System 7 was crazy.
Category: Apple History
The Colors of Apple⇢
Linus Edwards, writing about the rumored iPhone 5C, in context of the design of past Apple products:
I wonder if these new colorful iPhones, along with the more colorful iOS 7, is a signal that Apple is transitioning into another colorful phase, similar to that of the late 90s. I always found it strange how Steve Jobs pushed the colorful iMac and iBooks, yet completely turned away from those colors after only a few years. Maybe he saw that fashion and tastes change rather quickly and wanted to pivot and stay ahead of the game. The bright colors would soon become garish if Apple kept them too long, so Jobs took Macs in a completely different direction with neutral colors that would be more timeless and less at the whim of current fashion.
Towers of Power⇢
A gross slideshow of some cool tower Macs.
Every Apple Ad⇢
Apple in 2000⇢
In digging around Apple’s PR site for yesterday’s piece, I came across this article:
CUPERTINO, California—December 5, 2000—Apple® today announced that it has experienced significantly slower than expected sales during October and November, which will result in revenues and earnings for its quarter ending December 30, 2000 being substantially below expectations.
The company expects to report revenue of about $1 billion and a net loss, excluding investment gains, of between $225 and $250 million when actual results are announced on January 17, 2001.
Christie’s Auctioning Off Vintage Apple Gear⇢
If you want a Lisa with 5.25-inch floppy drives, the bidding starts at $20,000.
On the Power Mac G4
At Macworld in January 1999, Apple announced the Power Macintosh G3 (Blue and White).
From 1997 to 1999, Apple had been shipping a Power Macintosh with a G3, but this new, colorful machine a much more forward-thinking rig. In addition to an all-new case that was easily opened for upgrades and maintenance, the machine added USB support, dropped the floppy drive and was the first Power Macintosh to be built using the New World ROM.
Twentieth Anniversary Mac Teardown⇢
If I ever score a TAM, I’ll know how to replace the logic board.
Not that I’d be able to find the parts … or take a screwdriver to one of these machines.
‘JOBS’ Movie Poster Includes Comma Splice
Here’s the poster:
And here’s the poster, with proper punctuation:
If this lack of attention to detail is going to be present in the movie, my inner Siracusa is going to need to do more than lie down.
image via The Loop
Wozniak, on the Original Mac⇢
The whole thing is worth reading, but this part jumped out at me:
Every time we improved the Macintosh, year by year by year, it got closer to what the Lisa had been.
We didn’t get the Lisa back until we got OS X from NeXT. Once we had OS X, that was the Lisa! But we had it so early … If we had just worked on it and developed it until it was at a personal computer price, we would’ve had the most incredible technology ever for GUI computers and we would’ve really owned it and had the rights to it. So Macintosh… the Macintosh failed, really hard, and who built the Macintosh into a success later on? It wasn’t Steve, he was gone. It was other people like John Sculley who worked and worked to build a Macintosh market when the Apple II went away.
Newton Connection 2.0 Released⇢
If you’ve got a Newton and a Mac running Snow Leopard or later, your life just got a lot easier.
California Codenames⇢
Thomas Brand:
OS X Mavericks wasn’t the first Apple product with a California code name. Just off the top of my head I can think of at least three other Apple products that were inspired by California with a codename to match.