
Thoughts on, and pictures of, the original Macintosh User Manual - tosh
https://www.peterme.com/2007/08/27/thoughts-on-and-pics-of-the-original-macintosh-user-manual/
======
gumby
What a great article!

I liked the commentary about preppy white guys. I think this was deliberate
(perhaps subconsciously so), but not for reasons why it might happen today.

First, back in the 80s there was still a big issue as to whether execs would
use computers. Most could not type; that was at that time considered a female
activity. Sounds absurd, but this was literally a topic not just in newspapers
talking about computers but also in computer journals wondering if PCs could
break into business. And most execs were (and still are :-( ) male.

Second, the Mac was quite a bit more expensive, really at the edge of what an
individual could afford (Apple offered a finance plan, if not at launch then
soon after). So they were making an affinity pitch to people who could afford
it.

> Also, why is the keyboard in Chapter 3 positioned like that? Why on earth
> was it posed that way?

I suspect it was to show you could use the mouse and not be intimidated by
that scary keyboard thing.

I was also struck by the Chapter 3 photo as it seemed to be the only one that
could have been shot today (except for the Mac itself of course). All the
others had hairstyles, color palette, and/or artifacts (desk phone, tape
dispenser) that you'd never see today. Even the final shot of the Stanford
Campus has bikes that look old fashioned.

~~~
pvg
_not be intimidated by that scary keyboard thing._

I think it's more about showing you can use the computer with just the mouse.
They went to great lengths to avoid having the series-of-menu-
selections/commands-by-keystroke-and-arrow-keys type text mode UIs (which were
the norm on other personal computers) replicated on Macs. The original Mac
keyboard didn't even have arrow keys.

~~~
userbinator
AFAIK there was no on-screen keyboard, so you would not have been able to do
things like enter filenames and such with only a mouse.

(On the other hand, try using that Mac with only the keyboard, and you'll be
disappointed at how much more difficult it is.)

~~~
pvg
_things like enter filenames_

Entering filenames is exactly what the interface is trying to avoid, doubly so
for entering paths. And it worked - you could be a sophisticated classic Mac
OS power user and not know what the HFS path separator was.

~~~
userbinator
Unless you want everything named Untitled, Untitled(1), Copy of Untitled,
Untitled(3), etc. you are going to have to enter a filename at _some_ point.

~~~
pvg
Sure, at some point you will have to type. But the idea here is not that you
_never_ have to type, it's that most of the time, you can point. If anything,
it's striking it's remained true for as long as it has.

------
drfuchs
The original Macintosh also came with a cassette tape in the box, with audio
lessons on how to use the "mouse" to move the "cursor" around on the screen,
and how to "click" and "double-click" it to make a "selection" \-- new terms
and new concepts for the vast majority of early users. And, of course,
everybody had a cassette player.

~~~
open-source-ux
In a similar vein, when Microsoft released Windows 3.1 in 1992 (much later
than the 1984 Macintosh) they also included lessons on moving a mouse cursor
on screen and double-clicking. However, they turned their lessons into a
simple but effective interactive tutorial. Here's a screen recording of the
entire tutorial - it still holds up as quite informative and well put-
together:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkM7mJrwcg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkM7mJrwcg)

~~~
Theodores
Once upon a time I needed to look something up on my home computer, so I
phoned my mum from work and tried to talk her through clicking on a few icons.
This was with Windows 3.11 and the task was far from rocket science. After
getting nowhere for twenty minutes I discovered what was wrong. My mother -
bless her - had the mouse held the wrong way up. She knew that mice - as in
the sort that scurry around and work very hard in laboratories - had the tails
at the back. Consequently she held the mouse upside down, with the cable
coming out the back.

Before arriving at this simple mistake I had got her to close the blinds in
the room where my computer was setup. In those days mice were opto-mechanical
with the ball, and, under extreme bright light the sensors in the mouse were
vulnerable to light coming through the plastic housing of the mouse.
Connections had been checked too, plus I had managed to get her to reboot the
machine with the reset button on the front. Yet all along it was operator
error, I imagined everything that could be wrong up to 'it must be a stray
neutrino' levels of implausible yet I overlooked the idea that my mum
intuitively thought that a computer mouse was like a real mouse with the 'tail
at the back'.

We got there in the end after I had the eureka moment and worked out my mum
was holding the mouse wrong. I could talk her through the rest when that was
resolved and got the snippet of information I needed - a telephone number -
which I needed for work.

It was only when ecommerce and the Amazon Kindle came along that my mother was
finally able to use a computer. All difficulties and fears mysteriously
vanished when it came to buying stuff online, she became perfectly adept at
using a computer then, much to my father's amusement.

If only I had known of this tutorial back then.

