Mac History 87.02 - The First Portable Macintosh
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This month, we lug the first portable Macintosh, leap aboard the hype train to Mac utopia, join the Leather Goddesses of Phobos, take SuperPaint for a spin, dress our Mac for success, and get a Lisa on the cheap.
This is A Macintosh History: a history of the early Apple Mac told through the pages of MacUser magazine. This post is based on the February 1987 issue. New to the series? Start at the beginning with Welcome to Macintosh (Oct ‘85).
PS. Some images are scaled down. Click on an image to see the full version.
February 1987
Pick up your copy of MacUser February 1987 from the Internet Archive. Download 68K Mac software from Macintosh Garden and Macintosh Repository.
Taken to Task
Patrick J. Kuras is concerned about multitasking in this month’s letters (page 30):
In your November ‘86 issue several references were made to Andy Hertzfeld’s Servant as “a multitasking replacement for the Finder.” Servant, while a wonderful alternative to the Finder, does not provide a multitasking environment. Although multiple applications’ windows can be on screen at the same time, this interface is simply a more intuitive implementation of the context-switching environment first seen on the Macintosh with Switcher.
It seems to me that this could be described as multitasking only by those willing to stretch their imaginations a bit. For now it looks as though people who need multitasking will have to go back to the Lisa, or bite their tongues and buy an Amiga, which they will subsequently have to program.
Check out At Your Service (Nov ‘86) for early Servant coverage or read A First Look at the Amiga (Oct ‘85).
ProGlyph and MacTut
If Egyptology is your thing, turn to page 39.
A conspicuous gap in the font world has been filled with the arrival of ProGlyph, the program that brings ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to your Macintosh.
If you take a somewhat more casual approach to Egyptology (you used to wear an ankh back in the sixties), take a look a MacTut. MacTut is clip art you can use with either MacPaint or FullPaint to create authentic looking “ancient” documents or tomb paintings. You have a choice of borders, symbols god and goddesses and - my personal favorite - “gods small.” These are not the gods of the lesser pantheon, they’re just, well, not so big.
Read more in ProGlyph: Hieroglyphic Font for the Apple Macintosh from The Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt (JSTOR).
These days, you can enjoy Egyptian hieroglyphs without paying $16 for a floppy disk; take a look at the Egyptian Hieroglyphs Unicode block.
Rumor Manager
Remaining on page 39, we leap aboard the hype train to Mac utopia!
The year of Mac hardware is just about to slip into high gear. What will be the standard Mac in December 1987 will bear no resemblance to any machine currently available or hinted at (even in these pages). However, this Very Enhanced Mac will be able to run all software that currently runs on a Mac Plus. Price? The goal is $4999 list… Low end users will also have a machine (in the $1500 range) with a built-in hard disk, but without the staggering (25 to 35 MHz) speed of the main machine…
We’re only a couple of months away from the Macintosh II and SE launches. Stay tuned.
Leather Goddesses Of Phobos
Infocom has one more hit in them (page 65).
Years ago, when the first adventure games like Zork I and the original Adventure came out, computer gamers were enthralled by the ability to type things like “Get gold” or “Attack dragon with sword” and get a reasonable response. Today’s computer gamers apparently want something more stimulating than a chaste kiss on the cheek from a newly rescued, suitably grateful princess.
Truth to tell, despite the great title, the best feature of Leather Goddesses of Phobos is not the sex, but the humorous writing… It’s easier by far than Hitchhiker’s Guide, and the humor is broader, less British, and certainly more bawdy. Like all text adventures, there are no exciting graphics or sound effects to spark your imagination, just words. But as fans of lnfocom know, a good sentence easily be worth a thousand pictures.
The Adventurers Guild has some fine coverage of Leather Goddesses puzzles and how it fits into Infocom’s broader story.
Steve Meretzky was also responsible for A Mind Forever Voyaging and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; see Novels of the Mind (Dec ‘85). In other news, Infocom was sold to Activision (Jun ‘86).
