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Good morning! Welcome back to the ValorosoIT channel, the channel dedicated to vintage computers and electronics. I'm at Varese Retrocomputing 2024 with Sergio Gervasini from ESoCoP, who is nothing new within the channel, because we already interviewed him last year on the occasion of the other Varese Retrocomputing.
Hi Sergio!
Hi Amedeo!
What do you want to talk to me about today?
So, let's talk to you about those three cars that we decided to bring today, because when we bring cars, we always want to tell a story, if we want. Okay?
In this case, the story is a bit like that of Steve Jobs. We know very well that he founded Apple, we know very well that he did it together with Steve Wozniak. When they started, they made a card called Apple 1 and, well, they sold very few of them. Those few who remained have become extremely rare. The last one, it seems, is worth a million dollars now. Whoever has it now makes good money.
Exactly! Oh, if there is anyone who has it and wants to give it as a gift, we are ready!
Oh, actually. I have a clone card, i.e. replica, of the Apple 1. But it's a replica, in short, it's not the original, that's it.
Unfortunately. But, immediately after the Apple 1, what did they do? They made the Apple II. So, the Apple 2, which unfortunately we see turned off here. And it's turned off because this morning it worked very well, then naturally, as happens in the best families...
That's the beauty of live, right?
That's the beauty of live broadcast. However, it is a machine that is more than forty years old, so let's say that it could be that, perhaps after a couple of hours of operation, it could give some numbers, in short.
But you are definitely capable of fixing it.
Yes, well, we will definitely fix it. This is actually an Apple II, that is, one of the very first ones that came out. Then, after that, the Apple 2 series actually continued: there were the Europlus, there were the E, there were the Platinum. There were some... they went on doing them until the '90s.
So, be that as it may, it is a very long-lived machine, if we want. But this is the progenitor, so this is the very machine from which Apple was basically born. I mean, the Apple 1, yes, ok, it was the real birth, but when they started making money, they made it with the Apple 2.
And if I'm not mistaken, if I remember correctly from last year, otherwise I'll cut this scene, the year is 1977. The PET, the TRS-80 and the Apple II had come out.
No, I didn't look. Eh, I didn't look. I remembered from what you said last year. Indeed, if you search the @ValorosoIT channel, you will find Sergio Gervasini's interview from last year. Last year we talked about the machines that created an era in '77. Here instead we talk about the machines that Steve Jobs created, or at least in which he was involved in a certain way.
We therefore consider the Apple // again the progenitor of a whole series of machines that Apple created and which continued until the 1990s, as we were saying.
Another fundamental machine in Apple's evolution is the Macintosh. Okay. The Macintosh was presented in 1984 during the Super Bowl, and an advertising film was made, let's call it that, which was very particular for the time, called 1984, as it happens. The director was Ridley Scott, so it was also something disruptive for the time.
Because no computer company had ever done advertising at the Super Bowl anyway. Apple had succeeded in doing so. And Apple did it.
Second, this machine was considered a revolution, because it was the first machine intended for a mass market, which had a graphical interface, it had a mouse and therefore it was already all integrated: a floppy disk drive, all integrated to be able to function and have a graphical interface.
And there's a flight simulator up there. What we are running right now is a Simulator: the Flight Simulator. The classic Flight Simulator that exists in N versions and variations on almost all existing platforms. It is also available for the first series Macintosh.
This is also a first series, anyway. So the very first one. The very first Mac!
I still remember, and one day I would like to reproduce it, the scene with which Steve Jobs presented the first Mac. Then, apart from being all dressed up and wearing a bow tie, he showed up on stage. There was some kind of cube with a bag in his hand. He opened his bag, took out his Mac, plugged it in, took a floppy disk out of his pocket, put it in and started the demo without saying a word. It was beautiful!
By the way, a side note: Apple, before the Macintosh, had made the Lisa. The Lisa, however, was an extremely expensive machine with quite poor potential, if you like. In the sense that it was slow because, in any case, the amount of graphics they had put into it was very heavy. This (the Macintosh) was also quite slow, but it cost a lot less and so that's why it started to be successful.
However, keep in mind that the original version had 128KB of RAM, and with 128K you could do almost nothing with it. So much so that, after a while, they expanded to 512KB. Okay. And they encouraged 128K users to upgrade to the 512K. What could be done within the computer itself? No, they gave you another motherboard. Ah, did you really have to change the whole motherboard? Absolutely yes. Okay. But they gave it to him at such a rock-bottom price that practically almost everyone did. So the few 128K Macs that are left around are really rare, let's say. They are rare now, they have become rare.
Another machine with which we involve Steve Jobs is a machine from when he left Apple. The machine we're talking about here is the NeXT, or rather, specifically the naturally shaped NeXT Cube.
Since when was he kicked out of Apple?
Yes, which is always questionable there: kicked out, he's gone... In short, it's clear that, when there is a dispute between partners, sooner or later someone leaves. It usually happens like this. He left Apple and created this company: NeXT.
So he designed these machines here. By the way, this is the second version of the Cube, because the very first version had magneto-optical disks, not hard disks, which made them not very reliable, let's be clear. So much so that they arrived later and retraced their steps for a moment, using more normal hard disks, in quotes.
But in particular, we have recreated this NeXT that we bring here as a replica of the NeXT on which the World Wide Web was born.
Was the WWW born?
The WWW was born on a Next, at CERN in Geneva, in 1990. And on this machine, we replicated the machine both with the software, which is running at the moment. So here we now see the pages that are the original ones of the Internet. The first Internet page in history. The first Internet page in history is run on a NeXT.
Not only that: we also replicated that note you see there. The sticker.
Eh, it's half torn but deliberately so, in the sense that at the time they had it half torn.
But the concept was that when they developed the software on this machine, it was obviously software that had to run 24 hours a day, because we're talking about being online on the Internet, right?
Yes, a server must always be turned on.
Exactly. But since it was on Tim Berners-Lee's desk, they turned it off every now and then.
And then he stuck this note on us that said: This is a server, don't turn it off!. If you turn this off, you turn off the Internet!
Exactly. Do you see today's kids, if you turn off their Internet, what will they do?
And so, oh well, he stuck this note, which was then half torn. But, in short, the photos that show it from the time show it done in that way, and we really wanted to replicate exactly the machine on which the web was born.
And so, here it is! Here it is!
This too is beautiful. Thank you very much, Sergio! Thanks to you, Amedeo.
It was a beautiful presentation.
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HI! HI!