Macintosh is turning 30
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 8:23 pm
In a few days (January 24) the Macintosh Computer will officially turn 30 years old. Over the next few years, we'll also cross the 30th anniversary of the GUI-based (WYSIWYG) score engraving (MOTU's Professional Composer), as well as many kinds of music and MIDI sequencers including Performer. It's been a long, long ride, and now it's almost hard for me to remember when these things DIDN'T exist, even though the first half of my life was spent as a traditional musician without any sort of electronics.
I've still got my 128K Macintosh whose case is engraved inside with the names of the engineers and developers who created it, including Steve Jobs. At least, I THINK I do. My warehouse was broken into sometime recently, and while it didn't appear that they stole anything, I didn't actually put my hand on that. (it's buried)
For over 25 of those years, I worked professionally in MIDI, then later in MIDI and audio as well. I'd trained as a recording engineer long ago, but had not used that training professionally until DP came around. I've always credited the Mac and Steve Jobs with opening up doorways for me which either did not exist before, or which might have been closed to me in traditional permutations of such skills as arranging MIDI, directing concerts and shows that include MIDI, creating detailed and carefully crafted lighting plots and sequences, and then the amazing coming of age of the In-The-Box recording studio.
Outside of music, there was also the fascinating development of Photoshop and Illustrator — the ultimate bitmaps and vector apps of their time. That led to CAD programs, computer-controlled manufacturing, and a host of related applications. I dabbled in all the above, except for the manufacturing part, but I hung out with people who did, and I got to watch the development of that art, too.
Almost overshadowed by all this was the WYSIWYG word processor that blew into the world with MacWrite on the first Macintosh. Thus, this is also the 30th birthday of desktop publishing. After the initial phase of going wild with San Francisco Font (which looked like a ransom note), I settled into MacWrite, then later Microsoft Word and several other word processors as useful tools that I've used daily for decades. My old typewriters have not seen the light of day since then.
Then there was the spreadsheet. That was one of my first awe-stricken computer experiences. Watching a page of figures update with every change you make was simply outside our ability to imagine before seeing Microsoft's Multiplan, and later Excel. It was one of those one-way experiences. Once you had seen it, you couldn't go back to a calculator and paper ever again. It literally transformed businesses, and it was one of the first apps to cause the loss of massive numbers of jobs in the workplace. Corporations used to have rooms full of people who were called "calculators." They sat there and rang up figures. Even when those figures were computerized, it still took a room full of data-entry people who prepared the data for calculating. With the advent of the spreadsheet, one person could do more, faster, than that entire room full of people. Of course, the Mac was not the first to have a spreadsheet. Lotus and others had already been around for years before the Mac was born. That revolution had already taken place. Still, the Mac brought hi-res GUI to the spreadsheet, as well as a mouse. You could get around faster with both the mouse AND the keyboard, and you could see more of your spreadsheet, scrolling around to different parts of it with ease.
Not long after the first Mac, people started connecting Macs to online services through modems. Throughout the Mac/PC wars, this capability was developing. Anyone who started out on Compuserve or Genie soon learned about that vast and mysterious (and expensive) electronic universe called The Internet. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the high priests of network programmers developed the point-to-point protocol (ppp) which enabled the splitting of a single node on the internet into thousands of nodes for end users who basically shared large internet connections via an Internet Service Provider. Dividing a $10,000/month connection among so many people made it affordable to everyone, and by 1991 or so, the early adopters were flocking to the Internet on both the Mac and the PC. This led to the development of the World Wide Web and the first browser, Mosaic, then Netscape, Internet Explorer, Safari, and so forth. Over the next decade, the world joined the online universe, and now it's hard to imagine a world without it. The World Wide Web and the Internet on which it runs represents a change in the evolution of human societies, probably the biggest and most profound change since the birth of cities.
So, a lot has happened in the 30 years since the little Macintosh was born. Steve Jobs' vision has remained with us and has guided Apple and its Mac customers to the brave new world of iPods, iPhones, iPads, and whatever is yet to come. Now, we talk to our devices with Siri, and she talks back. She can tell us useful information far faster than we could look it up or calculate it even with a calculator. This Star-Trek sci-fi future feature has arrived! Back in the 1960s, we always figured that such capability would occupy computers the size of a railroad car, some electronic overlord that was scary and powerful. Instead, we have devices not much larger than a pack of gum, up to devices the size of a tablet, and they seem much more powerful than those sci-fi monster computers of old, yet they have remained very much an extension of ourselves, not an electronic alien overlord.
Thirty years! No, it really doesn't seem like a long time. It seems to have happened overnight. Anyone watching our society from an alien planet would probably believe that we just made an overnight evolutionary leap — and that's probably not far from the truth. This has happened in an eye blink of time. How did all this happen in just 30 years? One can only wonder what the next thirty years will bring. The world will surely be a very different place, and while there are many doomsday scenarios, having watched the unbelievable advances since the Macintosh was born, and the radical changes it brought to my own life, I have confidence that the next 30 years will NOT bring doom, but solutions to complicated global problems which currently we cannot imagine. When someone exhibits fear of the future, think of the old fear of computers, then the birth of the Macintosh. I think it likely that the future will be a wonderful place. One thing for sure, the future arrives every day, day at a time. There is no escaping that. We WILL see many things come and go, but we will take it day at a time, as well, and we'll adapt and change as does our technology.
It's been quite a journey. 30 years with the Mac, MOTU, and all you great people who have each contributed to the development, usage, and acceptance of the most massive change in music since the birth of recorded sound. We're a community, now, not just loners playing around with expensive toys. The world has some idea of what we do, even if you have to mention "Pro Tools" to trigger some recognition. Years ago, it was impossible to explain.