Give Me A Lite — A Mac Lite
Dynamac introduces (possibly) the first portable Macintosh (page 76) for $7,000 ($14,000 in 20201). Remember, this is 1987. Apple wouldn’t release the Macintosh Portable until late 1989 and the first PowerBook in late 1991.
I have a trip planned to Disney World, Florida next month, but I’ve already been to Tomorrowland. Thanks to the Dynamac Corporation I’ve been able to spend the past couple weeks using a prototype “flat Mac.” It’s been an eye-opening as well as a futuristic experience.
Laptops are very exciting. The portability is obvious. But what may not be obvious right away is the whole new dimension they can add to how a person computes and does business.
But it didn’t look like us Macintosh owners would be likely to see such a machine very soon. While there have always been rumors of Apple working on something “flat,” no real word has ever come from Cupertino. But by bypassing LCD displays entirely and going to a startlingly vivid electroluminescent display, by some interesting design techniques and general manufacturer’s bravery, Dynamac will soon be offering the Macintosh world the option of going flat.
It Takes Guts
Only God can make a tree, and only Apple can build a Mac. The Dynamac company does not so much manufacture Dynamacs as they re-engineer Apple components and add components from other manufacturers.
The Macintosh digital and analog boards, the power supply, disk drive and other components are simply removed from Mac Pluses and utilized in their new configuration.
The first thing you will definitely notice about the Dynamac is its bright, amber display. It’s an electroluminescent screen that will make you forget the gray, dingy world of LCD technology the minute your eyes are riveted by it.
All in all, if you drive a Mercedes, vacation on the St. Moritz, and don’t need to ask what a thing costs — the Dynamac is absolutely, definitely for you. But those of us in lower tax brackets will have to carefully weigh the value against the price point.
The Dynamac isn’t the only flat Mac out there. The Colby Corporation, best known in the Mac community for their earlier ruggedized, portable Mac, have also created a prototype flat Mac.
See also: Dynamac and Dynamac EL (LowEndMac), The Dynamac, a Macintosh clone (DigiBarn), and read Byte’s May 1988 Review (archive.org).
Macintosh Conversion
There’s a long history of third-party Macintosh conversion; let’s look at a couple.
Colby WalkMac
Challenging for the title of the first portable Macintosh, Colby developed a range of portables, including one with an orange gas plasma screen. Learn about Chuck Colby and his many innovations courtesy of DigiBarn.
Colby WalkMac 125 by Bmarchon under CC BY-SA 4.0
Dash 30fx
Created by Sixty-Eight Thousand Inc. and built on the 68030-based Apple IIfx, the Dash 30fx was the opposite of portable, coming in a large tower case at a hefty 70 lb (30 kg). It’s difficult to find much on the Dash, but trusty LowEndMac has some coverage, including photos: The 68000 Dash 30fx, an Accelerated Mac IIfx. There’s also a Seybold report from 1990.
It’s Draw, It’s Paint, It’s SuperPaint!
SuperPaint combines the power of MacDraw and MacPaint (page 84).
Catchy openings aside, is SuperPaint really super? Absolutely. It’s missing a few minor basics, and you might wish for a some additional advanced features, but SuperPaint’s two-layer approach gives you the artistic freedom of MacPaint and the manipulative accuracy of MacDraw, all in one smooth package.
add images from SuperPaint manual and/or Verbum
The Paint Layer
SuperPaint’s Paint layer is similar enough to MacPaint that you can find your way around without much reference to the manual… there are a few new shape tools: a circle tool, a straight line tool, and a welcome arc tool that draws a quarter circle when filled, or a simple arc when “None” is the pattern. The “Grabber” hand is gone; instead, you can get it any time by pressing the space bar, which is very convenient. Almost all the other tools and “standard” procedures have been souped up since you last saw them in MacPaint.
The Draw Layer
The thing that makes SuperPaint really super is its second layer, the Draw layer. If you’ve worked with MacDraw, you’ll know right away what kind of power this gives you… In fact, you’ll probably find yourself working almost exclusively in the Draw layer, with quick trips to the Paint layer for occasional detail work.
