The Computer Chronicles - Computer Ergonomics (1984) 

One of the reasons why I love watching this show is that I learn about the pioneers of the computer world. Never heard of Susan Kare before, and now I learn that she designed many fonts, buttons for Windows 3.0, card design for Solitair and worked for IBM, Sony and Intel as a freelancer. Wow, what a career!

Susan has very relaxing voice, i could listen to her for hours.

They don't make TV shows like these anymore.. This show is so relaxing and informative..

Susan Kare also did icons for Windows 3, including the card deck in Solitaire, which remained for many many years before it was changed.

"We have adjustable chairs, but I wonder if we need adjustable software." Classic Herb! Such a rascal!

1984: "We worked very hard to go from 2 or 3 buttons on the mouse to only 1" 2023: "the 3 regular mouse buttons and mouse wheel are accompanied by 5 macro buttons, a full numpad, a dpi selector, an rgb quick change button and a button toggling the free mouse wheel"

That Apple I is now worth more than my house.

So fascinating. Feels like watching people the people who invented something so basic and common today that it may as well have been the wheel. Also, Susan Kare: I thought I knew what cool was till I saw how she rocked that blue sweater.

Thank you for the ASMR Susan

This show is a treasure trove

thanks for keeping us up to date of the latest Computer trends

Stewart Cheifet’s comb over is epic.

The 2 ladies... Well spoken , well thought out, great explanations.. would have love to have had these 2 as teachers...respect !!👍👍🇺🇸🇬🇧🇨🇦👍!!

"without having to have the person remember right or left" -- oh the irony. and years later Apple had to succumb to the 2-button mouse. ;-)

Wow that Susan Kare has such a soothing voice.

I love these shows. I wish I could go back in time. This however is at least close enough. 🥰

Susan Kare hypnotises you with her voice, well spoken easy to listen to.

LITERALLY 1984 . A actual dystopia !

Oh man the sound of that old Mac keyboard sends shivers down my spine. Why don't they make those anymore? I want that sound when I type!

20:10 How do you flip back through the pages on notepad....we'll never know!

I recall the ergonomic hazards from that era. The fact that a person could keyboard words without pausing to "return the carriage of a typewriter" created problems with the hands, wrists, arms, and shoulders; as I did suffer in the 1980s when I got my first PC. I've wondered how many workers in Silicon Valley [California] became dexterity disabled from keyboarding in the 1980s; as there were job postings from that era where high-tech companies advertised employment for data-entry positions; as I can still vividly recall the job openings requirement that called for 10K keystrokes per-hour. That's a tremendous amount of wear-and-tear to the hands.

The Macintosh mouse was designed with one button so you don’t have to remember which button to press. But now the trackpad advance gestures are very hard to remember.

I remember using computers with CRT monitors, I felt a lot of fatigue when using computers back in those days. After LCD monitors became mainstream starting in the early 2000s, I felt less fatigue when I used computers for a long period of time.

Random Access "EA's Archon" So nostalgic. I used to play that game at least once a day for years on my C64. One of the all time best games I had on the system.

21:24 "two of Macintosh (advantages) is that things happen so quickly", how cute, imagine if they saw how things load today with SSDs.

I got ASMR from Susan's voice. I wish there was a full hour video of her walking through Mac.

1983, Xerox demonstrates the mouse and their printers on this show, fast forward one year, Apple is demonstrating the mouse on this show :) Steve was a master jigsaw solver, bringing all the pieces of tech from others together, which they all clearly didn't know what valuable tech they had... Then crazy Bill steals it all :)

Look how far humanity has come, from reporting about irritation due to screen glare to binge watching.😂

Right or left: a lot to ask in 1984

That Apple 1 they’re showing would be worth millions today

I like Jerrys comment on how fast it loads applications - 30 sec off loading 4 lines in notepad - thats retro....

10:18 that computer look like out of a soviet bunker,but excellent explanation by the lady.

The host’s combover is epic

It was cool to see Susan Kare's segment demonstrating the Mac & it's GUI OS. It was almost as advanced as the Commodore 64 & GEOS.

Great ASMR with Susan.

What's shown here is not an Apple 1, but an Apple 2 prototype (the motherboard has no silkscreen mask but appears to be genuine Apple.) It clearly says Apple Two on the motherboard, and has hand wired RAM size select blocks. This is probably even rarer than the Apple 1. This appears to be a pre-revision 0 motherboard. White ceramic package PROMs and 6502.

That Apple 1 was built by Woz while Jobs was breathing down his neck

Nerds of the 70s and 80s were still marveling at the novelty of computing and this is why they chose to sacrifice productivity for the bling bling novelty of the mouse+windows and icons interface scheme. Which imo was a terrible mistake

@16:45 thanks Susan; forevermore I will refer to it as a "Content Mac" in lieu of "Happy Mac".🙂

That screen looks like a porthole into the future

I love watching these series and see how Apple is still a pionneer in computing world!

Speedy deflection during the long load time :)

When I usually think of Computer Ergonomics it is the design of the keyboard and the mouse for the personal computer system, not necessarily the graphics involved on the monitor screen. However making all things more user friendly is a very good idea. I considered getting a Macintosh computer years ago, but it was way too expensive for me to be able to afford. I eventually went with a Windows PC because I was more able to get it and it had variations of the features that originally attracted me to the Macintosh.

