Word: macintoshs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...look at the information landscape 10 years after the launch suggests that the Macintosh may turn out to be almost as important as Jobs promised. Not only have the icons and pointing devices pioneered by Apple become ubiquitous -- both on rival computers and on new vehicles being designed to navigate the emerging information highways -- but the Mac has also played a key role in making society comfortable with the central technology...
...Macintosh was the crucial step, the turning point," writes Steven Levy in a new book, Insanely Great (Viking; $20.95), published to commemorate the machine's 10th anniversary. (The title comes from Jobs' typically hyperbolic claim for how great the Mac would be.) Levy, the author of Hackers and a columnist for Macworld magazine, believes the Mac set in motion a subtle intellectual process that is changing the way people think about information and, ultimately, thought itself. "In terms of our relationship with information," he writes, "Macintosh changed everything...
That overstates the case, but there's something to what Levy says. The crux of his argument is that the Mac moved computer users into the realm of metaphor. By making the internal workings of a machine as cozy as a living room, the Macintosh allowed people to feel at ease in cyberspace, that "ephemeral territory perched on the lip of math and firmament," as Levy describes it, or, more simply, "the place where my information lives...
...central metaphor of the Mac is the desktop. Like a typical office, the Macintosh screen is filled with folders, documents and stacks of paper. There is even a trash can for throwing things away. Rather than having to memorize ^ abstract commands like A: INSTALL, Macintosh users simply point and click...
...Macintosh, the medium is the metaphor, and users begin to think not in words but in symbols. Paint programs come equipped with electronic pencils, paint buckets, spray cans and erasers. Desktop-publishing programs come with electronic scissors and pasteboards. Photographs are processed in electronic darkrooms; digital movies are spliced in electronic videotape editors...