40 Years Ago, Drexel Made Computer – and Apple – History
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jasoneckert
sircastor
Apple commentator John Gruber (of Daring Fireball fame) attended Drexel in the early 90s and got a Mac because of this program. He talks about it in Jason Snell’s “20 Macs for 2020” podcast.[1]
thisisntkraig
I found one of these Drexel 128K in the trash in Lansdowne, PA, sometime around 2007. It still sits on my desk.
I decided to bring it into my summer internship thinking my co-workers would find it interesting.
My boss, Steve Weintraut (vice president of DUsers, as mentioned in the article), was pretty surprised to see it.
Thanks Steve, for a great start to my career, introducing me to a fun culture of learning and probably trusting me with too much access to the production database.
nthrowawayccnt
I remember those days. I was a freshman back in 1987 and shelled out 2000 dollars to buy one 1 MB Ram Mac SE which had no hard drive. Because I was told, it would be good for my future. It had 2 disk slots where you run the system on one disk and your programs on the other. You really could not do much. It had no memory protection so you ran something intensive, the thing would reboot itself. During algorithms class where the professor told us to implement Dijkstra's algorithm using a version of lisp, it would take about a hour to find the shortest path from about 30 points. Perhaps it was a problem with the interpreted version of lisp we were using but the time it took to process that info was just a joke. In robotics class, we used a pc with windows 2.0 or 3.0(I cant remember now) since we had easy access to serial ports that controlled a simple mechanism. In Mac it was too difficult to figure out. We basically used it to write papers in MacWrite and then head off to the printing center to print those papers early in the morning before turning the papers in. Oh the sound from those dot matrix mac printers early in the morning was just aweful. I still remember when I spend the whole night to write a paper and that thing reboot itself because the pages were too many and the memory was almost full. And I had forgotten to save it once and I lost everything. A classmate of mine had the same problem. But instead of cursing, he just threw it out of the window. Literally. When tuition back in those days was about 6-7000 dollars per years, the price tag was too much.. Drexel's tuition went up every year and could barely afford it. When I passed my last class, I still owed them 1500 dollars. I just sold that price of "super" technology to get my degree. Sometimes when I think about it, there must have been a lot of kickbacks between apple and administration since there was so much propaganda to convince everyone that we "needed" a mac.
game_the0ry
I wonder how prevalent PCs (laptops) are in colleges these days. I get the impression that college students are so used to their mobile phones that they will prefer to use the on-campus computer labs. That's what I did sometimes instead of using my laptop.
elashri
I taught physics labs 2018-2022 (before, during and after pandemic) and the students always worked on their laptops and I rarely found anyone without a laptop and have never seen someone "working" on a mobile device (including iPad). It is hard unless you are taking note during a lecture to use these devices (and the 6.5 inch devices is too small for effective note taking)
So I seen people using iPads/tablets in note taking and laptops for lab work. But never seen any useful usage of phones myself. Maybe that would be different experience. I myself was graduate student during this time and used iPad for note taking and of course used laptop for everything else including my research.
Now it is interesting that I daily drive my work using mini pc with pop os and the experience is very good.
mjevans
I find phones from both an OS and general Human Interface Device standpoint to be subpar for any meaningful form of composition. Humans are adaptable and can manage amazing things even with tools barely fit for the job. However that same level of experience and training with a tool fit for the task would surely yield far better results.
Mobile computers do have their place, but the pocket form factor is at best a window to better tools that exist elsewhere. For my use cases they are primarily a communicator, occasionally media consumption device (E.G. if I'm on an airplane or something), and sometimes good for a quick reply in various electronic forms.
AStonesThrow
I suppose that if you're in a technical track it's more typical to lug a notebook around campus.
But what I observed in community college was classrooms full of desktop systems where the students were expected to log in and do classwork or keep up with a lecture. It was a hassle to shove those aside and interface a personal system with the campus network instead. (No you don't get an Ethernet port!)
Even the coffeehouse had desktop systems where I'd perch to do English homework. It was straightforward to go to the library and find a machine, check out a Chromebook for free, use their WiFi, or must you really bring your own?
In non-tech, General Ed classes, students brought their phones, period. They purchased/rented eBook textbooks and used their phones. I brought a notebook a couple of times and felt ridiculous.
Also, having a mobile phone is practically mandatory for students now, so if you're already carrying/charging/using the smartphone then it's illogical to possess a second device (that happens to be the #1 theft target as well.)
relaxing
> And Apple agreed on the $1,000 price tag for a model that sold to the public for $2,495.
Talk about a savvy deal. And a year before the Mac was released to the public!
sircastor
Even outside of this deal, the educational discount on Macs in this era was insane. Somewhere in the range of 40-50% off.
JKCalhoun
I think about 1988 I paid $1200 (with a student loan) for my student-discount Mac Plus when they were going for at least $2000 otherwise.
Smartest purchase I made.
jsrcout
Same here. Made the money working for my home builder dad in the summer. I still have it - need to check if it still runs.
LarsDu88
Inflation adjusted that's $3,089.26 and $7,568.70 respectively
The modern Apple Vision Pro falls right in between
Quite honestly, though the Apple II would've been better for students!
atleastoptimal
"Mac iPads built into every school desk of every child" -2070 Paradigm shift, TEDx Drexel
mmmlinux
They should really put the correct mouse in the display...
system7rocks
Absolutely awesome. Do these Drexel Macs show up on eBay?
I actually own one of these early Mac128k systems from Drexel: https://triosdevelopers.com/~jason.eckert/stuff/Mac128.JPG
From the serial, it was manufactured in February 1984, so Drexel must have planned this with Apple long before the January 1984 launch as noted in the article. The D is actually dyed into the case plastic itself and not painted on (I can see it from the inside too).
I bought it on eBay in 2006 for $50 new in box, never used (and it worked like new when I booted it up for the first time). The seller said she received it as part of her tuition, but was afraid of computers and never took it out of the box or turned it on. So it was likely that Drexel automatically added or included the $1000 cost to all tuition to make it mandatory as the article abstract suggests.