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My on-again, off-again Apple relationship

February 28th, 2010 at 08:00pm Under Hot Apple News

With TUAW’s Your First Apple series, we let you get a glimpse of our own histories with the Mac. My own history with Apple’s computers has been a bit convoluted. The first Apple computer, in fact the first computer of any kind I remember using, was an Apple II+. I was in kindergarten in Saudi Arabia at the time, so I don’t really remember much about those early experiences. Like many people of my generation, when I returned to the US I went to schools that had computer labs crammed full of Apple IIe computers. Of course, the only programs that were ever run on my elementary school’s Apples were marginally “educational” games like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Odell Lake, and the massively popular Oregon Trail. Meanwhile, my family had a KayPro PC at home, which meant my dad had to teach an eight-year-old kid how to navigate through the amber-lettered jungles of DOS — something I’m glad I’ll never have to do with my own kids.

The Apple IIe was the only computer I used in school through 1990. I spent most of seventh grade cooking up little text-based adventure games in BASIC, and I even learned some rudimentary drawing and audio programming, all of which I forgot long ago. In mid-1990, the school revamped our computer lab with brand-new Macintosh Classics: the first Mac I ever used, the first machine I used that had a hard drive, and the first time I ever used a GUI to interact with a computer. Oddly enough, despite the huge leap in capabilities the Mac Classic had over the Apple IIe, we spent half of eighth grade using the Mac to learn how to type. I guess I should be thankful I learned to touch-type way back then, but spending several months on typing tutor software was a hard sell after spending the previous year doing actual programming.

After that first year with the Mac, my experiences with Apple’s computers went through some rollercoaster-like ups and downs. Click “read more” to find out why.

Some time in the early 90’s, my dad dumped his KayPro for a custom-built, unbranded, 386-based PC running Windows 3.11, which I inherited from him after he upgraded yet again. It was the first computer I had all to myself. After learning my way around the Mac’s interface, learning Windows 3.11 took all of five minutes. The PC also had color graphics, which was a definite improvement over the black-and-white Mac Classics at school. I didn’t get much actual work done on the PC, though, because nothing I produced on it was compatible with my high school’s Macs; I mostly used the PC for games.

My high school actually had two computer labs: one full of state-of-the-art Macs for basic computer training and programming, and one full of ancient, DOS-running IBM PCs used for business-related classes. I spent ninth and tenth grade learning how to program in HyperCard, which I used to create a couple of graphic adventure games complete with an X-Y navigation system that took quite a while to code properly. One program I developed in tenth grade on the Mac LC III was an Aliens vs. Predator adventure game, with graphics taken straight from the Dark Horse comic series and audio from both the Aliens and Predator films. I also created a HyperCard-based trojan to mess with the other kids in the lab. It was basically just a HyperCard stack that, once launched, would auto-generate new cards until the RAM filled up and the Mac crashed. High school was a high point in my experiences with Macs, but for the rest of the 90s and the first few years of the 2000s, it was all downhill.

Once I got out of high school, my long relationship with the Mac went on an extended hiatus. After joining the Navy in 1995 I hardly used computers of any kind for several years, to say nothing of Macs or the Internet. For almost four years I barely touched a PC for anything other than playing video games. Macs didn’t register on my radar at all, and the few times I came across one, I had the same reaction that a lot of today’s Mac haters still have: “For as much as they’re charging, I can’t even get any decent games for this thing?”

In late 1999 I finally started using the internet on a regular basis via a 56k dialup connection through my roommate’s ancient and thoroughly crappy Performa. I don’t know which model Performa it was or even what OS it was using — it was either OS 8 or System 7 — but I was not impressed with that machine at all. When my roommate offered to give me that Mac in exchange for me paying his part of the rent for a couple months, I turned him down, because I hated almost everything about that Performa. When I moved in with my girlfriend of the time, she had two computers: some anonymous box from HP running Windows 98, and an iMac with OS 9. Since the iMac didn’t have any games for it, wasn’t compatible with our cable modem, and had that horrible piece of garbage hockey puck mouse, I wouldn’t go near the thing. I preferentially veered toward the HP machine for everything I did.

From mid-2000 to early 2003 I once again barely even saw or used a Mac except for the handful of times I visited a Mac zealot friend of mine who lived in Seattle. I inherited yet another ancient computer from another friend of mine for my home use, one even older and less capable than the Performa: some Gateway box running Windows 95. Unable to even hook that machine up to the internet or run 3D games of any kind, the Gateway saw little use for the two years I had it.

After almost ten years of using computers solely for internet access and the occasional bit of gaming, I’d become sort of a luddite. Beyond basic word processing and web browsing, I really had no clue how to use a computer anymore. I ended up becoming a Mac switcher in early 2003, completely against my will, when I moved in with my wife. She had a dual 1GHz G4 Power Mac running OS X, and for the first couple of months using it, I had no idea what I was doing. I think my ignorance showed through enough that my wife got paranoid of letting me use her Mac at all. I eventually got the hang of it, but it was a painful process; I insisted on using Internet Explorer, stayed well clear of OS updates, and didn’t even attempt to do anything out of the ordinary with her Mac.

It was only after buying a used PowerBook G3 off of eBay for $200 that I really started figuring the Mac out. In the process of upgrading the processor to a G4, upping the RAM, swapping out the hard drive, and hacking the thing to run OS X Panther and Tiger (the model of PowerBook I bought was supposed to max out at Jaguar), I quickly gained an appreciation for the ins and outs of OS X. In the process, I reached the point where I flat-out refused to use Windows unless I absolutely had to for some reason. Within the space of a year, I also went from being completely ignorant about computers to being free tech support for all my friends; and for the few of them still using Windows, my first bit of tech advice is almost always to stop using Windows. OS X may or may not be inherently “better” than Windows, but over the past several years I’ve figured out that I only get the urge to throw my Mac out the window once or twice a month versus once every five minutes with the average Windows box.

My wife upgraded to a MacBook in 2007, so I inherited her Power Mac — just in time, as it turned out, because even after all its upgrades, my PowerBook was definitely showing its age, particularly in the way it liked to chew through hard drives. In February of 2008 I bought the 17″ MacBook Pro I’m still using today — the first brand-new computer I’ve ever owned.

It’s been a long, weird ride — BASIC programming, typing tutors, HyperCard programming, then close to ten years of neo-Ludditism — to where I am now, in a house full of Apple-branded gadgets, most of which would have sounded like science fiction when I sat down in front of a Mac Classic for the first time twenty years ago.

TUAW My on-again, off-again Apple relationship originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Chris Rawson Continue Reading My on-again, off-again Apple relationship Add comment

Macworld 2010: Adam Savage re-enacts the EFF’s history

February 11th, 2010 at 07:00pm Under Hot Apple News

Filed under: Hardware, Developer, Apple History

We visited a lot of parties last night (and the TUAW bloggers are nursing hangovers because of it), but the best was undoubtedly the Electronics Frontier Foundation’s 20th anniversary bash at the DNA Lounge. It wasn’t strictly Mac-related, but Mythbuster Adam Savage was in the house, and he led a hilarious re-enactment of some of the major moments in the EFF’s history, assisted by various objects and people “found around the club”. Of course, since there were quite a few luminaries in the house (including the founders of the EFF, the crew from Steve Jackson Games, and other tech who’s whos), the re-enactment actually ended up being re-enacted by most of the actual participants. We captured video of the event, and it’s both informational and hilarious — you can catch it in two segments after the break below.

Stay tuned for more from Macworld 2010 all this week — the floor opens today, and we’ll have live streaming video right here on the site, as well as hands-on, interviews, and news from the show in San Francisco all week long.

For the iPhone-friendly YouTube video, click here.

TUAW Macworld 2010: Adam Savage re-enacts the EFF’s history originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple – San Francisco – Adam Savage – DNA Lounge – Electronic Frontier Foundation

By Mike Schramm Continue Reading Macworld 2010: Adam Savage re-enacts the EFF’s history Add comment

Your first Apple, or how it all began…

February 11th, 2010 at 06:30am Under Hot Apple News

Filed under: Apple

This week, while a good part of the TUAW team is at Macworld, it’s worth considering for a moment how we all came to start using Apple products. The “Switcher” campaign morphed into the “I’m a Mac” campaign, but really the idea is the same: rarely do you see people switching *back* to Windows after using a Mac. Then there’s the halo effect from the iPod/iTunes ecosystem, the iPhone, and before all of that there was Apple’s dominance in the educational markets and later in the design, publishing and other creative fields. But we all came to Apple in a different way. On the following pages we’ve published some stories from our Seed contributors on how they came to start using Apple products.

For me it began in the late 70’s when my dad bought an Apple II in a bike store. There were no computer stores at the time, so this bike shop had a computer hobbyist corner, complete with Altairs and other blinking-light computer systems. He was intrigued by the keyboard, the cassette system and the color TV output. I wrote a review of the Apple II “red” manual last year. In fact, I still have that Apple in my office, complete with paddles, tape deck and a bunch of cassettes. One gem: AppleSoft BASIC by a little company called Microsoft! What’s amazing is that the thing still boots up, although I had to dig up an ancient analog TV to hook up to the thing. Now I’m hoping the Disk II drive will still read my copy of In Search of the Most Amazing Thing.

We’d love to hear your first Apple story, so leave it in the comments. Over the next few weeks we’ll also bring you the stories of TUAW bloggers and how they began as lifelong Apple customers.

TUAW Your first Apple, or how it all began… originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple – iPhone – AppleSoft BASIC – Macintosh – Microsoft

By Victor Agreda, Jr. Continue Reading Your first Apple, or how it all began…Add comment

Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 Newspad finally arrives, nine years late

January 28th, 2010 at 11:00pm Under Hot Apple News

Filed under: Hardware, Cult of Mac, Internet

One of my all-time favorite movies is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. At several points during the film, we see ill-fated astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole using a flat, iPad-like device. In one of the posters for the movie, astronauts at a base on the Moon are seen using this device (see image at right).

Those who read Arthur C. Clarke’s novelization of the movie will remember that he described this device as the “Newspad,” something that was used by people of the future (as envisioned in 1968) to watch TV and read newspapers. You can read the full description of the device after the break — it’s described as a newsreader, with two-digit codes for each article online, and a constant stream of information from the hourly updates on “electronic papers.”

Of course, we don’t have two-digit references to articles; we simply need to tap on them to bring them up. We do need to know the “codes” for the world’s major electronic papers; we refer to them as URLs or specific apps. But like many things Clarke foresaw in his lifetime of writing science fiction, the Newspad has finally become reality in the form of Apple’s iPad.

I think Arthur would be proud.

When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug his foolscap-sized Newspad into the ship’s information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world’s major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display unit’s short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him.

Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-sized rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word “newspaper,” of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites.

It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to Caxton or Gutenberg.

From 2001: A Space Odyssey , by Arthur C. Clarke.
Published by Del Rey in 1968

TUAW Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 Newspad finally arrives, nine years late originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Arthur C Clarke – Stanley Kubrick – 2001: A Space Odyssey – Apple – David Bowman

By Steven Sande Continue Reading Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 Newspad finally arrives, nine years late Add comment

Frog Design releases 1983 tablet prototypes

January 25th, 2010 at 10:30pm Under Hot Apple News

Filed under: Hardware, Peripherals, Odds and ends, Apple, Apple History

It’s this week! It’s almost a sure bet that we’ll finally, after all of these years, see the Apple tablet unveiled this week, and to celebrate, Frog Design (the company responsible for many of Apple’s designs back in the day) has given Wired some old shots of prototype tablets from the Cupertino company … from 1983. Of course, Apple has released tablet-like devices before, and they’ve been thinking about this type of computer for a long time. But back in 1983, they apparently commissioned some concepts for an unreleased tablet called “Bashful” (so called because it was designed to work with the Snow White “industrial design language” that Apple used back then in the //c and other releases.

