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Ahh, Artemis. For those of you not in the loop with Apple's code names, this is the machine alternately known as the Power Macintosh G3 All-In-One, the AIO, the Performa G3, and the "MolarMac."

The latter name, of course, referring to it's shape - vaguely looking akin to a giant molar tooth. You can see pictures of it on Apple-History. I personally don't consider it all that unattractive - not the best design in the world, but I've seen worse from PC manufacturers.

Nice part about the MolarMac? It was basically the full beige G3 desktop design in an all-in-one housing - meaning, if I recall correctly, it had 3 PCI slots and a ZIF slot for upgrading the processor. Bad part? 60+ pounds of computer does not lend well to portability. Don't bother security cabling it down - the sheer heft alone will keep it in place. :-)

we actually also just found 2 Mac 1024s in the trash. have now powered them up yet, but basically it's the second Mac ever made (first being the 512k).

BZZZZZT! Wrong! :)

The first Mac ever made was the Mac 128k, the Mac 512k, or 'Fat Mac' was the second. I think what you probably got is a Mac Plus, (which is the third Mac made) as tons of them were sold to educational institutions as the Mac ED.

we actually also just found 2 Mac 1024s in the trash. have now powered them up yet, but basically it's the second Mac ever made (first being the 512k).

BZZZZZT! Wrong! :)

The first Mac ever made was the Mac 128k, the Mac 512k, or 'Fat Mac' was the second. I think what you probably got is a Mac Plus, (which is the third Mac made) as tons of them were sold to educational institutions as the Mac ED.

we actually also just found 2 Mac 1024s in the trash. have now powered them up yet, but basically it's the second Mac ever made (first being the 512k).

BZZZZZT! Wrong! :)

The first Mac ever made was the Mac 128k, the Mac 512k, or 'Fat Mac' was the second. I think what you probably got is a Mac Plus, (which is the third Mac made) as tons of them were sold to educational institutions as the Mac ED.

the 20th Anniversary Mac was black. Like so

An odder curiosity than A/UX was the Network Server 500/700 that ran AIX.

If you want your opinion to be heard, I suggest the following:

Get to the point quickly: Bulleted lists of your points might be appropriate. Keep things as short as you can.

Talk about current problems and experiences, not old ones: They don't care about the Quadra you looked at 10 years ago, unless it relates to todays offerings.

Don't whine about things that won't change: The mouse is an example. Apple has had single button mice since the Apple IIe of 1983, and perhaps before. They're not going to change it, so quit your whining and buck up the $20 for a USB multibutton mouse.

Give suggestions: This hardly needs to be said to a good Slashdotter, I'm sure. Criticism means little if you don't have a better idea.

Also, this might be helpful: Apple History

Mac OS, a blatant ripoff of Windows

Uh, no, its the other way round, sort of (actually Apple originally ripped from Xerox and so did MS)... ever use a 1984 or pre-1984 Apple system? If you had, it would be obvious to you that Windows 3.1 was obviously a horrible ripoff of the early Apples. (Anyone else remember those old systems with McWrite, McDraw, McPaint etc? Complete with mouse, windows, menus, icons, buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, even thumbnail views in the file manager which it took MS until around 2000 to really do) Check your history, Apple had Windows-like OSs long before MS did, Windows *1.0* was released, what, around 1985?

Check out http://apple2history.org/ and http://www.apple-history.com/ if you don't believe me. I remember actually using some of these systems in the early 80's. Check out screenshots of the Apple Lisa (1983), Mac128k (1984) etc. Microsoft Windows was indisputably a ripoff of Apple, to state the opposite is outright incorrect. Take a look at http://www.theyopy.de/applehistory/lisa.html (a mirror of apple-history.com) and http://www.theyopy.de/applehistory/gui.html where they describe to what extent Apple had in fact ripped off the ideas themselves from Xerox Parc from the Alto. Apple had tried to sue MS for copying them, but the fact that they themselves copied so much contributed to a weakening of their case. Also see http://www.theyopy.de/applehistory/horn1.html.

