Doing the rounds on Twitter today is a fantastic review posted by Larry Magid. It’s a review of a Mac, but with a difference—it’s a transcription of his take on the original Mac, which appeared in the LA Times on January 29, 1984.

It’s easy to forget just how revolutionary the original Mac was compared to competition at the time, but this review brings it home. The mouse was so uncommon that it’s scare-quoted in the article, and Magid explains how to use it. He also talks about the ‘desk top’, and appears to have been converted to Apple’s WIMP UI model, despite stating: “When this process was described to me, it sounded cumbersome, especially since I’m already comfortable with using a keyboard”.

Today, touchscreens are gaining ground. We’re moving from abstraction on a virtual desktop to direct integration with content via gestural controls. How long will it be before someone looks back at early reviews of iPhone and Microsoft Surface, finding it hard to remember a time when such interface conventions weren’t ubiquitous?