Although it's only very recently that I've used a Mac much, I remember the late 1980s when the Mac was trumpeted as the harbinger of a new mode of visual, tactile, intuitive computing.
I know that the claims were partially hype, but it's interesting to see that Macs and PCs, as well as game consoles, smart phones, and tablets have reached a certain level of parity with current software offerings, meaning that it's no longer the case that any platform has a corner on the market for some software genre. It's also interesting that regardless of market share, the Mac Way won out in program design. Program qualities that were "Mac-ish" back in the day are no longer the exclusive province of Macs, but have become attributes of quality software on all platforms.
Regardless of the current state of software design, when I inherited my Mac, I wanted to explore, and introduce my kids to the kind of computing experience that was first made possible by Mac. Reading various articles and comparing MG ratings, I've come up with this short list of the Mac-isiest of Mac software:
- Myst, Riven, and their predecessors from Cyan
- Crystal Quest
- HyperCard and multi-media works like If Monks had Macs
- (WYSIWYG editors ...)
- (desktop publishing ...)
(Very short, but I've excluded famous Mac titles that I don't think have that Mac-ish quality (e.g. Dark Castle) or whose original implementation wasn't for Mac (Wolfenstein 3D and other FPSs). (Apologies for gaping holes in my research.))
What am I missing? What other titles or genres should I try to get a flavor of the heady brew of the original Mac?
FreeHand is on my list of apps to try, too.
