FUN FRIDAY: 1984 is here again

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Ah, 1984. If you were there, you remember big hair, preppy outfits, and cars so square you could build houses out of them. What a time it was.

If you were a proto-geek like me you also remember Macintosh. Macintosh was the first computer you probably ever touched with a mouse and a graphic system. It was incredibly awesome.

Or, so it seemed then.

The original Mac had about 1/1000th the power of your average burner phone and a 7″ black and white tube TV for a display. It took about 2 minutes to start up from a floppy disk that make all sorts of clicky and whiny noises. And, once you got done showing your friends how you could draw a stick figure on the screen, it wasn’t much use. And it cost, like, $2000 which would also get you a reasonable used car in those days.

But hey, nostalgia is always fun so I present to you this emulator I found on the web. With it, you can run an original Macintosh, right down to the operating system. It also includes about $5,000 worth of games and apps to play with. Just like the original Mac, once you’re done playing, you can’t actually do anything useful.

It really makes you wonder what our computers will look like in 32 years. The Mac seems like a total dinosaur, yet we all remember it being super-futuristic. After all, it was the computer that promised “1984 won’t be like 1984,” and we believed it.

About the Author

Stuart Sweet
Stuart Sweet is the editor-in-chief of The Solid Signal Blog and a "master plumber" at Signal Group, LLC. He is the author of over 10,000 articles and longform tutorials including many posted here. Reach him by clicking on "Contact the Editor" at the bottom of this page.