As Apple was preparing for the presentation of the first Macintosh

Apple is very well known for its presentations. each demonstration new products It attracted the attention of many people around the world. The special edition was also the first Mac in 1984. What has allowed Apple to hold this special presentation? Who was the author of the ideas embodied in reality? These and other questions will be answered in this story.

It took us a tremendous amount of effort and espresso, in time to finalize the first release of the software for the Macintosh. We finished almost simultaneously with the launch of production of computers in the morning on 16 January. Most of the crew had not slept for several days, so we all went home for a well deserved rest.

It seemed to me that I have to sleep the whole day, but I woke up six hours later with a desire to return to Apple. By the evening of the same day, almost the whole team back on the workplaces. We were tired and happily lounged before Jobs visited our department.

"Hey, well, quickly took their places, your work is not over yet!" - shouted Steve.

We do not really understand what is required of us at this moment, when the computer is in the assembly stage.

"We need an opening intro! Mac deserves to have a special introduction before your presentation! This should be done over the weekend, so I could be ready for a demonstration! "- Jobs continued to give instructions.

We groaned with fatigue and could not think of everything at once, so started to work on the assumption of the following day.

Capps suggested the use of a giant font for the scroll the words «Macintosh» on the screen. Bruce Horn wished to represent the twinkling stars in the night with animation «Macintosh». We discussed all the ideas and agreed that we would definitely use music from "Chariots of Fire."

Write music editor was not possible for a couple of days. I tried to recreate the desired theme music sounds on a Mac, but it sounded lousy and Steve nixed the idea. We decided to use a CD for background playback sound design.

During our work on the demo we visited Mark Barton. He was a third-party developer and author of the generator for the Apple II, which converts text to speech. I helped Mark with drivers for the Mac. It turned out that his voice began to sound even better due to more modern hardware.

When Steve heard the generator, then immediately I decided to use it in the opening intro. Jobs insisted that Mark quickly made a deal with us, then the generator was renamed Macintalk.

My music generator failed, but now I had to create a voice track, using the Barton Library. I was not sufficiently competent in this matter, so I asked Steve Hayden to help me. He was one of the authors of the famous infomercial "1984"So think of the intro was not a problem for him.

After all of the demo have been collected, the introductory part refused to work on the Macintosh standard. Fortunately, we have in the lab had a Macintosh 512K prototype, so we decided to fool everyone and use it to demonstrate, as he ran our excellent intro.

Introductory part began with the graphic part, where Mac was depicted in the carry bag. At this stage the huge letters appeared Capps. Suddenly escalated separate series dedicated volume, play with the CD, and you receive the night sky with twinkling stars. At this point on the screen were shown pictures of various third-party applications. Finally, the music stopped, the screen went out. Steve had to press the mouse button. When he did this, Mac began to speak in a strange, but quite lovely tone:

"Hi! I'm Macintosh!

How wonderful to go, finally out of the bag!

I'm not used to public speaking, but after a meeting with computer IBM would like to say something. Never trust a computer you can not lift!

Obviously, I can continue the conversation, but now I want to sit and listen. With great pride, I call on the man who became my father... Steve Jobs! "

via Folklore.org