As we approach the 25th anniversary of the Mac’s debut in January 1984, it’s a sure thing that there were lots and lots of changes during that period. Some might even call them revolutionary, since Apple has never objected to making huge changes when they deemed it appropriate.

In some cases, the changes were mostly indirect. Take the advent of the Apple LaserWriter, containing some weird software known as PostScript, which used sophisticated mathematics to generate printed pages. That, and an application known as PageMaker, allowed you to create fully formatted documents with fancy typefaces and and illustrations on your Mac.

At the time I was also involved, in part, in the process of generating those printed pages, although the method was nowhere near as direct. The handwriting was on the wall, and it didn’t take an awful lot of time for those traditional typesetting studios to either go out of business or move to the burgeoning world of desktop publishing.

Now even with the basic Mac hardware, the world had changed in a big way, and that was only the beginning. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

This article was posted on Sunday, December 7th, 2008 at 7:40 PM and is filed under News and tagged with: achievement, Adam Engst, Apple LaserWriter, Classic, Conspiracy, G5, Hardware, information, Intel, Laserwriter, Mac Os, Mac Os X, Night Owl, PageMaker, Postscript, Powerpc, Predecessor, Steve Jobs.