This page indicates that IBM's first all-in-one personal computer was released in late February of 1984 -- the first Macintosh, an all-in-one personal computer, was released in January of the same year. A year earlier Apple had released its first all-in-one personal computer, the Lisa.

This page indicates that IBM's first all-in-one personal computer was released in late February of 1984 -- the first Macintosh, an all-in-one personal computer, was released in January of the same year. A year earlier Apple had released its first all-in-one personal computer, the Lisa.

Has AppleWorks been around longer than Microsoft Office?

AppleWorks has been around since (IIRC) 1985. What Apple is now calling AppleWorks started life as ClarisWorks, but I don't know when ClarisWorks first appeared. The first versions of Word and Excel appeared on the Mac sometime in the mid-80s, but I don't think they were bundled together as Office until later.

Most sources usually credit AppleWorks as being the first integrated-software package. (If you want to get really nitpicky, though, the first would be III EZ Pieces, a package for the Apple III that mutated into AppleWorks when it became clear that the III was going nowhere in the marketplace.)

Damn. Forgot the link. For the interested, check out Apple-History. Also, Steve Levy (I think)'s book "Insanely Great" is a pretty darned neat read on the origin of the Macintosh.

Hi there,

Heres www.Apple-History.com's info on the Lisa 2.

The Lisa/Lisa 2/Mac XL

Codename: Lisa
CPU: MC68000
CPU speed: 5 Mhz
FPU: None
motherboard RAM: 512 k
maximum RAM: 2MB (via 3rd party upgrade)
number of sockets: 2 -- lisa cards
minimum speed: n/a
ROM: 16k of diagnostic and bootstrap code present
L1 cache: n/a
L2 cache: n/a
data path: 16 bit
bus speed: 5 Mhz
slots: 3 Proprietary
SCSI: none
Serial Ports: 2 RS-232
Parallel Ports: 1 (dropped in Lisa 2/MacXL)
Floppy: 2 internal 871k 5.25" (400k Sony 3.5" in Lisa2/MacXL)
HD: 5 MB external (10MB in some configurations of Lisa 2/MacXL)
CD-ROM: none
Monitor: 12" 720 x 360 built-in (B/W)
Sound Input/Output: Continuously Variable Slope Demodulator (CVSD)
Ethernet: none
Gestalt ID: 2
power: 150 Watts
Weight: 48 lbs. Dimensions: 15.2" H x 18.7" W x 13.8" D
Min System Software: LisaOS
Max System Software: LisaOS/MacWorks
introduced: January 1983
terminated: August 1986

Thanks, David Craig

Named for one of its designer's daughters, the Lisa (pictured below left) was supposed to be the Next Big Thing. It was the first personal computer to use a Graphical User Interface. Aimed mainly at large businesses, Apple said the Lisa would increase productivity by making computers easier to work with. The Lisa had a Motorola 68000 Processor running at 5 Mhz, 1 MB of RAM two 5.25" 871k floppy drives, an external 5 MB hard drive, and a built in 12" 720 x 360 monochrome monitor. At $9,995 it was a plunge few businesses were willing to take. When the Macintosh came out in 1984 for significantly less money, it eroded the Lisa's credibility further. Realizing this, Apple released the Lisa 2 (pictured above right) at the same time as the Mac. The Lisa 2 cost half as much as the original, replaced the two 5.25" drives with a single 400k 3.5" drive, and offered configurations with up to 2 MB of RAM, and a 10 MB hard drive. In January 1985, the Lisa 2/10 was renamed the Macintosh XL, and outfitted with MacWorks, an emulator that allowed the Lisa to run the Mac OS. The XL was discontinued later that year.

Cheers,

HA HA
Then why did it cost $10,000 and had a hard time selling even as a business computer???It was the ??first personal computer?? to use a Graphical User Interface!!. Aimed mainly at large businesses!!, Apple said the Lisa would increase productivity by making computers easier to work with.

Whatever.
They are trying to rewrite history.

I wouldn't say that an all-in-one Mac with flat panel display has been done before.

I would:

http://www.apple-history.com/aniversary.html

Think back 15 years. We had the Mac, Mac Plus, Mac SE. In recent years were the iMac, iMac DV, iMac SE. Apple loves to re-use concepts -- my old toaster Mac had a SuperDrive.

I'd love to see an iMac equivalent of the IIci or the LC3. Flat panel, compact desktop case, one or two expansion slots, and much cheaper than the pro towers. Basically, what the Cube should have been. It can be done. They have the technology. But is Lord Steve willing to do it?

Think back 15 years. We had the Mac, Mac Plus, Mac SE. In recent years were the iMac, iMac DV, iMac SE. Apple loves to re-use concepts -- my old toaster Mac had a SuperDrive.

I'd love to see an iMac equivalent of the IIci or the LC3. Flat panel, compact desktop case, one or two expansion slots, and much cheaper than the pro towers. Basically, what the Cube should have been. It can be done. They have the technology. But is Lord Steve willing to do it?

Think back 15 years. We had the Mac, Mac Plus, Mac SE. In recent years were the iMac, iMac DV, iMac SE. Apple loves to re-use concepts -- my old toaster Mac had a SuperDrive.

I'd love to see an iMac equivalent of the IIci or the LC3. Flat panel, compact desktop case, one or two expansion slots, and much cheaper than the pro towers. Basically, what the Cube should have been. It can be done. They have the technology. But is Lord Steve willing to do it?

So at what point does Apple violate the terms of the agreement with Apple Records for ripping off the name and logo?

1989.

Here's a nice summary of the whole thing. Basically, in 1981 (after years of squabbling) apple computer entered into a written agreement not to compete with apple records in any way. In 1989, Apple records decided that apple's computers had reached the point of qualifying as "musical editing equipment", and sued apple claiming that the agreement had been broached and Apple was infringing on Apple's trademark.

(I for some reason thought for a very long time that this was because 1989 was the year apple started putting built-in sound input ports on all shipping machines, but the apple-history site claims that the first apple machines to ship with onboard sound input-- the IIfx and the IIsi-- didn't come out until the beginning of 1990, so maybe that isn't it. Or maybe Apple Records was, in 1989, reacting to advance news from apple describing the upcoming IIfx and IIsi machines. I don't know.)

Anyway, all of this ended in 1990 when Apple and Apple settled; Apple computer had to something like 26.7 million dollars to Apple records, and in return Apple computer gained the right to do pretty much anything with the name "apple". The iPod would be, i am certain, covered under that 1990 agreement.

(There was, after the 1990 agreement, some rather long drawn out legal proceedings involving who paid for the settlement and legal bills from all this, Apple Computer or their insurance company; i think their insurance company finally won. I can't say i really care either way, though.)

This time I remembered to use
tags! Sorry...

My problem has always been that Apple doesn't like to let other people inside their boxes

Sure, if you buy an iFruit, Apple definitely doesn't want you opening one of those up, since the target audience is those who couldn't tell a resistor from a capacitor. However, the G4 tower case designs are very accessible, and make it really easy to install new hardware.

Beside that, Apple is making an active effort to help PCI hardware vendors write drivers for MacOS X in their upcoming I/O Kit PCI Kitchen on August 28th. This is a free workshop for developers to bring in hardware, and get help writing drivers.

It took them ages to finally put several expansion slots in their boxes.

If you look into the history of Apple computers, you'd find out that the fifth Macintosh model released, the Macintosh II (1987) had 6 NuBus expansion slots. I've got one in my basement, it's quite a beefy chunk o' plastic.
Article on the Mac II for those interested.

