Recently, in preparation for a slight piece to be included in the June issue of Mac|Life, I had the occasion to dig through what Poe described as "many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore" - namely, issues of MacUser and Macworld from June 1987 - 20 years ago, to be exact. (That's in magazine time, which runs a couple of months ahead of human time.)
I was researching ancient prices of ancient peripherals, but in my perusal of those hallowed tomes I came upon a number of quotes which I thought you might find of interest, amusement, or value. Here are a few missives from that faraway time - before email, before the Internet, before the world "online" had any meaning to us Normal Humans™.
Predictions:
We're all tempted to offer our opinions about what the future may bring. In most cases, it's safe to do so - no one will call you on it if you're wrong. However, now that everything is saved forever, you might want to be more careful. For example, here's a news item from Macworld, June 1987. Hmmm... Didn't quite work out this way, did it?
"Giant floppies - such as Kodak's costly and rather slow 10MB, 5 1/4-inch drive - may be the wave of the future for people who need to cart around a lot of data and don't want to risk jostling the bits out of place on a hard drive."
Larry Tessler, Apple's then-VP for advanced technology, was more prescient in a Macworld interview that month. Remember as you read this next quote that the idea of a "worldwide network" was quite radical at the time - and Larry also had a solid call on "pervasive use." He was off the mark on ISDN, but otherwise this was virtuoso prognosticating.
"I foresee a personal computer so portable that you will take it everywhere. High-quality, 3-D, interactive computer-generated graphics on the desktop. Integrated Systems Data Network (ISDN) will be adopted as a communications standard, enabling easy use of a worldwide network. Finally, pervasive use of computing. People's communications habits will be based on the assumption that everyone has a computer, much as today we all assume that everyone has a phone."
Oh, and just so you know that Larry wasn't an infallible seer, here's his take on RAM limitations.
"Using NuBus cards, you could go as far as 4GB some day."
In the same month's issue, Macworld columnist Jerry Borrell had a "wish list" for improvements to the Mac experience. Bad call on the plasma-screen notebook, Jerry, but not bad otherwise - and we're all still holding our collective breaths for a comprehensive overhaul of the Finder in Leopard.
"A personal LaserWriter for under $2,000. Update the Finder. A portable Mac for under $2,500. And please don't use one of those miserable LCD displays. Do it right - like Dynamac - and use a gas-plasma or electroluminescent display. Multitasking. I want to be able to open and manipulate more than one window - and more than one application - at once."
Ads:
Ads in the June issues of Macworld and MacUser were a hoot. Check out the Illustrator ad copy, which requires the definite article before the product name. Also, note that we all may have become a wee bit spoiled regarding an application's abilities.
"The Adobe Illustrator is a software program that, for the very first time, combines the control and fine detail of drawing by hand with the speed and mathematical precision of the computer ... instead of building an image with dots like other programs, the Adobe Illustrator uses precise curves and lines."
Regarding this next quote, well, I've been around the block in the Mac biz, but I readily confess that I didn't remember that PowerPoint was originally published by a company named Forethought, Inc. - who, to complete the story, was also the original publisher of FileMaker. Check out their June 1987 ad in MacUser:
"Introducing PowerPoint. With PowerPoint, you actually plan, compose and edit your entire presentation on your Macintosh computer."
A radical promise in 1987; a "Well, duh!" in 2007.
And then there's the Avenue of Broken Dreams:
"Any day now, Scoop will be showing up at dealers all over America. And desktop publishing will never be the same ... Suppose, for instance, you want to wrap text around a circular of irregular image. Or fill that image with text. All it takes is a single click of the mouse."
So long, Scoop - we hardly knew ya.
Next : Opinions from June 1987
Opinions:
The fine line between pontification and punditry hasn't moved much in the last 20 years. Check out these opinionificationers:
"Jazz [an early Mac spreadsheet app from Lotus] was designed to meet the needs of the market that Apple anticipated reaching with Macintosh - yuppie managers in big corporations." - Columnist Michael D. Wesley in MacUser, June, 1987
"Business Software magazine found the Mac II to be 'such a fine machine overall ... that we predict Mac IIs will become a fairly common sight in the DOS-dominated business office.'" - News item, Macworld, June 1987
Ah, and then there's this beautiful bit of Gallic prose from Jean Louis Gassée, Apple's erstwhile VP for product development, whose main claim to fame was his ability to spin webs of influential bull-tookie rather than developing solid products. His Peter-Principle reign helped lead Apple towards ... what do the French call it? Le wc?
"When I watch fifty-year-olds crowing over their Macintoshes, I know they are feeling the sensation I know so well and of which I never tire: the feeling of suddenly having access to domains from which one felt excluded forever. An incomparable sense of freedom ... a limitless space in which they can explore unknown lands containing immense resources."
Finally, I know I'm skipping ahead a decade here, but it's worth noting that readers' wisdom often trumps that of the pundits. In June '97, a MacUser reader, Aaron Benson, wrote:
"If Apple wants to gain ground, it must port the new Mac OS to Pentium processors ... The only way that the Mac OS can ever hope to unseat Windows is to compete on the same machine."
You go, Aaron.
