Macintosh System 1
| Macintosh System 1-tan | |
| |
| Character Information | |
|---|---|
| Common Names | Macintosh System 1-tan |
| Other Names | Mac OS1-tan, System 1-tan |
| Faction | House of Mac, Binteeji Renmei (semi-retired) |
| Lineage | Classic Mac (founder) |
| Appearance | |
| Height | 125 cm (4'1") |
| Hair Color | black |
| Eye Color | silver |
| Design | |
| First Appearance | Sep 2006 |
| Technical Information | |
| System Personified | Macintosh System 1.0 + 1.1 and the original Macintosh Project. |
| Developer(s) | Apple Inc. |
| Debut | January 24, 1984 |
| Latest release | v1.1 System Software 0.1 (May 5, 1984) |
Technical details
The Macintosh project was started in late 1979 and was originally intended to be a low cost home computer, but instead took after the Lisa, Apple's first computer with a GUI, which was in turn modeled after (with permission) Xerox's Star computer and PilotOS. Both the Lisa and the Mac were made for businesses, but the Mac initially sold for 1/4 the cost of the Lisa, and was the first commercially-successful OS with a GUI.
Macintosh System 1 is the first Mac OS version, released along with the original Macintosh on January 24, 1984, and also shipped with the Macintosh 512K which was released later in 1984. System 1 cannot multitask due to the limited amount of RAM, but is able to run Desk Accessories, small programs that can run while an application is running.
Character details
General description
Macintosh System 1-tan is represented as a small girl who likes 1980's fashion, commonly dressed in a minidress with bike shorts, leg warmers, a headband, and wears her hair in a wavy side ponytail. Her outfits are in black, white and grey since the original Macintosh was 1-bit monochrome, but her outfits also decorated with colorful accessories, which references the colorful, abstract box art of the earliest Macs. She wears a necklace with the Happy Mac icon on it.
She is energetic, charismatic, and is always trying to be helpful, but is also scatterbrained and has a one-track mind. She struggles with some tasks, but is resourceful, and willing to push herself to her limits to get them done. She is cheerful, but had lived in fear a lot in the past, and is more easygoing and laid-back now.
Her weapon of choice is a large hammer, which she wields a reference to the 1984 Macintosh commercial. She can wield error bombs, but prefers to wield her hammer. Despite being friendly and straightforward, a lot of people found her to be intimidating, for being too straightfoward and simple. She mainly speaks in Newspeak as another 1984 reference, but it is also to conserve her memory.
She likes writing and graphic design, owing to the original Macintosh's role in desktop publishing, though she likes working with pictures more, referencing the deliberate lack of text used in the Control Panel of System 1.
Family and relationships
The Mac-tans
She is mostly retired, and has been for years, but wants to help out in any way she can, and to continue to be a role model. She has not been able to keep up with the later generations of Mac-tans very much, but they can still appreciate her efforts in trying to help.
Apple II-tan
System 1-tan and Apple II-tan have very different views from each other, but they have always gotten along, and System 1-tan has always admired her as the nicest of her older sisters. She was sad when Apple II-tan left home in 1993, but has visited her more.
Apple III-tan
Apple III-tan was rather distant from everyone but Apple II-tan, but System 1-tan wants to meet her again, and is worried that her own success was one of the reasons that Apple III-tan left.
Lisa-tan
System 1-tan did not intend to compete against Lisa-tan, since System 1 and the Macintosh did not have all of the Lisa's more advanced capabilities, such as multitasking, but Lisa-tan frequently tormented her in their early years. She saw System 1-tan as another competitor within the family who could usurp her and siphon her followers away for being more approachable.
System 1-tan disliked her for several years, and waited for the day of her debut to upstage Lisa-tan and to get her independence. Lisa-tan remained unsupportive, jealous of System 1-tan's success in founding her own faction, but she started to feel sorry for Lisa-tan when she lost most of her followers, and suddenly stopped talking in 1989, and then when she left home in 1993. Years later, System 1-tan was willing to forgive her after seeing how Lisa-tan's time away from home.
Windows-tans
She and the other early Mac-tans have always gotten along fine with Windows 1.0-tan, owing to 1.0 being the current Windows version when Microsoft started writing software for the Macintosh.
In meetings between the Mac and Windows families, if she's at the Mac House, she tries to be civil, but may act out aggressively in perceived self-defense although she is trying to move on from the past after seeing some of the other Windows-tans and Mac-tans get along.
DOS-tans
Of her contemporaries, her main rivals were MS-DOS-tan and PC-DOS-tan, as they had the largest market share and were direct competitors to the Macintosh. She largely ignored the other home computer-tans, such as the Atari and Commodore-tans, since the Macintosh was well above the typical home computer price range.
She had long-lasting rivalries with most of the DOS-tans, especially PC-DOS-tan and MS-DOS-tan. She and PC-DOS-tan still have a rivalry although it is toned down from what it used to be; System 1-tan likes to poke fun at PC-DOS-tan for being so uptight. Their rivalries, are still reasonably civil, just like in the pre-OS Wars days. She is friends with QDOS-tan because she was never a competitor, and she sympathized with QDOS-tan's abandonment.
Legacy
She is considered a revolutionary, popularizing the GUI, and later founded the House of Mac, but at her older sister Lisa-tan's expense for diverting away a lot of her followers, and at GEM-tan's expense during an era when a GUI with icons and overlapping windows were not commonplace.
History and background
Early life (before debut)
In her early life before her public debut in 1984, Macintosh System 1-tan lived with her older sisters Apple ][-tan, Apple III-tan and Lisa-tan. She did not get to meet Apple I-tan, because she was born after Apple I-tan died, and she was often lonely. Lisa-tan resented System 1-tan's existence knowing that she would eventually become her competitor, and often tormented her by treating her as a servant.
Apple II-tan was very kind to the young System 1-tan, but was often away from home since she was the income earner. Apple III-tan taught System 1-tan a few things, but was indifferent, and often reclusive.
Her debut, through the 1980's
She was later given another chance to go out in the world to succeed where Lisa-tan failed. Aside from being faster, she was less advanced that Lisa-tan in most ways, but her approachability and charisma helped her gain the following she needed. She was successful enough to start her own faction, which is still around. She taught System 2-tan and the other early Mac-tans and remained influential for many years.
Despite the prosperity of the Apple family in the 1980's, she quickly had feelings of uncertainty about her, and her descendants' futures because of the increasing number of competitors with GUIs. This references how the future of the Macintosh was already uncertain due to declining sales in 1985. She was afraid that her success was short-lived, and feared her fledgling family dying out, or being forgotten. Apple II-tan kept the family financially afloat for a few years.
One competitor in particular got her attention-- GEM-tan, whose similarities to the Macs was so uncanny that System 1-tan took action against her aggressively, because she seemed to be a threat.
1990's and later
The OS Wars of the 1990's were those fears coming true as the Windows forces led by 95-tan conquered most of the Mac-tans' territory, and the Mac-tans struggled to keep their company together and defend the last of their territory. System 1-tan was traumatized during this time and not able to do much. She was in fear and despair, wondering where she and the faction went wrong, and felt completely helpless.
After the OS Wars subsided, she cheered up a lot and started to overcome her habit of living in fear. She was eventually able to reconcile with some of her former rivals, such as Lisa-tan and GEM-tan.
See also: