Macintosh System 1
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| 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.
Character details
General description
Macintosh System 1 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 or shades of grey as the original Macintosh was 1-bit monochrome, but her outfits also decorated with colorful accessories; referencing the colorful, abstract box art of the earliest Macs.
She is very feisty-natured and adamant, charismatic and leader-like, but is also scatterbrained and has a one-track mind, since System 1 doesn't have any form of multitasking and the first Mac has barely enough RAM to run it. She struggles with some tasks, but is willing to push herself to her limits to get them done, even if it means never using a command line because she thinks they are oppressive.
Her weapon of choice is a large hammer (although System 1 introduced the error bomb messages), which she wields a reference to the 1984 Macintosh commercial. Despite being friendly and straightfoward, a lot of people found her to be intimidating, for being too straightfoward and simple! She mainly speaks in Newspeak as another 1984 reference, and an ironic one at that, but it's to conserve much-needed memory.
Family and relationships
The Mac-tans
Although she tends to be childish, is scatterbrained, and has a poor attention span, she means well and still strives to be a mother and leader figure to the rest of the Mac-tans, even though nearly all of them see her as a little sister-figure who needs to be cared for. Still, they appreciate her efforts.
Family meetings
In meetings between the Mac and Windows families, if she's at the Mac House, she tries to be civil and leader-like, but is at times haunted by the OS Wars of the past, and may act out aggressively in perceived self-defense.
DOS-tans
Of her contemporaries, her main rivals were MS-DOS-tan and PC-DOS-tan, as they had the largest marketshare and were direct competitors to the Macintosh. She largely ignored the home computer-tans, such as the Atari and Commodore-tans, since the Macintosh was well out of the home computer price range.
She still considers most of the DOS-tans to be rivals, especially PC-DOS-tan, who acknowledges the rivalry to this day; System 1-tan likes to poke fun at PC-DOS-tan for being so uptight. Their rivalries, mutual or one-sided, are still reasonably civil though, just like in the pre-OS Wars days. She doesn't see QDOS-tan as a rival though, and sees her as a friend and innocent little sister figure to her.
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 primarily as their servant, which Lisa-tan forced upon her before being given another chance. Apple ][-tan was very kind to the young System 1-tan; Apple III-tan was indifferent, but still taught her some things, and Lisa-tan was harsh; often giving her lots of chores and sometimes even being abusive. Her childhood before her release was very lonely, as Apple II-tan was so busy with work, and Apple III-tan was reclusive.
Her debut, and after
She was later given another chance to go out in the world to succeed where Lisa-tan failed. She was technologically inferior to Lisa-tan in most aspects (except for speed), but was successful enough to later start her own family and faction, which is still around to this day. Despite the prosperity of the Apple family in the 1980's, their success was largely still due to Apple II-tan. System 1-tan was plagued with feelings of uncertainty about her future as well as that of her descendants because of the increasing number of competitors with GUIs, and was afraid of her fledgling family dying out, or being forgotten. 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.
The OS Wars of the 1990's turned out to be a physical manifestation of those fears 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 despite her great leadership skills. She was in fear and despair, wondering where she went wrong with raising her family (despite that it wasn't her fault at all) and felt completely helpless. But after the OS Wars subsided, she cheered up a lot and started to overcome her habit of living in fear. Now she no longer lives in fear, has even in recent years reconciled with GEM-tan. The two of them are even friends now.
See also: