Vratislav Holub Today, 17 years have passed since the Velvet Revolution, which took place on November 1989, 32. Although 3 decades may not seem like a very long time, it is diametrically different in the case of technology. Technologies are developing at an incredible pace. After all, this can be observed, for example, even on not-so-old iPhones or Macs. Please try to compare, for example, an iPhone 6S and a MacBook Pro (2015) with today's iPhone 13 and Macs with an M1 chip. But how was technology in 1989 and what did Apple offer then?
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Amaya Toman A short trip to history
Internet and computers
Before we look at what a gem Apple showed off in 1989, let's look at the technology of the earlier era in general. It is necessary to point out that personal computers were still in their infancy and people could only dream of the Internet of today's dimensions. Even so, we must point out that it was in this year that the British scientist Tim Berners-Lee, who was then working for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, created the so-called World Wide Web, or WWW, in the laboratories there. This was the beginning of today's Internet. It is also interesting that the first WWW page it ran on the scientist's NeXT computer. It was this company, NeXT Computer, that Steve Jobs founded after being fired from Apple in 1985.
So we have a rough overview of the form of "personal" computers at that time. Looking at the price, however, it is clear to us that these were definitely not quite ordinary household machines. After all, the NeXT company aimed primarily at the education segment, and thus computers were for the time being only used for research in various institutions and universities. Just for the sake of interest, it doesn't hurt to mention that in 1989 the extremely popular company Intel introduced the 486DX processor. These were important mainly due to the support of multitasking and the incredible number of transistors - there were even over a million of them. But an interesting contrast can be seen when comparing it with the latest chip from Apple, the M1 Max from the Apple Silicon series, which offers 57 billion. The Intel processor thus offered only 0,00175% of what today's chip from Apple offers.
Mobile Phones
In 1989, cell phones were understandably not in the best shape either. With a bit of exaggeration, it could be said that they practically did not exist for ordinary people at the time, and it was thus a relatively distant future. The main pioneer was the American company Motorola. In April 1989, she introduced the Motorola MicroTAC phone, which thus became the first mobile and at the same time a flip phone at all. By the standards of the time, it was a really small device. It measured only 9″ and weighed just under 350 grams. Even so, we could call this model a "brick" today, since for example the current iPhone 13 Pro Max, which may be too big and heavy for some, weighs "only" 238 grams.
Motorola MicroTAC (1989)
What Apple offered during the Velvet Revolution
In the same year, when the Velvet Revolution took place in our country, Apple started selling three new computers and alongside them, for example, the Apple Modem 2400 modem and three monitors. Undoubtedly, the most interesting is the Macintosh Portable computer, which can be seen as the predecessor of the popular PowerBooks. Unlike the Portable model, however, these resembled the shape of today's laptops and were truly mobile.
Macintosh Portable
The Macintosh Portable, which you can view in the gallery above, was Apple's first portable computer, but it wasn't exactly ideal. The weight of this model was 7,25 kilograms, which, admit it yourself, you would not want to carry around often. Even some of today's computer builds can be quite a bit lighter. In the final, however, one could turn a blind eye to the weight. The price was a bit worse. Apple charged $7 for this computer, which would be roughly $300 in today's money. Today, a Macintosh Portable would cost you almost 14 crowns. The device was not exactly successful twice in the final either.
Apple news from 1989:
- Macintosh SE/30
- Macintosh IIcx
- Apple Two Page Monochrome Monitor
- Apple Macintosh Portrait Display
- Apple High-Resolution Monochrome Display
- Apple Modem 2400
- Macintosh SE FDHD
- Apple FDHD SuperDrive
- Macintosh IIci
- Macintosh Portable
- Apple IIGS (1 MB, ROM 3)
In addition, Apple was still 9 years from the introduction of the popular iMac G3, 11 years from the first iPod, 16 years from the first Mac mini and 18 years from the now legendary iPhone, which brought a revolution in the field of smartphones. If you are interested in a complete timeline that shows the introduction of all presented Apple devices, then you should definitely not miss it perfectly crafted scheme by TitleMax.
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Pavel Jelic 