Apple history

Today in Apple history: Turnaround artist Gil Amelio joins Apple’s board

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Bringing on Gil Amelio was viewed as a big coup for the Apple board.
Bringing on Gil Amelio was viewed as a big coup for the Apple board.
Photo: Apple

November 9: Today in Apple history: Gil Amelio joins Apple board of directors November 9, 1994: Gil Amelio, a businessman with a reputation as a talented turnaround artist, joins Apple’s board.

Coming off his impressive revitalization of two other tech companies, National Semiconductor and Rockwell International, Amelio’s appointment at Apple sparks widespread celebration. Many Apple watchers think his arrival means the company’s dark days are over. Sadly, Amelio’s turnaround tricks won’t work in Cupertino.

Today in Apple history: Tim Cook becomes Apple’s chief operating officer

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Tim Cook
Tim Cook was on his way to the top spot at Apple.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

October 14: Today in Apple history October 14, 2005: Tim Cook takes the reins as Apple’s chief operating officer, continuing an upward climb through the company’s ranks that will make him CEO less than six years later.

“Tim and I have worked together for over seven years now, and I am looking forward to working even more closely with him to help Apple reach some exciting goals during the coming years,” Steve Jobs says in a statement.

Steve Jobs’ Make Something Wonderful comes out April 11 (for free)

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The new digital book comes out April 11 for free.
The new digital book comes out April 11 for free on the Steve Jobs Archive website and Apple Books.
Photo: Steve Jobs Archive

The Steve Jobs Archive’s first major release — a digital book titled Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words — will arrive April 11.

Despite the announcement coming in an email from the archive on April Fools’ Day, the news appears to be genuine. And that includes the part about the e-book, which is filled with Jobs’ emails, conversations, photos and more, being free online for all.

45 ways Apple put a ding in the universe [Cult of Mac Magazine 395]

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Yes, Apple changed the world.
Yes, Apple changed the world.
Cover: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

In some ways, it’s hard to remember what the world looked like before Apple arrived in 1976. The upstart company made computing consumer-friendly, fashionable and, ultimately, ubiquitous.

In just four and a half decades, Apple made a surprisingly big impact on the tech scene and the world at large.

As we look back on the company’s 45th birthday this week, we take stock of 45 ways Apple put a ding in the universe. Hit the highlights in this week’s issue of Cult of Mac Magazine. Get the free app to enjoy the stories on your iOS device. Or read them on the web via the link stacks below.

Why Apple should celebrate its history with an Official Apple Archive [Opinion]

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Why Apple should celebrate its history with an Official Apple Archive [Opinion]
It was great while it lasted!
Photo: Unofficial Apple Archive

Apple took a proverbial sledgehammer to the Unofficial Apple Archive, an online collection of more than 15,000 classic Apple ads and assorted other materials, last weekend. Cupertino’s legal team issued a slew of takedown notices to Vimeo and the Unofficial Apple Archive’s host provider, Squarespace, resulting in thousands of vintage Apple ads vanishing in the blink of an eye.

While I understand the reason for the takedowns, I really, really wish Apple hadn’t tried to wipe the ads off the internet. Fortunately, Apple could set things straight — by embracing both its past and its most ardent fans.

Dealer will part with prized Steve Jobs autograph for $77,000

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Plaque Steve Jobs
For 10-years of services.
Photo: RR Auction

How does an autograph collector part with a favorite item? Dan Caldwell of Billionaire Collectibles sets the price high enough so that letting go is not so painful.

He has what is likely the only Steve Jobs autograph currently for sale, a signed work-anniversary certificate for an Apple employee. The $77,000 asking price on eBay is how much someone “will have to pay to peel it out of my hands.”

Apple II screenshots required a whole lot of extra hardware

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Running Apple II programs on a Mac with an Apple IIe Card was pretty darn awesome.
Kids today don't know how lucky they are.
Photo: Microwavemont/YouTube

Taking a full-screen screenshot on a modern Mac or iPhone is just a matter of tapping a couple of buttons. But things used to be a whole lot more challenging, as longstanding Apple employee Chris Espinosa recently shared on Twitter.

Kids (and “how to” article writers) today don’t know how good they’ve got it!

