Last week, I wrote about the first email sent from space, and how there was a discrepancy in what date has been reported for the event:
So where’s the mystery in all of this? Well, according to NASA, Apple, and Guinness Book of World Records this message was sent on August 9, 1991. STS-43 took place from August 2 to 11 that year, so I feel confident the date the message was sent is indeed August 9.
Thirty years ago, a Macintosh Portable was used to send an email from aboard the space shuttle Atlantis as part of the STS-43 mission.
The email in question was sent to Marsha Ivins at Johnson Space Center and said:
Hello Earth! Greetings from the STS-43 Crew. This is the first AppleLink from space. Having a GREAT time, wish you were here,…send cryo and RCS! Hasta la vista, baby,…we’ll be back!
The message was sent via AppleLink, an online service created for use between Apple, its customers, and its various dealers and partners. (It was replaced by eWorld in 1994.)
I recently came across a stash of old Apple press releases, and this one jumped out at me:
At a financial conference in Monterey, Calif., on October 30, 1996, Dr. Gilbert F. Amelio, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Apple Computer, Inc., spoke about the general future of operating systems. Contrary to the claims made in several media reports, he did not announce a new operating system strategy for Apple, nor make any new statements about microprocessor or product line direction.
Francisco Tolmasky has written a fascinating Twitter thread 1 about Apple’s UI frameworks and the rise of Electron all through the lens of tabbed interfaces.
That’s what the young people call “blog posts.” ↩︎
I’ve never seen this prototype before, but it is pretty cool:
The 8-Bit Guy has a new video out about the Apple I. I learned a ton about the computer from it:
These are the two most interesting tweets about the Macintosh Performa … maybe ever.
Think it’s possible that the Macintosh Performa name was a portmanteau of performance and the Latin “pro forma?” I never made this connection before. pic.twitter.com/QJlC9q2owa
— Michael Steeber (@MichaelSteeber) July 18, 2021
The Performa debuted three years after Andy spun out with General Magic, and he wouldn’t have been involved in hardware product line naming anyway. “Performa” was intended to evoke performance, both computational and artistic. The Latin phrase had nothing to do with it.
In my series 2001 Revisited, I’m covering Apple’s major announcements from 20 years ago. On July 18, 2001, Steve Jobs presented the keynote at Macworld New York, less than two months after WWDC 2001.
This event took place a couple of months after the first two Apple Stores opened, and Jobs seemed eager to show photos of them off before announcing four new stores:
This would bring the total number of Apple Stores to six, with a goal of 25 being set for the end of 2001. To share his excitement about this, Jobs ran a video showing off the concept.
I had completely forgotten about this.
I was recently idly scrolling through the vintage Apple listings on eBay and came across something I’d never seen before: the Microloop 1100 Spirometer.
According to the listing, this beast hails from 1987 and is built around an Apple IIe and a 9-inch CRT, with some extra goodies:
This machine was crammed into a custom case and was hooked up to a spirometer, which is used to measure the volume and movement of air into and out of the lungs. This medical instrument interfaced with the Apple IIe via that 16-channel Interactive Structures A113-A card, which operated as an analog-to-digital converter for incoming data.
Parker Ortolani has put together an amazing list of some of the most memorable moments from WWDC’s three decades of history.
No one asked for this comparison, but I delivered anyway: