1984 Macintosh Intro Brochure

[@JDW-]

Folks, at 9:41 I point out the first Apple credit card on the back of the brochure. Frank Conforti has kindly posted photos of his 2 cards on Flickr Black card (shown on brochure): flic.kr/p/2oRGVHF White card: flic.kr/p/2oRFk9D Interestingly, both cards lack VISA/MC/AMEX logos, just like the titanium Goldman Sachs card today.

[@flintlock1]

Thank you James, really appreciate the work you did on the scan, thanks for sharing, keep up the great content.

[@jpkoskimaa]

Thanks for sharing the contents with all of us, James. Much appreciated!!

[@MacEffects88]

I don’t think I have seen this one before in its entirety. What a well crafted brochure. Another amazing video - thanks for your efforts!

[@JDW-]

Thank you for the kind words, Mark!

[@Fred_Raimer]

It could not have found a better home with a nicer guy! Best to you, James!

[@WelcomeToMarkintosh]

That brochure is AWESOME - great video James! Thanks you for scanning & archiving it for the rest of us!

[@retrotechguy]

Awesome brochure - thanks for taking us for a tour! 👍

[@jockelill]

Wonderful video James! I really liked it!! Makes you realize what kind of game changer the Macintosh concept really was back then! Although at a high price, but unbeaten for easy of use and compatibility! That picture of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs side by side is epic!

[@cla3d]

Thanks for sharing the PDF. They knew how to promote a product.

[@JDW-]

And thank you for your kind support of this channel, Chris!

[@1BitFeverDreams]

I'm fairly certain we had that at home back in late 1985 and/or 1986. I seem to remember the sequence of things where my dad probably bought a 512k in early 1986, realized the low RAM wasn't up to his needs and swapped it for a Plus a few days/or a week later. I seem to remember this gap where I was wondering where the computer had gone and being worried the next one wouldn't be as cool. I'm fairly certain I read and reread the brochure and all materials that were probably acquired as part of the shopping done, to death. As a kid learning how to use his first computer, you remember the first 3 games you spent all your time bouncing around from one to the other: DéjàVu from Rubicon (not ICOM!), Lode Runner and Sargon III.

[@pocketscience911]

Very cool James that you've gone to the effort to first purchase this piece of history, and then to document it for everyone who may have never seen it before. I just found my Nov/Dec 1984 copy of Newsweek (Ronald Reagan on the cover) - which was partially taken over by Apple with numerous full page ads, and fold out sections. Much of the material comes from the brochure you have, but there's some other content specific to the election results. The front inside cover and first page has a Mac displaying the following in a MacWrite window.. "Last Tuesday, several million of you demonstrated the principle of democracy as it applies to politics. One person, one vote. Throughout this magazine we're going to demonstrate the principle of democracy as it applies to technology. One person, one computer.". There's also a two page spread on the IBM documentation piece of the story entitled "Even IBM has written a testimonial for Macintosh" with a huge photo of those enormous manuals you showed. The back cover folds out with the "Test drive a Macintosh" ad showing the gloved hand holding a mouse.

[@JDW-]

Thank you for your very kind words, Gavin. And thank you very much for the detailed description of the ad insert in Newsweek! I really appreciated reading that.

[@Stryder_The_Nite_Owl]

Great video, and a nice change of pace from some of the other videos. Great historic coverage of this fantastic brochure.

[@JDW-]

Thank you for watching, Stryder. I'm very pleased you liked it. Historic coverage is hard. I put the same amount of work into this 12 min. video as I put in to creating a 1 hour video. I do think it is worth it in th end, especially in this case because I was able to preserve it for the community. There's still so much out there that needs to be preserved!

[@Stryder_The_Nite_Owl]

@@JDW- Those who preserve today, will be the heroes tomorrow. Software, documentation, hardware. It all needs to be documented, preserved, and shared.

[@GarthBeagle]

Nicely done, and thanks for the excellent scan!

[@FrankConforti]

Thank you for the kind words!

[@JDW-]

Thank YOU, Frank!

[@janquieldapper]

You put it in download!!! wow!!! Great!!!

[@JDW-]

Yes, I spend many days scanning and then editing the scans to be as perfect as possible. The download link is in the text description.

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

That is freaking nuts dood! Burrel Smith later got schizophrenia from inhaling too much lead solder fumes while working on the Mac.

