Enjoy Apple’s ‘Back To The Future’ Homepage Circa 1983

Nicole Martinelli ()

Future perfect? Dave Lawrence's mock-up of Apple's homepage circa 1983

Future perfect? Dave Lawrence's mock-up of Apple's homepage circa 1983

Dave Lawrence over at Newton Poetry had some fun with Photoshop making this retro-future homepage for Apple products. He picked a critical year in Apple history, 1983, when the company faced competition from IBM and the flop of the $10,000 Lisa.

Inspired by “how Apple’s web site has changed over the years,” Dave “thought it’d be cool to use it as a time-traveling template to take a peek into the past… It’s not accurate, of course, because I took some embellishments on the iPhone prototype and the fact that some sort of World Wide Web existed during the Reagan administration.”

Still, it’s an interesting take on web design—as well as what’s gone right and wrong with Apple products over the years.

Dave also mentions he’d like to see what would happen “if someone took a snapshot of Apple.com as it would appear throughout the years before its actual launch in 1996. For instance, I’d love to see what the homepage would’ve looked like on the Newton’s launch day, or the first PowerBook, or System 7.”

Anyone game? Send us your what-may-have been mock-ups.

We’ll give a prize to the best entry.

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Cult of Mac – the decorators are in

Hat tip to CoM reader Raphael.

9 comments »

About the author

nicole_martinelli

Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco native who has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek. You can find her on Twitter , Facebook and Google+.

If you're doing something new/cool that's Apple related, email her about it.

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  • Eric

    that would be hillarious

  • Joan

    This brings back the memories. What a great machine! I had one.

  • …

    Just check it on http://www.archive.org
    I went through Apple Websites there before from waaaay back.

    Its probably Fun with a 33,6 Modem for the real retro experience! :)

  • Henry

    Really makes you stop and think. No computer of 1983 could have displayed that page or anything even close. Think what it would look like on an Apple II, an Atari 800, a Vic-20, a PC-XT with Color Graphics Adapter, or even a Lisa.

  • ty

    let us remember that before the iphone time, some two-ish years ago, apple has a tabbed style homepage…similar to:

    http://web.archive.org/web/20010301154733/www.apple.com/

  • Erin’s Dad

    I worked at a computer store in Upstate NY, and we sold a couple of these, along with the $4,995 Apple Laserwriter to IBM Kingston for doing documentation editing and printing. They needed to produce documentation for the new state-of-the-art orange-on-black Gas Plasma Displays. Hilarious!

  • iFanboy

    Like this very much. Well done!

    BUT… to make it appear even more authentic, the headline “Apple invents the personal computer. Again.” should ideally be set in the preferred font of the time, which was Garamond Light Condensed.

    And maybe close the gap between “computer” and “Again”? ~ and definitely NO Bold.

    Otherwise, very witty.. and strangely touching

  • http://newtonpoetry.com Newton Poetry

    Thanks for all the nice comments, gang.

    @iFanboy: you’re right, and I can’t tell you how long I agonized over which font to use – Apple’s Garamond or the new Myriad – before going with the more modern font.

    If anyone else tries their hand at it, start a Flickr group and we’ll all join in – one from each year, mayhaps?

  • Jamie

    Aww… I’m actually a little disappointed.

    Not a trace of the cool old Garamond font anywhere, or of the old 80s “space age” lower-case Apple mark or anything!

    It’s kind of a cheat to just take the 2009 site and re-do it in beige without changing all the stuff that made 80s Apple so much cooler than the kinda bland 2000s Apple.