Design Classics The Apple Macintosh

Bernhard E. BOrdek The Apple Macintosh Many objects are beautiful; many are useful. But only very few ever enter into history: Design Classics eu/t o(tt M~e!Jtto6'/t j Copyright @ 1995, 1996 I The Cult Team, cult-adm@utu.fi Coauthored by Chris Stone, stone@gulf.net @ MacSense • Pt;INT Latest links on August 30th. will happen. With this in mind, Apple continues to be a catalyst for improving the way people use technology to work, learn, and communicate." And if something turns into a cult-object, then naturally the appropriate environment develops: diverse magazines are dedicated exclusively to the Mac, its accessories, and software. Independent fairs are held (the MacWorld) and the product itself has its counterpart in Cyberspace: http://cult-of-mac.utu.fi/- that's the URL (the Internet address) where fans can download information to their own computer from a rich and comprehensive Mac-archive. The Mac, its software and different accessories have their own trade About two hundred addresses exist, offering information of fair, MacWorld. On the Internet, all kinds about APPLE and the Mac. the community of Mac fans can surf through the Mac's archives. No matter how light-heartedly one may speak of a "change in paradigm" in history, the Mac certainly caused such a transformation - from the rule of computer scientists to the use of computers by amateurs. This was a truly revo- lutionary act: the democratization of the electronic data processing by the turn of the 20th century. There is something else: similar to the Walkman9, which made the collective musical experience mobile and indivi- dual, the Mac is the symbol for how computer performance that had for the most part been centralized, was now decentralized and thus made available on the individual user's desk. 26 ware and software. The mutual escalation- ever-increa- sing performance and more and more "fea…