512 Pixels

Totes doomed.

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Mark Bergen has a look at Nest’s new CEO. It’ll be interesting to see if his past roles in the security sector help Nest move to what seems inevitable — making home security systems a lot smarter.

In an interview with Ashlee Vance at Bloomberg:

Bloomberg: The internet says you might be a tyrant. Are you a tyrant?

Fadell: You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. That style may not be for everyone. But, you know, there are people that worked with me years ago at General Magic, and they have their kids working for me now. If it was true, it would get around like crazy. The Valley’s a small place. I’ve been here 25 years, right?

To me, it’s truly, what’s your mindset? Are you coming to work? Are you truly respecting the mission we’re on? Yes, things are going to go up and down. But because we have a true respect for the people, because they respect what we’re trying to do, we’ll get through anything together. And that’s what counts, right?

Bloomberg: What do you wish you had done differently at Nest?

Fadell: I don’t know of any regrets that I have.

I can understand getting stuff done at the cost of other things, but it’s easy to argue that Nest isn’t actually getting stuff done. That aside, no project or product is worth being a dick.

Tony Fadell:

While there is never a perfect time to transition, we’ve grown Nest to much more than a thermostat company. We’ve created a hardware + software + services ecosystem, which is still in the early growth stage and will continue to evolve to move further into the mainstream over the coming years. The future of Nest is equally as bright given the strong and experienced leadership team in place, as well as the two-year product roadmap we’ve developed together to ensure the right future direction.

Although this news may feel sudden to some, this transition has been in progress since late last year and while I won’t be present day to day at Nest, I’ll remain involved in my new capacity as an advisor to Alphabet and Larry Page. This will give me the time and flexibility to pursue new opportunities to create and disrupt other industries – and to support others who want to do the same – just as we’ve done at Nest. We should all be disrupters!

Given all the drama that’s been leaking out of Nest, this isn’t shocking news. I’ve got several Nest products, and I really do like the company. I think this is probably the right move.

The Tribune Publishing Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and more is rebranding:

Tribune Publishing Co. today announced that the Company will change its name to tronc, Inc., a content curation and monetization company focused on creating and distributing premium, verified content across all channels. tronc, or tribune online content, captures the essence of the Company’s mission. tronc pools the Company’s leading media brands and leverages innovative technology to deliver personalized and interactive experiences to its 60 million monthly users.

[…]

Chairman Michael Ferro said, “Our industry requires an innovative approach and a fundamentally different way of operating. Our transformation strategy – which has attracted over $114 million in growth capital – is focused on leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the user experience and better monetize our world-class content in order to deliver personalized content to our 60 million monthly users and drive value for all of our stakeholders. Our rebranding to tronc represents the manner in which we will pool our technology and content resources to execute on our strategy.”

I sorta passed out there in the middle of that blockquote, but I’m sure this will save newspapers.

Long before Jony Ive would be locked in his all-white room, Apple used product videos to show off new products. Here’s the iMac’s:

This isn’t great. iCloud Music Library/iTunes Match/Whatever The Hell It Is Called has been up and down for a couple of days now.

Update: It’s now way worse.

Apple loves a good television ad. Here are a bunch from the iMac G3 era:

This is going to take a lot of getting used to, AP Stylebook. Standing here today, I’m not a fan of the change.

Of course, I can’t buy a digital copy of the 2016 AP Stylebook in iBooks, for the Kindle or even as a PDF yet. The 2015 version is still the newest on digital shelves, but all the AP is currently offering is a spiral-bound book or an online subscription.

Sigh.

Nine months after announcing the Five Flavors, Steve Jobs took the stage to rev the iMac G3s again.

These new iMacs all had three main new features: a slot-loading optical drive, Airport capability and a tweaked case that allowed for fanless operation.

Jobs opened the iMac pitch with the optical drive. Gone was the tray-loading drive, replaced with a slot-loading drive. This may seem odd now, but according to Walter Isaacson, it was important to Jobs. Here’s a story from the time leading up to the original iMac’s 1998 launch:

Jobs had not seen the final product before, and when he looked at it onstage he saw a button the front, under the display. He pushed it and the CD tray opened. “What the fuck is this?!?” he asked, though not as politely.

[…]

“Steve, this is exactly the drive I showed you when we talked about the components,” Rubinstein explained. “No, there was never a tray, just a slot,” Jobs insisted. Rubinstein didn’t back down. Job’s fury didn’t abate. “I almost started crying, because it was too late to do anything about it,” Jobs later recalled.

Beyond the optical drive, the October 1999 iMacs all shipped with slots for an optional $99 Airport card, bringing wireless networking to the iMac for the first time. Tray-loading iMac users were stuck with modems and Ethernet cables.

Next, Jobs highlighted the fact that this model of iMac shipped without a fan. The slot loading machines featured a slight case redesign that included a much larger area for ventilation around the handle, as you can see on my Grape and Indigo models:

Compared to the tray-loading models, these computers were quieter and more power efficient.

Slot-loading drives, Airport and no fan were big improvements. Additionally, these machines were more transparent than before and came with built-in Harman Kardon speakers.

I get the sense this is the iMac G3 Apple wanted to ship in 1998.

The 1998 iMac — available only in Blueberry — sold for just $999, the first Mac to ever ship with a sub-$1,000 price point since a handful of Macintosh LCs from the 1990s.¹ It came with a 350 MHz G3 and a 6 GB hard drive.

There was, however, one more thing: the iMac DV. With this revision in October 1998, Apple split the iMac lineup for the first time into a “Good, Better, Best” arrangement:

The middle rung — dubbed the iMac DV — shipped with slightly revised Five Flavors colors,² and a whole lot more for $1,299.

• A faster 400 MHz G3
• A larger 10 GB hard drive
• VGA video out for mirroring
• A DVD-ROM drive
• iMovie
• A pair of FireWire 400 ports

(The VGA port was stashed behind a removal panel on the back of the iMac. You could replace with a second panel that included an opening that exposed the port. Fiddly, but I guess Apple didn’t want to show that ugly port off to the world.)

Bringing FireWire to the iMac was a big deal. While this was before the Digital Hub strategy had a name, it gave regular consumers access digital camcorders. FireWire was developed by Apple starting in 1986 as a high-speed serial bus to replace the clunky and problem-prone SCSI interface found on Macs. With help from Sony and other companies, FireWire entered the market in the mid-1990s. Commonly used for transferring digital video and other large files, FireWire was a major part of Apple’s computer lineup and feature set for many years, eventually giving way to Thunderbolt.

This computer marked the introduction of iMovie. Built on the back of QuickTime, it allowed users to import and edit videos right on the desktop. DVD burning was still a little ways off, but these movies could be exported to disk, back to the camcorder (and out to a VHD recorder) or published online.

“Desktop video,” Jobs said, “will be as big as desktop publishing.”

In his demo of iMovie, Jobs imported footage over Firewire to a Grape iMac DV. Once imported, he stitched them together with some transitions with just a few clicks.

There, was, one more one more thing, however: the iMac DV Special Edition.

Available only in a stunning new color called Graphite, this machine was an iMac DV with 128 MB of RAM and a 13 GB hard drive that sold for $1,499.

Oh mama.

Yes, please.