Apple Machintosh (128K)
I have the main unit, keyboard and mouse.
type computer
country USA
year 1984
os System Software 1.0
cpu Motorola 68000
speed 7,8 MHz
ram 128 KB
rom 64 KB
disk single 3,5″ 400 KB
graphic 9″ CRT, 512 x 342
colors mono
ports mouse, disk, printer, modem, speaker
The Apple Macintosh 128K — The Computer That Changed Everything
Released on 22 January 1984, following what is arguably the most famous television commercial in advertising history — Ridley Scott’s ”1984” ad aired during Super Bowl XVIII — the original Apple Macintosh was one of the most consequential products ever created. The Macintosh introduced the graphical user interface and mouse-driven computing to a mass audience, establishing the paradigm that every personal computer in the world would follow for the next four decades. It was not merely a new computer — it was a new way of thinking about what computers could be.
The Interface Revolution
Before the Macintosh, personal computers were operated through text commands typed at a prompt — you had to know what to type, and you had to type it correctly. The Macintosh presented a desktop metaphor: files and programs were represented as icons on a screen, folders organised them just as physical folders organised paper, and a mouse allowed you to point at things and click them rather than memorise commands. This was intuitive in a way that text interfaces never were, and it opened computing to people who had previously been excluded by the technical barrier of command-line operation.
Technical Specifications
The Macintosh 128K used a Motorola 68000 processor running at 8 MHz — unusually powerful for a consumer computer of 1984. The 128 KB of RAM (which gave the machine its name) was a serious limitation that Apple would address with the 512K later that year, but for many applications it was sufficient. The 9-inch 512×342 pixel monochrome display was sharp and clear for text and graphics, and the built-in 400 KB 3.5-inch Sony floppy drive was far more reliable than the 5.25-inch drives used by most contemporary computers. MacPaint and MacWrite — bundled with the machine — demonstrated the potential of the graphical interface in a way that no amount of description could.
Legacy
The original Macintosh 128K is one of the most historically significant artefacts in the history of technology. Surviving examples are extraordinarily prized by collectors, and finding one in a private collection is genuinely rare. It represents not just a machine but a moment when the trajectory of human interaction with technology was permanently altered — the beginning of the era of computing for everyone.