As I read through Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, I can only reflect on my first days in the computer industry and remember the Macintosh for how intelligent it was for the early ’80s. While I had the occasional pleasure of using a Mac then, there would be far more years ahead of me teaching courses on the first IBM PCs, the PC XT, the PC AT, and onwards.
Looking back at this ad, and after reading this era of the Macintosh in Isaacson’s book, I can fully appreciate now how important it was to Jobs, despite all his “this is shit” comments toward things that just did not measure up. To see this Mac in the early ’80s was – compared to a black screen with the boring DOS prompt C:\> flashing in green or, later, amber – remarkable, to say the least. I think one had to have lived through that era and remembered those machines to fully appreciate the depth and breadth of the impact of the Macintosh.
If you haven’t read Isaacson’s bio, I can highly recommend it.
