| The day the Mac was introduced 20 years ago at
the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco, in the back of the room (on
two fold up card tables) there were two other companies showing Mac
related things. At this, the first Mac World, one company was a small
software company named Microsoft. The other company was an even smaller
company called Colby Systems with a product called MacColby, which was
the first portable Mac. It was built using the case of our MS-DOS portable,
by replacing the IBM PC motherboard with a Mac motherboard (which I
had gotten it from Steve Wozniak in December 1983 when I was over at
his house installing his Satellite TV system that I had designed for
him), adding two Mac floppy drives and changing the keyboard to a Mac
keyboard. The display was the hardest to get going because the Mac used
a horizontal scanning frequency that was non-standard and twice the
frequency of a standard video monitor.
After Jobs did the big introduction, he introduced John Sculley the
new Apple President, who gave his presentation. When Sculley was done
on stage, he came to the back of the room to see what the excitement
was around the MacColby. Sculley ordered 2 MacColbys on the spot (one
for himself and one for his son who was attending Stanford). He arranged
for the two Mac motherboards to be sent to Colby, and we delivered the
two Mac Colbys to him a week later. However, he never paid for them,
so here we are 20 years later and with compounded interest, I figure
Apple owes me $20,000 or so, which I will be glad to take in new Mac
hardware and software!
|