Tim Cook tells graduates what it really means to love your job

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2018 interview with Tim Cook suggests Apple was working on iCloud backup encryption
Remember that tired old adage about a job you love not being work? Tim Cook just threw it out the window.
Photo: Apple

During a commencement speech at Tulane this morning, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave graduates a new twist on the old adage about finding a job you love. He also talked about Apple’s vision to “move humanity forward.”

A brief history of Steve Jobs’ automated factory at NeXT [Cook book leftovers]

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Inside Next Factory in Fremont
In 1990, Steve Jobs built another highly-automated factory, where robots did almost all of the assembly of NeXT computers.
Photo: Terrence McCarthy, used with permission.

Tim Cook book outtakes

This post was going to be part of my new book, Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level, but was cut for length or continuity. Over the next week or so, we will be publishing several more sections that were cut, focusing mostly on Apple’s manufacturing operations.

This is Part 2 of a two-part section on Apple’s misadventures in manufacturing. Part I is here.

Steve Jobs carried his dream of end-to-end control over manufacturing to NeXT, the company that Jobs founded after being booted out of Apple in 1985. It was here that he learned a tough lesson about manufacturing: that sometimes it’s more trouble than it is worth. Or, perhaps more kindly, that great manufacturing capabilities mean nothing if you don’t have a product people want to buy.

A brief history of Apple’s misadventures in manufacturing: Part 1 [Cook book outtakes]

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Apple Macintosh Factory of the future in Fremont
Steve Jobs built a highly automated Macintosh plant grandly called the "factory of the future."
Photo: Apple Maps

Tim Cook book outtakes This post was going to be part of my new book, Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level, but was cut for length. Over the next week or so, we will be publishing several more sections that were cut, focusing mostly on Apple’s manufacturing operations.

Steve Jobs always had a deep fascination with automated factories. He was first exposed to them during a trip to Japan in 1983. At the time, Apple had just created a new floppy disk drive called Twiggy. During a visit to Apple’s factory in San Jose, however, Jobs became irate when he discovered the high failure rate of Twiggy drives Apple was producing. More than half of them were rejected. Jobs threatened to fire everyone who worked at the factory

Apple II’s original ‘Graphics Magician’ headlines KansasFest

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Mark Pelczarski
One of the most popular games published by Mark Pelczarski's company, Penguin Software
Screenshot: Penguin Software/YouTube

Mark Pelczarski’s first contribution to the personal computing revolution came in a zip-lock bag.

With no App Store in 1979, Pelczarski bagged disks and photo-copied instruction manuals for what was then one of the first digital paint programs for the Apple II.

Camaraderie, chaos and the original iPhone launch stories you’ve never heard, on The CultCast

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Introducing, iPhone
Though Steve played it cool, the iPhone's launch was plagued with huge problems.

This week on The CultCast: You’d never know it from Steve Jobs’ effortless keynote introduction, but the original iPhone was plagued with huge design and production issues that almost made Apple call it quits — right up until the day it was released! To commemorate the iPhone’s 10th anniversary, we’ll recount some of the incredible stories behind iPhone’s beleaguered early days, and celebrate how Apple pulled off one of the greatest device launches in history.

Our thanks to Shutterstock for supporting this episode. Kickstart your next interactive project with video clips or music tracks from their collection, and save 20 percent for a limited time at shutterstock.com/cultcast.

Tekserve’s Apple artifacts wind up in Ukrainian museum

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MacPaw Apple museum

Photo: MacPaw

When legendary Mac repair shop Tekserve closed its doors last summer in New York City, Apple fans of a certain age experienced two deaths.

They bade goodbye to the original Genius Bar, technicians that had been servicing their devices for nearly 30 years. Those fans would also never again stare at Tekserve’s impressive Apple computer artifact collection, which was quickly auctioned off to an unknown bidder for $47,000.

The collection returned to a museum display today, more than 4,600 miles away in the Ukraine. Its new home is at the headquarters of software developer MacPaw.

iMac’s terrible code name was an in-joke between Jobs and Schiller

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iMac design: The iMac G3 was a bit fatter than model than today's models.
The iMac G3 could have had a very different name.
Photo: Apple

The first iMac’s frightful code name was an in-joke that reflected Steve Jobs’ respect for Sony.

The working name — “MacMan” — was so horrible it would “curdle your blood,” according to Ken Segall, the Apple exec who eventually came up with the name “iMac.” Nearly 20 years after Apple shipped the iMac G3, we now have an explanation for the craptacular internal name — courtesy of Phil Schiller, the guy who came up with it.

Meet Steve Jobs’ alter ego on the opera stage

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Ashton Kutcher and Michael Fassbender played Steve Jobs in movies. Now Edward Parks III brings his rich baritone voice to the Steve Jobs opera, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs.
Ashton Kutcher and Michael Fassbender played Steve Jobs in movies. Now op
Photo: Dario Acosta/Santa Fe Opera

Edward Parks III will likely be the first singer on an opera stage to perform in running shoes, jeans and a black mock turtleneck shirt.

Yet Parks knows there is nothing casual about playing Steve Jobs. He is soaking up all he can about the late Apple co-founder as he prepares to bring his much-heralded baritone voice to the role this summer in the world premiere of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs at the Santa Fe Opera.

“I’m taking in everything that is out there and stuffing it in my head so that I can come away with my own thoughts of who he was and what he means to us,” Parks, 33, told Cult of Mac. “I think at first it was a little daunting. This is going to have a lot of attention, not just from the opera world but in the tech community.”

Still using an original iPhone? We want to know.

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img_0897
A shot of the battered original iPhone belonging to a member of the design team.
Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

Next week marks 10 years since Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPhone, blowing our collective minds regarding the possibilities that smartphones presented.

Coming up on a decade later, if you’re still using the first-gen iPhone on a regular basis, we want to hear from you!

Today in Apple history: Apple’s first ever computer goes on sale

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apple-1-dec-2014-auction
One of today's surviving Apple 1 computers.
Photo: Christie's

Friday 1 July 1, 1976: The Apple 1 goes on sale, becoming the first computer ever sold by the Apple Computer Company.

Arriving the same month Jimmy Carter was nominated for U.S. president, Family Feud debuted on TV, and the United States celebrated the 200th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, the Apple 1 is only produced in small numbers, and sells for the unusual price of $666.66.

Today in Apple history: Mac LC 520 makes a splash in education market

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LC 520
Was this really almost a quarter of a century ago?
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Tuesday 28 Arriving on this day in 1993, the Macintosh LC 520 was among the first of Apple’s LC 500 series of medium-price Macs.

Selling for $2,000, it was particularly popular in educational institutions, a market Apple continues to pursue today. If you went to school in the decade of Nirvana, Bill Clinton and Pulp Fiction, this could well have been the Mac you used!

Today in Apple history: Power Mac G5 goes on sale

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G5 computer
Do you remember the Power Mac G5?
Photo: Apple

Thursday23Sometimes affectionately called the “cheese grater,” the original Power Mac G5 first went on sale on June 23, 2003 — offering what was then Apple’s fastest-ever machine and the world’s first 64-bit personal computer.

Check out the video of Steve Jobs introducing the computer 13 years ago today.

Today in Apple history: Steve Jobs shows off iPhone 3G

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iPhone 3G
The iPhone 3G was a big hit for Apple.
Photo: Apple

thursday_9 In the music industry, they talk about the “difficult second album.” Fortunately that didn’t hold true when it came to Apple releasing its highly successful second-gen iPhone, which it unveiled for the first time on June 9, 2008.

Adding GPS, 3G data and a higher-quality build than its predecessor, the iPhone 3G was arguably just as revolutionary for what it did on the software side. iOS 2 arrived at the same time, and introduced push email, turn-by-turn navigation and, most significantly of all, an App Store — something Steve Jobs had previously been adamant Apple would’t allow.

Check out the debut of the iPhone 3G below.

For world’s biggest Apple museum, book a flight to Italy

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The All About Apple Museum in Savona, Italy.
The All About Apple Museum in Savona, Italy.
Photo: All About Apple Museum

Cult of Mac 2.0 bugFor years, Apple has been under pressure to open an Apple museum. The company’s rich and storied past has its fans clamoring for a central repository of that history.

Word from the company: No. Apple’s leaders say they are more interested in the future than the past.

In fact, the most complete historical collection of all things Apple is nowhere near Cupertino. The serious Apple fan must travel to, of all places, Savona, Italy.