The Old Macintosh

I was browsing my Instant Netflix queue the other day when I came across a documentary titled "Welcome to Macintosh". I watched to movie keeping the objectives and concepts of system interface design at the forefront of my mind.

I knew that the development of a GUI was a huge step in the technology world, but I never realized how long it took and how novel the concept was. The movie featured interviews from several long-serving or Apple employees that shared the process of developing many of the technologies that went into the major systems such as the Apple II, Macintosh, iMac and iPod/iPhone.

After the success of the Apple II, a small team of about a dozen designed the first Macintosh, the first GUI and the first successful point and click environment. Most of the original artwork was done on graph paper that could easily be translated into bitmaps because the team could not afford to build a prototype for each contributer. The text editor was capable of several different fonts of different sizes.

Today GUIs and point-and-click have evolved, but many of the principles remain the same. We still use images of folders and disks to give a metaphorical representation of file systems. We still use windows to manage viewing different applications. One clip in the movie reference an IBM quote saying, "No computer that can fit on a desk could ever be powerful enough to do worthwhile computing." The Macintosh didn't have the speed or memory of a contemporary IBM mainframe, but certainly left a much greater impact on the world.