‘Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.’ – those were the words Steve Jobs uttered with his final breaths, yet ‘Oh wow’ is all I can seem to muster up and say after finding out about his original weird plan for the Mac.
Before we get to his bizarre idea let us remind ourselves of what Steve Jobs did to revolutionise the world.
As I’m sure you all know Jobs was the co-founder and CEO of Apple – one of the world’s largest technology companies and one of the most forward thinking in the world. He also founded Pixar before selling it off to Disney, reports Fast Code Design.
Up until his death in 2011 Jobs pioneered the Apple revolution to unforeseeable heights. Now what sort of bizarre idea could a genius like this want to install in his computers?
Prepare yourself.
Steve Jobs wanted to put a little man inside every Mac. A mysterious visual man known as Mr. Macintosh who would pop up at random times before disapearing.
The story goes that back in February 1982 a manic and wildly excited Steve Jobs burst into the office of Andy Hertzfeld, the primary software architect of Apple’s top-secret next gen computer, the Mac, before shouting ‘Mr. Macintosh! We’ve got to have Mr. Macintosh! all the while waving his hands around like a pure maniac.
Understandably bewildered, Hertzfeld asked: ‘Who’s Mr. Macintosh?’.
Jobs then gave a thorough answer:
Mr. Macintosh is a mysterious little man who lives inside each Macintosh computer. He pops up every once and a while, when you least expect it, and then winks at you and disappears again.
It will be so quick that you won’t be sure if you saw him or not. We’ll plant references in the manuals to the legend of Mr. Macintosh, and no one will know if he’s real or not.
One out of every thousand or two times that you pull down a menu, instead of the normal commands, you’ll get Mr. Macintosh, leaning against the wall of the menu. He’ll wave at you, then quickly disappear. You’ll try to get him to come back, but you won’t be able to!
Hertzfeld loved the idea and so he and Jobs went about making sure Mr. Macintosh would become a reality.
They hired artists, marketers, and many others to help make the life of Mr. Macintosh a vital part of the Apple revolution however when the Mac was released Mr. Macintosh was nowhere to be seen.
Due to the implications of early computing and the Mac’s mere 128 kilobytes of memory Mr. Macintosh was killed off and so was the legend of his being however it certainly provides a fascinating insight into one of the minds that changed the world we know and live in.
Rest in peace Mr. Macintosh and rest in peace Steve Jobs.
