Mr. Jobs showed off the new device to Appel’s shareholders at their annual meeting, held in Cupertino (via MacRumors).
Macintosh Out The Bag
The legendary machine cost $2,495 and weighed 17 pounds. It came kitted out with:
- 9-inch black and white display
- 8MHz Motorola 68000 processor
- 128KB of RAM
- 3.5-inch floppy drive
Once unveiled by Mr. Jobs, the new Macintosh spoke to the assembled shareholders:
Hello, I’m Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag. Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I’d like to share with you a maxim I thought of the first time I met an IBM mainframe: NEVER TRUST A COMPUTER YOU CAN’T LIFT! Obviously, I can talk, but right now I’d like to sit back and listen. So, it is with considerable pride that I introduce a man who’s been like a father to me… STEVE JOBS.
Apple sold 70,000 units of Macintosh by May 1984. The rest, as they say, is history.
The most remarkable thing was a fantastic GUI (that we are still using today) with just 128 KB of RAM. Thanks Steve and others: you change the world with the Mac!