Posts tagged with "mac"

How The “Lost” Mac Intro Video Was Found→

On January 24, 2005, Majo posted the video on his site for the Mac’s 21st birthday. The traffic was overwhelming. To watch, you had to download the 20MB file, and majo’s site soon crashed. We were SlashDotted, kottke.orged, and etc. He begged for mirror sites, and a bunch of other people helped out. I wrote a blog post about the video. I watched the comments come in from around the world as people woke up and discovered the “lost” video (that I didn’t realize had been lost). The comments show how excited people were to discover the video, and how eager they were to help by mirroring it. It was a pretty cool day.

Like many other “lost videos”, there’s a good story behind Jobs’ Macintosh intro (via Daring Fireball).

See also: how the original Macintosh demo was actually put together, by Andy Hertzfeld.

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This Is My #Mac30

Thirty years ago, Apple introduced the Macintosh with the promise to put the creative power of technology in everyone’s hands. It launched a generation of innovators who continue to change the world. This 30‑year timeline celebrates some of those pioneers and the profound impact they’ve made.  - Apple.com

Here’s my story. In 1994 I was a college-bound high school senior that loved art, especially drawing. I knew I wanted to use my creativity as a career but didn’t know exactly what to do. I remember the day when one of the art supply closets was reconfigured into a small, 3 computer lab. The computers were all Power Macintosh 6100/60s with a System 7 OS – and nothing like I had ever seen before. I cannot recall what art program was on them but they kept drawing my attention every time I went to art class. We got them late in the school year, so I was only able to play around with them as no formal classes were started until the fall – and I was about to graduate. We couldn’t afford anything like that growing up so I thought I was lucky to just have a few weeks to take in that new user experience.

After moving into the dorm for my freshman year in college, we had an Apple computer lab in the building and the Internet was still new and we didn’t know what to do with it besides looking up things we weren’t supposed to – come on, we were all 18 year old boys!. Anyway, we wrote papers on Macs and used search engines such as Webcrawler, Lycos, Go.com, and Infoseek. I didn’t see those machines as the creative machines that I played with in high school; rather, as machines that we were required to use to do homework. But I hadn’t forgotten about what awesome powers they possessed for being creative.

Jump to sophomore year in the fall of 1995. One of my roommates shows up after summer break with a 1993 Apple Color Classic and I realize what a fantastic little machine it was. Not only could I write papers and play simple games, but I could create little pixel drawings and use type! That feeling I had during my senior year art class was back. I finally realized what I wanted to do for a living and I had found my digital, Apple-carved canvas.

In the second semester of my sophomore year, I enrolled in an intro course to Graphic Design and loved/excelled in it. Being able to express my creativity on that new medium felt breathtaking. While taking design classes, I would do some evening computer lab work in the art building up on the third floor where they had a more focused lab used for computer graphics and “digital photography” – it was a new term at the time and people were excited. Along with my graphic design classes, I started a digital photography class and that was where I was first introduced to the Apple QuickTake Camera and Adobe design software. While graphic design taught me history, practice, typography, and what is good layout, digital photography taught me scanning, Photoshop/Illustrator, and basic HTML coding. It was the best of both worlds, really. I was getting my minor in art history as well so it felt like a very balanced approach towards getting my BA in Studio Art with focus on Graphic Design.

After graduating college in August of 1998, I knew I had to go into debt and buy the original Bondi Blue iMac. I loved the machine: an entire PC, wrapped in a space age color casing that wasn’t beige? Who wouldn’t want one? I used it for some small freelance work, Internet, and gaming. Soon after, I started my job as a graphic designer for a daily newspaper and worked on Macs every day. We had Quadras, PowerPCs that evolved into G3/G5/G5 towers and iMacs in the nine years I worked there. Not only did I have the design background but I now had the technical knowledge of how those machines worked as our IT admin only knew Windows so I was not only the Graphic Design Supervisor, I was also the Mac admin. In 2002 I added a Titanium Powerbook G4 – one of my favorite Macs of all time – then bought a Power Mac G5 Dual Processor in 2004.

In 2007, I completed the full circle and purchased another 24” aluminum iMac, but this time a much larger and faster version. After almost 7 long years, the longest I’ve ever had a computer, the hard drive died just weeks ago. Rather than sell this (still) awesome piece of computing history, I’m going to give it a new hard drive and a second chance on life, much like Steve Jobs gave Apple one when he returned in 1997.

