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Apple: First to Latest

Posted by michael on from the too-much-time-on-their-hands dept.

athagon writes: "Being a rabid MacOS fan, I recently tripped over an amazing site on the 'net: Apple History. Intrigued, I continued onward and found a host of information, "codenames", photos, and tech info in general (all who knew that the G4 AGP was codenamed "Sawtooth" raise your hand!). Interested? Check out the site." Random thought: how long before Trivial Pursuit comes out with an edition specializing in technology/computer/internet subjects?

5 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. *raises hand* by alewando · · Score: 5
    G4 AGP was codenamed "Sawtooth" raise your hand!


    That one's actually easy, since MOSR had been repeating the name "Sawtooth" for months in advance of its release.

    What's much more interesting (and which most people don't know) is why the Lisa got its name.

    Before Wozniak joined with Jobs to found Apple, he was something of a studmuffin (certainly by any standard that encompases Bill Gates, at least), but he had a little trouble "keeping his dick in his pants" as we like to say at the MUG. At times, he was going through three girlfriends a week (and twice as much vermouth and heroin).

    Lisa was the one who finally set him on the straight and narrow, because it was her experience in getting an abortion that showed him he wasn't cut out for parenthood and had other things he wanted to accomplish first. He was seventeen at the time.

    When the marketers were trying to decide what to name the hot new prototype, one of them recalled Wozniak's motivational story about his torid past and so named it "Lisa".

    I'm glad there's now a site to chronicle these events. You can learn a lot about a bit of technology by examining where its inventors came from and what they had to overcome in order to bring it to market, at least in a predictive sense of foreseeing where the company and its technology will go.
  2. Innacuracies by maggard · · Score: 5
    Just to give folks a reminder: Just 'cause someone put it on a web-page doesn't mean it's true...

    For example the web-site linked to claims that it was a visit to Xerox PARC that inspired the Apple Lisa. Rather the Lisa was well along it's development (with the GUI close to it's final form) before the famous trip.

    While it's become geek-folklore to assert Apple "stole" the GUI from Xerox PARC you'll note that none of the folks involved have ever said so & indeed often go to lengths to point out the differences between the Xerox Star & what Apple shipped as the Lisa & Macintosh. Indeed this would be more accurately labelled an "urban legend".

    Overall the web-site is a nice one & presents lots of information (none of it particularly unknown but still nice to see out there) however it's not a particularly rigorous piece of historical documementation or even good basic journalism.

    --
    I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
  3. Lots of mirrors by jpatokal · · Score: 5
    In a rare case of foresight, the site has official mirrors around the globe:

    Gotta love that front page note though, dated January 30th:

    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...

    Baaaaaaaad move...

    Cheers,
    -j.

  4. Mirrors! by Xenex · · Score: 5
    From Apple-History.com's front page:

    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!!

  5. Donate to Apple-History! by Rura+Penthe · · Score: 5

    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. :/