"You try and put this together – what was the process here, how early was this, how late was this?" he says. It’s a bit like archaeology for gadgets, he explains. He studied every inch of this early Mac in detail, enthusing about tiny differences between it and the version that made it to market – such as the little Apple logos imprinted on the rubber feet of the prototype. Before long, Matarazzo had the device functioning again. It wasn't working so its owner asked Matarazzo if he could take a look at it. Last year, he published a YouTube video about an apparent prototype version of the 128K that turned up. Steven Matarazzo, a YouTuber and computer collector, says that one of the machine’s capacitors can sometimes degrade over time, meaning that the 128K's screen won’t work properly – it'll appear slightly squished. Sometimes Macs show their age in strange ways. An earlier 128K that had been on display for a long time at the Centre for Computing History eventually failed and "couldn't be fixed", he says. McGerty’s colleague Adrian Page-Mitchell, collections officer, says it’s not always easy to keep these decrepit Macintoshes functioning. Apple's graphical printer, the ImageWriter, was released shortly before the 128K. "It’s 40 years old and it’s still going," says Lisa McGerty, chief executive, who remembers the introduction of Macintosh computers as a "massive" improvement for people in the printing and publishing business. The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, England, is one of many collections that feature a functioning 128K. The first Macintosh with a colour screen, the Macintosh II, only arrived in 1987. Some Mac 128K owners, however, use the devices to play quirky games like Frogger or Lode Runner on their treasured machines. And for collectors they are a piece of computing history, with the signatures of the team who built it moulded into the plastic of the rear casing. The original Macintosh can still sell for as much as a modern computer. "Everything there in a beautiful little integrated square board. "It's got everything: ROM, RAM, processor and all the input-output," he says. David Greelish, a computer historian in Florida who is releasing a documentary about the 128Ks predecessor the Apple Lisa this month, notes the ingenuity of the 128K's original circuit board. If you want to check out the 128K's specifications, Apple actually lists them on its website.Įven with its diminutive memory, no modem or ability to connect to the internet, and rudimentary graphics, there is a community of avid fans who delight in poring over this seemingly ancient hardware. The machines are extremely limited due to their small amount of memory. But a handful of diehard fans still use their Mac 128K computers today – although not without frustrations. Apple stopped producing the computers in October 1985 and discontinued software support for them in 1998. Today, the Mac 128K – so called because it came with 128kb of Random Access Memory, or RAM – is a museum piece. And Steve Jobs’ flashy launch day presentation, at the Flint Center in Cupertino, California, became a template for his many later appearances introducing subsequent Apple hardware – including the iMac and iPhone. But it was, arguably, the first to change the world. The device was not even the first personal computer. The captivated audience – of Apple shareholders – went wild.īy today's standards, the tiny screen, boxy form and rudimentary graphics of the original Macintosh look ludicrous. As the theme from Chariots of Fire played, the word "Macintosh" swept across the tiny computer's screen and a series of monochromatic images flashed up. On 24 January 1984, a man called Steve Jobs got up on a stage and heaved a beige box out of a carrying case, shoved a floppy disc into it, and stood back. "A computer that would work for a single person – that was, in itself, mind-boggling," remembers Blatner, who is now president of CreativePro Network, an online resource for creative professionals.īut it would take another decade before he got one of his own – with the arrival of the Apple Macintosh. There, Blatner got to try early personal computers such as the Alto, which had a graphical interface and a mouse. He used to ride his bicycle to Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in California where his stepfather worked in the 1970s. He had seen early iterations of personal computers as a young child. It was everything he felt a computer should be. He remembers the neat way the screen was laid out the glossy manual the cassette tape tutorials explaining how to use the machine. But one in particular stands out – the first. David Blatner still has practically every Macintosh computer he ever bought.
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