Category: Apple History

On this week’s episode of Under the Radar, Marco Arment and _David Smith discussed the rumor of Apple moving to a universal app platform across macOS and iOS.

Their conversation has changed my thinking on the topic. It’s easy for people like me to view the Mac in an idealistic way, not a pragmatic one. I want my Mac apps to be fully native and rich, integrating with system features smoothly. The reality is, sadly, that quite a few of the apps in my Dock aren’t native, but are either wrappers around websites or Electron monstrosities.

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The Lisa is the computer that Apple used to introduce the GUI and the mouse. It was far too expensive, and after getting booted from the development of the machine, Steve Jobs wandered around the company until he took over the Macintosh project from Jeff Raskin.

The new, smaller computer packed Lisa-inspired technology at a much lower price. Since history honors winners, the Mac is the computer people remember.

That’s not to say the Lisa isn’t worth knowing about. I realized recently the machine’s 35th anniversary is coming up, so I spent a bunch of time researching the computer and it’s ground-breaking software for my column on MacStories this month. It’s on the long side, but if you use a Mac or iOS device, this computer is where much of the magic started.

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The Henry Ford, keeper of many of technology’s most important artifacts¹ has recently acquired the first project between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak:

Created to make free illegal phone calls, Blue Boxes were the first joint business venture between the two innovators, three years before the founding of Apple Computer Inc. in 1976. The new acquisition joins The Henry Ford’s collection, which also includes an original 1976 Apple I Computer. The Blue Box was purchased at Bonhams’ History of Science and Technology Sale.

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Be still, my heart.

Don’t miss this 2007 interview of Mehrle by Benj Edwards.

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This month on MacStories, I wrote about the original Apple TV:

By this point, iTunes housed (and sold) music, TV shows and movies. Users could enjoy this content on Macs, PC and iPods, but not their televisions.

This product — dubbed the iTV at this point — was designed for “completing the package” of Apple’s digital content business. In Jobs’ words, it was a box for getting iTunes content to a flat-screen TV. Pretty simple.

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Hard to believe this was just twenty years ago, honestly:

Designed with additional memory, the MessagePad 2100 has 4 MB of DRAM, which is 3MB more than its predecessor, the MessagePad 2000. The expanded system memory allows the MessagePad 2100 to run more applications simultaneously, permitting users to work more efficiently. The upgraded memory and communications software are expected to be especially useful for customers who tend to use large applications, like to work on their MessagePads with a variety of applications open at one time or use communications applications such as Internet email or web browsing.

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Robert Digitale, for The Press Democrat:

The Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard, the tech pioneers who in 1938 formed an electronics company in a Palo Alto garage with $538 in cash.

More than 100 boxes of the two men’s writings, correspondence, speeches and other items were contained in one of two modular buildings that burned to the ground at the Fountaingrove headquarters of Keysight Technologies. Keysight, the world’s largest electronics measurement company, traces its roots to HP and acquired the archives in 2014 when its business was split from Agilent Technologies — itself an HP spinoff.

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I wrote about the Pippin several years ago, but recently was sent one by a reader. It’s really incredible to have such a weird piece of Apple history in my collection, and I hope you enjoy learning some more about it:

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Me, over on MacStories:

Very often in life, we see things like products, athletic careers and even relationships end way later than they should. When this happens, sometimes the end goes unnoticed and with little fanfare.

Occasionally, things end on a high note, like when an athlete announces their retirement after winning a championship or a band calls it quits after a massive album and tour.

In the world of Apple products, the iPod mini is an example of the latter. It’s perhaps the best example of Apple killing one of its darlings.

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This new Kickstarter project caught my eye:

A beautifully produced, fully illustrated history of the pioneering Macintosh game scene. Spanning over 400 pages, this exhaustively researched book documents the landmark hits and arcane wonders that defined this much loved gaming platform.

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In 1988 Apple’s Advanced Technology Graphics Group created a short filmed named Pencil Test to show off the capabilities of the Macintosh II:

The company published two support documents about the film.

Reading this documents is a little wild. The Macintosh II was a modular system, unlike Steve Jobs’ original all-in-one. Apple speaks to both sides of the closed/open coin, claiming they have the best of both worlds: integrated system software and factory hardware with the ability to accommodate modularity at the same time:

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Yours truly, at MacStories:

Enthusiasts of all types always have that one special obsession. For muscle car people, maybe it’s one particular year of Ford Mustang. Photographers always have a favorite lens, while baseball players may have a favored bat or glove.

Ask almost any macOS fan, and they’ll tell you that Snow Leopard is their favorite version of all time.

There are a bunch of good reasons for that, beyond pure nostalgia.

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