Reliving the Past
As many of you know I wrote a newspaper column in 1984 with a review of the Macintosh computer which was picked up on by Mac fan boys twenty years later and used to condemn me for not immediately falling in the love with the mouse in 1984 and questioning its future. Some people have gone so far as to misquote my commentary which was simply that it – the mouse – was experimental. The primary made-up attribution was that I didn’t want one of these “newfangled” devices. I never said any such thing and this sort of writing I never do. It was wishful thinking by someone hoping to make me look like an old fart, which might be true today, but was not 30 years ago! I’ve seen the misquote appear here and there and manage to get it pulled whenever possible. Anyone who uses it should be ashamed of themselves.
Curiously that 1984 column was re-addressed in 1987 when I was asked to reflect on the then old 1984 column. After the 1987 column I thought the matter was resolved and my take on the Mac corrected.
In hindsight I probably got more mileage out of this Mac Mouse topic than anything I’ve ever done, which is kind of pathetic, if you think about it. The fabled “My Dinner with IBM” comes in at number two. If anyone is interested I’ll dig up the original unedited version of that screed.
So while cleaning the closet I managed to run into an original clipping of the 1987 column for your perusal.
That was just the beginning of your crimes, John C Dvorak, you also killed CPM Kaypro’s with your “no one ever got fired for buying a IBM pc”…
But this can be said in your favor, you didn’t try to save Netscape…
So perhaps its purgatory, and not the lowest hell you will go.
#20 Actually, both Steve Jobs & Bill Gates stole almost everything GUI from PARC.
I still wish I didn’t have a mouse. It’s a stupid input device which only exists ’cause everybody began designing the desktop interface around it (rather than around the user). Even the illogical qwerty-keyboard is a far better design for most tasks.
Mr. John C. Dvorak –
You need to create a QR code “rebuttal” package of material and links to articles such as this and have that available as a signature on your postings, reviews, email, etc.
Re: the mouse – Did you use the keyboard equivalents instead?
#13 raster – That’s why there were such an increase in carpel-tunnel problems in the late 1980s and early 90s.
#14 gildersleeve – It’s more like one long thread through different media and the pre-internet era to the present.
#19 Glenn E. – Don’t forget the NeXT Cube, the hardware for the world’s first web server which was hit by slow development at Motorola.
#20 Glenn E. – The Video Toaster kept the Amiga line running for a bit. It’s amazing how capable the Video Toaster was when it was released in 1990.
#23 James – The mouse gestures will be replaced by the touch gestures.
John,
Your initial impressions on many things are correct, and worth listening to. But you occasionally do plant a whopper. Meaning that we, who read your pronouncements, interviews and reactions should always—ALWAYS—take them with a grain of sodium chloride.
Your initial impressions can be dead wrong. It’s the same core reality that follows every news story, every pundit, every commentator and every blog.
When you express your opinion, you, I or anybody here is treading water to some extent. Unless you can convert your opinions into science and express them as theories or laws of reality, those opinions are open to new evidence and revision.
I concur with #18, brm. I tried finding the original, “My Dinner With IBM” article, to no avail. Looking back on these articles brings an insight to 80′s computing/business politics and the legacy of JCD.
Please post it!
Sweet! Amiga was the bomb!
Please keep posting these throwback articles, John. You need to publish all of them in a book, I’d buy it.
How did the Dvorak Mac III work out?
#9. The last time I used a typewriter was in college. I began as a professional writer with a computer in 1979 and always filed electronically in one way or another.
#24 tuis is a good idea. My own “snopes!” I’ll do it.
#28 worked out just like MacBASIC
Thanks for posting this article John.
It provides perspective for those of us who were still in elementary school and using the Apple II which was my first exposure to computing.
These back-to-the-past scans are great, more please! I would visit your site more often if you did more of these.
“Sweet! Amiga was the bomb!
Please keep posting these throwback articles, John. You need to publish all of them in a book, I’d buy it.”
seconded
Anyway the plastic mouse is injecting poisonous BPA into our bloodstreams while we hold it and needs upgrading to safer materials.