5 ms·

Preliminary Macintosh Business Plan (12 July 1981) [pdf]

66 points by Lammy 3y ago

orionblastar 3y ago
Interesting that the 1981 Mac design was for a cheaper computer with GUI graphics like the Lisa. Originally it was to be a 6809 based system like the TRS80 COCO. Jobs did a high tech makeover of the Mac to borrow tech from the Lisa.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  After Jef Raskin got kicked off the Mac, his concepts of a easy-to-use, non-mouse-based computer eventually turned into the Canon Cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat
  - garyrob 3y ago
    IIRC Raskin kept on trying to take some sort of partial credit for the Mac over the years, but the actual Mac that was made had pretty much nothing to do with his initial concept.
    - WillAdams 3y ago
      See: https://www.folklore.org/I_Invented_Burrell.html https://www.folklore.org/I_Invented_Burrell.html Though, to be fair, he did name it: https://www.folklore.org/Bicycle.html https://www.folklore.org/Bicycle.html and for an actual answer see: https://www.folklore.org/The_Father_of_The_Macintosh.html https://www.folklore.org/The_Father_of_The_Macintosh.html
- watersb 3y ago
  Jef Raskin's initial idea, I believe, was more of a text system that would have been possible with the 6809. The Canon Cat was a further development of this idea. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat I can't find any demo or screen shots of the Canon Cat system in use, but I imagine it to be somewhat along the lines of the HASCI concept, which had been brewing around the same time. https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1982-11/page/n404/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1982-11/page/n404/... HASCI actually shipped on the USA version of the Epson QX-10 as "Valdocs", an integrated document management system.
  - kalleboo 3y ago
    > I can't find any demo or screen shots of the Canon Cat system in use There's an advertising video on YouTube showing it in use for text editing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_TlE_U_X3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_TlE_U_X3c
    - watersb 3y ago
      Wow, of course.. didn't think of video. That video is great, a VCR tape collection of corporate demos by Jef Raskin's company, apparently for investors and resellers. YouTube suggested a short, informal demo posted only 10 years ago, about 6 minutes: https://youtu.be/jErqdRE5zpQ?si=A1kK2FhR9-LhoZIU https://youtu.be/jErqdRE5zpQ?si=A1kK2FhR9-LhoZIU A bit less familiar with it so a quick and dirty video I suppose but a great demonstration of what it would be like to use one now. Essential history! Thanks!
  - RodgerTheGreat 3y ago
    You can try out the Cat in emulation from the comfort of your browser: https://archive.org/details/canoncat https://archive.org/details/canoncat
    - watersb 3y ago
      Phenomenal. Excellent catch! If only I could convince mobile browsers to enable the onscreen keyboard in web-based emulators... For instance, Infinite Macintosh has an explicit "Keyboard" that I should trivially peek at. It has a different problem mapping the iOS keyboard to ancient computers. Hmm. Has anyone figured out a way to work around this?
- duskwuff 3y ago
  > Interesting that the 1981 Mac design was for a cheaper computer with GUI graphics like the Lisa. The 1981 design also had significantly lower resolution graphics (384x256) than Macintosh released with (512x342). Any idea when this was changed?
  - Someone 3y ago
    Early 1982. https://folklore.org/Five_Different_Macs.html https://folklore.org/Five_Different_Macs.html: “In the beginning of 1982, the original 68000 design was more than a year old, and the software was nowhere near finished, so Burrell was afraid some of the trade-offs of the original design were no longer current. He used the expansive canvas of a custom chip, where additional logic was almost free, to update the architecture. The most important decision was admitting that the software would never fit into 64K of memory and going with a full 16-bit memory bus, requiring 16 RAM chips instead of 8. The extra memory bandwidth allowed him to double the display resolution, going to dimensions of 512 by 342 instead of 384 by 256. He also added bells and whistles like a fancy, DMA-fed sound generator with four independent voices. This was the fourth version of the Macintosh design.”
    - rbanffy 3y ago
