Paint demo is around 42 minute. At one point when Paint was demonstrated I heard a background noise "that's incredible". That's how incredible and how shocking people found when computer was no longer a terminal, but with a mouse and a control menu.
The Mac Writer (around 51 minute) was also very simple yet efficient. For example, once the writer entered the format mode, the options for line space is right on the top and easy to click. Then I thought "geesh, we can't even fit anything on the screen with all the buttons in Word unless we hide them into a drop-down list." I always have trouble locating the line space option in OpenOffice or Word. Having used Word 2003, I rather go back to 2003 and stay that way.
What have we done to our software? The tools we use are becoming so complex.
History note: being the first Macintosh, this is an expensive equipment. The sale didn't go very well because it was very expensive...
I liked how they reacted to the guy asking questions about Mac Writer. It showed both what the mentality and expectations of software at the time were and what a step forward compared to those Macintosh was.
He first asked if it is possible to center only part of the document instead of the whole document as demoed and then he asked whether select-and-replace worked only for replacing equally lengthy text. Both of those questions were followed by laughter at – what I assume – was the demo that both of that was no problem on the screen.
Whenever I see those classic demos like Engelbart's in the 60ies or the first Mac, I feel a bit ashamed for our profession. Computer Software really doesn't seem to have developed much in the last 50 years. We have turned working academic prototypes and concepts from back then into products, not even to the full extent they were perceived. Other than that everything seems to have turned in circles. The minicomputer, the PC, the LAN, the Web, mobile devices - it all brought cool new hardware capabilities, but when it comes to software it was just reinventing the wheel again. The hardware has usually dictated the way the device is to be operated instead of the other way round. Mac and iPhone have been notable exceptions to this.
While I agree with you, we should view it this way: we started out with nothing and so any progress we made back then would been incredible. Now we have so much progress we are just looking at how to fine tune things and so there aren't much surprising, revolutionary ideas out there. And because there are so many tools to turn people's idea into reality (which increases competitions), there is little room for surprise. The truly surprising technology that we start utilizing and making big progress would be 3D printing. It has been around for many years but now we finally start using it...
Paint demo is around 42 minute. At one point when Paint was demonstrated I heard a background noise "that's incredible". That's how incredible and how shocking people found when computer was no longer a terminal, but with a mouse and a control menu.
The Mac Writer (around 51 minute) was also very simple yet efficient. For example, once the writer entered the format mode, the options for line space is right on the top and easy to click. Then I thought "geesh, we can't even fit anything on the screen with all the buttons in Word unless we hide them into a drop-down list." I always have trouble locating the line space option in OpenOffice or Word. Having used Word 2003, I rather go back to 2003 and stay that way.
What have we done to our software? The tools we use are becoming so complex.
History note: being the first Macintosh, this is an expensive equipment. The sale didn't go very well because it was very expensive...
Here is the teardown of the 128K Mac; http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Macintosh+128K+Teardown/21422