alt Hacker NewsThe defining aspect of the Macintosh for me will always be the mandatory GUI - most everything else had it as either an entire afterthought, or at least as a “program started later”.
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simondotau • today at 10:40 AM
And perhaps most critically, other semi-GUI platforms made lesser attempts to demand consistency.
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The mandatory graphic GUI - and MacPaint - made the point that the Mac was primarily a visual design tool that happened to handle text.
That was absolutely revolutionary.
S-100 systems and the early PCs were primarily text systems that sometimes happened to do crude graphics.
The original Apple II tried to do graphics but the tech to do it properly just didn't exist. And the underlying UI was still text based.
Raskin's Mac vision didn't make that leap. It wasn't just about the mouse, it was about the philosophy of the product. Raskin wanted text-but-cheaper-and-better, Jobs wanted pictures and art.