Three years since the original Mac 128k. So it took a while, but I don't think that qualifies for "ages". Especially considering this was back in the day when a 40 MB hard drive waas still optional.

My problem has always been that Apple doesn't like to let other people inside their boxes Sure, if you buy an iFruit, Apple definitely doesn't want you opening one of those up, since the target audience is those who couldn't tell a resistor from a capacitor. However, the G4 tower case designs are very accessible, and make it really easy to install new hardware. Beside that, Apple is making an active effort to help PCI hardware vendors write drivers for MacOS X in their upcoming I/O Kit PCI Kitchen on August 28th. This is a free workshop for developers to bring in hardware, and get help writing drivers. It took them ages to finally put several expansion slots in their boxes. If you look into the history of Apple computers, you'd find out that the fifth Macintosh model released, the Macintosh II (1987) had 6 NuBus expansion slots. I've got one in my basement, it's quite a beefy chunk o' plastic. Article on the Mac II for those interested. Three years since the original Mac 128k. So it took a while, but I don't think that qualifies for "ages". Especially considering this was back in the day when a 40 MB hard drive waas still optional.

I think one thing that people tend to overlook is that OS X is still in the Beta stage. I can't really blame them for that view, since it's been commercially available for some time, but Apple just started shipping it with new computers in the past couple months, and even then the systems are set up to boot to OS 9.1 as the default. Personally, I think OS X is pretty slick, and given my machine's age, I am ready to get a new system ... after I buy a house this fall. (First things first.) We'll see if iCEO Jobs introduces dual-processor G4s today. I hope I hope I hope.

Interestingly enough, these designs bear a striking similarity to Apple's 'Pomona' prototypes from 1993.

Pomona saw the light of day as the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, but the prototypes are where the real similarity lies.

Well, a dead standard, at least. For example, PowerMacs had DVD-RAM drives two years ago, and even Mac addicts panned it because DVD-RAM can't play back on consumer DVD players. That's where the money is.

I had one of these (PB 5300, well known as the Exploding PowerBook due to Li-Ion batteries that caught fire) - mine didn't explode, but it did squeal like mad when it was charging the battery. I am now much happier with my G3!

Ahem...

Thats kind of strange considering that Apple didn't exist in 1976!

Apple was incorporated April 1, 1976.

http://www.apple-history.com/history.html

And if Valdrax's info isn't good enough, here's a link: www.apple-history.com.

There were extreme supply issues with the G4 initially, due largely to Motorola's inability to deliver the 7400 chips in adequate supply. This was further compounded by an "errata" in the initial revision of the 7400 that effectively lowered the ceiling of the chip to 450Mhz. As a result, all models of the G4 were "speed dumped" in October. The PowerMac G4 PCI was decreased in speed to 350 Mhz, for the same $1599 price tag. Existing orders for the G4 PCI/400 were largely honored.

4/10/01 I have managed to survive the "slashdot effect". With nearly 20,000 unique visitors, and over 2 million individual file requests, yesterday saw the heaviest traffic this site has ever had. The site got as many hits as it did in all of March. A big thanks to everyone who was kind enough to register yesterday!"

BTW, nice comment title.

If you are interested in broadening your timeline to include other operating systems' promise/delay/delivery-not-meeting-expectations, there are plenty of other examples out there, notably OS-X (AKA Rhapsody) which is 3 years late and lacks CD-R(W), DVDRW, DVD play support, along with missing printer and SCSI drivers (without running in 9.1 emulation mode). I'm still waiting for a major x86 Linux distro with good enough USB support, lacking for over a year, to use my Visor that I don't have to manually upgrade the kernel (I know, short work for some of you kernel hackers, but too much of a PITA for me), preferrably Red Hat, but their 'next several weeks' continues to drag on.

I doubt the 'promises/delays/letdowns' are exclusive to Windows, but fairly standard practice for the industry as a whole. That doesn't make it right, just typical.

Even more puzzling to me is how these apparently industry standard release cycles contribute to fragmentation, especially from a single proprietary vendor who can control all the different flavors! Sure, if they want it to fragment, they could make it happen, but it would require them to make it happen (or perhaps a federal judge ;).

Last time I checked, 512 was only twice as much as 128. The first Mac had 128, not 64, and was soon upgradable to 512 (aka Fat Mac).

Check out his bibliography for some reading material. In addition to this stuff, there are some great books which give (often contradictory) accounts of the software projects you mention, as well as some unconfirmed "skunkworks" projects which never saw the light of day. The most interesting of these is "Star Trek", an effort to port Mac OS 7 to Intel hardware, cosponsored by Intel and Novell. The team developed a proof of concept, were given a holiday as a reward, and came back to discover the project had been killed.

The books I've read and can recommend are Jim Carlton's Apple, John Sculley's Odyssey and Gil Amelio's In The Firing Line. The last two are insider's accounts, which doesn't make them any more trustworthy. However, coupled with some independent background material, they make fascinating reading. All available at Amazon.

"...it's not a particularly rigorous piece of historical documementation or even good basic journalism."

Actually, this site is one of the best places to point people if you want to explode the myths surrounding the development of the GUI. Buried deep within the site is this page, which reprints a discussion between Bruce Horn and Jeff Raskin, two of the Mac's many parents, as to the ins and outs of the GUI development. They don't agree with each other on many issues, but one thing which comes across clearly is that the "urban legend" surrounding these events is just too simplistic to be true.

One thing these discussions reveal is that the story of Apple swiping the concept wholesale from Xerox is simply an impossibility. Like the Internet, many of these concepts had been floating around since the 1960s, when neither Apple nor Xerox PARC existed. What's more, further key concepts were dreamt up entirely by Apple, such as "drag and drop", and others seem to have been arrived at independently at several sites.

Here are some quotes from Raskin taken from this discussion:

As I said in my history of the Mac Project ... the Mac was by no means the work of one person, but the combined efforts of thousands in hundreds of companies large and small. It was not, as many accounts anachronistically relate, stolen from PARC by Steve Jobs after he saw the Alto running SmallTalk on a visit.

..it is perhaps understandable that people would find it necessary to invent a history that derives the Mac's genesis from the nearest similar work. The honest intellectual debt the Mac owes to the work at PARC was not a case of highway robbery.

Just for those of you interested.. the exact page(s) on apple-history.com which is suspect is here

The text does look a little too professional for Tom's site.. but apple-history.com is not the most professional of sites either. Someone is lying, not that I really care who it is :)

If you go to this site and like it please consider donating to Apple-History to help them stay alive. Especially considering what a heavy strain slashdotting the site is going to be on the financial resources of the site owner. :/

Interestingly, the Lisa had 512K of RAM (in 1983), four times more than the Mac had when it came out over a year later.

Problem with it, though, was that it also came with a $10,000 price tag. In 1989, Apple finally junked thousands of unsold Lisas in a nearby landfill.

1/30/01

The main site was down for a few hours, as we maxed out our bandwidth for the month. We've transfered over 12GB in the last two weeks! I've worked out a way to make sure that if we max out our bandwidth in the future, we just pay more, instead of the site going down... I've also moved the movies and most of the images to a seperate server.

As always, please use one of our mirrors if possible.

And this was back at late January...

This time the Slashdot effect isn't just funny or stupid. It is going to cost a fan that is dedicating their own money for no profit.

For the love of god, do them a favour, and use theirmirrors!

Incase you missed that:
MIRRORS!!

1/30/01

The main site was down for a few hours, as we maxed out our bandwidth for the month. We've transfered over 12GB in the last two weeks! I've worked out a way to make sure that if we max out our bandwidth in the future, we just pay more, instead of the site going down... I've also moved the movies and most of the images to a seperate server.

As always, please use one of our mirrors if possible.

And this was back at late January...

