Doug Brown has dug up something previously lost to time. In working with an early Performa, he discovered a true gem on its hard drive:
This Performa 410 was a store demo unit! This is the kiosk software that would have been running on a demo Mac inside a store like Sears or Circuit City. The machine was never wiped back to factory state before being sold, and the original owner kept the demo software the entire time they had the machine. Such a cool find!
As is tradition, I have made and cataloged a whole bunch of screenshots of the new version of macOS.
Golden Gate is the 24th version of macOS that I have documented this way. It’s a lot of work, but I love having the screenshot library as a resource for folks to use and enjoy.
If you haven’t looked through the library in a while, you should check out my new-ish comparison tool. You can type what you are looking for, and the page will surface related screenshots, sorted by age. It is a lot of fun.
This is one of my favorite pages across Apple’s various websites. I mean, just look at this drawing of the iPhone 17 Pro:
Well, this little Easter Egg in Apple’s 27 OSes is fun. If you go into Settings → Appearance → Liquid Glass and scroll down far enough in the example content, an old friend appears:
This 3D version of Clarus can also be found within macOS 27 Golden Gate:
My thanks to Federico Viticci for sending this my way!
Sam Gold on Mastodon, writing about the one version of OS X that allowed a user to put something to the left of the Finder icon in the Dock:
[In] Lion DP1, you could set
defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-left-of-finder -bool YESand get this.that first Lion beta build is absolutely chock full of experimental UI behind flags.
This makes me feel weird inside.
Usually, there isn’t much news in August, but this year we got new desktop Macs and Tim Cook’s last day as CEO. I’ve added both to the Apple History Calendar.
RR Auction has something amazing for sale at the moment: an Apple I built for the Byte Shop.
The auction page has more details:
Well-preserved and fully functional ‘Byte Shop’–style Apple-1 computer (also commonly known as the Apple I, or Apple Computer 1), complete with all components and accessories required for operation, housed in a unique Smith-Corona typewriter case modified to fit the Apple-1.
This remarkable Apple-1, marked “01-0066” on the reverse side in security marker, is a highly original 8K system from the second batch of 50 Apple-1 computers produced and sold. While the marking alone does not establish that the computer was originally sold directly by The Byte Shop, the system displays several important Byte Shop–style characteristics, including its stock-number marking, its 8K configuration, and its original Datanetics Rev D keyboard with custom wired Apple-1 cable—the same keyboard-and-cable arrangement seen on known Byte Shop Apple-1 systems.
Jeff Geerling is living the dream:
Several years ago, I ran a series of Kickstarter campaigns highlighting important dates in Apple’s history with three different wall calendars.
There were also digital versions of the calendars that folks could subscribe to in Apple Calendar, Fantastical, etc.
Today, I have some news about that part of the project:
I am so excited to have found a way to keep the Apple History Calendar project going after all this time, and I would love for you to check it out.
Anyone who dabbles in Apple history probably has EveryMac.com bookmarked, and today it celebrates a milestone:
On July 2, 1996, EveryMac.com launched.
Thirty years is a long time – and a great deal has changed since then – but what has not changed is that EveryMac.com has been there to provide you with detailed info on every Mac from the original 128k to the current line. Thank you very much for your support through the years.
Hartley Charlton at MacRumors:
macOS 27 Golden Gate removes AFP support, ending Time Machine compatibility with Time Capsule after nearly two decades, but a community project from a Microsoft engineer offers a potential workaround for owners not yet ready to move on.
The original Time Capsule was announced way back in 2008, in the same Macworld keynote as the first MacBook Air. From Apple at the time:
Time Capsule combines an 802.11n base station with a server grade hard disk in one small package. Simply plug it in, then easily set up automatic wireless backup for every Mac® in your house to a single Time Capsule with just a few clicks. Time Capsule offers the benefits of a full-featured 802.11n Wi-Fi base station, and comes in two models: a 500 gigabyte model for just $299 and a 1 terabyte model for just $499.
I’ve been emulating the Apple Lisa recently, and I was struck by how many of its UI strings were slightly or wholly different than what we’re used to.
It makes sense. Lisa came out in 1983 as Mac’s predecessor and really the first GUI that is directly linked to what we’re using today. Even though it borrowed things from work done at Xerox, tons of conventions were not established yet.