~~~
teddyh
> _She knew that mice - as in the sort that scurry around and work very hard
> in laboratories - had the tails at the back. Consequently she held the mouse
> upside down, with the cable coming out the back._

The original mouse _did_ have the cable at the back. That’s why it was called
a mouse.¹

1\. [https://stason.org/TULARC/languages/english-
usage/51-mouses-...](https://stason.org/TULARC/languages/english-
usage/51-mouses-vs-mice-Usage-disputes-alt-usage-english.html)

------
KineticLensman
I recently found my copy of the 1991 Macintosh User's Guide. It has the superb
line:

"Until you save your work, it exists only in the computer's memory - like
thoughts that are lost unless you write them down."

This is almost as good as:

"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain"

~~~
2bitencryption
"Everything not saved will be lost."

-Nintendo "Quit Screen" message.

------
bsenftner
I was a beta tester for the original Mac, as well as in the first Mac
Professional Developer Program, introduced at Harvard University as a summer
session in '83\. I still have my mimeographed partially typeset, partially
typed version of Inside Macintosh. It is filled with hand written notes by the
original developers, and was copied directly from their copies as they worked
to complete the beta version that summer. I had it appraised around the time
of Job's death, and the response was it's priceless and needs to be in a
museum. It's still in a air sealed box at the moment.

~~~
twoodfin
Wow! I hope you can find a way to digitize it. I picked up the giant one-
volume version of _Inside Macintosh_ from an MIT Library sale, and even
without the rich added character of yours it’s an extraordinary piece of
technology history.

------
userbinator
Compare the IBM PC/AT "Guide to Operations" of the same time:

[http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/IBM_5170_Guide_to_Op...](http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/IBM_5170_Guide_to_Operations_1502241_MAR84.pdf)

No colour, and of course a CLI doesn't need a lesson in how the UI works, but
plenty of technical information.

~~~
acqq
"The scroll lock light comes on when you press the Scroll Lock key or when
your program is in the scroll lock mode. The scroll lock light goes off when
you press the Scroll lock again, or your program is no longer in the scroll
lock mode."

"The System (Sys) key has its functions defined in your operating system or
application program manual."

Heh, it's like it's written by my co-workers that simply can't do anything
user friendly but like to make totally redundant "documentation." E.g.:

"The option --result-dir specifies the result directory"

"The function int getSize( int frob ) returns the size of the frob. The
parameter is frob." (God forbid they inform you what the allowable range of
input or output is, in which units they measure the size or what the frob in
their program means or what is actually measured or counted, and they _never_
include an example of using anything)."

~~~
dredmorbius
That is the worst and most useless type of documentation.

Also the most common.

~~~
pavlov
I suspect the problem is often that engineers try their best to write
objective documentation and it unconsciously goes to an absurd extreme — “I
shouldn’t presume to tell them how they might want to use this function, let’s
just stick to the facts.”

(Btw this is an illustrative example of why you can’t have “news that just
states the facts.” That principle doesn’t even work for technical
documentation! You need some degree of interpretation and empathy for writing
to make sense.)

~~~
dredmorbius
My suspicion is that it's documentation written by people who don't use, don't
know how to use, and do not understand the product.

Fundamentally, technology is _means_ and _method_ , and both point to _ends_
or _goal_.

 _Technology is the study of means._ (John Stuart Mill's definition. He also
gives science as "the study of causes".)

Which means that _documentation_ should point you at _what you might want to
do_ and _how the tool(s) available to you serve that end_. Referencing _only
the internal state of the system itself_ (and worse, at the most trivial
level, as in the example give, which is _by no means_ unusual in the field) is
... perfectly useless.