      I wish they had used the same 12" screen used on the Lisa, but in a vertical position (and with some extra pixels from a slightly faster memory system - or a slightly slower frame rate and longer persistence).
slater 3y ago
Anyone know what the "VLC" is that is mentioned?
- Lammy 3y ago
  I was assuming “Very Low Cost” while reading it but am totally just making that up for lack of a better contextual fit.
- toast0 3y ago
  I think that's what became the Apple IIe. From this plan, the VLC seems very associated with the Apple II, and Wikipedia has a compatible timeline in the History section of the Apple IIe page[1]: > In September 1981 InfoWorld reported—below the PC's announcement—that Apple was secretly developing three new computers "to be ready for release within a year": Lisa, Macintosh, and "Diana". Describing the last as a software-compatible Apple II replacement [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe
  - toast0 3y ago
    This page [1] suggests it's the IIc though. [1] https://www.apple2history.org/history/ah08/ https://www.apple2history.org/history/ah08/
webwielder2 3y ago
> 4. Is our schedule realistic? No. No it is not.
karmakaze 3y ago
The ~(Xerox)~ notice gave me a chuckle as that's what the Macintosh is of the demo Steve Jobs saw at Xerox PARC.
- wk_end 3y ago
  Jobs and co. no doubt took inspiration from Xerox PARC but I think the narrative that they just copied the Alto or the Star is a bit ahistorical and does the Macintosh team a disservice. If you sit down with each of them, it quickly becomes apparent just how much work went into making the Macintosh’s iteration of the GUI friendly and intuitive compared to Xerox’s drafts - to say nothing of the accomplishment of squeezing it into a desktop micro.
  - deaddodo 3y ago
    Firstly the comparison should be Lisa to Alto/Star, Macintosh is a degree removed. That being said, I've sat down with both and it's pretty clear both A) how very similar a significant chunk of the elements / components / systems are. And B) how much more advanced the Xerox system was from the Lisa one. The argument isn't that Lisa (and Macintosh, by proxy) were a direct copy of the Xerox system. It's that by Apple's own arguments against Microsoft in court, the similarity to Xerox is even greater than that between Windows 1.0-3.1 and early Macintosh versions. The context of the argument matters, it doesn't exist in isolation. It's not like one day people just decided Apple plagiarized Macintosh.
    - rbanffy 3y ago
      I have to add that the Star is quite clunky when compared to the Lisa (and the Mac). For instance, you'd need to select an icon and press the "Copy" key on the keyboard in order to copy it to another folder (rather than just dragging it like the Lisa, and later Mac did). Same for moving files. You also couldn't directly edit a file stored in a floppy - floppies were strictly for moving data to other computers. IIRC, you couldn't even drag a window to another place on the screen, or drag the lower-right corner to resize it.
aworks 3y ago
Hmm. Versus Apple II/III, detached keyboard, built-in display, and mouse. I also like "Imagine two posters next fall, the first appearing In retail dealers and Sears"
demondemidi 3y ago
Kind of amazing that I'm working on new product plans right now and they still look exactly the same. The #s are 1,000-10,000x higher (quantity and dollars), but the concerns are still the same.
- WillAdams 3y ago
  I really wish that some company somewhere would just accept a couple of interface options and form-factors and promise to keep them available over the long-haul and be successful with it (and that one of their designs would include a Wacom EMR stylus). The Samsung Galaxy Book 12 was about perfect for me, but when I finally had to look for a replacement there weren't any running Windows, so I had to move up to a Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 (which interestingly, its replacement seems to use the same case).
camkego 3y ago
The last PDF page is a play on the Paul Masson and Orson Welles wine commercials of the time. https://youtu.be/5C6EwLTAvHc https://youtu.be/5C6EwLTAvHc The 1978 commercial says “ We will sell no wine before it’s time” The PDF business plan says “ We will announce no Apple before it’s time” And shows a man drinking wine who could be Orson Welles.
- kinnth 3y ago
  Thanks for the info, i knew the comments would turn up some gold!

