The Computer Chronicles - MacWorld Boston (1994)

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[@theodricaethelfrith]

Bold of HP to advertise on the MacWorld show

[@yellowblanka6058]

The main thing I remember about 90's Mac computers was the Macs in our elementary computer lab seemingly regularly flashing the "Bomb" error message on the screen.

[@richbiles230872]

That was all part of the Mac experience.

[@WhatALoadOfTosca]

Yellowblanka Ah back when corruption got your product in to schools...

[@floydjohnson7888]

The "bomb"...I remember a schoolmate joking, "A bomb on-screen? That is NOT a good sign. At least it isn't going off."

[@dcjlove]

8:30 System 7.5 may be a step forward for OSes, but that hair is a major step back for all of mankind.

[@ssnoc]

dcjlove 😀 - omg his hair looks like its polyester! It must be 500 degrees under that plastic wig ... I'm convinced these types of people get off on the shock reactions they receive , it's a wig cult thing.

[@Dewotto]

Omg his hair looks like the wig Phil Collins had in the Jesus He Knows Me music video mixed with a cabby's hat.

[@yellowblanka6058]

It's bad, but is it as bad as the host's obvious comb-over?

[@joelhodes1619]

You made me autoforward to that timestamp It was worth it !

[@8BitNaptime]

This was a very formal event, look at all those tucked-in t-shirts

[@midnitetoker420]

14:50 KISS - "Keep it Simple Systems"....well, that's one way to name the acronym...I always used another word that began with "S"...

[@JaredConnell]

Ya, I always thought it stood for Kkep It Simple, Silly 😂

[@yellowblanka6058]

2:47, lol, gotta love the random cut to the booth of adult FMV games.

[@Ikkepop]

Dude @ 4:00 , guess he was pretty embarrased about that statement later down the road...

[@matthewroberts1569]

I think they got mixed up on their models @ 13:15...They're talking about a 280c but what they're showing is definitely a 500 series. The 280c was a color Duo series model.

[@midnitetoker420]

I remember when "PDA" meant "public displays of affection"!

[@KurisuYamato]

Why no one in Boston cares about Chicago.... dang that's a good one :D

[@JaredConnell]

Oh dang I just got that at 11:06 😆 the Chicago windows beta! I forgot what was going on in the tech world at that time lol

[@kirishima638]

Powerbook 150 @ 12:45 "improvements include more expansion capability". That was a flat out lie. Apple removed every port with the exception of the printer port and upgrading the memory required a unique adaptor.

[@svensubunitnillson1568]

lol. i heard they replaced the ports with a cointslot to make it work better by inserting coins while booting

[@JaredConnell]

@@svensubunitnillson1568 my 3 year old self thought this was the case for Macintosh SE/30s, my family's SE ended up with more change than a piggy bank and let me tell you it didn't speed things up at all. It actually required a trip to the repair shop if you can believe that! So ha, don't try putting coins in your mac. Maybe a pc but not a mac.

[@agy234]

What I don’t understand is why they phrased this as a completely separate product. Most 68k software worked fine on the new macs

[@Dewotto]

7:37 F-Zero?

[@jzero4813]

Whoa, yes it was F-Zero running on a SNES. I was there, the booth was run by a wacky R&D gig (maybe MIT?) that was demoing an EEG hooked to some real time analysis software, running on a mac, that allowed you to control the B button acceleration with your mind (wearing the EEG sensor, of course - that blue head band the kid's wearing) I tried it - it really worked. Pretty cool, actually. A bit weird to get used to, but it's kind of like learning to ride a bike. You could also see your brainwaves on a monitor off to the side. They had a full spectrograph with alpha, beta, gamma, waves...bunch of analysis tools, etc. ...and, lol, after typing all that, I just got to 24:52, where they explain the whole thing. So, go watch that instead, I guess.

[@floydjohnson7888]

@@jzero4813 Nonetheless, even for 1994, that was zany for the brainy.

[@japhyriddle]

@@floydjohnson7888 Atari did it ten years earlier... sort of. Look up Atari Mindlink.

[@ichigokarasu]

Eat up Martha

[@Dustie1984]

omg its hard to believe the Apple at one point had their own EXPO!!

[@ferrreira]

The first MacWorld happened in 1985

[@straightpipediesel]

This wasn't put together by Apple, MacWorld was a popular magazine by the same publishers of PCWorld.

[@Dustie1984]

@@straightpipediesel Yeah but still, a whole expo dedicated to just one manufacturer's computers.

[@edwang8975]

Not at all

[@WhatALoadOfTosca]

They used to have serious users too, before they became a fancy "artisan" and "unique user" computer maker ;)

[@KabelkowyJoe]

15:00 Exactly what Jobs said about Newton in 1997 - noone is using palmtops, told in 1994. If only they built-in phone module! It it could be what Blackberry did and Compaq but almost 10 years later - iPAQ h6340 for example. But in 1997 Apple had no money to risk that, and trend of early times of GSM was to make smaller phones not bigger. Data transfer until 10 years later cost lot of money. Project was put on shelf to be introduced later as iPhone. Also there would not be iPhone success without iTunes and iPod popularity.

[@Dustie1984]

Or it would have been too niche of a product, only targeting die-hard businessmen. They were the ones who had cellphones in late 90s. It wasn't until after the turn of the millennium that cellphones began turning into mass products.

[@WhatALoadOfTosca]

You'd forget that companies like Psion had full fledged PDAs that sold well... Well before apple thought they invented the PDA.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

@@WhatALoadOfTosca Niche market though. Jobs didn't want niche products cluttering Apple's inventory channels, that only contributed to the bleeding cash flow.

[@medes5597]

Handspring did it. Around the same time. Pdas with an expansion slot. One of the expansions? A phone module. It was a smart phone in all but name with the phone module slotted in.

[@justandhans]

I like Maggie ☺️ 5:50

[@jeffm2787]

Amazing how Wrong that guy was about Intel.

[@pining4apple]

"Internet membership account?"

[@Darimonde]

pining4apple - Love the Ultraman logo!

[@nathanielscott1654]

It’s eWorld look it up

[@alexkaa]

8MB OF RAM - WHO might need that, sounds kinda decadent...

[@Tony_7791]

The PowerPC was a pile of shite compared to the Pentium

[@yellowblanka6058]

Actually every benchmark/anecdote I read/heard would counter that, but fanboys gotta fanboy, even decades after the fact apparently, lol.

[@Tony_7791]

@@yellowblanka6058 Ohh the irony, and what processors did Apple change to? Intel. (Yes they have recently created their own Processors, but ultimately the PPC was a fat failure.)

[@olepigeon]

​@@Tony_7791 It failed, but not for the reason you're thinking of. Anandtech did a breakdown of the PowerPC G5 versus the Pentium 4 and Xeon (with the Xeon being the closest actual comparison.) The G5 was, by and large, a significantly faster and more capable CPU in most benchmarks. The Pentium 4 edging it out with single core performance. Coincidentally, a similar story with the current Apple Silicon. The reason Apple abandoned the PowerPC was because after Motorola ended their partnership with Apple and IBM, IBM was the only company left capable of manufacturing the CPUs. IBM was concentrating on their server line of POWER processors, which is what the PowerPC is based off of. What IBM was _not_ interested in doing was making _mobile_ processors. So Apple's laptop line had stagnated for over a year and a half, stuck on G4 processors while their desktops moved on to the more powerful PowerPC G5s (and had they stayed, the PowerPC G6 would have been a derivative of the POWER6 processor.) Despite having access to some of the most powerful desktop CPUs, Apple had no mobile processor option during a time when laptops and mobile devices were outpacing sales of desktops at an alarming rate. So during those few years, Apple started Project Marklar, in which they secretly (well, it was leaked and the industry knew anyway) maintained a feature parity release of MacOS X compiled for x86. The switch to x86 was the only way Apple could compete in the increasingly important mobile market. That partnership lasted quite a while, until Intel's dominance in the CPU market (coupled with only incremental releases by AMD as they focused all their attention on the new Ryzen) again led to stagnation. Intel was unable to meet Apple's performance-per-watt requirements for their mobile devices. Apple went back to their roots (Apple was one of the three original founders of ARM), purchased and hired a whole bunch of microprocessor companies and engineers, then developed their own silicon. Apple's CPU design theory is now being copied by nVidia and Intel, which is fantastic for the industry as a whole. This means more competition, which results in more innovation, better performance, and lower prices for consumers.