Apple History At folklore.org

oaklybonn writes "Andy Hertzfeld seems to be the primary author on this fascinating site, which details many of his experiences in the Macintosh (Bicycle??) development efforts. It includes such choice commentary as: "we were amazed that such a thoroughly bad game could be co-authored by Microsoft's co-founder, and that he would actually want to take credit for it in the comments.", on a page describing a game bundled with the original IBM PC." Reader themexican adds "As a plus, Hertzfeld notes in the faq that the python code running the well-designed and easy to navigate site will be made public in the near future."

Comments

Mac Anniversary

[ahacop@wmuc.umd.edu]

So, what happened with the rumors of a special announcement on Monday in commemorate the Mac's anniversary?

Re:Mac Anniversary

[mr100percent]

Well, all Apple did to celebrate was release...a security update. Ta Da!

Not my joke, just copying from an earlier post from another story.

Re:Mac Anniversary

[Tibor the Hun]

They turned out to be rumors.

Bicycle

[mr100percent]

What, no elaboration on why it was called the Bicycle? Fine, I'll enlighten you.

Apparently there was a story in Scientific American, or Popular Science, or some such magazine where the scientists were trying to determine what was the most efficient of animals in terms of locomotion. Which creature moved with the least amount of calories burned? Well, humans were waay down the list, pathetic in terms of other creatures. The top animal with the most efficient means of movement was an eagle or something. Then, one guy had this idea to measure how efficient a human being is on a bicycle. It was awesome, he was drastically more efficient, able to go further and without burning as many calories. It knocked the bird out of first place.

So, early on, Apple was planning on calling it the "Bicycle for the Mind." I don't know if it makes as much an impact if you don't know the story behind it.

I got this anecdote from one of the Apple behind-the-scenes books (I forget which), like Apple Confidential.

Re:Bicycle

[bangmonkey]

Way to go beyond not just reading the article, but also repeating the contents. +5 Insightful indeed.

Re:Bicycle

[kfg]

You also have to understand the energy crisis culture at the time the fact that more scientific research went into bicycles in the previous ten years than probably all of thier history previous.

It was right about at that time that the number of bicycles in America once again outnumbered cars.

In 1980 in think there like 10,000 people in America who had ever heard of the Tour de France. In 1984 it was nearly as commonly known as the World Series.

Bicycle was actually a buzzword.

There is a species of albatros that lives entirely at sea for months at a time, generally soaring at little more than wave hight. It is so adapted to this enviroment and so efficeint in flight that it can sleep while so soaring.

Even though water is a dense medium animals that are adapted to it do not have to expend energy supporting their own weight. I've got the chart from MIT around here somewhere, but can't lay hands on it immediately, as I recall the dolphin and tuna and salmon topped the list for animal motion by its own power (a soaring bird may use little energy, but that's because it's not doing much of anything. Air and gravity are.) A Portugese Man-o-War simply floats with the tide, as a man in an innertube might. Torpor is very energy efficient.

So what animal is the most efficeint will change with your definition of "motion."

It is interesting to note, however, that not only is a man on a bicycle more energy efficient than a swimming dolphin, but he is more energy efficient than the same man riding a horse.

This is why the invention of the bicycle was such a stunning technological step that transformed society even before the advent of the motor car. The first smooth paved roads were made for the bicycle. The cars uspurped them.

KFG

Re:Bicycle

[mr100percent]

First off, when you posted, it is +3 insightful.

Second, this wasn't in the contents. Go check the site yourself, the story isn't mentioned, only that they were going to use the name "Bicycle" (Why? It doesn't say)

Ungrateful wretch, I will tell you, YOU, bangmonkey, no more interesting stories.

Re:Bicycle

[vought]

Apple had a higher-ed program for equipping labs with Macs in the late 1980s and early 1990s called "Wheels for the MInd".

The Susan Kare-style logo at the top of the WotM letterhead was the same featured in the Folklore site. Pretty cool, if you ask me. Still cool, even if you don't.

Re:Bicycle

[bangmonkey]

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macin tosh&story=Bicycle.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date& detail=medium Mentions the origin of 'Bicycle' for the team (Jobs quoted as saying computers were bicycles for the mind), as well as efforts to use the term. Linked with the word 'Bicycle' in the article :P I concede that your story was more in-depth.

Re:Bicycle

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1980 in think there like 10,000 people in America

Quick! Somebody get this man a bicycle!

Re:Bicycle

[Artifex]

It is interesting to note, however, that not only is a man on a bicycle more energy efficient than a swimming dolphin, but he is more energy efficient than the same man riding a horse.

Wow, that's a surprising revelation. Please go find that chart and let us know where that came from...

Re:Bicycle

[yiantsbro]

"...adapted to this enviroment and so efficeint in flight that it can sleep while so soaring."

Yes, but can they do it while nursing a series of gin and tonics like human airline pilots :) I think not...

Re:Bicycle

[criordan]

You have obviously never ridden a horse.

Re:Bicycle

[kfg]

Still haven't been able to dig that one up. I've got some graphs here comparing human power output to that of a horse, but that's a horse of a different color.

On the other hand if you've done any riding of both it's surprising at first, but reflection bears it out.