It's actually worse than useless, because you've got to wade through so much
goddamned mud soup _trying to find information that 's actually useful._ I've
long had this problem with various "documentation by the pound" publishers --
Que and "Learn Foo in 24 hours" type series -- where the books are so padded
with cute comments and junk statements that you cannot find the real meat.

O'Reilly's "Nutshell" series often go too far in the other direction, but at
least the information is (usually) there.

The O'Reilly _UNIX Power Tools_ book, a _cookbook_ of recipes and methods
_with specific ends and goals explicitly stated_ is, pound for pound, probably
the most valuable reference book I've ever bought. It doesn't cover everything
(though it touches on a lot of material), but it covers _a vast range of
useful information_ and best of all _gives you the tools to find out more._

------
foobiekr
this is wonderful. it's especially interesting how dramatically different
Apple's idea of what a computer user is and wants to do vs. how IBM viewed it.
They are coming at it from two fundamentally different mindsets.

a full PDF can be found here:
[http://www.maccaps.com/MacCaps/DIY_Information_files/Macinto...](http://www.maccaps.com/MacCaps/DIY_Information_files/Macintosh_Manual_1984.pdf)

~~~
userbinator
Ironic that one of the sentences in the introduction is "With Macintosh,
you're in charge." and there's plenty of references to " _your_ Macintosh".
Ditto for the IBM PC/AT manual I linked to in another comment here, although
the latter explicitly mentions near the very beginning that it has built-in
BASIC (and the manual for that is also supplied) while the Mac manual never
mentions programming until the very end where it briefly references the
Programmer's Switch and warns users not to use it.

Apple makes it difficult from the beginning to do anything other than use the
computer as an appliance, while IBM seemed to be the exact opposite.

~~~
foobar1962
It’s hard to over state how much easier to learn and use Macs were back then,
compared to any other computer.

I used to teach computers in the early 1990s before Windows 3.1 was popular,
and the main PC apps like Lotus 123 and WordPerfect were impossible to learn
without the keyboard templates that had the key-presses printed in them you
needed to do anything including edit, print and save. Each app had its own key
presses and the publishers fiercely protected them to ensure competitors were
NOT copying them. Then came the Mac and you learned to print in one app, you
knew it for EVERY OTHER MAC APP.

At the time developers couldn’t understand why such functions (and appearance)
were standardised and many considered it negatively, as in “Apple restricting
my creativity and telling me what to do.”

------
malvosenior
Doesn't hold a candle to the VIC-20 user manual:

[http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Commodore/VIC-20%20User's...](http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Commodore/VIC-20%20User's%20Manual.pdf)

~~~
andai
This is neat! Doesn't just teach you how to use the computer, but it's a
complete introduction to programming. (At the time, I suppose, there was not
much difference :)

------
sverige
The basic nature of the instructions reminded me of talking to a guy I met in
Charlotte who was mad about how young people today don't really know why
editing text or photos is called "cut and paste." He was a professional
photographer who took many iconic photos of stock car races from the 50s
through the 80s or 90s, and was good friends with (for example) Bill France of
NASCAR.

Anyway, he published a magazine (or maybe more than one, I can't remember)
with photos and stories about racing. They had to be literally cut and pasted
onto boards before printing. It was genuinely irritating to him that people
could simply point and click at a scissors icon to edit their layout and still
call themselves "editors."

Of course, I listened with great interest, since I'm still irritated that CLI
isn't the standard any more.

~~~
foobar1962
> They had to be literally cut and pasted onto boards before printing.

Well resourced offices had a machine that you’d feed the photos into to put a
thin layer of wax on the back. The wax remained tacky (like post-it note glue)
to hold the photos and text elements in place but let them be easy to
reposition.

------
nealabq
I'm pretty sure this manual was written by
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Espinosa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Espinosa)

Source: He was a highschool and college friend.

------
sgustard
I prefer the rougher edges of the Apple II Red Book.

At times, the prose is a bit flowery: "Computers can perform marvelous feats
of mathematical computation at well beyond the speed capable of most human
minds. They are fast, cold and accurate; man on the other hand is slower, has
emotion, and makes errors."

