Hindsight, as we all know, is a wondrous thing. Looking at this introduction of the Macintosh Portable in 1989 makes it very clear that we are living in a different century. Jean-Louis Gassée’s rather dry delivery is in contrast to the later style of the Jobs the Great. Steve was still in the wilderness at this time and the bean counters held sway in Cupertino, doing their best to ruin things.
The fascinating aspect of this video is that Gassée actually builds the computer from scratch, plundering a box of tricks to his right. He slots it all together, massive battery and house-sized floppy drives, motherboard, modem, speakers, screen and keyboard. He then presses a button and the marvel of 1989 springs into life. Cue thunderous applause: This would surely take the world by storm. All credit to Jean-Louis for a gutsy performance and a surprisingly positive outcome. Sadly the Macintosh Portable was yet another poor seller and Apple had to wait for the return of the messiah before striking big time again.
Look out for the shots of excited new owners trying to pretend that this monster “laptop” was actually portable. Then take a look at the 2016 Macbook.
Much better presentation job than Jobs ever did. I find the modern ‘walking around, trying to sound trendy’ type of presentation quite painful. This guy looks like a cross between actor Michael Sheen and comedian Bob Newhart. I love his dry wit and he gets my ‘Oscar’. I believe the MAC did well, eventually!
William
Wasn’t he the man that was behind the OS that never was… BEOS?
That was a great OS Mike, it had a continuously indexing (journaling) 64 bit file system in the 1980’s… Only IBM was doing better, and they charged a fortune for their systems.
Unfortunately, there was chaos in Apple at the time and when Steve Jobs came back, it was like the return of the messiah…
The triumph of marketing over technology.
Steve Jobs was certainly a genius, listening to this man is snooze inducing in very short order.
I think you are right about the OS but I can’t recall the name. J-L G is still around, occasionally sniping from stage left.