Its crazy gow expensive software was back then! $300 for brokerage software, $300 or $400 for a organization program in a different episode and $50 or $60 for most little stuff. That's a lot of money back then.

10:11 - This has to be the most shocking looking machine I've ever seen 😂😘

Good posture and keyboarding position make a big difference between being an accurate worker and being uncomfortable and careless worker. Fortunately, I still keyboard with 9 fingers and my right thumb. I need not rush the keystrokes, even if I were keyboarding dictation. Not only I am a fan and a growing computer user; I enjoy the stories that The Computer Chronicles produced, and that is why I am watching.

Little did they know if be eating watching this on a computer in the form of a mobile handheld device. Steaming it over the internet, and without any wires.

absolutely amazing. never seen technology so advanced as this before. is this programme from the future??!!

Fun to see the early Macintosh as something new and fast. I remember those days fondly.

To my fellow retro computer video lovers, if you ran out of Computer Chronicles videos to watch, BBC Archive has some good ones too. For example, I love this 1979 episode about word processors: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-b6URa-PTqfA.html

1:21 My guy casually having an Apple II prototype sitting on his desk.

using the computer back then felt really special, you don't feel that even with Apple vision pro today

4:56 She was still in the profession 12 years ago. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01449298408901778 12:12 It ignores left-handers and the disabled who couldn't reach over there.

Where the heck have they original founders uploaded??? Definetly not in internet, i am sure they have not make it to TVs

25:11 oh my god, that star wars system is so old as it's not working, or is it now?

4029 colours? Wow i'm in pressed! HD anyone?

20:00 whenever she moves the mouse it sounds like someone is giggleling! It is so distracting xD.^^

20:45 The term we're using is "cutting and pasting" wow!

How did folks in 1984 even get by in such a Primitive World?

"adjustable software" =hide or show the various menu bars, edit the menu bars. Easy mode and "show advanced settings" toggle.

I never thought about detachable keyboards being optional....

Returning to this episode 5 years after I last viewed it (my, how time flies!). I have to say, I wish Apple would have kept at least a second button their mouse. All the one-button crap did was hamper the Mac in both gaming and productivity, and they kept this up for so very long! And even now, they ship a weird mouse that doesn't really have a right mouse button since it's more of a touch surface on top of a mouse, so still there are limitations imposed that just don't need to be there. For instance, I don't know how you are supposed to do a simultaneous right and left click on it the way you so easily can on a mouse with actual buttons on it, and MS Word *for the Mac* has a function where you can hold both buttons to get finer detail when adjusting the position of a tab stop. That's one reason I still opt not to use the mouse that Apple ships with a new Mac.

Not many people know that the original title of this show was "HURRY UP!"

@16:13 this woman does what I do today every day but on modern computers

From when Mac was just a little baby, brand new to the world.

Ahh, the days Karon could speak with out becoming a meme.

This is 31 years old and look at what we are at. If someone would bring out a modern laptop and show them it would be incomprehensible to the people just as if someone brought a computer 31 years from the future. I don't know if we will still be here in that time.

My favorite part was when Karen wasn't asking to talk too the manager

Damn Stewart needed a big math book after that Mac demo

XY thumb wheel mouse. How cool!

Very interesting video!

In 2020 an Apple-1 computer sold for $905,000

I love Archon (and Archon II) even today. I can win from either side.

Damn, Susan's voice is like a lullaby

The "Apple I" is not an Apple I. It looks like an early prototype Apple II. Notice all the CERDIP integrated circuits and "patch" jumper wires on the board.

9:05 Why 4,029 colors? Why that instead of 4,096?

Susan Kare is the best :3

I didn’t realise how good the macs were back then

Man I remember when owning a computer was a class symbol .....around 95it became so every man

8:10 he didnt want to say fat people

Very very good

Apple computers: Designed for the 99%, priced for the 1%.

Wanda is the mother of CSS

18:25 I found Sarah Connor quick call Skynet!!

i need to get one of those keyboards...

10:00 The Computer of the future. Nice brown color, very small screen, weighs more than 60 kgs. Now just create your own python code and wait 10 minutes for the processor to generate a menu.

in this episode it seems like all the guests must have been sharing the same weed.. they all space out mid way thru their point.

Wish i could appear there holding Galazy Z Fold 5

That HP Orion looks like a G3 iMac :)

13:04 switch cameras.. computer starts talking

@10:26 Lol, very good ergonomics example of what NOT to do! @11:33 OMG talking about making your text hard to read and causing eye strain :D

Karen is my cup of tea/profession :-)

Isn't interesting that everyone was using their particular computers in the worst possible way? Worst workstation setups...

What have I just watched ?, what were they talking about ?, I'm glad I was born in the 60's.

Why do they keep saying terminal just say your tumputer

12:06 that looks like it would cause carpal tunnel instantly

The money this computer cost I can buy a Mac and put one person to work. I can spend the same about of money buying IBM clone and put 3 people to work. .... Go Figure !

Lol the early mice😂

There were alot of women working in Tech industry back in the 80s Mgmt, Finance, Operations, Legal, Taxes, Sales and Marketing. Yes, there is a Tech world outside of the Engineering department and the Pay is much better.

After seeing the two girls who went first their computer seems so ancient compared to the Mac.