Category: Apple History

The Whole Widget⇢

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After listening to the most recent episode of The Talk Show, I decided to go hunt down video of Steve Jobs dropping the “i” from his title, and becoming Apple’s full-time CEO. That took place at Macworld Expo in January 2000.

This keynote is wild,1 as it includes the first public demonstration of Aqua, but something right before the CEO announcement caught my attention. In this clip, Jobs talks about how Apple viewed itself, and why some who called for it to be broken up into a separate software and hardware company were wrong:

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The Power Mac G3: An Apple Marketing Archetype⇢

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Harry McCracken:

At Macworld Expo 1999, Apple’s big news was the Power Macintosh G3, a high-end tower desktop. After introducing it, Steve Jobs played a promotional video, prefaced with a Henry Kissinger quote and featuring Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s The Look of Love on the soundtrack. (If you know who’s singing, please tell me; I’m not sure, and it stumped Shazam.) The video touts lustworthy features such as a 400-MHz processor, up to 1GB of RAM, and USB (“the future of I/O!”).

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On the Mac Pro, the G4 Cube and Their Shared Vent Design

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In a recent episode of ATP, the guys spoke about a conversation that was overheard at WWDC between Tim Cook and Jony Ive that included an interesting detail of the holes in the front and back of the new Mac Pro:

Then there’s video Marco posted on Twitter, in which Ive appears to compare the opening of the Mac Pro to the Cube:

Well, I was in the right place at the right time. pic.twitter.com/9ib25nwbOL

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Putting the Mac Pro’s Price into Historical Context

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Ed Cormany, co-host of the excellent podcast Simple Beep, which focuses on the history of Apple and the Mac.

When Apple announced the new Mac Pro last week, one of the things that got the most attention was its price tag: the base configuration will cost $5,999. The question is whether it’s an outlandish price for what is far and away the most powerful Mac ever sold. The fact is that Apple has definitely charged that much in the past for its hardware.

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A Collection of iTunes Errors⇢

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Allen Pike has put together a wonderful blog post looking at various iTunes errors over the years:

Once upon a time, Apple debuted an application for playing music.

Yes, an application. That’s what we called apps back when dinosaurs roamed the Mac. And one of the most-loved applications back in that ancient era was for playing your MP3s. It was called iTunes.

I think this one is my favorite:

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The Lombard PowerBook G3 (Bronze Keyboard)

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This week marks the second anniversary of the 512 Pixels Membership. To mark the occasion, I am sharing this article, which was sent in this month’s members-only newsletter. To learn more and sign up, visit this page.

Today, the vast majority of Macs sold are notebooks, and as we Mac nerds eagerly await a redesigned MacBook Pro, it’s easy to forget just how far Mac notebooks have come over the years.

In May 1999, Apple introduced the “PowerBook G3 (Bronze Keyboard)” which was an update to the black, curvy notebooks of the day. True to its name, it shipped with semi-transparent bronze keys that exposed the keyframes underneath under direct light.

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History of Gold Apple Watches⇢

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Zac Hall at 9to5Mac, writing on the weird history of the use of gold and gold finishes when it comes to the Apple Watch:

Apple Watch has a curvy history with the color gold and accompanying straps. The original 18K gold Apple Watch Edition paired with a range of straps before being discontinued. Aluminum models have included three shades of gold (rose gold, gold, and “new” gold) with Sport and (now discontinued) Woven Nylon bands using gold hardware. Gold variations aren’t sold separately either which makes them somewhat rare.

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