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Susan Kare: Mother of Icons You Love (or Hate)

bughunter writes "One of today's Yahoo Daily Picks is the personal exhibit of Susan Kare: the mimimalist creator of most of the original Macintosh icons then, later, the iconic elements for Windows 3.0, and she didn't stop there. More than just icons, her GUI elements have become part of the modern collective subconscious - trashcans, bombs, and Happy Macs are universally recognized by computer literate persons the world over. (I can personally attest that the Mac System 6 beachball is burned into my soul...) She deserves some recognition of her own."

3 of 363 comments (clear)

  1. Google Cache by Torqued · · Score: 4, Informative
  2. Cultural problems by SuperBanana · · Score: 5, Informative
    I remember the happy mac startup icon from 1984... when the Mac was happy, *I* was happy. When the Mac had a twisted mouth and Xs for eyes, I wasn't.

    Some folks may remember the happy mac actually winked at you during startup in one of the OS 8 versions. It was quickly yanked- Apple supposedly got a backlash(or feared one) from cultures/countries where winking is offensive; search on google and you'll find a ton of links about it.

    Similarly, they yanked at one point the Chimes Of Death(doo wee do doooooo) that accompanied the dead-mac(and error code dump), usually caused by severe hardware or software problems during booting in older macs. It genuinely freaked people out(I know it scared the shit out of me the first time i heard it.)

    Random trivia- most of the original Macintosh's ROM was taken up by a COLOR image of the Macintosh development team. My 660AV's ROM contained an image of the team(much larger) at a beachparty. It is so sad to see that easter eggs have pretty much been killed off for years now in apple hardware/software.

    Curious- Did she design the Spinning Pizza of Death, in OS x?

    Obligitory slashdotting joke: Her site could use the SPOD right about now :-)

  3. Re:COD sample? by Captain+Nitpick · · Score: 4, Informative
    Does anyone know where I can find a downloadable sound sample of the "Chimes of Death"? I'm not a mac user and I'm interested in hearing them...

    I found copies of both the crash sounds, and the startup sounds here. I recommend the 'Crash Mac Quadra' file.

    --
    But then again, I could be wrong.