Great post.
I wasn't aware of MacPlaymate I guess because it was introduced in 1986 and I didn't get a Mac till 1988. I googled it and found a download so will check it out if it works. Those black and white graphics are so retro cool. On one google hit there was a report quoting articles and comments on this horrible/wonderful game . I have copied some for your entertainment. This is real classy classic stuff.
![User uploaded file]()
At a San Francisco computer trade show, it brought out the vice squad -- and a 10-deep ''feeding frenzy'' of men frantically waving wads of money, ''begging'' to buy it.
There is no way to describe MacPlaymate delicately -- which is entirely the point, say a group of Los Angeles women who argue that such programs are inappropriate for the workplace and most every place else.
For the less than computer literate, ''interactive'' means the operator is no passive observer but takes part in directing what happens on the screen.
In MacPlaymate, the user summons an animated rendering of a woman, ''Maxie,'' who flutters her Theda Bara eyelids, moves her mouth, breasts, legs and hands and entices the user into the program.
As an added treat, the program has digitized sound: a woman's voice, in tinny gasps, moans ''Oh!'' And a ''panic'' button calls up on the screen ''a real-looking pseudospreadsheet that looks like you're working, like if . . . your boss comes over to your desk,'' marvels Dave, a computer consultant to several Los Angeles high-tech firms.
For every MacPlaymate sold, scores were copied free. It is ''probably the most pirated program'' on the Macintosh, says Frank Brooks, president of a Connecticut computer company.
Many men who have seen it variously describe it as a ''novelty and a curiosity . . . gimmicky . . . funny . . . a one-line joke . . . a general recreational piece of software.''
To most, it is a roguish bit of high-tech whimsy, created to show off just what a computer can do, and as ''a parody on ***********,'' says Brooks, who knows the designer.
Something of an underground legend since it appeared nearly two years ago, MacPlaymate hit a higher profile only lately. Ad executive Prudence Baird learned of it from a lighthearted item in Vogue magazine about its ''user- friendly'' program.
Then she and her co-workers, who showed it at the bridal shower to ''find out what we're up against,'' heard to their distress that many men who have seen the program think it is no big deal.
Computer sexual images of women are not new. Pirated Playboy photos are sent through computer scanners onto ''bulletin boards'' often accessible to kids.
Sex sells: Photos of women in see-through shirts are used to persuade prospective male buyers of the screen's qualities.
Some argue, then, that a program like MacPlaymate is simply the inevitable union of society's fascination with technology and obsession with sex.
Nothing much changes as Boys will be Boys and Girls will be Girls.
