This month in my MacStories column, I revisited the insane story of the lost/stolen iPhone 4. It was a lot of fun to re-read all the stories about this.
Category: Apple History
Thirty Years After Launch, HyperCard Lives on at The Internet Archive⇢
On August 11, 1987, Bill Atkinson announced a new product from Apple for the Macintosh; a multimedia, easily programmed system called HyperCard. HyperCard brought into one sharp package the ability for a Macintosh to do interactive documents with calculation, sound, music and graphics. It was a popular package, and thousands of HyperCard “stacks” were created using the software.
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Hypercard, we’re bringing it back.
A New Home for the iMacs
Early last year, I tweeted that I wanted to collect every color of iMac.
A month later, I had all 13 colors of iMac G3 in my office. I took a bunch of photos and made a video of the process. I then went on a summer-long tear writing about every generation and permutation of the CRT iMac. This work then morphed into an ebook about the iMac and the road from the classic Mac OS to Mac OS X.
Steve Jobs and the iPod nano⇢
Steve Levy, writing at Wired, recounting a conversation with Steve Jobs the day Apple announced the iPod nano:
“This is a huge bet,” he said, describing how once or twice a year he gathered the top 100 people at the company—“not the top 100 in the org chart but if you were going to have 100 people on a rowboat with you, who would you want?”—to figure out big strategic issues. The previous year, he said, he had opened the meeting with a speech: “Our revenues have doubled in the last two years,” he told his team. “And our stock price is high and our shareholders are happy. We have a lot of momentum. And a lot of people think, ‘It’s really great, we’ve got a lot to lose, let’s play it safe.’ That’s the most dangerous thing we can do. We have to get bolder, because we have world class competitors now and we just can’t stand still.” The bold move was the Nano, replacing the wildly popular iPod mini with an even tinier, full-featured, color-screened successor. “We call this a heart transplant—stop one production line, start another. It’s amazing, and the team has done brilliantly and pulled it off.”
Apple Removes iPod nano and iPod shuffle From Sale
The iPod world has ended not with a bang, but with a whimper, as apple.com/ipod now redirects to apple.com/ipod-touch. Both of the smaller music players were there just a few days ago.
Apple hasn’t published a press release on its website, but issued a statement to the press:
Today, we are simplifying our iPod lineup with two models of iPod touch now with double the capacity starting at just $199 and we are discontinuing the iPod shuffle and iPod nano.
Oral History of Avie Tevanian, Part Two⇢
Part Two of Avie Tevanian’s oral history has been posted to YouTube by The Computer History Museum.
World Emoji Day
Today is World Emoji Day. Started by Emojipedia founder and very handsome man Jeremy Burge in 2014, it’s a day to celebrate the tiny icons that have taken over much of our communication.
To help mark the day, Apple is previewing the new emoji coming to the company’s operating systems later this year. Beyond the press release, Apple Podcasts is getting into the day in a big way:
Happy #WorldEmojiDay!
Come play along with us and turn podcast titles into emojis with #PodcastEmoji.
Three Tiny Laptops⇢
This month in my MacStories column, I wrote about three of the most adorable Mac notebooks ever shipped: the PowerBook Duo, the 12-inch PowerBook G4 and the original MacBook Air.
5K Versions of Every Default macOS Wallpaper
Every major version of Mac OS X macOS has come with a new default wallpaper.
I have collected them all here, in glorious 5K resolution. I owe a huge thank you to the mysterious @forgottentowel for upscaling many of these for modern screens.
The JLPGA PowerBook 170
There are a lot of colorful Macs. Look no further than the original iMacs and iBooks if you need a little more than brushed aluminum in your life.
These machines are all great, but there’s one Mac that puts them to shame when it comes to being colorful.
Say hello to the JLPGA PowerBook 170:
There were only 500 of these made to commemorate the 1992 JLPGA golf tournament in Japan. The guts are a run-of-the-mill PowerBook 170, 1 but the case is truly special. The blue body is completed with a white lid and base. The battery doors are red, as are the screen adjustment sliders. The hinges are bright yellow; rounding things out are the green feet.
The Original iPhone SDK⇢
John Timmer at Ars Technica has rerun the site’s original review of the first iPhone SDK, way back in 2008. It’s wild to see how basic it seems now.
iPhone Turns Ten
This week marks a full decade since the original iPhone launched. I wrote about it back in January, on the anniversary of Steve Jobs’ incredible keynote.
There’s already a bunch of great stuff on the web about the anniversary. Throughout the week, I’m going to round up some of it here.
- WSJ: How The iPhone Was Born: Inside Stories of Missteps and Triumphs — Former Apple executives Scott Forstall, Tony Fadell and Greg Christie talk about the time and work leading up to the iPhone’s announcement.
- CBS: It had us at “Hello”: The iPhone turns 10 — A video with the four journalists who received review units of the iPhone back in 2007, coupled with an interview of Bas Ording, who was instrumental in Apple’s early multi-touch work. Don’t miss this chance to re-watch David Pogue’s painful music video of his review.
- Computer History Museum: Putting Your Finger On It: Creating the iPhone — Original iPhone Engineers Nitin Ganatra, Scott Herz, and Hugo Fiennes in Conversation with John Markoff, followed by Scott Forstall.
- Wired: iPhone-creator Tony Fadell: don’t let smartphones threaten your ‘analogue life’ — In this interview, Fadell mentions a multitouch MacBook Pro and talks about the Rokr, which is fun.
- MacStories: iPhone 1.0: The 10th Anniversary Review — John Voorhees reviews the iPhone as if it was 2007.
- The Verge: We compared hardware specs for every iPhone ever made — All the great charts.
- WSJ: Living With the First iPhone … in 2017 — Joanna Stern is braver than most.
- The Prompt #30: The Internet in Your Pocket — Back in 2014, Federico Viticci, Myke Hurley and I talked through the original keynote.
- 512 Pixels: On the Original iPhone’s Launch — A few years ago, I recounted my experience as an Apple retail employee when the iPhone launched.