As you can see above, the tablet isn’t exactly “elegant” by today’s standards, but it is interesting how similar it actually is to many of today’s smartphones and handhelds, considering that we’re talking about almost 30 years ago now. One model had a floppy drive attached (which was gigantic), and apparently they even considered a version with a phone on it as well. We still don’t know for sure what Apple’s release this week will look like, but it’s fascinating to think just how far back the planning for this week’s unveiling actually went.

TUAW Frog Design releases 1983 tablet prototypes originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Mike Schramm Continue Reading Frog Design releases 1983 tablet prototypes Add comment

The birth of the iPod

December 9th, 2009 at 02:00pm Under Hot Apple News

Filed under: Hardware, Odds and ends, Steve Jobs, Apple History, iPod classic

Wired has an interesting look at the early days of the iPod, and what’s most fascinating is just how fully formed the idea of the iPod and iTunes was. The idea itself originates from a company called PortalPlayer, where hardware designer Tony Fadell had the idea to create a player that could eventually be paired with “a Napster music sale service to complement it.”

That’s it — even that early, the iPod + iTunes idea that would eventually revolutionize Apple was that complete. Of course, that was before Apple even got invested in the project — once they did, Steve Jobs put “100 percent” of his time into the project, and they ended with the iconic design and the feel and experience that pushed it beyond any other MP3 player at the time.

That’s not to say that development was smooth sailing after that — apparently there was a major battery issue that kept battery life at a super low three hours until Apple and PortalPlayer got it fixed up. Always fun to hear the backstory on the stuff that would eventually make this company what it is today.

TUAW The birth of the iPod originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Steve Job – Apple – iTunes – IPod Classic – Digital audio player

By Mike Schramm Continue Reading The birth of the iPod Add comment

Apple’s original tablet

November 23rd, 2009 at 06:30pm Under Hot Apple News

Filed under: Hardware, Apple History

In 1979, the Apple II Plus was a badass piece of hardware, and the Apple Graphics Tablet was a flashy accessory. At $650US, it let users sketch with a wired stylus. Measuring 3/4 in x 15 1/2 in x 15 3/4 in, the Graphics Tablet was eventually discontinued when the FCC discovered that it caused radio frequency interference problems.

Sure, the wired stylus is a kludge, as is the general design (don’t look at the back), but remember that 1979 was 5 years before the first Macintosh was released and computer mice became ubiquitous.

Edible Apple has some additional photos and an old ad promoting the tablet and Utopia software. Go and check out an interesting piece of Apple history — complete with vintage scotch tape!

TUAW Apple’s original tablet originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Dave Caolo Continue Reading Apple’s original tablet Add comment

The Apple tablet that wasn’t

October 29th, 2009 at 10:00am Under Hot Apple News

Filed under: Hardware, Portables, Odds and ends

TechCrunch has posted pictures of what they’re calling an “unlaunched Apple tablet.” In 1990, as the story goes, Apple was supposedly working on a pen-based touchscreen tablet called the Pen Mac that was actually extremely small for the time — just about an inch thick, with a screen the same size as a Mac Portable. They were bringing a few different companies in on the deal, and apparently it worked well — ran a full Mac OS, used a pen to control or let you plug in a mouse and keyboard, and there was even a smaller version called the PenLite (bulky by today’s standards, but remember that this is 20 years ago now).

