MacKozer

25 years ago, the IT reality in communistic Poland (25th anniversary of Macs)

Posted on January 21, 2009 by admin

Recently MacWorld started to publish articles about the 25th anniversary of Macintosh that is due to be this Saturday 24th January. 25 years ago first Macs were born in the Cupertino. At the same time Poland was in the middle of the worst economical crisis after the 2nd World War. The Martial Law had been just canceled couple of months before and the state was ruled by the communistic army regime, being a satellite state of the Soviet Union (but Poland was never a part of the SU which is mistakenly and commonly taken for sure). In 1984 – the Orwell’s year – there was nothing in the shops, just a vinegar. Everything was rationed and available only via the special system of coupons that were the second legal tender aside of the Polish Zloty. The black market was on rise and the queues was the important part of the daily life of almost every citizen of the state (apart of the prominent members of communist party). The only places of wealth where the Dollar Shops (Pewex) both groceries, electronics, toys and cosmetics. Poland was also a part of COCOM embargo (Reagan’s embargo of export new technologies to the so called Soviet Countries). There was no new technologies to be imported to Poland using the legal means. Computers were traffic to Poland avoiding both West German and Polish custom officers at the borders. At that time just introduced Macs were rather unknown in Poland and most of us had rather limited access to the 8bit machines like ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 (or in some cases Amstrad Schneider CPC 464/6128). The first Macs aif there was any – were used along with PCs rather in the state companies (all of them were owned by the state). In the big communistic estates of concrete block houses started to appear the places with arcade machines. I spent a fortune on the games like Moon Patrol, Donkey Kong, Commando, 1942 or Defender. In 1986 I got my first computer Atari 65 XE, by that time Macs were still rare and unavailable. At the end of communist era they probably stared to appear in the DTP sector and in the newspapers editors’ offices. One of the friends of my friend, who is a graphic designer and artist, sold the apartment to buy a PowerMac. It was in the middle of Nineteen nineties.

Today, reading the articles about Mac’s 25th anniversary I have just grabbed the old book “Komputery Osobiste“, published in 1986, that was a compendium of knowledge about the computer manufacturers, brands, specifications and the description of the whole available systems and operating systems. Here are some shots of the pages about Macs and the parts of the system. There is more in that book, actually the descriptions of the software are based on the applications available in the classic Mac. The author was probably a MacUser, one of a few in Poland at that time…