1992 Apple was … different.
Category: Apple History
Advanced Mac Substitute⇢
Advanced Mac Substitute is a project dedicated to reimplement the classic Mac OS in order to emulate 68k Mac software without Apple ROM or software.
Sean Gallagher at Ars wrote about it earlier this week:
Advanced Mac Substitute is an effort by long-time Mac hacker Josh Juran to make it possible to run old Mac OS software (up to Mac OS 6) without a need for an Apple ROM or system software. Other emulators out there for 68000 Mac applications such as Basilisk II require a copy of MacOS installation media—such as install CDs from Mac OS 7.5 or Mac OS 8. But AMS uses a set of software libraries that allow old Mac applications to launch right within the operating environment of the host device, without needing to have a full virtual hardware and operating system instance behind them. And it’s all open source.
Macintosh Turns 35
35 years ago today, Steve jobs took his prized creation out of its bag for the first time:
Joe Rossignol beat me to this, but he summed the original machine up nicely over on MacRumors:
The original Macintosh was priced at $2,495 in the United States, equivalent to just over $6,000 today, and was a big deal because of its graphical user interface rather than command-line interface. Tech specs included an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 processor, 128 KB of RAM, and a 400 KB floppy disk drive.
The Macintosh Garden Archive⇢
Good news for fellow retro Mac nerds: there is a full mirror of The Macintosh Garden on the Internet Archive.
The Apple Developer Transition Kit⇢
Over on MacStories, I took a look at what may be the single weirdest Mac of all time: the Developer Transition Kit:
An Intel Mac inside a Power Mac G5 body, the Apple Developer Transition Kit (or DTK) was made as a way for developers to work on their x86 applications before the first Intel Mac shipped to customers.
GarageBand Turns 15
In 2003, iLife was a huge selling point for the Mac. It made managing photos, making movies and burning DVDs all easy (and even fun!) for users who found more pro-focused apps difficult to approach.
At Macworld 2004 — 15 years ago this weekend — Steve Jobs introduced GarageBand.
I’ve watched this keynote section before, but in reviewing it this week, I was struck by how underrated it is. I think it’s in the top handful of Jobs performances on stage.
Video: The 12-inch PowerBook G4⇢
It’s been pretty quiet on my YouTube channel, but I’m kicking off 2019 with something fun: A look at the most beloved notebook in Mac history, the 12-inch PowerBook G4.
Magnets!⇢
This month in my MacStories column, I wrote about something fun:
Apple’s use of magnets in its products go back further than the most recent iPad Pro, with its keyboard and Apple Pencil. Magnets allow Apple to do things without the need of mechanical components, keeping the design of its products clean and streamlined. Here are a few of my favorites over the years.
Happy Birthday, Mac Pro⇢
Today marks the fifth anniversary of Apple’s last update to the Mac Pro, as reflected in the MacRumors Buyer’s Guide.
Apple released the second-generation Mac Pro on December 19, 2013, starting at $2,999, and it remains that price today after some reshuffling of configurations despite having over five year old hardware, including up to a 12-core Intel Xeon E5 processor, 64GB of ECC RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, and dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs.
Checking Into the iBook Hospital⇢
Busy night in my studio.
Apple’s February 2006 Event⇢
As far as Apple press events, this one wasn’t a huge deal: the Mac mini got an Intel CPU, the iPod got some leather cases and the iPod Hi-Fi was introduced.
However, as I came across the video today while researching another topic, I couldn’t help but watch it. Jobs sounds a little under the weather here, but he’s loose and relaxed. I especially enjoyed the segment when he shows Front Row working on the Mac mini.
The World’s Largest Apple Collection Needs a New Home⇢
Francois Murphy and Leonhard Foeger for Reuters:
Over the years since he began working for a company that repaired Apples in Vienna in the 1980s, Roland Borsky’s collection has grown to roughly 1,100 computers, he says - far more than the 472 items at Prague’s Apple Museum, which says it is the world’s biggest private collection of Apple products.
“Just as others collect cars and live in a little box to afford them, so it is with me,” he said in his office, which is so packed with dusty items like a wall of old monitors that he has moved most of them to a warehouse outside the city.