512 Pixels

Benj Edwards pours one out for a bunch of forgotten Macs.

Thomas Brand:

Most people have a mix of natural abilities, but the gifts we call superpowers often are tempered through training and experience. That is the case for me. My superpowers come as the result of a disease. I am legally blind. […] When it comes to superpowers I am gifted. I have three. LHON might have taken some of my vision, but in return it left me with heightened abilities I would easily trade for the chance to drive a car, or read a classroom blackboard.

Thomas lists his excellent memory, hearing and an ease with public speaking as the powers he’s been granted from battling with his vision. Having spent a good amount of time with Thomas on two occasions, I can say that he is spot-on with his self-assessment.

I couldn’t help but think of my son Josiah reading Thomas’ article this evening.

When Josiah was diagnosed with brain cancer, the doctors told us that he may be blind in one eye, and probably would never walk or use his left arm.

While his vision is impaired slightly (it’s easy to sneak up on him due to his lack of peripheral vision on the left side), he spends his days running up and down the hallway in our house, laughing and singing with his little sister, with just a hint of a limp. While his left arm (and especially hand) are weak, through years of physical and occupational therapy, he’s gained lots of movement and strength.

What Josiah may lack he makes up for in attitude and spirit. He’s kind, funny and out-going. He wants to be in your lap if you’re sitting down, but won’t be content until he’s made you laugh.

I don’t know if Josiah will ever be able to drive or play basketball or swim. But I don’t care, because he — like Thomas — is a super hero.

Jordan Golson at MacRumors:

New iMac models on the Apple Online Store list a lead time of several weeks to get delivered, while the refurbished models claim to ship in 1–3 days, with $200 and $230 discounts on the low- and high-end 21" models respectively.

If you need an iMac now, this is the way to go.

Bryan Bishop:

The Computer Science Museum is offering the source code for Photoshop 1.0.1 for the Mac with Adobe’s blessing. It’s for non-commercial use, though it’s not something you’re going to be able to run out of the gate — aside from operating system and architecture issues, the MacApp libraries that were licensed from Apple at the time are not included. It consists of about 128,000 lines of code, the majority of which were written in the Pascal programming language.

Mmhmm, Pascal…

Speaking of Photoshop, don’t miss Paul Miller’s look at the apps’ development over the years.

Anyone who has been following technology since before the Dawn of the Smartphone should remember the Apple Newton. The handheld device was sold from 1993 to 1998, and is regarded as being ahead of its time.

The family of devices all came equipped with (eventually) decent battery life, handwriting recognition and a pen-based UI, and all ran the Newton OS.

Apple didn’t just keep Newton OS confined to glowing green handheld devices, however. In November 1997, just four months before the entire project would be shut down, Apple shipped the eMate 300.

With the same 480 x 320 16-bit greyscale display as the Newton 2000 and 2100, the eMate 300 supported pen input and ran all the same programs as its handheld brethren. (Sadly, the eMate was woefully underpowered at a mere 25 MHz. The Newton 2100 ran at a blistering 162 MHz.)

Instead of being a tablet-like device, however, the eMate 300 resembled a small laptop. At 4 pounds and 12.0“x11.4”x 2.1", the eMate 300 was only a little larger than the downright tiny PowerBook Duos. It rocked a nicely-sized keyboard on the lower half of its semi-transparent green clamshell. Apple even included several places to store the stylus.

(The eMate’s design came back around with the iBook G3.)

The eMate housed an infrared port, and standard Macintosh serial/LocalTalk ports, making it easy to connect to a Macintosh.

That’s the genius of the eMate, really, as Apple built it with education in mind.

Here’s the first paragraph from the original product specification announcement:

It is designed to take the rugged lifestyle of a student’s computer in K–12 secondary education. For example the keyboard has no circuitry hidden under it and thus avoids and potential ‘Pepsi syndromes’ that might result from drinks spilling on it. In addition, the shell incasing it is designed to survive spills of the drop and bounce type. If the screen or keyboard is damaged, both are designed for easy removal and replacement. The software inside it is also designed to adapt to the classroom environment and use wireless IR and client-server approaches to fit in and adapt to the high school environment.

(Don’t miss the Pepsi/Scully reference in there.)

Here’s Allen Pepper, in an interview at Low End Mac:

I set each student up with their own account and password. On each cart, I have an Apple StyleWriter and LaserWriter, so they can print whenever they want. They use them when we go to the library to take notes for any project that they may have. They are able to make charts and graphs on them to include in their assignments. When they are finished with their work, they like to use the beaming function as an instant messaging tool. This feature really attracts them to the device - especially when they use it to print a document.

The iPad’s success in education really feels like an echo after reading about the eMate 300.

Like its Newton cousins, the eMate can still be used today. While it isn’t as powerful as portable as the Newton, it holds a special place in my heart, and in any conversation about the history of mobile computing.

Rebecca Greenfield:

Not all of Musk’s data is entirely convincing and the parts that are don’t point to a malicious plot. In the end, it looks like Broder made some compromises to get from the Newark charging station to the Milford one, in both speed and temperature. Broder may not have used Musk’s car the way Musk would like, but Musk is, for now, overhyping his case for a breach of journalism ethics.

Update: The Times chimes in here and here.

Elon Musk:

When Tesla first approached The New York Times about doing this story, it was supposed to be focused on future advancements in our Supercharger technology. There was no need to write a story about existing Superchargers on the East Coast, as that had already been done by Consumer Reports with no problems! We assumed that the reporter would be fair and impartial, as has been our experience with The New York Times, an organization that prides itself on journalistic integrity. As a result, we did not think to read his past articles and were unaware of his outright disdain for electric cars. We were played for a fool and as a result, let down the cause of electric vehicles. For that, I am deeply sorry.

If that weren’t damning enough, Tesla has posted numerous graphs and tables outlining the car’s performance while in the hands of The New York Times.

This week, Lil’ Mikey DJ and I discuss gdgt being bought by Aol, Apple’s slight refresh to its MacBook line and the iPad 4.

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Viticci:

Last Monday, 445 days after my first scan, my PET scan came back negative. This doesn’t mean my journey is over: it means the treatments I have received, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, have been very effective. I will likely get more treatments to “consolidate” – e.g. “wrap up” – everything, but, overall, this is great news. It means I have kicked cancer’s ass.

This is not a post about the lessons I’ve learned. I am still learning. There’s an old saying in Italy that goes like this: “life is a continuous exam”. I believe that’s true. How can I write about life when I’m still learning how to deal with it?

Almost four years into my son’s fight with cancer, I’m still learning, too.

Apple continues to grow more aggressive with its pricing this time around. The price of the Air has fallen, while the Retina machines have gotten faster.

Interestingly, the non-Retina MacBook Pro is still around after today’s updates. I would have guessed that wouldn’t have been the case, but I’m glad my machine isn’t a dinosaur quite yet.

I think this bit really sums up the whole thing nicely:

The only thing we’ll never do is make a crappy product. We’re going to make a great product. That’s the only religion that we have. We must do something great, something bold, something ambitious. We want the customer to be the center of it. We want to enrich people’s lives. And all of this other stuff, we sweat the details on those, in hopes that we’ve proven over the years that this is something we can do.

Benj Edwards:

At a time when it seemed that compact Macs would forever be saddled with 9-inch monochrome displays, the Color Classic burst forth with a glorious, ultra-sharp 10-inch Sony Trinitron tube that handily displayed 256 colors—although it did so at a 512 by 384 resolution that almost matched its compact ancestors.

I own a Color Classic, and enjoyed Benj’s article about the machine. It was a great little machine in its day.