In 2022, it is relatively common for a new appliance to enter the house. An iPhone, an iPad, a Mac… from time to time you have to renew. But in the mid 90’s the arrival of a computer at home was quite an eventwhich brought everyone in the house together to witness the arrival (drum roll) of the digital world.
“It’s like a music CD, but with information”
A good example of this is the video Apple released in 1995 for new owners of a Macintosh Performa of the time and what you can see on these lines. In the video, the company guides you on how to place the computer, in which area of the house to install it, how to sit for good ergonomics and how to take breaks from time to time so as not to being too tired.
It’s very curious to see the time the video spends teaching a whole family how to connect the keyboard and mouse or to show the basic behavior of a cursor. We’re not even talking about the moment when the father tries to use the mouse by having it float in the air, although there are moments we can better understand, like the explanations of the Mac OS Classic interface or the internal components of Performa.
Beyond the explanations that everyone knows at the moment, listening to the hum of the Performa’s hard drive particularly won me over. It’s a sound that accompanied me throughout my childhood and adolescence, and which somehow I miss. In total, the video gives us over 20 minutes of pure nostalgiasomething that can already be seen even from the very cover of the VHS in which it was delivered:
