512 Pixels

Macintosh Design Team Interview

Aresluna.org has posted an interview of the original Mac team by Byte Magazine. Here’s Jobs in 1984:

If you read the Apple’s first brochure, the headline was “Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication.” What we meant by that was that when you first attack a problem it seems really simple because you don’t understand it. Then when you start to really understand it, you come up with these very complicated solutions because it’s really hairy. Most people stop there. But a few people keep burning the midnight oil and finally understand the underlying principles of the problem and come up with an elegantly simple solution for it. But very few people go the distance to get there.

[…]

In Mac, there’s no English on the outside of the case. Everything’s iconic. And there is absolutely no English in the ROM. It is universal in nature. When the thing comes on it puts a few icons on the screen. If something goes wrong, it can’t boot or something, it puts a frowning Mac on. If it’s booting it puts a happy Mac on. It loads all the languages, all the country-specific stuff, off the disk. So, because the keyboard is detachable and mapped anyway, to localize Mac all you do is change the keyboard, manuals, and the disks. Nothing in the box has to change.

It’s a long read, but a very interesting look into the past, and shows the obsession these guys had when developing the first Mac.

A Lack of Direction

A lot of people are worried about a post-Steve Jobs Apple. Looking back of history, these fears are not completely unfounded. After Jobs was kicked to the curb in 1985, Apple entered a 10-year period of falling sales, poor products, and a slipping market share, while Microsoft and others grew in strength and numbers.

When Apple’s engineers failed to build a successor for the aging classic Mac OS, Apple bought NeXT Computers, bringing NeXT’s OS and CEO - Jobs - into Apple. With Jobs once more at the helm, the company has rocketed to new heights in the last 10 years.

In the time without Steve, Apple shipped a lot of computers. This one really sums up why Apple almost failed: a horrible product line:

The 630 was available in a confusing number of configurations, especially in the Performa variants (which had slightly different model numbers). The Quadra 630 featured an 68040 processor, 4 MiB of RAM, a 250 MB hard disk and a CD-ROM drive; the LC 630 was essentially identical, but had the FPU-less 68LC040 processor. The LC 630 DOS compatible added an additional 486DX2 processor at 66 MHz and dedicated RAM on a Processor Direct Slot card to the LC 630. The Performa versions were:

  • 630 - The LC 630, but without the CD-ROM drive
  • 630CD - Identical to the LC 630
  • 630CD DOS compatible - Identical to the LC 630 DOS compatible
  • 631CD - Like the 630CD, but with an additional RAM slot (for a total of two) on the motherboard, 8 MiB RAM, 500 MB hard disk and sold bundled with a monitor and modem
  • 635CD - The 630CD, but with 5 MiB RAM, bundled with a monitor and a modem
  • 636 - The 635CD without the monitor and CD-ROM, but with 8 MiB of RAM and the (optional) 500 MB hard disk
  • 636CD - The 636 with a CD-ROM. Sold exclusively through higher-education outlets. Was available with a 250MB hard disk.
  • 637CD - The 636CD with the monitor, but only a 350 MB hard disk
  • 638CD - The 637CD without the monitor, but a TV/video in card instead
  • 640CD DOS compatible - The 631CD with a modem and the 630CD DOS compatible’s 486 processor card

Holy cow. Today, with just a handful of products, Apple is far stronger - and simpler - than last time Steve left. And as long as Apple executives realize this, they’ll be fine. Apple came up with some amazing products without Jobs, and will do so after he is long gone, but they have to keep the product line clean and clear. Update: Here’s a video of Jobs completing Apple’s new, simpler product structure with the iBook:

A Look Back

The Guardian has a great interview with Steve Wozniak and  Andy Hertzfeld, two of the men who helped birth Apple and later the Macintosh:

“The Mac was kind of a funny hybrid between the two, and no one thought much of it,” he says. “Even after Steve Jobs took it over, a lot of people thought it was the Steve Jobs back-to-the-garage fantasy, that he was trying to pull Apple back to its roots with a small team who were very excited about what they were doing.”

Attitudes shifted quickly, however, thanks to mistakes elsewhere in the company. When the $10,000 Lisa failed to make an impact on its release in 1983, eyes began turning to Macintosh as a serious prospect.

“People started investing their hopes in the Macintosh,” says Hertzfeld, who now works for Google. “By the time the Mac shipped, it was kind of ‘bet the company’: it was clearly the most important thing at the company.

Early Macintosh Reviews Show John C. Dvorak Clueless Even in 1984

CNNMoney has compiled some snippets from reviews of the Macintosh when it was released in 1984. Here’s my favorite, from John C. Dvorak:

Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?” The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse’. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I dont want one of these new fangled devices.

Apple’s “arrogant assumptions” seems to be as right today as they were 20 years ago.

The MacBook Air, All Grown Up

Macworld reviewed the new MacBook Air:

Though not for everyone, Apple’s MacBook Air can still boast about its status as the world’s thinnest notebook computer, only now, with a 33 percent performance gain, the tradeoff between size and speed is not as great as with the first generation MacBook Air.

Its good to see a positive review of the MacBook Air talk about something other than the thin factor. I had a 1st generation for a bit, and thing was barely usable for much more than browsing and Office.

More on Taskbar vs. Dock

Ars Technica:

Ultimately, the new Taskbar is not Mac-like in any important way, and only the most facile of analyses would claim that it is. Concerns that Microsoft is making Windows too much like Mac OS X are not founded on any real evidence; the similarity is at most skin-deep.

That said, it’s not impossible to see a future where Windows also uses the same concept of the document being the window, ending the peculiar document-less windows we see today in Word and other software. It could do this by using the same approach as Messenger already uses in Windows 7; retain the Taskbar icon even when the last window is closed. In conjunction with a few extra window management operations (the ability to bring all windows of a particular application to the front, for example), Windows could offer the best of both worlds: the document-centric UI of Mac OS X, with its neatly orthogonal application and document switching, and document windows free from the constraints of their application, combined with the rapid window switching and management of the Taskbar.

Mac-loving Obama Staff Inherits White House Full of Old Windows Machines

The Washington Post:

One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.

It will be interesting to see if the President’s staff (or at least some of them) get their way. Besides traidition, the biggest challenge will be observing the Presidential Records Act, no matter what platform the White House staff is using.