This Day in Apple History: Episodes
Apple's first foray into the flat panel monitor business was an ill-fated attempt to sell a substandard, oddly sized LCD capable of displaying 80 columns and twenty four lines of text as an add-on to the Apple II. Lacking and expensive when compared to competitorsofferings, the Apple Flat Panel display…
The sales projections for the first Mac were a bit ambitious. Steve Jobs predicted that Apple [would sell?] half a million Macs by the beginning of 1985. Unfortunately for Apple, Steve was wildly off the mark, and Mac sales didn't hit 500,000 machines until September of 1985. Sales of the…
By now anyone who lives in a semi major metropolitan area has an actual Apple store where they can go and bug the geniuses, try out the products, and basically enjoy the Apple feel throughout the store.This wasn't always the case. At one time Apple lacked a decent…
The original Mac was powered by the Motorola 680x0. Later Macs used more powerful chips but the architecture remained similar. A big change came with the jump from 680x0 chips to the PowerPC processors.The change necessitated rewriting the OS, with developers including two binaries for any program that…
The original design of the Mac called for a lunchbox style machine with a fold-up keyboard. The design was conceived by Jef Raskin but was less inspired than his other ideas. While Steve Jobs was initially fond of the form factor he later decided a case redesign was in order.
When the first Mac was being developed the designers saw no need to address the issue of running multiple programs. The oversight was understandable; the programmers were working hard enough just to develop the system and a single program to run in 64K, which the Mac was originally intended to…
Rabbit, be it braised, roasted or fried, is an under-appreciated food item. The mid-sized lagomorph is both delicious and a valuable source of protein. While America might lack a decent number of recipes for the cute but tasty cottontailed beasts, the world knows better and there are any number of…
During the creation of the original Mac, there was a struggle over whether to provide a single slot so users could expand the Mac's capabilities. Steve Jobs was strongly opposed to the idea, preferring that users buy a new machine instead of upgrading their old ones. Burrel Smith, electronic genius…
The original iMac sold a ton of machines. Wanting to get in on the good stuff, other manufacturers began imitating the iMac's for the time, radically fresh design. Of course, the imitators' machines couldn't run Mac OS or run Mac-only programs so the manufacturers kept the aping of the iMac…
Fans of Apple computers have been called everything from "informed buyers" to "kool-aid drinking fanatics." The reasons Mac users exhibit such astonishing amounts of loyalty are not easily quantifiable but no small part of the reason must surely be Apple's commitment to research and development.Apple's ...
When Bill Gates first saw the Mac he knew he had glimpsed the future of computing. Microsoft invested heavily in programming for the GUI based interface. How excited was Bill by the prospect of a GUI interface? Microsoft began working on its own version of a GUI soon after Bill…
The Apple I launched the empire that became Apple computer. But what inspired the Apple I? Steve Wozniak will tell you that it was his sincere desire to own a computer, but by the time he built the Apple I he had already built several other computers so that reasoning…
Apple had high hopes for the Newton but when the product was introduced the reception was tepid at best. The reasons were obvious: the Newton's handwriting recognition was so poor as to be fodder for cartoonist G.B. Trudeau, there weren't many third party applications available, and the mail program wasn't…
If you ask the average Mac fan why the Mac is still around when so many others have fallen by the wayside, they'll likely spout off about the first commercial use of the graphical user interface or the first use of a mouse in a consumer oriented machine.
The original Mac had several shortcomings. The best way to address these shortcomings was left to Jean-Louis Gassee. Starting with the file server from the announced but never shipped Macintosh office, Gassee gave his engineers the task of making a completely expandable, updated Mac. The result of all…
In the first quarter of 1979, Mike Markkula asked Jef Raskin what kind of machine he could build for $500. Raskin retorted that there wasn't anything worthwhile he could build at that price point but for a $1,000 he could create something very impressive. The machine Jef was…
Name a company 'Apple Computer' and you're likely to anger the Beatles label: "Apple records." Following the inevitable lawsuit, you'll agree to give them an undisclosed amount of cash and stay away from the music industry, which seems like an equitable solution for all parties involved. Well, equitable ...
You can't tell by looking at them but they are out there: hardcore Newton fans. The Newton, many people will remember, was a personal digital assistant before PDAs were known as PDAs. It is difficult to say why the Newton has such a loyal following after all the intervening years…
There is an oft-retold example of Steve Jobs' obsession with aesthetics that unravels as follows: seeing the original Mac's motherboard, Steve thought the design looked somehow inelegant. When queried as to why the perceived inelegance would be an issue if the Mac was only supposed to be opened by technicians,…
If you work for a large corporation and are called into the President's office you're likely confused. Are you about to be promoted? Fired? You have no idea. Corporate presidents don't fire average employees; they leave heavy lifting like that to HR and feel-good promotions are usually left to the…