[http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Apple/Apple%20II%20(Redbo...](http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Apple/Apple%20II%20\(Redbook\)%20Reference%20Manual%2030th%20Anniversary.pdf)

~~~
macintux
That quote echoes Steve Jobs’s comments about tools augmenting human
capabilities.

[https://www.brainpickings.org/2011/12/21/steve-jobs-
bicycle-...](https://www.brainpickings.org/2011/12/21/steve-jobs-bicycle-for-
the-mind-1990/)

------
uxp100
Ah, I understand the "scroll bar" now. Never put that name together until now.

------
duxup
It's interesting how that computer "fits" on a desk very nicely space wise.

I have a huge Ikea desk and some monitors. I never feel like it all "fits". I
won't give up my big monitors... at the same time it irks me that it never
feels it all fits on my desk.

~~~
c22
I just hang my monitors on the wall behind the desk. I'm up to 5 now and
there's still plenty of room.

------
kayamon
> My favorite is scrolling. I can imagine the discussion: “Well, it’s called a
> scroll bar… I know, let’s use a drawing of a scroll!” Yes. Because people in
> the mid-80s were all about scrolls…

Uh... that's literally _why_ it's called a scroll bar in the first place...

------
8bitsrule
What was really striking was the difference between manuals for the Apple II
and Macs. The II manual was probably one of the finest user-friendly manuals
for a computer ever created.

Of course it addressed a different audience ... the users, not the purchasers.

The same thing happened to the technical manuals; the II manual was
transparent about the machine; while the Mac manual left out a lot of useful
technical info and replaced it with the first incarnation of the software-
prison. No PEEKs or POKEs or hardware insights, no friendly appeals to having
fun and learning.

Eventually the rainbow logo became a blase grey ... same shape, but drained of
color. Revealing a different personality.

------
etmargallo
This a great piece to come across. Written in 2007... nice to have a chance to
see it. I was laughing at the part where he packed in a bag and started biking
away with it. Like... wow that bike must have been front-heavy.

------
eigenhombre
It is amazing how much the manual has to explain to a 1980s user, for a device
that, for me at least, exuded a sense of magic, especially compared to the
competition. The office at my first technical job had both an Apple Lisa and a
Macintosh, as well as IBM PCs, XTs and ATs. The Macintosh really felt like a
different sort of beast... and though I've had several Apple machines over the
years, all of them far outperforming the original Mac, none of them ever felt
quite as special for some reason. I suspect a lot of it might simply be the
original industrial design, which still looks cool to me.

------
pwpwp
PDF:
[http://www.maccaps.com/MacCaps/DIY_Information_files/Macinto...](http://www.maccaps.com/MacCaps/DIY_Information_files/Macintosh_Manual_1984.pdf)

------
rconti
Am I the only one for whom every smaller photo (of the first 7, it turns out)
goes to an enlarged version of the same photo #1, and clicking 'next' from
there goes to a totally unrelated photostream item?

------
paultopia
I love that people were (at least in Steve Jobs's vision) biking around the
Stanford campus with macs in the 80's. Nothing ever really changes about that
place...

------
Finnucane
I recall that my Apple II came with a booklet of handwritten notes about
assembly code.

------
kensai
Also interesting that at least one picture is at Stanford University. They had
right from the start the prestigious university student as a target
demographic. :)

------
zydeco
Is it just me, or do the pictures on chapter 3 and 4 look like prototypes with
a 5.25” drive?

~~~
fzzzy
Those particular pictures don’t look like that to me, but some prototype
Macintosh machines had a Twiggy drive. There’s a great story about how the mac
designers had to hide their negotiations with Sony from Steve Jobs so he
wouldn’t get mad on folklore.org.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_FileWare](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_FileWare)

[https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...](https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Hide_Under_This_Desk.txt)

------
code_duck
“The Finder is like a central hallway in the Macintosh house” - that works for
me.

------
radicaldreamer
I like the appendix photo... The bicycle for your mind in a bicycle... at
Stanford

------
cottsak
I still have mine.

------
pmarreck
Remember Flickr? >..<

------
Animats
_Pretty cool how they got the computers to work w /o plugging them in._

That was a Jobs thing. For years, Mac ads didn't show cables. Then came the
iDweeb earbuds.

~~~
jiveturkey
it likely predated jobs by a long shot. i don’t know how far back it goes, but
all add for electrical appliances (even lamps) don’t show cords. cords are
ugly.

even ads for other things, say a desk, don’t show cords of the computer or
lamp on the desk.

