During the Super Bowl of 1984, Apple debut a commercial inspired by George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. The commercial was announcing the release of their first personal computer called the Macintosh.
But was the computer actually used to keep “Big Brother” and the threat of totalitarianism at bay like the commercial said it would?
We went to AskReddit to find out what people were actually using their new computers for in the mid 80s.
Redditor incrementaler asked:
“People that had a personal computer in 1984, what did you actually use it for?”
Here’s a list that’s sure to spark some nostalgia.
The games.
“Lode Runner.” – John-Musacha
“And Wizardry!” – OneSidedDice
“And Archon.” – hossbeast
“I’m actually trying right now to get Lode Runner to work in my PC emulator I’ve been writing….” – valeyard89
“I remember a good friend of mine introducing me to that game. I can’t recall how many levels there were, but I think we made it in to the 120’s? We would challenge each other by making our own maps. That was a great game!” – MickeyRipple
“My father has a Mac SE with a Rodine hard drive that still works and plays lode runner (as long as you have the license disk!)” – stevebri
“Hunt the Wumpus.” – fireshitup
“Adventure international expanded on that if I remember correctly…” – Eticket9
Zork.
“Got my first computer in 1983. A Commodore 64 with a 1541 disk drive and a dot matrix printer. I used it for homework (writing papers), but mostly for games. First game I ever played was Zork and the second was a game called Blue Max. (flying/shooting game)”
“By 1984, I also had a 300 baud modem and went online, calling BBSs and joining Q-Link in 1985. Q-Link would, in 1989, become America Online. But, it was mostly BBSs, because Q-Link cost money and the BBSs were free.” – BranWafr
“Zork is a text adventure, something that would’ve probably cost around $40. The computer itself was $595 at launch, but various retailers have cut the price down to around $99 in the 1990s.”
“You’ll also need a disk drive, which costs around $400 for a 1541 disk drive. The price would be just a little over a thousand dollars, at $1035. You would also want a display device, but normally you can use your home TV if it has an RF or composite output.” – pixdoet
“I loved Blue Max…that was a great game! I typed in SpeedScript from Compute’s Gazette magazine and used that word processor through high school and my first year of college.” – sdtopensied
“I remember seeing commercials for something I think it was called prodigy.” – Jolly-Idea-5079
“At the time the big, national online services were Q-Link, Compuserve, and Prodigy.”
“Soon after there was also GEnie, which I joined and where I discovered Babylon 5 since Joe Straczynski was a GEnie member and was talking about the show as he created it and filmed the pilot. That was a lot of fun…” – BranWafr
The bulletin boards.
“Games, using bulletin boards.” – SlimChiply
“That’s about all there was then. Oh, and learning how to write code.” – jcpmojo
Writing you own software package.
“Games mostly. But I also wrote a bowling league software package my dad used for around 8 years! Trs-80, Coco 3, Commodore 64.” – hagemeyp
“Yeah, I had my trash-80 as well. But it was a real computer. Originally has a cassette device for loading and saving software and ultimately hit a disk drive.” – Stay-Thirsty
“I had Trash 80s at school and a C64 at home. And my friend had an Apple IIe. I got to cover all the bases.” – BranWafr
Learning to code.
“Learning to code in good ole BASIC. Playing games that you typed in from the back page of a magazine.” – xilog
“Spending hours typing them in, only to have it crash, then spending another hour going through line-by-line and finally finding one misplaced comma.”
“Of course, that’s assuming the programs worked in the first place. More than a few had typos, and those were the worst. Especially since the code normally wasn’t commented, which is a terrible practice to teach kids.” – APeacefulWarrior
“I had a commodore 64. I used it to print basic word documents that looked like a typed page and spent hours typing in program code from a book so I could see 3 balloons float across the screen in different directions.” – Dapper-Dance5549
“I remember when I was a little kid hearing stories of my grandpa spending loteral hours and hours typing a code just for a ‘song’ to play like 5 notes on repeat.”
“It was beeps also. Not atcual music like today. Sounded like those old Nokia ring tones. But just 5 beeps of a different pitch.” – TaintedTruth222
Homework.
“I was in college and set up a Radio Shack TRS80 with a dial-up modem that connected to the University mainframe. While other kids were stuck in the computer lab (think rows of dumb terminals) late into the night, I sat in my apartment and did assignments any time I wanted.”
“Game changer.” – dartdoug
“Games, typing essays for school.”
“My teachers hated my dot matrix printer.” – I_only_eat_triangles
Definitely not that.
“Not porn.” – TheFutureIsAlmostNow
“No back then it was a tape.” – Jolly-Idea-5079
“You didn’t have copy of Strip Poker by Artworx?” – Amiiboid
“I also didn’t wait for it to download line by painstaking line.” – theriveryeti
An oversized calculator.
“Tried to calculate 2+2. Somehow, I got a 5 as a result.” – EarlyGalaxy
“I had one at work as a process engineer for an electronic component manufacturer. On Lotus 1-2-3 (spreadsheet), I had to set calculations to manual mode from automatic. It would keep the machine from getting paralyzed after each keystroke.”
“I was tasked with getting an ultrasonic scanner mated to a fancy new x286 computer To replace our 1960s vintage analog scanner. What junk.”
“Way too much data for it to work. The cutting edge in computers was pretty blunt.” – Apical-Meristem
Writing letters.
“I received a Commodore VIC-20 as a birthday gift in 1984. It didn’t even run on floppy disks; it had a cassette drive.”
“I used it to play Hangman and Galaxian and a couple other crappy games.”
“I could also write letters and print them out on the archaic dot-matrix printer. One page took about five minutes to print.” – filthy_lucre
“Making greeting cards and posters.” – throwawayb122019
Union work.
“Xerox that ran CP-M. Had a really primitive spreadsheet program we used to keep track of union membership, dues, and print mailing labels. Still have it. Still works. Including the printer.” – ccie6861
“That’s funny. If you buy a printer today it will not last long.” – Jolly-Idea-5079
There wasn’t a lot people could do back then, because the technology was so new.
Games were still incredibly huge back then, but the internet hadn’t really started to get even close to what we know it to be today.
So much has changed in the past few decades.
It’s incredible to think we only used computers for coding, games and essays. Now, we hold them in the palm of our hand.