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Steve Jobs Introduces the Macintosh

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Recording of the January 1984 Boston Computer Society meeting where Steve Jobs unveiled the Macintosh. It is followed by a panel Q&A with core Mac team members such as Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson and Steve Capps.

HN points to it as the primary source for the original Mac demo and the personal post-show Q&A with the team.

6 comments from Hacker News

@willmeyers2021-02 · in “Steve Jobs introduces the Macintosh (1984)”

The post-show is my favorite part[0]. It's just so personal. Almost feels like a meetup! [0] 1:06:38 ( ▶ this video )

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@breck2024-09 · in “The Intelligence Age”

> Back then, were executives writing such grand proclamations about the future ? Yes. And the good ones (like SamA and SJ) deliver. ▶ this video

@Someone2021-12 · in “A checklist for doing live demos”

> 4. Minimize everything else I would say there shouldn’t be anything else. Create a local ‘demo’ account, if needed. That also avoids getting any embarrassing message pop-ups. Also, if your software isn’t that stable and you can get away with it, switch machines all the time. If your demo requires multiple actions foo and bar , demo foo , then switch to a machine where foo was done beforehand to demo how bar works. Look at some of Steve Jobs’ demos and try figuring out how many machines they used to demo some of the prerelease software. Also, don’t be afraid to cheat. For example, when seeing the copy-paste demo in ▶ this video , I immediately thought “that copy of MacWrite is rigged to always paste that fish”

@uniqueid2021-09 · in “The Macintosh Way (1990) [pdf]”

I didn't notice anything one wouldn't expect, given how different first-hand accounts tend to be. Kawasaki is a marketing guy so his knowledge is weaker than an engineer's in many areas; stronger in a few others. For anyone interested, here's the demo in question: ▶ this video

@Twisell2019-09 · in “iPadOS”

It was definitely present in MacOS classic can’t tell exactly when contextual menu was added. But on top of that there was actually a third method, select the disk (highlight) and press cmd-E. Which now now that I think of it is just a shortcut for the fourth one, select the disk then select "Eject" in the file menu. Actually this last method must be the mother of them all, the drag to trash was also maybe one of the first "discoverable shortcut". It’s just that "drag to the trashcan" gimmick was present since first Macintosh introduction keynote in 1984 and is still usable as of today so no surprise it’s the first answer on every Q/A. I can’t yet skim through the footage but it might even appear in the 1984 LIVE DEMO (more emphasis needed) of the first Macintosh : ▶ this video