NY1.com

  28º

01/29/2009 11:59 AM

Tekserve Celebrates 25 Years Of The Mac

By: Adam Balkin

  To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

In the 1989 movie "Back To The Future Part II," Michael J. Fox travels to 2015 and sees a window display of Reagan-era "antique computers." Twenty years later, what was once a joke has now become a reality.

During the week that marks the 25th anniversary of Apple's first Macintosh computer, Manhattan-based Tekserve is marking the occasion by offering customers a hands-on look at just about every single model of Mac ever made.

"We go a little bit in history before the Mac, because Apple was a successful computer company before the Macintosh, but the Macintosh was really the start of the revolution," says Dick Demenus, the co-owner of Tekserve. "So we go back to the Lisa, the Apple II series, and then we start with the first Mac and have a representative sampling of everything through today."

The Lisa, which cost $10,000 in 1983, had a mouse, but The Macintosh from the following year cost about a third as much and is often credited with bringing mice to the masses.

Tekserve Celebrates 25 Years Of The Mac
"You could actually draw in real time. Before you had to type in lines like the opening of 'The Matrix,' and now all computers are like this," says Demenus.

The first Mac laptops are also on display, as are computers from an offshoot company created by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. But when Jobs returned to Apple, there was an obvious shift towards style.

"Apple really hit the road again when Steve came back with the iMac, that really revolutionized portable computing all over again, the all-in-one," says Demenus. "Before that, I'd say they were more into function and good design, but cool started with the iMac."

Tekserve Celebrates 25 Years Of The Mac
While the focus of the exhibit is on computers, other historic Apple gadgets are on display, like the Quicktake, a giant Apple digital camera that is the size of a modern camcorder and has a resolution of one-third of a megapixel.

The exhibit also has one of the first personal digital assistants, the Newton, and the PowerCD, one of the first somewhat portable CD players.

Visitors who are old enough like the trip down memory lane, while younger visitors grasp a better appreciation for today's technology.

"Just really exciting to see all this technology lined up and to see where it's come from," says visitor Harry Allen. "And then I also wonder where it's going, when are we going to see the things that are in the store down here and then just more incredible stuff?"

Tekserve Celebrates 25 Years Of The Mac
Maybe in another 20 years, young adults will float in to a similar exhibit on a Mac hoverboard and have vague recollections of messing around with a relic in the corner called an iPhone.