66 points by Lammy 3y ago

Interesting that the 1981 Mac design was for a cheaper computer with GUI graphics like the Lisa. Originally it was to be a 6809 based system like the TRS80 COCO. Jobs did a high tech makeover of the Mac to borrow tech from the Lisa.

kalleboo 3y ago
After Jef Raskin got kicked off the Mac, his concepts of a easy-to-use, non-mouse-based computer eventually turned into the Canon Cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat
- garyrob 3y ago
  IIRC Raskin kept on trying to take some sort of partial credit for the Mac over the years, but the actual Mac that was made had pretty much nothing to do with his initial concept.
  - WillAdams 3y ago
    See: https://www.folklore.org/I_Invented_Burrell.html https://www.folklore.org/I_Invented_Burrell.html Though, to be fair, he did name it: https://www.folklore.org/Bicycle.html https://www.folklore.org/Bicycle.html and for an actual answer see: https://www.folklore.org/The_Father_of_The_Macintosh.html https://www.folklore.org/The_Father_of_The_Macintosh.html
watersb 3y ago
Jef Raskin's initial idea, I believe, was more of a text system that would have been possible with the 6809. The Canon Cat was a further development of this idea. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat I can't find any demo or screen shots of the Canon Cat system in use, but I imagine it to be somewhat along the lines of the HASCI concept, which had been brewing around the same time. https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1982-11/page/n404/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1982-11/page/n404/... HASCI actually shipped on the USA version of the Epson QX-10 as "Valdocs", an integrated document management system.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  > I can't find any demo or screen shots of the Canon Cat system in use There's an advertising video on YouTube showing it in use for text editing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_TlE_U_X3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_TlE_U_X3c
  - watersb 3y ago
    Wow, of course.. didn't think of video. That video is great, a VCR tape collection of corporate demos by Jef Raskin's company, apparently for investors and resellers. YouTube suggested a short, informal demo posted only 10 years ago, about 6 minutes: https://youtu.be/jErqdRE5zpQ?si=A1kK2FhR9-LhoZIU https://youtu.be/jErqdRE5zpQ?si=A1kK2FhR9-LhoZIU A bit less familiar with it so a quick and dirty video I suppose but a great demonstration of what it would be like to use one now. Essential history! Thanks!
- RodgerTheGreat 3y ago
  You can try out the Cat in emulation from the comfort of your browser: https://archive.org/details/canoncat https://archive.org/details/canoncat
  - watersb 3y ago
    Phenomenal. Excellent catch! If only I could convince mobile browsers to enable the onscreen keyboard in web-based emulators... For instance, Infinite Macintosh has an explicit "Keyboard" that I should trivially peek at. It has a different problem mapping the iOS keyboard to ancient computers. Hmm. Has anyone figured out a way to work around this?
duskwuff 3y ago
> Interesting that the 1981 Mac design was for a cheaper computer with GUI graphics like the Lisa. The 1981 design also had significantly lower resolution graphics (384x256) than Macintosh released with (512x342). Any idea when this was changed?
- Someone 3y ago
  Early 1982. https://folklore.org/Five_Different_Macs.html https://folklore.org/Five_Different_Macs.html: “In the beginning of 1982, the original 68000 design was more than a year old, and the software was nowhere near finished, so Burrell was afraid some of the trade-offs of the original design were no longer current. He used the expansive canvas of a custom chip, where additional logic was almost free, to update the architecture. The most important decision was admitting that the software would never fit into 64K of memory and going with a full 16-bit memory bus, requiring 16 RAM chips instead of 8. The extra memory bandwidth allowed him to double the display resolution, going to dimensions of 512 by 342 instead of 384 by 256. He also added bells and whistles like a fancy, DMA-fed sound generator with four independent voices. This was the fourth version of the Macintosh design.”
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    I wish they had used the same 12" screen used on the Lisa, but in a vertical position (and with some extra pixels from a slightly faster memory system - or a slightly slower frame rate and longer persistence).

slater 3y ago

Anyone know what the "VLC" is that is mentioned?

