{"id":8168,"date":"2022-10-29T17:46:46","date_gmt":"2022-10-29T17:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=8168"},"modified":"2022-10-29T17:46:46","modified_gmt":"2022-10-29T17:46:46","slug":"unitron-mac-512-a-contraband-mac-512k-from-brazil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=8168","title":{"rendered":"Unitron Mac 512: A Contraband Mac 512K from Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From a paper on postcolonial computing I learned about the <a href=\"https:\/\/lowendmac.com\/2016\/unitron-mac-512-a-contraband-mac-512k-from-brazil\/\">Unitron<\/a><em><a href=\"https:\/\/lowendmac.com\/2016\/unitron-mac-512-a-contraband-mac-512k-from-brazil\/\"> Mac 512: A Contraband Mac 512K from<\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lowendmac.com\/2016\/unitron-mac-512-a-contraband-mac-512k-from-brazil\/\"> Brazil<\/a>. For a while Brazil didn&#8217;t allow the importation of computers (so as to kickstart their own computer industry.) Unitron decided to reverse engineer the Mac 512K, but Apple put pressure on Brazil and the project was closed down. At least 500 machines were built and I guess some are still in circulation.<\/p>\n<p>The article is Philip, K., et al. (2010). &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/41511154\">Postcolonial Computing: A Tactical Survey<\/a>.&#8221; <em>Science Technology Human Values.<\/em> 37(1).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;\">Though Apple had no intellectual property protection for the Macintosh in Brazil, the American corporation was able to pressure government and other <\/span><span style=\"font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;\">economic actors within Brazil to reframe Unitron\u2019s activities, once seen as nationalist and anti-colonial, as immoral piracy.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From a paper on postcolonial computing I learned about the Unitron Mac 512: A Contraband Mac 512K from Brazil. For a while Brazil didn&#8217;t allow the importation of computers (so as to kickstart their own computer industry.) Unitron decided to reverse engineer the Mac 512K, but Apple put pressure on Brazil and the project was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=8168\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Unitron Mac 512: A Contraband Mac 512K from Brazil<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,58,5,17,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","category-ethics-of-data-science","category-history-of-computing-and-multimedia","category-humanities-computing","category-interface-design-and-usability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8169,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8168\/revisions\/8169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}