A Brief and Warped History of the Mac, part 9 (WozCast)
By Rick Tanner
Taking a break from the Mac itself, this week the column is going to focus on something that may have been the PodCasting of its day.
By his own admission, Steve Wozniak – Apple’s cofounder and original engineer was a phone fanatic. Back when answering machines were relatively new and had to be rented from the phone company, he set up a ‘dial-a-joke’ service.
The idea of this service was that Woz would record a joke onto his answering machine every day and then distribute the number to anyone who may want to listen to it. People could then phone his number to listen to the recording.
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A Brief and Warped History of the Mac, part 8 (My Favourite Mac)
By Rick Tanner
This week, I’ve been in the mood to reminisce and have been thinking about all the Macs I’ve owned, used or lusted over. Hopefully, this week’s edition will spark a nice thread in the MacCast forums because I’m sure all us Mac Geeks love to gush about which model is our favourite ever Mac.
Way back in the 1980’s when I was young and the Mac was just a little younger, I didn’t know much about computers, I was happy pottering with the Toshiba HX-10 machine that my grandparents bought me for Christmas when I was 4. Even at that age I could just about manage the simplest elements of the BASIC programming that it required – though I will apologise to my Mum for the hours of copying code into the computer that she was persuaded to do on my behalf.
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A Brief and Warped History of the Mac, part 7 (Soul of a Mac)
By Rick Tanner
Welcome to the HitchHiker’s Guide to the Macintosh.
Firstly, I want to say thanks to all the people who emailed me or left feedback on the site in relation to my six-part history of the Mac feature. Hopefully many of you will keep reading the column as I move on to other topics.
It is human nature to anthropomorphise the objects around us – we all like to think that our pets have the same sort of thoughts as we do and we like to think that the objects around us have personalities. Can you honestly say that as a child you never looked at a car and thought of the headlamps as eyes and the radiator as a mouth with an expression?
Well, in this column I want to explore the aspects that give the Mac a distinct personality and ask ‘What is the soul of a Mac?’
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A Brief and Warped History of the Mac, part 6 (in which the Mac rocks)
By Rick Tanner
Welcome back to my column – I imagine that many readers will be wondering when this insight into the past of the Mac will end – well this is the final part of the saga. The story flows much like Star Wars if you’ll allow me to recap with a strained analogy.
The first part of our story was the discovery of computers and the growth of Apple computers with the Apple II. Next came the action packed ordeal of developing the Mac, but this ended in the sad loss of one of the Mac’s parents – Steve Jobs. No clones though, they didn’t attack quite yet.
By part three, things had gone seriously pear-shaped with Apple doomed to financial and technological purgatory.
In part four, a New Hope was revived with the purchase of NeXT. Last week, I covered the story of how Apple took that and rebuilt the Mac OS – and this is largely where the analogy falls down – no-one gets their hand cut off. However, The Mac Strikes Back would be a fitting title for that section.
But in this final part we will see how the story unfolds up to now and word count allowing, even ponder the future. This is the story of the triumphant Return of the Mac.
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All You Need is Love… and iLife
Written by: Adam Christianson
Categories: Editorial
The first time I heard that the Beatles’ AppleCorp had sued Apple Computer, Inc. back in 1981 over the “Apple” name, it stung. Then when AppleCorp and Apple Computer settled another lawsuit in 1989, I was somewhat disappointed that the Beatles felt entitled to additional financial compensation from Apple Computer. And now that AppleCorp is planning to take Apple Computer back to court for a third time, I am absolutely outraged.
As a product of the final years of baby-boomerdom (1960), I grew up listening to my two older brothers’ hand-me-down Beatles’ albums (ancient large music discs made of black vinyl plastic). When I was very young my older brother, Ted, had me convinced that Paul McCartney was the greatest man on earth (behind God and himself, of course). My friends and I would often pretend to be the Beatles, and I proudly took on the role of Ringo Starr and used an old tree stump as my drum set.
Continue reading at macfriends.com …
A Brief and Warped History of the Mac, part 5 (in which the Mac is reborn)
By Rick Tanner
Welcome back to my column – by now I’m sure only the dedicated Mac Geek will be with me so I can probably say whatever I like. Knickers.
Last time, we left the Mac in 1997 preparing a comeback, having bought NeXT, and in so doing regained Steve Jobs. The new PowerMac G3 had been launched and the PowerBook G3 was on its way.
But, what people were waiting for – well, what I was waiting for anyway – was a consumer Mac based on the G3 processor to replace the Performa range of computers. The machine we got was not what had been expected.