So, Happy 30th Birthday Macintosh! May the journey continue in its scope and depth as before.
Shooshie
I've still got my 128K Macintosh whose case is engraved inside with the names of the engineers and developers who created it, including Steve Jobs. At least, I THINK I do. My warehouse was broken into sometime recently, and while it didn't appear that they stole anything, I didn't actually put my hand on that. (it's buried)
For over 25 of those years, I worked professionally in MIDI, then later in MIDI and audio as well. I'd trained as a recording engineer long ago, but had not used that training professionally until DP came around. I've always credited the Mac and Steve Jobs with opening up doorways for me which either did not exist before, or which might have been closed to me in traditional permutations of such skills as arranging MIDI, directing concerts and shows that include MIDI, creating detailed and carefully crafted lighting plots and sequences, and then the amazing coming of age of the In-The-Box recording studio.
Outside of music, there was also the fascinating development of Photoshop and Illustrator — the ultimate bitmaps and vector apps of their time. That led to CAD programs, computer-controlled manufacturing, and a host of related applications. I dabbled in all the above, except for the manufacturing part, but I hung out with people who did, and I got to watch the development of that art, too.
Almost overshadowed by all this was the WYSIWYG word processor that blew into the world with MacWrite on the first Macintosh. Thus, this is also the 30th birthday of desktop publishing. After the initial phase of going wild with San Francisco Font (which looked like a ransom note), I settled into MacWrite, then later Microsoft Word and several other word processors as useful tools that I've used daily for decades. My old typewriters have not seen the light of day since then.
Then there was the spreadsheet. That was one of my first awe-stricken computer experiences. Watching a page of figures update with every change you make was simply outside our ability to imagine before seeing Microsoft's Multiplan, and later Excel. It was one of those one-way experiences. Once you had seen it, you couldn't go back to a calculator and paper ever again. It literally transformed businesses, and it was one of the first apps to cause the loss of massive numbers of jobs in the workplace. Corporations used to have rooms full of people who were called "calculators." They sat there and rang up figures. Even when those figures were computerized, it still took a room full of data-entry people who prepared the data for calculating. With the advent of the spreadsheet, one person could do more, faster, than that entire room full of people. Of course, the Mac was not the first to have a spreadsheet. Lotus and others had already been around for years before the Mac was born. That revolution had already taken place. Still, the Mac brought hi-res GUI to the spreadsheet, as well as a mouse. You could get around faster with both the mouse AND the keyboard, and you could see more of your spreadsheet, scrolling around to different parts of it with ease.
Not long after the first Mac, people started connecting Macs to online services through modems. Throughout the Mac/PC wars, this capability was developing. Anyone who started out on Compuserve or Genie soon learned about that vast and mysterious (and expensive) electronic universe called The Internet. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the high priests of network programmers developed the point-to-point protocol (ppp) which enabled the splitting of a single node on the internet into thousands of nodes for end users who basically shared large internet connections via an Internet Service Provider. Dividing a $10,000/month connection among so many people made it affordable to everyone, and by 1991 or so, the early adopters were flocking to the Internet on both the Mac and the PC. This led to the development of the World Wide Web and the first browser, Mosaic, then Netscape, Internet Explorer, Safari, and so forth. Over the next decade, the world joined the online universe, and now it's hard to imagine a world without it. The World Wide Web and the Internet on which it runs represents a change in the evolution of human societies, probably the biggest and most profound change since the birth of cities.
So, a lot has happened in the 30 years since the little Macintosh was born. Steve Jobs' vision has remained with us and has guided Apple and its Mac customers to the brave new world of iPods, iPhones, iPads, and whatever is yet to come. Now, we talk to our devices with Siri, and she talks back. She can tell us useful information far faster than we could look it up or calculate it even with a calculator. This Star-Trek sci-fi future feature has arrived! Back in the 1960s, we always figured that such capability would occupy computers the size of a railroad car, some electronic overlord that was scary and powerful. Instead, we have devices not much larger than a pack of gum, up to devices the size of a tablet, and they seem much more powerful than those sci-fi monster computers of old, yet they have remained very much an extension of ourselves, not an electronic alien overlord.
Thirty years! No, it really doesn't seem like a long time. It seems to have happened overnight. Anyone watching our society from an alien planet would probably believe that we just made an overnight evolutionary leap — and that's probably not far from the truth. This has happened in an eye blink of time. How did all this happen in just 30 years? One can only wonder what the next thirty years will bring. The world will surely be a very different place, and while there are many doomsday scenarios, having watched the unbelievable advances since the Macintosh was born, and the radical changes it brought to my own life, I have confidence that the next 30 years will NOT bring doom, but solutions to complicated global problems which currently we cannot imagine. When someone exhibits fear of the future, think of the old fear of computers, then the birth of the Macintosh. I think it likely that the future will be a wonderful place. One thing for sure, the future arrives every day, day at a time. There is no escaping that. We WILL see many things come and go, but we will take it day at a time, as well, and we'll adapt and change as does our technology.
It's been quite a journey. 30 years with the Mac, MOTU, and all you great people who have each contributed to the development, usage, and acceptance of the most massive change in music since the birth of recorded sound. We're a community, now, not just loners playing around with expensive toys. The world has some idea of what we do, even if you have to mention "Pro Tools" to trigger some recognition. Years ago, it was impossible to explain.
So, Happy 30th Birthday Macintosh! May the journey continue in its scope and depth as before.
Shooshie