No authors specified.
I bought a remaindered copy of this book for a few dollars a few years after it came out. I was in ninth grade. The book wasn’t very relevant to the zeitgeist at the time. Steve Jobs was out at Apple, and Macintosh computers had become a bit of a joke.
It’s hard to overstate how much the book meant to me. It’s a great example of storytelling and mythmaking. Levy tells the story of the Macintosh’s creation as something between a heist and a superhero origin story. As a young teeneager, I love reading about adults who acted creative and playful in the real world: creating weird Easter eggs (like the elusive “Mr. Macintosh” who would randomly appear on the screen, wave, and disappear), or the way the Macintosh team all put their signatures on the inside of the computer’s casing.
I also loved that there were so many different colorful characters involved. I think Levy benefited from writing at a time when Steve Jobs’ star wasn’t shining quite so bright, so others were easier to see. I learned about Jef Raskin, the originator of the Macintosh project who hated any interface with a computer mouse. I learned about Andy Hertzfield, who grew up in the same Philadelphia suburbs that I did, and who injected the Macintosh with his playful spirit. And Alan Kay, who penned the philosophy underpinning the whole effort. As Levy wrote: “Very full tools transform their culture. The Macintosh is one of them.”
After reading the book, I became obsessed with trying to get my hands on a Mac of my own. I eventually landed a Macintosh Classic, which had the advantage of being the same form factor as the venerated original, but slightly more functional. True, it couldn’t run the latest software, and its 9-inch black and white screen clearly belonged to a bygone era. But I loved the chime it made when I turned it on, and the elegant grace of its interface.
I still use a Mac today, and marvel at the ways that the original Macintosh team’s vision reverberates in my daily experience of clicking icons, moving windows, and generally mediating my experience of working forty years after the first smiley Mac appeared on that little white screen.