This time the Slashdot effect isn't just funny or stupid. It is going to cost a fan that is dedicating their own money for no profit.

For the love of god, do them a favour, and use theirmirrors!

Incase you missed that:
MIRRORS!!

1/30/01

The main site was down for a few hours, as we maxed out our bandwidth for the month. We've transfered over 12GB in the last two weeks! I've worked out a way to make sure that if we max out our bandwidth in the future, we just pay more, instead of the site going down... I've also moved the movies and most of the images to a seperate server.

As always, please use one of our mirrors if possible.

And this was back at late January...

This time the Slashdot effect isn't just funny or stupid. It is going to cost a fan that is dedicating their own money for no profit.

For the love of god, do them a favour, and use theirmirrors!

Incase you missed that:
MIRRORS!!

1/30/01

The main site was down for a few hours, as we maxed out our bandwidth for the month. We've transfered over 12GB in the last two weeks! I've worked out a way to make sure that if we max out our bandwidth in the future, we just pay more, instead of the site going down... I've also moved the movies and most of the images to a seperate server.

As always, please use one of our mirrors if possible.

And this was back at late January...

This time the Slashdot effect isn't just funny or stupid. It is going to cost a fan that is dedicating their own money for no profit.

For the love of god, do them a favour, and use theirmirrors!

Incase you missed that:
MIRRORS!!

If you have a large glove box, then look no more furher than this amazing system. You can even use it to play exciting colourful games or type letters in a word processor between two telnet sessions.

Anyone else remember the Mac TV? How much progress have we made in 7 years?

Apple did not steal the GUI concept from Xerox's Palo Alto Research Centre. They borrowed some ideas but not the complete OS concept. The other key difference is that Apple actually asked Xerox first. Smalltalk really has very little in common with MacOS. Microsoft was given detailed information about the MacOS APIs to aid them in creating apps for the Macintosh. Microsoft used this information when creating windows.

There has been enough misinformation spread about the birth of the GUI and Apple and Xerox part in it all. Microsoft had no part in the creation of the GUI all the concepts were in place when it created its own.

I suggest those who are interested take a look at the following essay linked from here. They were written by people actually involved:

http://www.apple-history.com/horn1.html

You can actually still run System 1 today using the vMac emulator. If you have too much spare time then you can try it out and see just how advanced it was for its time.

http://www.nd.edu/~jvanderk/sysone/

like this.

Of course, the last time we saw an Amiga was when Elvis brought one out of a flying saucer.... (there's a UF comic about that somewhere :)

That's not inside information, it's history of the mainstream computing industry. Saying that the G4 is the second age of Apple computing is almost as bad as saying the Netfinity is the second age of IBM computing. Talking about "Second Ages" is talking about how something fits in with history, and saying a company as old and changed as Apple is only just starting its second age is absurd.

Apple getting rid of Amelio wasn't the "end of the first age", Amelio wasn't even in Apple until 1996, when the company was already almost 20 years old and already through with several major tranformations, both in product lines and in management. How was the loss of Amelio any more the end of an age than the loss of Scully, or Jobs? Regardless of how you feel about those people, they were far more significant to the company.

For a decent overview of the history of Apple, check out http://www.apple-history.com/history.html

----

My understanding is that it's not meant to be upgradeable at all. In addition to being misreported as a Linux box, it's really a misrepresentation to call the iToaster a normal PC--it's closer to a cross between WebTV and the Canon Cat (a really cool piece of hardware partially designed by Mac designer Jef Raskin). This is not aimed at the typical Slashdot crowd, or even pretend power users; it's aimed at people who want to be able to surf the net and do "computer-like things" like word processing and spreadsheets, without actually buying a computer.

As for what they might be taking from Linux, I doubt it's much of anything but buzzwords. Non-tech people know the name Linux and go "ooo" when it's mentioned; Be doesn't have that luxury. There'd be little point in porting X to BeOS for this kind of device.