“These days we take design on computers for granted, but 30 years ago we were still surrounded by low-res screens, clunky interfaces and command prompts,” Jamie Condliffe reports for Gizmodo. “Way back then, though, was when Apple stole the lead and became the choice of creatives everywhere.”
“This video describes how the Apple Laserwriter — a printer, of all things — cemented Apple as the hardware supplier of preference for anyone creating beautiful content,” Condliffe reports. “Steve Jobs invested heavily in printing hardware, and in turn carved out a niche for Apple that, broadly speaking, remains unchallenged today.”
Quality printing from your own home is taken for granted, but it wasn’t always that way – The Apple Laserwriter gave the original Apple Mac a purpose and cemented its place in the creative industries. We hear from Professor David Brailsford. — Computerphile
[Attribution: Gizmodo. Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Illustrator 88 sold me on Macintosh. Before that I clung to my Apple ][
Though B&W, the power and ease of the original Macintosh, sold me just seeing MacPaint.
Also, Jimmy Ohi, a student in high school way back, showed me his Star Trek game… an incredible accomplishment still to this day – all done on a Macintosh Plus. Before that I was plotting Pokes and Peeks in Basic on a Commador Vic20 – just to make a damn circle… the Mac stole my heart… I just wanted to get things done. And yes… illustrator and postscript WON me over. I could print things at any size and it was always perferct mathematically.
I’ve been in since early 1985 and the 512Ke. But the program that got me really working in my lab at UCLA was Claris CAD. It was simply amazing for the times. And I loved Freehand too.
Oh, how I miss Freehand;(
Miss Freehand?
I use it everyday (MX11) for drawing basic elements much faster and cleaner. Then simply export to Illustrator 6 for finish.
Pays to have a couple old Macs around running just fine like they were new. Even though their status nowadays is relegated to the land of misfit toys and thrown under the Apple upgrade bus … 😉
It still is the choice of creative professionals – because WE just want the machine to work – and not let the likes of say Windows daily fixing and tweaking get in the way of our creative process.
And OSX offered the power for those who love to tweak to do so and for those who just want to get things done within the same house.
Apple understands its customers and thats how they became the choice for most everyone today.
How? Because a Mac will do in two steps what a PC need five. It ain’t rocket science.
Macintosh blurred the lines – no longer did you need a degree or schooling as a Rocket Scientist was needed, in order to use a computer. Windows slowly got the idea and stole what Xerox had researched and Apple gave the world.
It was the ImageWriter that made the difference in the home and the LaserWriter in business. Even as “just” a dot matrix, the ImageWriter was also still years ahead of the competition, and looked more “professional” than other dot matrixes of the time.
Anyone remember CricketDraw? That’s the one that got me hooked back in 1987.
Now that brings back memories. Never used it but some colleagues of mine were early adopters.
I was hooked on .ai and .fh when they first debuted in the 1980s.
In a short amount of time .fh easily won the battle of vector illustration programs.
I thought it was amazing, Apple sold a black’n white computer AFTER the Apple II. And Steve Jobs STILL stuck with black’n white, with the NeXT, in the 90’s.
I was a total Amiga fan. In 1985, the Amiga was basically a color mac. A color mac with 4096 color output.
I’d love to see Apple make there OWN custom chipset for desktop.
Remember, the G5 was designed by Apple/IBM.
So, the custom chipset should include a PIXAR chipset.
You could easily create FAKE characters, with photographic reality, so it’s IMPOSSIBLE to tell the difference between a REAL actor, or a CGI. Stuff like Resident Evil:Damnation, and Boewulf, come close.
Isn’t about time, to have an EASY to use programming language, that comes with the computer, and lets you make fake CGI people ?