Back in 1983, when Apple was first developing MacPaint and its less-featured sister app for the Apple II, MousePaint, they had a menu option called “Aids” which contained image manipulation tools. You can see this menu in documentation for the original AppleMouse II.
Before release, though, this menu was renamed Goodies, and intriguingly, it was done so because of rising awareness of the AIDS epidemic. The more you know!
Here’s another lovely short video from Matthew Pearce, the man behind the Matt’s Macintosh YouTube channel.
MacPaint doesn’t just explain what MacPaint was, but is more about why it was an important part of the software lineup back in those days. Things we take for granted today (like copying a graphic and pasting it into another document) were new and exciting back then.
As Matt points out, MacPaint in 1984 laid foundations for features you still see today in modern graphics applications.
(And one other thing: Matthew’s original Macintosh 128K looks pristine, and the screen as clean and bright as the day it was made. He even has an as-new copy of the original printed manual. Where does he find this stuff?)
Enjoy!
