A 20-Year Obsession

January 24, 1984, Apple introduced the first model of what has evolved into the machine I now own — Macintosh. The commercial heralding this event is available here, for now — although it has been edited to give the young runner an iPod.

What a difference 20 years makes in technology. Compare these specs of the original Macintosh, with those of a modern-day, top-of-the-line, stock Power Mac G5:

Macintosh (1984)	Power Mac G5 (2004)
Early use of a 32-bit processor	Early use of a 64-bit processor
Single processor ran at a whopping 8Mhz	Dual processors each running at 2Ghz
128K RAM, not expandable	512MB RAM, expandable to 1GB
64K ROM	1MB ROM
Unable to multitask (perhaps intentional, so as not to compete with Lisa)	(They fixed this in 1987 a year after killing off the Lisa)
Used "Lisa Technology"	No marketing name other than "Mac OS"
Came with System 1.0	Comes with Mac OS X 10.3
One 3.5" floppy drive (400K capacity)	One CD/DVD burner (4.7GB capacity)
No hard drive available (another Lisa differentiator)	160GB Hard drive standard
Modem available, maximum speed: 1200 baud — and cost $495	Modem built-in, maximum speed: 56K baud
Cost: $2,495 (including monitor)	Cost: $2,999 (no monitor)
Weighed 22 pounds, including 9" integrated monitor	Weighs 39.2 pounds

Some things change for the better, some things don't change at all.

Data courtesy these two links: here and here. Current data from Apple.

On a side note: The poor, forgotten Lisa in all this. Introduced in January 1983, it used a mouse as well, but even CNN has forgotten about that.