Here’s your chance to check out an exclusive look at Marques Brownlee and Bill Nye evaluating some old tech on YouTube. Marques Brownlee, also known as MKBHD, launched a new “Retro Tech” series on December 2nd. As the name suggests, the series is designed to highlight “iconic” tech from the past.
The YouTube Originals documentary series includes six episodes with each taking a closer look at different vintage tech. In addition, each episode sees Brownlee joined by a variety of guests, including celebrities, experts, and other YouTubers. While all six episodes are already available to YouTube Premium subscribers, they are also going live to all YouTube viewers on a weekly basis for free.
The first episode is available to watch right now and focuses on something that’s personally relevant to the YouTuber, the camcorder. The second episode is due to go live on December 9th and centers around the original 1984 Macintosh. Screen Rant can now reveal a teaser clip of that episode which sees Brownlee and Bill Nye “The Science Guy” decide on whether “EarthPlot” for the Macintosh is “Dope or Nope.”
EarthPlot was a piece of software released for the Apple Macintosh back in 1985. Just like many consider MapQuest and its printed turn-by-turn directions to have paved the way for Google Maps, EarthPlot is best understood as a 1980s version of Google Earth. For example, the user would select the latitude and longitude values and the software would then produce a black and white render of the earth. Although unlike Google Earth which uses satellite imagery and aerial photography to generate the images, EarthPlot would literally draw the render for you. It might not have been the quickest solution, but it was still a solution back in the day. Here’s the clip:
As mentioned, if you’re already a YouTube Premium subscriber then you can check out the entire series now. If not, then a new episode will go live every Monday over the next few weeks. Following this Monday’s Macintosh episode, Brownlee will take a closer look at the 1980s video gaming industry and the launch of the Sega Genesis to take on the then dominance of NES and the soon-to-be released SNES. Following the Genesis episode, the series will move on to episodes on the Walkman and The Polaroid Land Camera. Brownlee will then close out the series with the world’s first ever cellular phone, the Motorola DYNATAC.
Spoiler: a ten-hour charge would give you about 30 minutes of phone time.
More: Does YouTube Have Too Much Control Over Its Creators?
Retro Tech’s Macintosh-dedicated episode releases today.
