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A New Kind Of Heist: Six Apps For Free

Those crazy MacHeisters are at it again, and this time the deal is even harder to resist.
The first ever MacHeist Nano won’t cost you a penny. You can download, without charge, fully licensed copies of ShoveBox, WriteRoom, Twitterific, TinyGrab, and Hordes of Orcs. If 500,000 people take part (which I think is a pretty safe [...]

Getting More iPhone Home Screens – And Keeping Them

A couple of weeks back, I wrote Temporarily Get More iPhone Home Screens Via Cunning Bug Exploit, but had heard staying away from the iTunes Applications tab within my iPhone was probably a Very Good Idea. Reader Larry Pressnell noted that since the most recent iTunes update, his extra screens have been accessible in iTunes.
Since [...]

Cult of Mac Favorite: MobileStacks Is the Best Reason To Jailbreak. Period.

I really like Stacks on my Mac. Stacks makes it fast and easy to find files, folders and apps right from the Dock. It makes managing a Mac pretty slick with all sorts of little UI tricks. That’s why I recently gave MobileStack a go on my jailbroken iPhone.
I must say that it lives up to the [...]

Gallery: Behind the Scenes From Two Classic Apple TV Ads

Is this Steve Jobs driving a tank in a classic Apple TV spot from the late 1990s? That was the rumor at the time: Jobs was making cameos in Apple commercials.
Ken Segall, the TBWA ad man responsible for naming the iMac and Think Different, reveals the truth after the jump. He also shares some rare [...]

Google 2001 Search Reveals Nascent Cult of Mac Activities

 Web 20011204183409 Http:  A112.G.Akamai.Net 7 1112 492 20011004 Www.Wired.Com News Images Thumbs Macwthimb0109 In honor of its 10th anniversary, Google has rolled back the clock as far as it can go — its January 2001 index. Though the company got rolling in fall 1998, this is the most materially complete version of the original Google that they have, and they’ve even included links to the Internet Archive to retrieve long-since dead web pages. An era before the iPod.

When you go looking for your humble Cult of Mac curators, however, it’s possible to discover a lot of proto-Cult of Mac content, most of which is extremely amusing. It’s like reading today’s Cult of Mac yesterday — but without the benefit of decent web design.

Why here’s Leander at Wired News, writing about the 2001 MacWorld keynote after years kicking around various tech publications and becoming a bicycle messenger: It’s a Mac, Mac, Mac, Macworld.

Or this riveting narrative of Apple’s decision to replace QuickDraw GX with Unicode!

This site even tells of a prehistoric July 15, 1996 MacWeek article in which Leander reports on shocking Mac sales slumps. Damn you, Windows 95!

Other than a bunch of articles from college, searching myself only yields my earliest ever Mac tip from a MacCentral round-up of Mac celebrities that included my report on Radiohead.

Turning back the dial on Craig, meanwhile, turned up the archive of his MacToolbox column “Revert to Saved,” including this scandalous rant that Macs crash occasionally!

Ed’s history includes postings on a now-defunct and not-even archived BeOS user message board called “BeSpecific.”

Giles pops up all over, but this interview about what it’s like to be a British journalist is probably the best.

Lonnie turns up this fascinating 1971 camp photo, which might or might not be him.

And Leigh might or might not be this yoga instructor/university department secretary.

It’s like looking into the old mirror. Fascinating.

About the author

Petemortensen

Pete Mortensen is the communications lead for growth strategy firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete's particular Apple avocations are both around design--interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!

Email the author | Read more posts by Pete Mortensen.

11 comments

    Oh, man, I’d totally forgotten that it was MacToolbox where I first started doing online stuff. But, good grief, my Mac was crashing constantly during the OS 9 period, and it was driving me crazy.

    I got flamed good for that one, but not nearly as much as for “Why the new iMac sucks”, a piece of satire that went down in an ‘interesting’ manner with, er, ‘fanatic’ US Mac owners. http://tinyurl.com/3v9374 is the reprint.

    Perhaps my favourite flame was from the interestingly named ‘Your worst nightmare’ and read, in full, “You might want to learn how to use a mac before writing an artical on one you f——ing winkie”. Quite.

    Yes, I was a track & field star before I became a Mac pundit. I’m really glad Google wasn’t around in the 80s.

    If you do a search for “iPhone” you get this:

    http://web.archive.org/web/20010207002902/www.uioa.com/productcatalog/

    iPhone 2050
    # Send and receive e-mail
    # Make phone calls
    # Shop online
    # Surf the Internet
    # Read the news
    # Check the weather
    # Review sports statistics
    # Access movie information
    # Trade stocks
    # Bank online

    Hmmm… sounds familiar