Today is the 30th anniversary of the introduction of the Apple Macintosh. It may not come as surprise to many readers of this blog that your blogger has been a Mac user from the very beginning. We decided to buy a Mac when they first came out 30 years ago, but could not actually get one until March 17. That day was St. Patrick’s Day as well as the start of Purim in the evening. To see if the new computer and printer were as easy to use as they promised, we set them up and tried to design and print place cards for people who were coming to dinner at our house that night. For the unusual confluence of holidays we designed the cards with each person’s name and a shamrock and a 3-cornered hat (associated with the evil Haman in the Book of Esther). Amazingly we finished the set up, design, and printing in about an hour and proceeded with the rest of the dinner preparation - the original Mac was that easy!

In the Vic Hayes presentation in previous post and the 2011 Steve Jobs memorial post we document how Apple played a key role in making Wi-Fi a ubiquitous service, more than the radio LAN for cash registers that was an original goal. Thus the Apple design philosophy of easily approachable technology also has had a key impact on the wireless industry - resulting in the cellular industry’s love/hate relationship with unlicensed spectrum and their codependency with it.

Below is a link to NPR’s excellent discussion today of the anniversary and interviews with members of the original team.

Tags: Wi-Fi History