Apple has been such a big influence in my professional life and personal life. With devices like iPods, iPhones, and iPads, Apple has truly changed how their users have evolved and who they are today. It’s amazing how at one time a computer took up an entire room and now it easily fits in our pocket. The old saying is right,“the Apple (user) doesn’t fall far from the tree”. This is my #Mac30.

iFixit Tears Down The Original Macintosh→

iFixit:

Join us as we live the time-traveler’s dream—the deep, lucid, Orwellian vision of hope, fear, and nostalgia that is 1984. Just in time for its 30th anniversary, we laid hands on an ‘84 original: the Macintosh 128K. And, you guessed it—we’re tearing it down like it’s the Berlin Wall.

They give it a repairability score of 7/10. Don’t miss the face-to-face photo of Old vs New in Step 7.

Also worth checking out: Macworld’s unboxing of the Macintosh (via John Siracusa).

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Apple Celebrates 30 Years of Mac

Mac

Mac

To celebrate 30 years since the introduction of the original Macintosh (January 24, 1984), Apple has launched a special webpage and released a commemorative video focused on the impact that the Mac had on modern technology.

Thirty years ago, Apple introduced the Macintosh with the promise to put the creative power of technology in everyone’s hands. It launched a generation of innovators who continue to change the world. This 30‑year timeline celebrates some of those pioneers and the profound impact they’ve made.

In the video, Apple shows musicians, designers, photographers, teachers, scientists, and other users who, with the Mac, have been able to be more creative, more productive, and more satisfied with computers thanks to the Mac’s constant evolution and refinement. In an interview with Macworld published yesterday, Apple’s Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi shared their thoughts on rumors of “convergence” of iOS and OS X and stated how, because of its nature and design, the Mac “keeps going forever”.

Apple’s special 30 Years site features beautiful photography and special icons for old Macintosh models displayed in a scrollable timeline at the bottom. Each Mac model has an associated story of how it was used – for instance, Apple talked to Moby, the Miller brothers (creators of Myst), and educators, among others, about the role that the Mac had in their lives.

Apple’s mini-site focuses on people and their stories rather than computer specs. In the timeline, the only product-only preview photos are the original Macintosh (where there are photos of Jobs and part of the original Macintosh team) from 1984 and the latest Mac Pro, displayed in 2014 (even though it was technically released in 2013). Apple is also allowing readers to answer questions to a poll about their first Mac, with results displayed in each model’s page under a “What people did with it” section. Unsurprisingly, Apple chose to celebrate human creativity instead of advancements in technology, which has been a common theme in the company’s campaigns lately. The 30 Years site is exceptionally well done.

As reported by 9to5Mac, Apple is also celebrating 30 Years of Mac with special window displays at its retail stores. As part of Apple’s press tour for the Mac’s anniversary, ABC’s David Muir interviewed Tim Cook, Craig Federighi, and Bud Tribble; the full interview will air tonight, and a first excerpt is available here.

Celebrate The Mac→

Jonathan Zufi:

To celebrate Mac’s 30th birthday, I’ve created this micro site for all the world to enjoy. In 2009, I started taking photos of every Apple product ever made since 1976. Then I turned them into a really big photo site. I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane, and I hope that the Macintosh’s anniversary brings your happy memories of your own experience with Apple.

Beautiful photos. Jonathan is also the author of ICONIC, a fantastic photo book about Apple products. Make sure to check out the PowerBooks page and then look down at your new MacBook’s trackpad.

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Apple Executives On The Mac At 30→

Macworld’s Jason Snell has an interview with Apple executives Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, and Bud Tribble about the 30 years of the Mac (Tribble was part of the original Macintosh team). It’s a great interview, and this part about convergence of OS X and iOS stood out to me:

The reason OS X has a different interface than iOS isn’t because one came after the other or because this one’s old and this one’s new,” Federighi said. Instead, it’s because using a mouse and keyboard just isn’t the same as tapping with your finger. “This device,” Federighi said, pointing at a MacBook Air screen, “has been honed over 30 years to be optimal” for keyboards and mice. Schiller and Federighi both made clear that Apple believes that competitors who try to attach a touchscreen to a PC or a clamshell keyboard onto a tablet are barking up the wrong tree.

“It’s obvious and easy enough to slap a touchscreen on a piece of hardware, but is that a good experience?” Federighi said. “We believe, no.

Later in the article, Snell included other quotes by Federighi and Schiller about how each device in Apple’s lineup fills a specific role. The message is clear, but I’m sure that it still won’t convince analysts to better understand the company they’re covering.

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The Life Of A Porting House→

They take a popular PC or console game - BioShock Infinite is the latest one - and develop and publish a Mac version, historically released months or years later (though that’s not often the case now), earning ridicule and celebration from a frustrated audience long condemned to second-class treatment.

Except these days they’re actually doing a pretty good job.

Eurogamer has a profile on Aspyr Media, the software house that’s well known for porting Windows games to the Mac (and recently iOS). I had no idea they’ve been around for more than 17 years. It would have been interesting to know more about Feral, too.

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