The revolution started in 1984. No, not the ominous date of George Orwell's dystopian world — the creation of the first Macintosh computer by a company called Apple.
Since the company's boisterous introduction into the world of personal computers, Mac has been a major player in the technology industry. The computer's 30-year anniversary falls this year on Jan. 24, and we're feeling nostalgic. We plumbed through old magazines, newspapers and TV shows and found some vintage, entertaining reviews of old Mac products.
See also: The Mac Turns 30: Inside the Incredible Evolution of Apple's PC
Relive the days when critics praised now ancient computing systems, and laugh as old reviews proclaim that Apple is a useless company that produces lackluster products that no one really needs. The times have certainly changed.
Image: Flickr, Blake Patterson
Consumer Report reviewed the very first Mac 128K computer in January 1985, and said it was “a computer that’s both exceedingly serious in its capacities and exceedingly easy to use.” The writer also said he liked the mouse and icons, which were still relatively new concepts.
Here’s the kicker: Consumer Report found the space very limited, saying that once the Mac’s operating system was loaded, there was only enough memory to type 8 1/2 single-spaced typewritten pages. Did you feel that? A collective shiver just went down the spines of millions of college kids.

TV show Computer Chronicles reviewed the first Mac and led with this now-silly intro: “It was just a little more than a year ago that a Macintosh was still something you gave your teacher, but now there are hundreds of thousands of Macintosh computer owners."
One of the show's reviewers, Gary Kildall, raved about the computer, saying, “What the Mac has really brought us is affordable high-resolution graphics, and that leads us to a whole new...generation of software where pictures and text are both important.” It was also a called a “brash challenger to its nemesis, IBM.”
Image: Flickr, Jon S.
Critic John C. Dvorak was harsh about the first Mac, as well PCs in general. In his Feb. 19, 1984, review of the first Mac, he wrote that he liked the computer, but didn't think it was a hit: “The nature of the personal computer revolution is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple (or anyone else, for that matter). Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately leaves the ‘why’ out of the equation — as in ‘why would I want this?’”
Image: Flickr, Ryan Somma
In 1987, columnist and contributing editor Jim Seymour said he had a "love-hate relationship" with his early Mac 128K: “Love, because the graphical interface gave promise of big things to come; hate, because those big things took forever to appear.”
However, the debut of the Mac II was a revelation, with Seymour saying it “fundamentally changes the equation for both Apple and IBM” due to the computer’s speed and power. He also said "the graphical approach of most Mac software makes the machine a better choice for a lot of jobs.”

The TV show Computer Chronicles said that by 1988, there were about 4 1/2 million fans of Apple scattered around the world. Programmer Laura Kurihara said that some of the new differences included an internal power supply and a 3 1/2-inch floppy disk drive offering five times the storage capacity, and it performed at 4MHZ, which made it much faster than older Mac models.
In comparison, a present-day iMac computer operates at about 1600 MHz.

The 16-pound laptop was harshly denounced by critics as being far too heavy to be a true portable computer, and far too expensive at $6,500. Today, especially, that does sound absurd.
However, InfoWorld’s review surprisingly backed the product’s price, saying "comparably equipped 286-based DOS portables such as the Toshiba T-1600 and the Compaq SLT/286 are set at around $5,000," and that "many of the available 386-based portables easily exceed the $7,000 range." The market has definitely changed since then, with most Mac laptops now ranging from $999 to $1,299.
Image: Flickr, Peter Surrena
In its March 1992 issue, tech publication Byte ran a review of the Powerbook with the headline “Apple Reinvents the Notebook.” Reviewer Tom Thompson wrote that Apple had “reentered the notebook market with a vengeance” with the introduction of the Powerbook laptops.
The computer's “ability to read DOS floppy disks," 2MB of RAM and 9-inch supertwist LCD made “on-the-go computing easier and more productive than ever.”
Image: Flickr, MIKI Yoshihito
In 1997, Wired said Apple was “out of the hardware game," and that the company's computers were failures because they didn’t outsource their hardware production, thus losing out to Microsoft’s more flexible manufacturing. Wired called Apple a “confusing product line,” that had “little inspiration from the top, [and] software developers fleeing.”
Despite all the complaints, Wired did make this prophetic statement: “Give Steve Jobs as much authority as he wants in new product development” because “Apple’s customers want to feel like they’ve joined a computer revolution. Even if Jobs fails, he’ll do it with guns a-blazin.'"
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