The first notebook I used full-time was a 1GHz Titanium PowerBook G4, and while I used a bunch of iMac G3s and beige Power Mac G3 in high school, my part-time job at the time came with what I consider to be “my” first Mac — a Blue & White Power Mac G3.
(That’s my exact machine. I just got it back through an extensive set of trades on the Memphis gray market for old Macs.)
Building a new operating system is a monumental challenge, and in January 2000 when Aqua was introduced, Apple was in the thick of the transition to OS X.
Beyond the staggering amount of development work taking place to smash Mac OS and NeXTSTEP together, Apple was hard at work on the user interface of OS X. But to understand what OS X would become (and how it would look), it’s important to remember where the company had been before.
Last year, I got a preview of the Apple Pop-Up Museum, a show in Atlanta showcasing the best of Cupertino’s hardware over the years.
This year, some of the guys behind that project are back, with Vintage Computer Festival Southeast 2.0:
This year’s exhibit space will be greatly enlarged over last year, occupying the whole retail space of the store. About 2/3 of the space will be occupied by a museum display of personal computing artifacts from the Kenbak 1 forward. The remaining 1/3 of the retail space will contain hobbyist vintage computing exhibits. For those who missed last year or who would like to see it again, the Apple pop-up museum from last year’s festival will again be available.
Priceonomics has a great article on Susan Kare, the designer of some of the most iconic pieces of computer UI ever done and one of my tattoos.
I just love videos like this. While mid-90s Apple was kinda insane, there’s some real gold in these six minutes.
While Macintosh hardware is considered some of the most reliable in the industry, the company has had some pretty epic failures in the past. We spoke about some of these a couple of weeks ago on The Prompt, but after doing some digging, I’ve tweaked and expanded the list.
This article isn’t comprehensive, and I’ve just ignored things like exploding iPod nanos and boring hardware failures. A couple are fairly modern, and a couple aren’t, but all of them are enough to make even the staunchest fanboy roll their eyes.
It’s been well documented that the iPod mini was the device that helped propel Apple’s music player to its status as a cultural icon. Andrew Kim’s photography of the music player makes me miss the gold model my brother had for years.
While listening to the third episode of Chris Parrish & Brent Simmons’ podcast the record, in which the pair interviews Greg Robbins the Mac OS Drag Manager and Objective-C library for Google Data APIs, I noticed this in the show notes:
Greg Robbins is Graphing Calculator co-author ( a story you should already know about, that we don’t go over again)…
Turns out, I hadn’t read or even heard of the story behind Graphic Calculator. Turns out, it is a crazy one:
Apple:
On January 24, 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh. And with it a promise that the power of technology, put in the hands of everyone, could change the world. On January 24, 2014, we sent 15 camera crews all over the world to show how that promise has become a reality.
From sunrise in Melbourne to nightfall in Los Angeles, they documented people doing amazing things with Apple products. They shot over 70 hours of footage — all with the iPhone 5s. Then it was edited and scored with an original soundtrack. Thanks to the power of the Mac and the innovations it has inspired, an effort that normally takes months was accomplished in a matter of days.
Sometimes, it really is better if ideas never make it out into the real world.
Update: Dr. Drang just reminded me of The Talking Moose. Old Apple is weird.
MG Siegler points out that the more things change, they more they stay the same.