It's 1965, you're POTUS, I give you a 2013 MacBook Air

[kellner]

@That_Don_Guy

I think the main problem is, did we have the technology to make any of the major parts (the CPU, the hard drive, the graphics processor) back in 1965? (When I say “make a CPU”, I mean “make a CPU with the transistor density of what’s in a MacBook Air”.)

Absolutely nowhere close. Just going by raw transistor count of the CPU alone that would be the equivalent of several million chips of the time (ignoring all the inefficiencies that would result if you actually tried to build such a monstrosity from separate chips). Of course it would also be orders of magnitude slower.

I don’t think they would be able to learn much about its low-level operation and if they tried they would probably just ruin it.

I think they would be very interested in the form factor and user interface. A few years later they would propose a more realistic goal inspired by what they had seen and call it a Dynabook or something like that.

[DMark]

Be sure to also give him this snazzy, super-fast 56K modem!

BTW, click on the little “connect” button and you can hear the modem connect…brings back the old days…I actually had that modem back when it was considered cutting edge!

[I_Love_Me_Vol.I]

@Fiendish_Astronaut

You’re the President of the US, it’s 1965. A mysterious Englishman comes into your office.

“Hi, don’t be alarmed but I’m from the future. You can call me Fiendish Astronaut. I’ve bought you this computer from 2013, it’s called a MacBook Air. As you can see it’s very light. Let me show you how it works. See this is the on button here. That light on the back is just the manufacturer’s logo. This is how the trackpad works. I’ve loaded some software on here already, nothing too powerful but some basic stuff. It’s a gift for you. Do what you want with it. Thanks. Bye!”

What do you do next?

I’d say:

“How the hell do you right-click with a mouse that only has one button!?! Thanks for nothing! I’ll just keep using my ENIAC, if it’s all the same to you. Besides. It’s cheaper.”

[Astral_Rejection]

A fun question occurs to me: what is the most advanced computer you could bring back that they’d be able to reverse-engineer?

[Mangetout]

Does the mysterious stranger also supply the mains charger?

[shadowofneo]

very shortly thereafter you invent “The Frisbee”

[Fiendish_Astronaut]

@Mangetout

Does the mysterious stranger also supply the mains charger?

Of course!

It’s loaded with the basic software but also things like MS Office.

Personally I’d give it to NASA.

[drastic_quench]

I think it’s more interesting if you send them two. One to keep functioning, one to inspect.

[chargerrich]

Play World of Warcraft! … oh wait :smack:

OK better answer, get that tech over to NASA ASAP so that the Apollo CM guidance computer has more than 2kb of memory! 2k lol that is absurd. What does my Macbook have 4GB?!

Hell Yeah Boys… we’re going to Mars by 1980!

[Ike_Witt]

If Tetris is loaded on the machine that would be the only thing it gets used for.

[chargerrich]

@iamthewalrus_3

Actually, Apple products are generally marked “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China”, which, if you’re paying attention in 1963, tells you something interesting and not particularly disturbing about the economic state of the world in 2013.

Which means that if this were just a decade sooner, we (me?) would be knocking at the door of Steve Jobs parents (adoptive) and putting them on trial for communist loyalties and spying!

[control-z]

@Fiendish_Astronaut

It’s loaded with the basic software but also things like MS Office.

You could run a corporation with Excel. A friend of mine did AT&T’s billing on a Apple 2 and Visicalc in the early 1980s. Of course printing would be a problem but worst case they could just transcribe the numbers to paper reports.

[iamthewalrus_3]

@Infovore

Maybe if the software included some sort of compiler that would allow me to put the science wizzes on to writing code for it, in which case it could probably run Mission Control all by itself when it came time for the moon launch…

It’s got bash. It’s got AppleScript. As of OS 10.8, Macs ship with python installed. That’s orders of magnitude more software development power than was available in 1965.

Yes, they’d probably break it trying to figure out how it worked. But a knowledgable person who just sat down and read all the documentation he could find on the computer itself would be able to use it for serious computation.

[bump]

@Infovore

Maybe if the software included some sort of compiler that would allow me to put the science wizzes on to writing code for it, in which case it could probably run Mission Control all by itself when it came time for the moon launch…

I’d almost guarantee that in 1965, it would become a top secret posession of the Department of Energy and end up at Los Alamos or Lawrence Livermore working on nuclear weapon research.

[Infovore]

@iamthewalrus_3

It’s got bash. It’s got AppleScript. As of OS 10.8, Macs ship with python installed. That’s orders of magnitude more software development power than was available in 1965.

Yes, they’d probably break it trying to figure out how it worked. But a knowledgable person who just sat down and read all the documentation he could find on the computer itself would be able to use it for serious computation.

Here’s an interesting earlier Dope thread discussing this. (I found it while searching for how much computing power they had for Mission Control during the first moon launch.)

[Acsenray]

Given that there’s no internet and no Apple server, there’s no way to register and setup this computer!

[Meurglys]

In three years time, whatever else they’ve done with it, and remembering it was delivered by an Englishman, they wonder how the hell the Beatles came up with a gizmo like that a few years down the line!

[BrotherCadfael]

@That_Don_Guy

IIf we could reproduce the processing technology, even for just a few units, the most likely place for them would be NASA.

Bullfeathers. The NSA.

[eschereal]

@I_Love_Me_Vol.I

I’d say:

“How the hell do you right-click with a mouse that only has one button!?! Thanks for nothing! I’ll just keep using my ENIAC, if it’s all the same to you. Besides. It’s cheaper.”

If you have ever touched one of those, the button has become kind of non-obvious. It is now completely hidden under the posterior region of the trackpad, so that it functions like their USB trackpad things. Apple seems to hate buttons in general.

[rocking_chair]

find the 2 steves and give them a bigger garage.