In the middle of the 1980s, Apple found itself with several options regarding the future of its computing platforms. The Apple II was the company’s bread and butter. The Apple III was pitched as an evolution of that platform, but was clearly doomed due to hardware and software issues. The Lisa was expensive and not selling well, and while the Macintosh aimed to bring Lisa technology to the masses, sales were slow after its initial release.
Category: Apple History
A More Charitable Take on Apple’s Self-Driving Car Ambitions
I’m still reeling a bit from Bloomberg’s reporting on what Apple was hoping to achieve with its self-driving car project. Even though $1 billion a year isn’t much on Apple’s scale, it’s clear that a lot of time and energy went into this project over the last ten years.
Many of Apple’s ideas around the future of the car were just too far-fetched to ship anything in the near future. However, I think there are at least three benefits to what the company was working toward with Project Titan.
Apple’s Car Project Was Far More Bonkers than We Ever Knew⇢
For a decade, we’ve all wondered what an Apple-designed car would be like. Thanks to Mark Gurman and Drake Bennett, we now have an idea:
Around the beginning of 2020, Apple Inc.’s top executives gathered at a former Chrysler testing track in Wittmann, Arizona, to try out the latest incarnation of the car the technology giant had been trying for years to make. The prototype, a white minivan with rounded sides, an all-glass roof, sliding doors and whitewall tires, was designed to comfortably seat four people and inspired by the classic flower-power Volkswagen microbus. The design was referred to within Apple, not always affectionately, as the Bread Loaf. The plan was for the vehicle to hit the market some five years later with a giant TV screen, a powerful audio system and windows that adjusted their own tint. The cabin would have club seating like a private plane, and passengers would be able to turn some of the seats into recliners and footrests.
The Oldest Items in the Apple Store⇢
This video from Quinn Nelson has some real gems in it:
Project Star Trek⇢
Ernie Smith has the best article I’ve ever read about Apple’s near miss with Novell in 1992:
With the growing success of Novell NetWare and its acquisition of DR-DOS (later called Novell DOS), perhaps Novell was feeling nervous about the idea that Microsoft Windows would eventually dominate the market, harming its good-guy position in the industry. It was going around at the time, after all.
(It came out years later that Novell had plenty to worry about, as Microsoft had intentionally added a fake error into Windows that only appeared when using DR-DOS … at the behest of Bill Gates.)
Video: The JLPGA PowerBook 170⇢
In 1991, Apple made just 500 examples of a very special PowerBook:
My thanks to Relay listener Dan for shipping his very rare and expensive machine to me so I could check it out and share it with all of you.
A Tour of QuickTime VR⇢
Despite the profound impact Apple Vision Pro will have on the Apple Retail experience, I’ve scarce mentioned it here on Tabletops, and that’s no accident. A major new platform deserves careful study and an awful lot of context — the kind that’s only possible to grasp when the product is available in stores.
The future makes more sense when you understand the past, which is why I’m sharing this slice of history with you today.
Insanely Great: The Apple Mac at 40⇢
Last night, the Computer History Museum put on a two-hour event honoring the Macintosh. I know how I’m spending my evening:
A Daring Machine⇢
Harry McCracken has written an interesting column about the ways the original Mac was and wasn’t influential in its day:
Compared to other PCs of the time, the Mac’s small size and unified design offered several benefits. First, it took up little desk space and made the computer easy to tote around: It even sported a handle for that purpose. Second, ensuring that every Mac user had the same crisp 9-inch monochrome display gave the experience a consistency that was lacking in most other computers, which users plugged into whatever monitor (or TV set) they chose.
The Mac’s Eras Tour⇢
Before I started writing my piece on the Mac’s 40th anniversary for The Verge, I was thinking of different ways to plot out the arc of the Mac’s history. I ended up going with the fact that the Mac has been the underdog for most of its existence, but I also considered plotting the Mac’s history as defined by the Mac’s four distinct processor eras.
The Mac’s Super Bowl Ads
I’m sure everyone reading this has seen this ad before, but damn, it’s still so cool:
In contrast, the company’s 1985 Super Bowl ad was a real fall from grace:
Macintosh Office is a story for a different time, but that ad wasn’t a great start to things.
The Whiz Kids⇢
The Steve Jobs Archive has a new email out today:1
When photographer Norman Seeff arrived at Apple’s offices in January 1984, he didn’t know what to expect. An editor at Rolling Stone had told him only that this was a “weird company” full of hippies making computers. Now Seeff, along with reporter Steven Levy, was covering these “whiz kids” as they prepared to launch their latest product—a new machine called Macintosh.