Today marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the Apple Macintosh, first launched on January 24, 1984. In celebration of the Mac’s birthday, the Folon Foundation shared an intriguing story. Steve Jobs had once enlisted Belgian artist Jean-Michel Folon to design an illustrated character.
This character, known as Mr. Macintosh or Mac Man, was intended to “live” within each machine and occasionally surprise the owner.
Andy Hertzfeld, a designer for the Mac, reminisced about hearing Steve Jobs introduce the concept in 1982, stating:
Mr. Macintosh is a mysterious little man who lives inside each Macintosh. He pops up every once in a while, when you least expect it, and then winks at you and disappears again. It will be so quick that you won’t be sure if you saw him or not. We’ll plant references in the manuals to the legend of Mr. Macintosh, and no one will know if he’s real or not.
It would be another few months before Folon entered the picture, Hertzfeld wrote.
“The software team was swamped with more essential work, so we deferred implementing Mr. Macintosh for a while.” But after meeting Folon, “whose work was imbued with a humorous, playfully profound sensibility that [Steve Jobs] thought would be perfect for Mr. Macintosh,” Apple’s co-founder invited the artist to “visit the Mac team in Cupertino for a demo and a potential commission.”
The project ultimately did not proceed, but as Hertzfeld noted, this was not due to a lack of synergy between Folon and Apple.
“Folon seemed fascinated by the embryonic Macintosh” he saw in 1982, and visited Cupertino again in the spring of 1983 to show his sketches to the team. But Apple eventually had to abandon its ambitions for Mr. Macintosh “due to the scarcity of ROM, disk space and development time.”
However, it is still a great tidbit of Mac history that also makes for highly desirable collectibles, such as the buttons that Apple made out of some of Folon’s drawings and gave away at trade shows, a Mac poster of his, or this once-auctioned letter showing that he and Jobs remained friendly.
As expected, these items are quite rare, but you might find some solace in exploring the links and images provided.
