First Issue
Volume Number: 10
Issue Number: 12
Column Tag: The Very First Issue
Related Info: First Cover
The Very First Issue 
Ten years doesn’t seem like so long ago
By Scott T Boyd, Editor
Note: Source code files accompanying article are located on MacTech CD-ROM orsource code disks.
About the Author
Scott T Boyd - Scott first wrote for MacTutor in the September 1986 issue on
the topic of The Pop-up, Two Dimensional, Random Access, Scroll Bar Menu. Although
he credits MacTutor with helping to launch his career, he would like to point out that
this particular concept didn’t make him filthy rich (as kindly requested in one of his
articles). Perhaps that has something to do with why he continues to work, currently
as Editor of MacTech Magazine and Proprietor of The MacHax™ Group.
I don’t think I could forget the first time I saw MacTutor. Or was it MacTech?
Ok, so Iforgot that much - but the rest I won’t forget. My friend Roger had somehow
come across a copy of a magazine about how to program the Macintosh. He brought it to
one of our programmer get-togethers. Joy! It was pretty hard to get any
documentation, much less good documentation, about programming the Macintosh at
Texas A&M back in early 1985.
Now, to understand Roger, it might help to know a little about him. I bought my
first Mac brand new for $2500. That got me a 128K Mac and an ImageWriter. I gave
Roger a demo. He spent an hour or so almost silently watching me give him a demo. I
got the distinct impression that he wasn’t impressed at all. Boy, was Iwrong! The next
day he went out and bought as complete a Macintosh system as you could buy. His
excitement rubbed off on me, and I went back and bought a second floppy drive. I still
remember shopping to buy floppies (800K). Those things were expensive, something
like $10 each. It makes me laugh remembering this because now I consider floppies a
nuisance. They just clutter up my shelves.
At any rate, Roger’s infectious excitement isn’t the kind to stay bottled up, and he
came to our meeting with a couple of copies of this new magazine, one copy for me, and
one for Greg Marriott. Now, these had to be the worst copies I had ever seen. Somehow
the toner had gotten only partially fixed onto the paper. We had to handle the pages
very carefully, but we didn’t mind a bit. With this one little magazine, we went from
having next to nothing in the way of practical programmer’s advice, experience, and
examples, to having a rich monthly resource! Given that Roger was the only one with
money to spend on such things, he made copies of the first three issue for us before we
managed to get our own subscriptions. I still have those bad xerox copies stored
carefully as the treasures that they are.
On the next few pages we have reproduced the entire first issue. We scanned the
only real copy that we had left. Since I work in the remote wilds of Montara,
California, I didn’t see the original before Isaw the scans. I thought something must
have gone wrong in the scanning process - everything was far muddier than Iexpected.
I had remembered that the first few issues were done on an ImageWriter, and probably
at 72 dpi, but I hadn’t remembered that the magazine itself looked like it had been
reproduced on a cheap copier. On closer inspection, it’s clear now that much of the
magazine was also put together using good old cut and paste techniques. This serves as a
reminder of how far we’ve come in the production of the magazine. Rather than 72dpi,
we image at 2540dpi. Rather than use only MacWrite, MacPaint, and MacDraw, we
use QuarkXPress, PhotoShop, Illustrator, and a host of other publishing and imaging
utilities. There’s no cheap copier involved in today’s production; we print on a Web
press and do a lot of four-color printing.
We discovered something interesting while putting this article together. Ipassed
around some different scans to a few folks to see which settings they thought produced
the best results. Steve Kiene went and compared them to his copy of the first issue. He
noticed something right away. His magazine was entitled “MacTutor™ (Formerly
MacTech)” while our copy read “COMPUtutor’s MacTech”. Both were clearly labeled
Vol. 1 No. 1. There’s a story in there somewhere about a company called Machine
Technologies, but we’ll leave that for someone else to tell. One thing has definitely
changed during the past decade. Our masthead now reads “MacTech Magazine
(Formerly MacTutor)”, bringing us full circle.
The first issue was twenty pages, and carried only a couple of ads, all for the
magazine itself. By the following December, it had grown to s eventy two pages, and
was carried in stores in twenty nine states as well as West Germany, Japan, and
Sweden. In addition, thirty two advertisers came on board in that first year. Some of
those names you’ll see are still with us as regular advertisers (e.g. MacNosy and
Mainstay). Many are still writing and selling Macintosh software, including Alsoft,
Capilano Computing, and FWB. Some have faded into fond memories.
The first issue rang in the beginning of the era of programming on the Macintosh
for the Macintosh. Prior to this, just about all Mac programming had been done on the
Lisa. We’ve watched such an event pass before us again this year. Last year, about the
only way to program a Power Macintosh was on an IBM unix box. Power Mac
programmers rang in the new year with Code Warrior, a programming environment
for the Power Macintosh on the Macintosh (Power and 68K).
We’re not using 128K Macs with a single (singing) floppy and no hard drive any
more, although there are undoubtedly those among us who still scrape and save to buy
those necessary supplies. The complexity and sophistication of most of our tools have
increased dramatically, but here we are, still programming and learning about a
machine we call Macintosh.
Many things have changed in the realm of Macintosh programming over the past
decade, but one thing has not. See page 20 of the first issue. “A no-nonsense, no fluff
Journal devoted to software development FORMac, ONMac. Let MacTech’s editorial
board teach you the Macintosh technology of windows, quickdraw, events and resources.
We have assembled a team of professionals to uncover and explain Mac’s secrets.” The
programming staff has changed somewhat, but still includes professionals, some of
whom are busy building the next generation of Macintosh.
We hope you enjoy reading (or rereading!)this piece of ancient history as we
celebrate MacTech Magazine’s Tenth Anniversary. In this business, a decade is nearly
a lifetime. After all this time and almost one hundred and twenty issues of the
magazine later, we’re pleased to continue to bring you the latest and greatest
programming information for and about the Macintosh, on the Macintosh.