So why weren’t we all using tablet computers 20 years ago? TechCrunch blames John Sculley, who apparently thought the tablet idea was out, and the PDA idea was in, and we ended up with the Newton instead. I won’t second guess him — while it’s easy to think that anything could have beaten the Newton, would the current Apple touchscreen tablet craze even be here if it weren’t for the iPhone? And isn’t Apple’s smartphone just a hop, skip and a jump from their original PDA?

TUAW The Apple tablet that wasn’t originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Mike Schramm Continue Reading The Apple tablet that wasn’t Add comment

Friday Favorite: HistoryHound, bookmark with abandon

October 16th, 2009 at 07:00pm Under Hot Apple News

Filed under: Features, Reviews, Friday Favorite

Today’s Friday Favorite is a new one to me, but it’s been around for a while. I just picked up the latest version of HistoryHound from St. Clair Software — more famous, probably, for Default Folder X — and have been using it constantly for days. Its hotkey already has its own spot in my muscle memory. Here’s what it does:

HistoryHound indexes bookmarks, history and cache from all of your browsers, with presets for Camino, Firefox 2 & 3, Flock, iCab, OmniWeb, Opera, Safari, Shiira and URL Manager Pro. It means being able to bookmark willy-nilly in any browser and know that you’ll be able to quickly locate noteworthy sites again, in any application.

Not just the bookmarks, though; in the background — with a very low footprint — HistoryHound starts indexing the full text of each page. Then you can search for exact or fuzzy matches, or with Spotlight-style boolean keywords for any text on the landing page. Search comes in two flavors: a tiny popup panel which can be assigned to a hotkey and provides a list of matches as you type, and a full, Webkit-enabled search window with page previews and a multi-column result list.

Continue reading Friday Favorite: HistoryHound, bookmark with abandon

TUAW Friday Favorite: HistoryHound, bookmark with abandon originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Brett Terpstra Continue Reading Friday Favorite: HistoryHound, bookmark with abandon Add comment

A fond look at a blast from the past: the Mac Portable

September 21st, 2009 at 07:00pm Under Hot Apple News

Filed under: Hardware, Portables, Odds and ends, Retro Mac, Apple History

An email this morning from Harry McCracken at Technologizer.com pointed the way to a trip down memory lane. Harry was letting us know that Technologizer blogger Benj Edwards had written a 20th anniversary teardown post about the first truly mobile Mac — the Mac Portable.

Why is this a trip down memory lane for me in particular? I actually owned one of these beasts for a few years. They were ridiculously expensive at the time — US$7,300 for a 16 lb. (7.25 kg) monochrome screen machine with 1 MB of RAM, a floppy disk drive, and a 40 MB hard disk — but since I was a developer at the time I was able to get a substantial discount and bought it for about $4,000.

I recall taking my Portable to meetings back in the day, and people were absolutely fascinated by it. Of course, about two years later it would be replaced by the much lighter (5.1 lb. / 2.3 kg) PowerBook 100, which was the first of what we consider to be the truly “laptop” Macs.

Definitely take a look at the Technologizer post if you get a chance. Benj does a step-by-step teardown, describes what you’re seeing in each photo, and notes what items on the Portable made it such a technological wonder in the late 1980s. I won’t spoil things for you, but be sure to look at the last page of the teardown for a comparison Edwards does between the Portable and the iPhone. We’ve come a long way in just 20 years.

TUAW A fond look at a blast from the past: the Mac Portable originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Steven Sande Continue Reading A fond look at a blast from the past: the Mac Portable Add comment

My on-again, off-again Apple relationship

Macworld 2010: Adam Savage re-enacts the EFF’s history

Your first Apple, or how it all began…

Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 Newspad finally arrives, nine years late

Frog Design releases 1983 tablet prototypes

The birth of the iPod

Apple’s original tablet

The Apple tablet that wasn’t

Friday Favorite: HistoryHound, bookmark with abandon

A fond look at a blast from the past: the Mac Portable

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