A few years before this, Apple had recruited a young British designer, Jonathon Ive to their design department to work on projects like the eMate (a laptop computer for schools based on the Newton) and Twentieth Anniversary Mac. Jobs approached Ive with plans for a machine that would return to the Mac’s roots and revolutionise the computer industry yet again. He wanted Ive to design the future – and it was going to be Bondi Blue.
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A Brief and Warped History of the Mac, part 4 (in which the Mac readies a come-back)
By Rick Tanner
Welcome back to my column – and if you’ve followed the story this far then you are truly a Mac Geek. Last week, under the control of Michael Spindler, Apple had not managed to do anything to improve it’s aging operating system and were bleeding money.
With the arrival of Gil Amelio, Apple entered its make or break era. In his short reign Amelio presided over some of the things that have made Apple what it is today. But this part of the story starts not with Amelio, but with catching up with Apple founder Steve Jobs.
I know you were all waiting for his comeback, so I’ll get on with it. After being ousted from Apple, Jobs had been busy. In 1986, he bought the computer division of George Lucas’s Lucas Film. This company cost $10 million and became Pixar. Pixar are still the leading company in computer rendering graphics and technology as well as producing 5 blockbuster movies with Disney.
Jobs also set up another computer company. His new vision was to create a computer that was elegent inside and out in every way. Everything from the motherboard design to the interface was created to make designers cry with joy. The company was called NeXT.
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A Brief and Warped History of the Mac, part 3 (in which the Mac sucks)
By Rick Tanner
Welcome back to my column – I am surprised you’re still reading this given last weeks warning. Read on, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. In last week’s column, Apple had unveiled the Mac which was rapidly becoming a huge success in the design and graphics industry.
Following Steve Jobs resignation from Apple, John Sculley took on complete control of the company, and hoped to get the most possible from the Mac. He oversaw the Mac product line grow from the original Mac to a whole family – the all-in-one Macs such as the Mac SE/30 that improved on the orignal Mac with a more powerful MC68030 processor and had a built-in hard disk – and also the Mac II series of machines that came in large boxes with separate monitors. The SE/30 was the most powerful of all the all-in-one Macs and I actually have one. My SE/30 hasn’t worked since a month after I bought it in 1998 for £20 from my college Maths tutor, the problem is that no-one fixes Macs that old these days.
Anyone who’s ever had a beige Mac will know the SCSI port, ADB port and Apple serial port used for printing and networking – these were pioneered in the Mac Plus in 1986. The most innovative member of the new Mac family was the Mac portable – the world’s first, um… not really a laptop. In 1989, this machine was released – it was big and bulky and not much lighter than the all-in-one Mac. It did pioneer the use of an active matrix LCD screen on a Mac though.
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A Brief and Warped History of the Mac, part 2 (in which the Mac is born)
By Rick Tanner
Welcome back to my column, where last week I left you all hanging in the story of the Mac. Appologies to anyone who felt cheated that we didn’t get as far as the Mac last time don’t worry, we’re getting straight there this time.
We left the story in 1981, when IBM introduced its PC and threatens the market share of the Apple II. The PC was open to many manufacturers to improve with an architecture that allowed the computer to get faster as new chips were produced. Apple needed to step up its game with a new machine that would offer more.
Apple was already on the case, proposing three new systems in 1979. Two of these systems would be a successor to the Apple II and a new high-end work machine.
The third new system was to be a games machine and was given to Jef Raskin for development. Raskin, however was far more ambitious and started developing ideas for a low-cost, general purpose home computer. Raskin’s favourite variety of Apple was a Macintosh.
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A Brief and Warped History of the Mac, part 1(in which the Mac doesn’t appear).
By Rick Tanner
Welcome to the first column in my series. I would at this point like to tell you what the column is going to be about but sadly I can’t really at the moment. I did ask Adam for some guidance on topic, but he said he’d leave it up to me – which was probably a big mistake.
All I can tell you is that this column is not going to be useful. However it may be interesting, informative and occasionally controversial – though if it is please don’t send too much abuse my way.
One thing I have always found incredibly interesting about the Mac is not just how it is now, but also how we got here. Apple have revolutionised the world of computers time and time again in terms of software and hardware. Not ambitious enough for them, they’ve now revolutionised the whole music industry.
The History of the Apple company is probably well documented in scraps around the internet and several other ‘brief history’ guides out there – most of which are better written. But here is my take on the whole sordid affair – serialised over 6 parts.
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