Lammy 3y ago
I was assuming “Very Low Cost” while reading it but am totally just making that up for lack of a better contextual fit.
toast0 3y ago
I think that's what became the Apple IIe. From this plan, the VLC seems very associated with the Apple II, and Wikipedia has a compatible timeline in the History section of the Apple IIe page[1]: > In September 1981 InfoWorld reported—below the PC's announcement—that Apple was secretly developing three new computers "to be ready for release within a year": Lisa, Macintosh, and "Diana". Describing the last as a software-compatible Apple II replacement [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe
- toast0 3y ago
  This page [1] suggests it's the IIc though. [1] https://www.apple2history.org/history/ah08/ https://www.apple2history.org/history/ah08/

webwielder2 3y ago

> 4. Is our schedule realistic? No. No it is not.

karmakaze 3y ago

The ~(Xerox)~ notice gave me a chuckle as that's what the Macintosh is of the demo Steve Jobs saw at Xerox PARC.

wk_end 3y ago
Jobs and co. no doubt took inspiration from Xerox PARC but I think the narrative that they just copied the Alto or the Star is a bit ahistorical and does the Macintosh team a disservice. If you sit down with each of them, it quickly becomes apparent just how much work went into making the Macintosh’s iteration of the GUI friendly and intuitive compared to Xerox’s drafts - to say nothing of the accomplishment of squeezing it into a desktop micro.
- deaddodo 3y ago
  Firstly the comparison should be Lisa to Alto/Star, Macintosh is a degree removed. That being said, I've sat down with both and it's pretty clear both A) how very similar a significant chunk of the elements / components / systems are. And B) how much more advanced the Xerox system was from the Lisa one. The argument isn't that Lisa (and Macintosh, by proxy) were a direct copy of the Xerox system. It's that by Apple's own arguments against Microsoft in court, the similarity to Xerox is even greater than that between Windows 1.0-3.1 and early Macintosh versions. The context of the argument matters, it doesn't exist in isolation. It's not like one day people just decided Apple plagiarized Macintosh.
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    I have to add that the Star is quite clunky when compared to the Lisa (and the Mac). For instance, you'd need to select an icon and press the "Copy" key on the keyboard in order to copy it to another folder (rather than just dragging it like the Lisa, and later Mac did). Same for moving files. You also couldn't directly edit a file stored in a floppy - floppies were strictly for moving data to other computers. IIRC, you couldn't even drag a window to another place on the screen, or drag the lower-right corner to resize it.

aworks 3y ago

Hmm. Versus Apple II/III, detached keyboard, built-in display, and mouse. I also like "Imagine two posters next fall, the first appearing In retail dealers and Sears"

demondemidi 3y ago

Kind of amazing that I'm working on new product plans right now and they still look exactly the same. The #s are 1,000-10,000x higher (quantity and dollars), but the concerns are still the same.

WillAdams 3y ago
I really wish that some company somewhere would just accept a couple of interface options and form-factors and promise to keep them available over the long-haul and be successful with it (and that one of their designs would include a Wacom EMR stylus). The Samsung Galaxy Book 12 was about perfect for me, but when I finally had to look for a replacement there weren't any running Windows, so I had to move up to a Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 (which interestingly, its replacement seems to use the same case).

camkego 3y ago

The last PDF page is a play on the Paul Masson and Orson Welles wine commercials of the time. https://youtu.be/5C6EwLTAvHc https://youtu.be/5C6EwLTAvHc The 1978 commercial says “ We will sell no wine before it’s time” The PDF business plan says “ We will announce no Apple before it’s time” And shows a man drinking wine who could be Orson Welles.

kinnth 3y ago
Thanks for the info, i knew the comments would turn up some gold!