Whats in the Mac box? Part 1

When i first moved into my house (some 15 years ago now) i had the urge to fill it with computer junk. I managed to get 2 house clearances worth of old computers including a lot of old Macs and other Apple stuff including a lovely IIc. Now quite a bit of this junk has been thrown out since though most of the Macs are still extant including a Mac 512K (the second ever model) which i have next to me on my desk as i type this now as a kind of glorified clock stand. Most of the Macs though, which include lovelies like a Workgroup Server 60 and a IIci, are in the loft and i was up there the other day when i found this box...

It doesn't look much, just a plastic box with Macintosh written on it and a hand drawn apple. So what was inside?

Why its the original Mac manual and the box for the power lead! "You're about to learn a new way to use a computer" the manual claims and indeed it was true as this computer had a graphical user interface and a mouse. Now these were not unique even in 1984, indeed there was the Apple Lisa already, but the Mac was the first "affordable" (it was still very expensive though) computer with these features we now consider commonplace or even a bit dated in the age of the touch screen.

Few people knew how to use a mouse and a WiMP interface (Windows Mouse Pointer) back in the early 1980s. People were used to typing stuff into the likes of CP/M to use their computers. Now they could just wave a mouse around and click on something instead...

Over 30 years on the basics are still largely the same. Everything is more advanced and faster of course but the fundamentals have not changed that much from the first Mac to the Macbook i use now which has the latest version of MacOS on it. Of course nowadays 180K would not be a lot of space to play with...

Next time: What can you do with this thing?