“As a historic moment in Silicon Valley, it’s right up there with the coin flip that christened Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and the Traitorous Eight mutiny that launched Fairchild Semiconductor and the microchip industry,” Mike Cassidy reports for The San Jose Mercury News. “Bow-tied Steve Jobs, standing on the Flint Center stage in Cupertino, Calif., on Jan. 24, 1984, reaches into a bag and pulls out a rectangular all-in-one personal computer called Macintosh.”
“‘Hello, I am Macintosh,’ the squat machine’s robotic voice says. ‘It sure is great to get out of that bag!'” Cassidy reports. “Hard to believe that it was 30 years ago. Hard to believe that there are grown men and women — working people, couples with children, bosses, company founders and the people who fund them — who have never known a world without Macintosh.”
“In fact, it’s hardly an exaggeration to say that the launch of the Mac goes well beyond a key moment in Silicon Valley history or even computer history. The launch was a watershed moment in world history,” Cassidy reports. “Steve Jobs on that stage marked the moment that the tools of the digital age were offered to all of us. It was the moment that the artist in Manhattan, the photographer in Santa Monica, the novelist in Des Moines, and the kid down the street in San Jose were offered the chance to create and communicate in ways they hadn’t yet imagined.”
“The Macintosh changed everything,” Cassidy reports. “It was a computer with a price tag that was within reach for many, and more importantly, it was a computer that almost anyone could operate without going to school to become an expert. It really was the ‘computer for the rest of us.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Today is Martin Luther King Day in the U.S. and the markets are closed. As usual on such trading holidays, we will have limited posting today.