An Object Lesson
What’s all the fuss about object-oriented art? Working in a bit-map is like drawing with a pen: each time you sketch on the paper, the latest line merges with the overall design. Working with objects is like cutting out dozens of little pictures to make a collage: you can rearrange them at any time because each is a separate item.
And, if fun isn’t a good enough reason to start getting objective in your art work, consider the “power” possibilities. Programs like Excel, Works, and MORE generate charts that are object-oriented. Pasting one of these charts into SuperPaint’s object layer means you can manipulate the separate components of the chart. Microsoft Works’ pie charts, for instance, are plain whole pies - but, put them in SuperPaint and you can pull out the slices, change the patterns, and so on.
Super Buy — I can really review SuperPaint in two words: Get it!
SuperPaint went on to considerable success. Aldus bought SuperPaint in 1990, with a final release in 1993 that supported System 7.
1980s computer art journal Verbum covered SuperPaint and competitors in Verbum 1.1 (winter 1987), in Digital Painting on the Mac. If you’re interested in 80s computer art, have a browse of the Verbum Collection at archive.org.
See also: Mastering MacDraw (Nov ‘85), FullPaint — My Paint Runneth Over (Oct ‘86).
Dressing Your Mac For Success
Tired of the same old screens and icons staring you in the face day after day? Maybe it’s time for a change (page 108).
Your most familiar scene as a Macintosh owner is “Welcome to Macintosh” staring you in the face. The Welcome window soon disappears, leaving you with that plain 50 percent gray desktop. In the upper right corner are one or two plain disk icons with Geneva 9 point titles beneath them.
Everything is plain, plain, plain. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
You can customize the Welcome message or you can replace it with a MacPaint picture of your choice. And, if you choose, that picture can remain on the desktop, replacing the gray one. The disk icons can be personalized. You can even have your Mac speak to you as it boots up.
All you need to customize your Mac is a copy of your system disk and a few widely available public domain and shareware tools. It doesn’t take a programmer to dress your Mac for success.
The Speed of Pascal
LightSpeed Pascal offers programmers a chance to escape the earthly bounds of most computers (page 118).
TO BE ADDED
Interesting Ads
The adverts can be as fascinating as the features in these old editions of MacUser.
Sun Remarketing
Do it for less with a $799 Lisa (page 162).
The Lisa Professional ran Macintosh software thanks to MacWorks Plus, a port of the MacPlus 128K ROM to the Lisa. Charles T. Lukaszewski explains its development in MacWorks Plus: Making A Lisa Speak Macintosh from MacTech Quarterly, Spring 1989 (via callapple.org).
The Verge has a documentary featuring Bob Cook of Sun Remarketing: Lisa’s Final Act: how Apple invented its future by burying its past.
In September 1989, according to a news article, Apple buried about 2,700 unsold Lisa computers in Logan… The burial in Logan was the final insult for a computer that never had a fighting chance, and it piqued our interest. What had happened to the Lisa between its discontinuation in 1985 and its final demise in 1989?
See also: Migrating Your Lisa to the Mac (Apr ‘86).
APL.68000
There are so many programming languages available to the 80s Macintosh owner. A surprise entrant is APL on page 172.
If you want to see some Macintosh APL code, check out The use of APL.68000 access to the Macintosh Quickdraw system for the production of shadows cast by buildings (PDF) courtesy of ACM.
MacEngine Accelerator
RYAD offers a 16 MHz 68000 or 68020 for your MacPlus or 512K on page 179. Memory is still costly in 1987. Upgrading from 1MiB to 2MiB costs $300 for the 16 MHz 68000 or $400 for the 68020.
Steve’s Blog has a pretty comprehensive list of Macintosh 68k Accelerators, FPUs and other CPUs (savagetaylor.com).
Other Features and Reviews
TO BE ADDED
- Foo (page nn)
What’s Next?
Next time, A Macintosh History travels to March 1987, with… In the meantime, check out the rest of SystemTalk.
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