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In 2021, I launched my first Kickstarter campaign, for a wall calendar celebrating dates in Apple’s hardware history. The next year, I followed it up with a project focused on Apple’s software history. I’ve got something cooking for the third installment, but that’s a story for a different time.

Each project was more than just a beautiful wall calendar, however. Each campaign included digital goodies: wallpapers made of the images in the calendars and digital versions and .ics files for each project’s dates.

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Writing on Six Colors:

Over the past couple years, Apple’s been rolling out its “Detailed City Experience” in Maps to cities across the world and finally, at long last, those improved maps and better landmarks have come to my hometown of Boston, as first noted by Frank McShan on Twitter.

These are really nice looking. The closest thing I’ve seen here in Memphis is the Bass Pro location inside the Pyramid, and it really doesn’t come close to these new Maps illustrations:

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This update is great, but I would love it if the example screenshots would include the Grizzlies winning a game:

As seen on MacRumors:

And on 9to5Mac:

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Laine Nooney has a new book coming out all about the Apple II:

The Apple II was a versatile piece of hardware, but its most compelling story isn’t found in the feat of its engineering, the personalities of Apple’s founders, or the way it set the stage for the company’s multi-billion-dollar future. Instead, as historian Laine Nooney shows, what made the Apple II iconic was its software. In software, we discover the material reasons people bought computers. Not to hack, but to play. Not to code, but to calculate. Not to program, but to print. The story of personal computing in the United States is not about the evolution of hackers — it’s about the rise of everyday users.

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Neale Van Fleet, writing on the Rogue Amoeba blog:

As part of the unveiling of our Historic Screenshot Archive, I made some fun images to post to our social media accounts. Making those images was tricky, because interfaces were much smaller in the pre-Retina era.

Working on this project with Rogue Amoeba was a real blast, but I had been wondering how they prepped the images used on social media. Now I know!

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Nilay Patel, writing at The Verge:

Here’s the best printer in 2023: the Brother laser printer that everyone has. Stop thinking about it and just buy one. It will be fine!

Seriously, ask around or just look in the background of Zoom calls: there’s a black Brother laser printer sitting there. Some people have the bare-bones Brother HL-L2305DW, which costs like $120. We have the $270 Brother MFC-L2750DW, which adds a sheet-fed scanner, because my wife is a lawyer and scans things for judges or whatever she does with it. It doesn’t matter. We only bought that one to replace our previous Brother laser printer that we lost in a move, and even then, I didn’t even look at the model numbers. It has been connected to our Wi-Fi for like six years straight, and I have never replaced the toner. It prints Amazon return labels from my phone without complaining, and it does not feel like the CEO of Inkjet Supply and Hostage Situations Incorporated is waiting to mug me or enable DRM at the slightest provocation.

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This week on the podcast:

Spotify is getting weird, Apple is getting wise to long thighs and The Quizzies are back!

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Philip Lee has an amazing new product for sale now:

Trashbot 2.0 stationery set is inspired by classic 80s computer culture, featuring unique desktop and icon designs. The set includes:

• Whiteboard x1
• Icons with magnetic back x3
• Trashbot figure/mini pen holder x1
• Error bot figure x1
• Memo Pad x2 (200pages in total)

Ordered.

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Apple Support:

Issue or symptom

If a FireWire audio device is connected to a Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) or an iMac G5 (Ambient Light Sensor) while the computer is restarting, the FireWire bus will stop responding and no FireWire devices will be detected on the bus. The device may stop responding or stop charging, depending on the specifics of the device.

Soltuion

You can restore the Firewire bus by resetting the SMU (System Management Unit).

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I did not have “Apple Music Classical is announced as an App Store pre-order” on my bingo card for 2023. Not to mention that the app won’t launch on the iPad on day one.

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David Smith, writing on Mastodon:

Widgetsmith just reached a truly remarkable milestone, its 100,000,000th download. I am genuinely staggered by this and incredibly grateful.

He continues on his blog:

A number that I can’t really wrap my mind around. A number larger than the population of all but 14 countries.

I was very conflicted about whether I should share and observe this milestone publicly. I am by nature a very shy, quiet person and not one to seek the spotlight.

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Whoever was assigned to task to write a support article explaining the differences between the PowerBook G3 models drew the short straw that week at Kbase HQ:

This article describes the differences between the PowerBook G3 Series (Bronze keyboard) introduced in May, 1999, and earlier PowerBook G3 Series computers.

There are a number of visual cues for distinguishing the new PowerBook G3 Series.

They are:

• The keyboard and trackpad button have a bronze or mocha color.
• The inside display bezel has a white Apple logo at the top.
• The rear ports are all enclosed by the I/O door and the modem port is now in the rear of the unit.
• There are two USB ports.
• It has a single, manual eject PC card slot which supports Type I and II PC cards.
• The display clamshell latch mechanism release is on the base of the PowerBook instead of the clamshell.

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