Category: Apple History

Apple’s W.A.L.T. Prototype: Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone⇢

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I know a lot about Apple history, and I’ve never come across this device until today. Juli Clover writes:

Unsurprisingly, the W.A.L.T. takes a while to start up given its age, but it’s functional, running Mac System 6. The W.A.L.T. featured a touchscreen, fax functionality, on-display caller ID, a built-in address book, customizable ringtones, and online banking access.

As shown in the video, it had a series of hardware buttons for activating various functions, and it worked with a connected stylus that could be used for navigation and writing. There’s a ton of lag when using the stylus, though, so writing doesn’t look great.

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The Late 2012 iMacs⇢

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Yours truly, over at MacStories:

The recent iMac updates brought additional power and flexibility to Apple’s all-in-one desktop, but didn’t redesign or modernize the iMac as we’ve known it for many years.

As the 21.5- and 27-inch machines are here to stay for at least a while longer, I thought it would be a good time to look back at the first of their kind, introduced at a press event in October 2012.

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The Alpha Xenon Development Kit

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When Microsoft was developing the Xbox 360, it turned to the PowerPC processor to power the console. To allow developers to work on software before the exact chip Microsoft wanted was ready, it turned to the Power Mac G5. The company used the original dual 2 GHz model, as well as the updated 2004 variant of the tower, and wrote a bunch of custom software for it, including a complete operating system.

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Advanced Mac Substitute⇢

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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.

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Macintosh Turns 35

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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.

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GarageBand Turns 15

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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.

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Magnets!⇢

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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.

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