[@JDW-]

Well, if flux fumes really did trigger schizophrenia, I'd be one of THE most schizophrenic people on the planet by now! I'm 52 and started soldering in Jr. High. 🙂

[@TaijanDean]

It just goes to show how much more intricate and well made brochures and manuals were back in the day conpared to the bland and featureless ones we have today. It does put into perspective how different the Macintosh was when it was released compared to its competition. Yes, it's a brochure so they're obviously trying to sell you a rather expensive product, especially for 1984, but nothing os false or misleading, it's more of a case of 'what you see is what you get' with Macintosh and it's certianly a rereshong angle to look at a product rather than glorify it and make it seem more than it really is. I do think the '32bit microprocessor' claim is a little cheeky though since, if I remember correctly, the Macintosh only had a 16bit data bus limiting the system to 16bit at best despite the CPU being 32bit.

[@JDW-]

What we can say is that the 8MHz 68000 was better than the 16-bit 4.77MHz 8088 in the IBM PC. The best detailed answer I've seen about whether the 68000 is truly 32-bit is from Ken Gregg on Quora: www.quora.com/Was-the-original-Apple-Macintosh-a-16-bit-or-32-bit-computer

[@aa-au]

Nice video. I liked the way you showed every page, with nice lighting, then actually spend the time to scan and correct and touchup the imperfections. Then, you pop all these images into a pdf and upload for all to see and download. I am not too sure how many brochures you have or if you collect Apple brochures at all, but I have some small Apple brochures and big Apple posters of the early 2000s era, and these were released in Australia. Anyway, if interested, I could try and dig them all up and we can talk.

[@JDW-]

To be honest, this is the first Apple "brochure" I acquired. I have other things like the Premier issue of Macworld, Apple's "So Far" book and the latter version by Ive, etc. I just was wanting some graphics one day, found very bad, low-rez versions online, did some research and found they were from the Mac Intro brochure, then found that brochure (2nd edition) was never scanned or placed online. I then search eBAY, and to my delight, one was being sold by the original photographer! It was rather expensive, but I decided to buy it with the aim of scanning it and posting it online for the community to enjoy. I'm somewhat of a perfectionist, so I spent many hours trying to delete every tiny spot and blemish on the scan, and also putting the pages together side-by-side in a way that looks lovely. Indeed, I would say my PDF scan looks better in some ways than the actual brochure. That scan should stand the test of time. If you'd like to send me some photos of what you have, please simply click my JDW name, which takes you to my channel page. Click the About tab, and scroll down. Click the business inquiries button, and you'll then be able to access my email address. You can either send photos as attachments, or post them to something like DropBox or Flickr or even iCloud photos so I can see them. If you have something that I might be able to preserve for the community, then maybe we can talk about that further.

[@michaelmullett7327]

Fantastique

[@janquieldapper]

PDF had a great quality too!

[@JDW-]

Thank you for the kind words. It took a very long time, but as you can see, all that work paid off. The end result is quite good. I wish all scans of vintage material were this good. I think it can be done if the person scanning and editing the scans takes enough time and care.

[@sideburn]

When i was about 12 the only one that had a mac was the the spoiled rich kids dad in my neighborhood. The kid could use a computer now and that kinda rubbed me the wrong way since I was banging out BASIC code on my trs-80 coco. I thought it was a toy and not a real computer but secretly I was very impressed. 😂 by 1991 I was 20 and had a job at a laser printer company and they put a mac on my desk and I got out the inside Mac books and figured out what was going on under the hood and I was sold. I had a career as a mac programmer after that.

[@JDW-]

With the price of the Mac being well over $3,000 (in 1984 dollars) when you factored in the ImageWriter I printer (which most every Mac user back at the time bought), it's easy to see why ownership was dominated by businesses or upper middle class families. While ours was more firmly middle class, my father was given the option of a cash bonus or "the new Mac and printer from Apple" in early 1984. He took the latter, and the rest is history! 🙂 I did have friends at the time who had C64's, and they always intrigued me because they had color. But what didn't impress me was their low resolution. As such, nothing could tear me away from Dark Castle when it arrived on the scene in '86. The Mac was B&W only, but the resolution was amazing compared to any other computer at the time (other than Lisa). Glad to hear someone put the right computer on your desk to win your love for the Mac!

[@sideburn]

@@JDW- yeah I remember seeing one of you videos where you tell the story how your dad got one as a gift from his work. Yeah I went from the trs-80 to Atari 8 bits. There was a Atari vs commodore battle going on at the time (probably still is at some degree) and I was on the Atari camp. My first “Mac” I owned was when I got an Atari 520 ST cheap and a guy at my work helped me make it into a “Hackintosh” running System 6.0.8. I remember it had the Talking Moose and the Oscar the Grouch trashcan extension 😁

[@sideburn]

@@JDW- and yes the mac display was amazing and still hold up today even. I hav le a 512, a plus, and a portable now. And a few old PowerBooks. And of course my modern MacBook Pro 16” but it’s not as fun as the retro machines 🤩

[@juanmacias5922]

lmfao the picture of Bill Gates. xD

[@emerybreck1688]

'Promo sm'

[@JDW-]

I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean.