vintage tech - page 8

Once upon a time, way back in 1984, the Mac was new. Let us travel back to the past for another look into the amazing first issue of MacWorld, which I acquired two weeks ago at a family reunion.

This week, let’s turn to “Polishing the Mac,” an extraordinarily long interview by David Bunnell (almost 4,000 words) with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates that is basically just about the Mac’s greatness. I’ll tease with a choice quote, then click through for some more of Chairman Bill’s still-prescient (and now hilarious and ironic) praise for the Mac. Also, dig the hair and glasses. Could he look more like his Anthony Michael Hall doppelganger if he tried?

On the Mac’s Ease of Use: “The Mac heralds a major change in how people view and interact with application programs. That’s why I’m so excited about it. There’s no question that I’ll let my mom try it out.”

Much, much more after the jump.

Feast your eyes, folks. Who likes the Z-Car? Woz likes the Z-car! Because it’s AWESOME!

Via Epicenter

Gather ’round, children. And let me tell you of a time before the consumer Internet. Before the iPod. And, if you can believe it, even before the iPhone. Yes, I speak of 1984. When the original Mac was the state of the art, and my favorite TV show was Sesame Street (not that this has changed).

I recently managed to acquire the very first issue of MacWorld magazine, published in February 1984. Though it sells on eBay for up to $100 a copy, I’ll be bringing you hilarious content from Mac fandom past for free. It features many wonders, including an art gallery of MacPaint creations, an interview with Bill Gates where he calls the Mac a classic, and even a feature on the incredible WYSIWIG technology that will allow print-outs on the Apple ImageWriter to look just like the screen output (you must see that one to believe it).

But before I start to dive too far into the issue (which will show up over the course of several days and posts), I will start with the most horrifying ad in MacIntosh history. Click through — if you dare!

Technorati Tags: ad, humor, macworld

Image from Telephone Tribute

With Apple on top of the market, it can be easy to forget that Steves Jobs and Wozniak first collaborated on an illegal project, making blue boxes to place illegal long-distance phone calls — phone phreaking. One of their biggest inspirations, according to Woz’s autobiography, “iWoz,” was Joe Engressia, who legally changed his name to Joybubbles.

A student at the University of South Florida in the late 1960s, he was given the nickname “Whistler” due to his ability to place free long-distance phone calls with his whistle. He was disciplined by the University early on, but after graduating his studies in philosophy and moving to Tennessee, law enforcement raided his house; he was charged with malicious mischief and given a suspended sentence and quickly abandoned phreaking, although was able to whistle 2600 hertz throughout his life.

Joybubbles lived a tragic life, as you can read in his Wikipedia entry. Still he had a profound impact on the early days of Apple. This Esquire story, featuring Captain Crunch and Joybubbles, changed consumer electronics history by inspiring the Steves. Rest in peace.

Via Boingboing

Looking for an obsessive chronicle of Apple’s products over time? Look no further than Designed in California, a website that takes every product — and every single SKU — Apple has released since Steve Jobs resumed control of Apple in 1997. It’s a million times more detailed than the map I tried to pull together a few weeks ago.

Can you believe that Apple ever routinely released top-of-the-line computers for almost $5,000 without a monitor? Worse, can you believe that the new octocore Mac Pros are $4,000 without a monitor?

An incredible undertaking. Anyone know the story here? According to a whois look-up, the owner is Graham Parks, who also owns Fondant Fancies. I’ve dropped him a note, so stay tuned.

Andy Hargadon, the director of the UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship, related a funny Apple story from his past at his talk on Thursday night. He came to Apple as a product designer in the early 1990s, and his first big project was the Powerbook Duo… power supply. Seriously. And his budget was $1 million.

As he tells the story now, Apple in those days was so opposed to using off-the-shelf solutions that they would over-invest in areas that people didn’t care much about. After all, though the Duo power adapter was pretty great, did the internals need to be developed in-house? Could an existing solution have been integrated into the case, which did incorporate the still-innovative gull wings for cord management?

It’s a great example of the trouble with creating a culture where everything a company does has to be the best, most exciting and most advanced. You end up investing in areas that don’t matter and spend too little time making sure that people actually care about the changes coming.

Apple’s much healthier these days, and appears to be committed to using the best solutions, no matter who creates them, and then spending the rest of their energy on increasing the difference between the off-the-shelf answer and the Apple-branded experience. That’s why the iPod was entirely non-Apple in every regard except the ones that counted: The logo, the user interface and the integration with iLife.

Anyone else have tales of past Apple development excess? I really don’t know if I can think of a crazier one than the million-dollar power supply.

Picture via eBay

German site Fudder got a lot of attention today for posting a set of concepts that frog design created for Apple in the early 1980s for the Snow White project, including the above “PhoneMac” concept that incorporated communication into a flat-panel Mac – before the first Mac ever shipped.

To augment the fun over at Fudder I’ve pulled all of Apple’s phone-related concepts from the wonderful coffee table book Apple Design. They’re all after the jump, and some of them are more compelling than others, to put it mildly.

An anonymous tipster sent me this screenshot from NBC’s new series Chuck, written by OC creator Josh Schwartz. In the show, premiering this fall, a guy named Chuck receives all of the spy secrets in the world via a friend who steals them from the most powerful computer in the world: A Mac Classic.

Nice.

Most of the time, we like to believe our computers have significantly advanced over the last 20 years. But some things remind us little has changed.

Take the video above. Created by James Leathem on an Apple IIe, it creates 3-D renders too complex for the actual machine. Since the computer couldn’t play the animation itself, Leathem shot each frame individually and pieced them together as a continuous stop-motion animation.

Simply incredible.

Via Boing Boing

Technorati Tags: apple //e, apple IIe

With all the excitement and, to be frank, disappointment that came with yesterday’s WWDC Stevenote, I haven’t seen anyone pick out the obvious with Apple’s innovative new GUI element Stacks, which allows users to cluster files that would otherwise clutter the desktop into a discreet pile of files that blow out into a scannable list with a simple click. It takes the super-janky right-click a folder in the dock movement we’re all used to now and replaces it with a sleek Dock launcher we can all get behind.
It’s really cool. It’s also a very old concept, one that Apple has had patented for 15 years. And this doesn’t look to be a great implementation of it. Way back in 1992, Apple called the Stacks content “Piles,” first demonstrating the new interface at the CHI conference. Gitta Solomon of Apple’s Advanced Technology Human Computer Interaction Group created the fascinating interview, which The Register mooted was finally destined for Mac OS X way back in 2003. Only four years too early — and 11 years too late. Click through to learn more about Piles.

Technorati Tags: piles, stacks

For a lot of Apple geeks, the love affair with Apple began at school, using an Apple II while playing Oregon Trail, the all-time best game where you could explore the wild west and see your whole family die of dysentery or snake bite, all before afternoon recess.
Silicon User has pulled together a fantastic article detailing the history of the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, creators of Oregon Trail, Number Munchers and Word Munchers. Those were the titles that proved that Macs were good for playing games, even back then. What I hadn’t realized is that Apple enjoyed a very close relationship with the odd, government-owned corporation:

Throughout the 1980s, key individuals from Apple Computer attended MECC conferences as keynote speakers including Apple co-founder and then-Chairman Steve Jobs and Alan Kay (an Apple fellow) in 1982, Flord Kvamme (Executive VP of Sales at Apple) in 1983 and in 1985 John Sculley, then-CEO of Apple.

Check it out and get nostalgic.
Educational computing for the masses | SiliconUser

Technorati Tags: history, oregon trail

Future Cruxy blogger Nat Freitas has been at this tech thing for a long time. In the above video, he talks about the Apple II in glowing terms on a local cable access show. It rocks.

7 year old kid (me) talking about Apple IIs back in ’82 from natdefreitas on Vimeo

Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: retro, Video

The Chop Shop t-shirt website has a very unusual Apple II t-shirt design for sale. The front of the shirt looks like a template for a plastic toy — like a model airplane.
But turn the shirt around and the assembled model is on the back — an Apple II. The site says each tee comes with a limited edition temporary tattoo.

The Virgin Mary has nothing on the patron saint of our cult! Photo by Luke Edgar Seeley, who notes:

I ordered a medium latte at a local cafe and was surprised to find that the barista had, with his mastery of steamed milk, poured a face and the words “I Love Steve Jobs” into my latte.

I don’t know if I believe it, but I want to believe. Who could ask for more?
A Steve Jobs Latte on Flickr – Photo Sharing

Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: espresso, steve jobs

Vance Carruth , a third grade teacher from Huntington Beach, California, is retiring — and his clutch of twenty Apple IIe systems will be going with him, the Mac Mothership website reports.

Even though the technology is almost thirty (30) years old, Vance’s third graders fight over the chance to get use of one of these puppies.
… the school system purchased Apple IIe’s for each classroom back in the 80’s. In the early 90’s they were replaced by IBM compatibles and most recently by Dell’s. Each of the teachers were told they could take their Apple IIe home or move them to a designated storage room. Most elected to not take them home. The storage room later became Mr. Vance’s classroom and he inherited the equipment. Mr. Vance decided to setup and network the desktops and has been supporting this effort with other machines that he has salvaged parts from for the last fifteen (15) years.

Now the real bad news. Mr. Carruth, (AKA Mr. Vance – Student’s nickname for him) will be retiring this coming June. This comes only after 39 years of service at the same school. Once Mr. Vance has gone, there will be no other teacher to take on this support effort and the Apple IIe legacy along with Mr. Vance will vanish from Smith School.