The Macintosh was supposed to be the computer for people that just wanted to use a computer without having to learn how to use one.
Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you're doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.
The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%.
Everything that I've learned about computers at MIT I have boiled down into three principles: Unix: You think it won't work, but if you find the right wizard, they can make it work. Macintosh: You think it will work, but it won't. PCWindows: You think it won't work, and it won't.
The grandiose plans of what Macintosh was gonna be was just so far out of whack with the truth of what the product was doing. And the truth of what the product was doing was not horrible, it was salvageable. But the gap between the two was just so unthinkable that somebody had to do something, and that somebody was John Sculley.
And, of course, you have the commercials where savvy businesspeople get ahead by using their MacIntosh computers to create the ultimate American business product: a really sharp-looking report.
I found that I loved producing that kind of propaganda and I loved the power that a few students with a Macintosh computer could wield. I was hooked on communications at that point.
Microsoft certainly makes products for the Macintosh.
The next generation of interesting software will be done on the Macintosh, not the IBM PC.
The two most important things about people on a revolutionary team are their ability and passion. Their educational level or work experience is meaningless--most of the engineers who did ground-breaking work of the Macintosh design didn't even graduate from college.
The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse. ' There is no evidence that people want to use these things.
I think the Macintosh proves that everyone can have a bitmapped display.
As for the Sun mouse, I'm not a big multi-button mouse fan, because I just can't remember which button to push when. I rather like the Macintosh system of using four modifier keys with the mouse.
