Almost 30 years on - were they correct???

[MacDoc]

[robert]

yes and no. :-)

people running companies didn't happen although independent graphic designers certainly increased with lower costing macs and the internet.

[MacDoc]

I suspect given the time the reference was to get the computers out of the "priesthood" and into the hands of the users. There is a long history of the hackers dedicated to busting the locks

	Quote:
	A Little Bit of Hacker History The early history of hackers is centered around MIT in the 1950's and 1960's. Naturally curious and intelligent MIT students who had been exploring the phone switching network and the control systems of the Tech Model Railroad Club were drawn to the computers of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab (MIT AI Lab). The director of the lab, Marvin Minsky, was sympathetic to the hackers' desire to explore and impressed enough with their accomplishments that he allowed them to have direct access to the machines, even though the true hackers among the group had by then dropped out of school to spend more time hacking. Legendary hacker figures from this time include Peter Deutsch, Bill Gosper, Richard Greenblatt, Tom Knight, and Jerry Sussman. This was the ``golden age'' of the computer hacker. The machines were large, slow, cumbersome to use, and it took an extraordinary effort to make them do even the simplest computation. Although this less than 40 years ago, to the programmer of today it is like looking through the mists of time into the genesis of computing. The legendary feats of the early hackers are made all the more amazing by the primitive nature of the machines they were using and the tools they had at their disposal. As computers spread to other parts of the country, so did the hacker culture. Largely initiated by hackers who had their beginning at MIT, the mid 1960's saw centers of hacker culture develop at other universities such as Carnegie Mellon University, and Stanford University. The Stanford AI Lab (SAIL), under the direction of John McCarthy, for example, became the center for west-coast hacker activity. When the SAIL machine was finally shut down in 1991, hackers sent an email goodbye message to Internet as if the SAIL machine was itself sending a last farewell to its friends [12]. Even commercial research centers were home to hackers. ATT, Xerox, and others all had programmers of legendary skill working for them. Legendary hackers from this second wave of activity include Ed Fredkin, Brian Reid, Jim Gosling, Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie, and Richard Stallman. The third wave of hacker activity was born in northern California without direct genealogy to the MIT hackers. It started with the Homebrew Computer Club in the San Francisco bay area. This was a group of electronic hobbyists with a common interest in the then radical idea of building their own computers. Because of the size and cost of the early computers, early hackers were restricted to using a small number of machines built by large companies and installed at universities or industrial research centers. This third wave of hackers wanted their own machines that they could not only program at home, but also build and modify the computer hardware at home. It was this group of hackers, which includes legendary figures such as Lee Felsenstein, Steve Dompier, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates, that formed the foundation for the entire personal computer industry of today.

Cupertino flew the pirate flag for the Macintosh team....


Folklore.org: Macintosh Stories: Pirate Flag

	Quote:
	“It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy” Jobs grew up in the 1960s-1970s counterculture, and it has influenced his views well into the 21st century. Even now, as one of the largest corporations in the world, Apple positions itself as the choice of outsiders, with Jobs as the leader of the noncomformists. While much of this is marketing hype, it works because Jobs truly believes it.

Given the guy's penchant for secrecy it was an oddly conflicted set of values.

[Lawrence]

My prediction of "Skyschool" (Online schooling) and "Online Casino's" came true from 1994.
Although, Not quite 30 years, I know. (Off topic, Sorry)

[ehMax]

Just read that this was was supposed to be the big slash-ad that was supposed to play in 1983, pre "1984-Superbowl" ad, but was canned by Apple at the last moment as being too-self congratulatory.

Can you imagine if this ad played instead of the "1984" ad? I don't think I'd be typing on this website right now.

Pretty nerdy if you ask me.

[fjnmusic]

No one but the fanboys (and today anyone who's read Steve's bio by Walter Isaacson) really wants to know all the behind-the-scenes stuff. We don't really want to pay attention to the man behind the curtain. We prefer the metaphor and the belief in the mantra that 'it just works.' Steve got this. Everything about Apple is about enjoying the metaphor, from the trash can on the desktop to the blank flat glass screen of an iOS device that become anything you can imagine. THAT'S what sells: the dream of simplicity and ease of use.