If you try to sit on a horse like you do on a chair you'll get pounded to death. Your butt will turn to hamburger, your spine will get crunched (forensic examination of Custer's troops showed spinal degredation even among teenagers as I recall). You have to lift yourself up and down in stirrups in rythmn with the horse. Saves your butt and spine, but until you've done a fair amount of riding you'l come home with your legs aching. Riding a horse is a lot of work. This is why the genteel class prefered the surrey. Even if, for some reason, you choose to sit like a sack and take the pounding you'll burn a fair number of extra calories in the process. Riding a horse works all the muscles of the body, each burning calories, no matter how slightly.

On a bicycle you can simply sit; only the legs are really using extra calories; and fairly gentle pressure on the pedals will give you 8 mph or so on the level. Grandma can do this and keep it up all day. 12 mph is the speed a man with virtually depleted sugar stores can ride all day (although he won't enjoy it very much). An expert can ride at 15 mph until he falls asleep if he eats normally(the record average speed for crossing the US coast to coast is 15.3 mph, that average includes all downtime such as for sleeping. The clock started in California and stopped in Atlantic City NJ).

I have to note that all of this is highly speed dependant. For instance, it takes a world class athlete (horse or man) to hit 40 mph, but the jockey of a horse galloping at 40 mph is probably working at about the rate of a bicyclist going 20 mph; about .2 hp ( watch a horse race on the tube, the jockey ain't just sitting there), whereas it's obvious that a man on a bicycle going 40 mph is pushing the very limits of human capability. (I'll note though that American professional cyclist Jackie Simes III beat a trotter in a race at Saratoga Springs. I've ridden a bicycle race on the same track. Trust me, the horse was at the advantage here. I never, ever want to race a bicycle on a horse track again)

The bicycle is at the disadvantage going uphill or into the wind. On the other hand riding a bicycle downhill requires very little energy while riding a horse downhill requires more human energy.

None of it is very straight forward and thus the claim that a man on a horse uses more energy than a man on a bicycle is provisional based on the conditions.

As I recall the figure I have is for a horse at a trot of about 8 mph (which is why I chose that figure above) and a man bicycling at the same speed on the level in still air.

The man on the bicycle will be expending about .03 horsepower, barely more than walking to the fridge.

Yeah, in the mid 70s I was a bicycle researcher, which is why I have that chart, and why it is "somewhere," although I concentrated more on dynamics.

KFG

Re:Bicycle

[Perl-Pusher]

If you try to sit on a horse like you do on a chair you'll get pounded to death. Your butt will turn to hamburger, your spine will get crunched (forensic examination of Custer's troops showed spinal degredation even among teenagers as I recall). You have to lift yourself up and down in stirrups in rythmn with the horse.

Not if you ride a horse with an extremly smooth gate. A Pacifino is the easy chair of horses. I have never ever seen a horse that is so smooth to ride, you can even ride it side sattle like prim and proper women rode in the the old days.

Re:Bicycle

[Anonymous Coward]

"gait"

Re:Bicycle

[Mikkeles]

"It is interesting to note, however, that not only is a man on a bicycle more energy efficient than a swimming dolphin, but he is more energy efficient than the same man riding a horse."

Is this on a road or in the wild? If the former, does it include the energy involved in building the road?^)

(That's a joke; honestly)

Apple history

[Kris Thalamus]

A model by model Apple history can be found here.

Re:Apple History

[Artifex]

2000 - Apple is Dying

2004 - Err, Ipod might save 'em

Now with BSD, they'll be dying faster, right? Or longer :)
BSD's been dying since I was a kid.

Folklore

[mad.frog]

"As a plus, Hertzfeld notes in the faq that the python code running the well-designed and easy to navigate site will be made public in the near future."

Cool. This looks like a neat software setup for a website. I'll be interested in trying it out after it gets released.

Re:Folklore

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming its the site software that's causing the slowdown, he could stand to improve the code to better withstand a slashdot.

Love Andy Hertzfeld

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

Met him at the West Coast Computer show in Vancouver demoing Thunderscan around '86 or so, and he had the exact same green shirt on that I was wearing.

The man is a Geek God. Turning a printer into a scanner? Sheer genius.

Re:Love Andy Hertzfeld

[Anonymous Coward]

The man is a Geek God. Turning a printer into a scanner? Sheer genius.

Uhhh you might want to give credit where credit is due. This was something that came out with one of the Amiga compatible printers in 1986, and like many things appeared first on that platform.

A refined UI? Multitasking? Color graphics? Built in Audio?

You only have to go as far as an Amiga

Re:Love Andy Hertzfeld

[Saven Marek]

LOL! Amiga users, still reinventing history after 19 years

Re:Love Andy Hertzfeld

[outZider]

UI, yes. Refined, no. I'm the biggest Commodore fan you can find, but Apple definitely had the edge in user experience. AmigaOS 4.0 is about to come out, and they've finally come around to making it look like... X11. :P

Re:Love Andy Hertzfeld

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

Nice try. Thunderscan was out before the Amiga even *existed*. 1984 conference with Bill Atkinson

A little more history...

[Jon Abbott]

Andy Hertzfeld is one of the guys who helped design the original Mac, and also one of the people behind Eazel, the GNOME UI polishing group. Eazel was the group that contributed Nautilus file manager to GNOME. Strangely, Eazel's webpage now displays jibberish...

Re:A little more history...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not gibberish, its SQL. Small difference, but still important. The domain is owned by some Spanish squatter, who is apparently not even competent enough to put up his advertising correctly.

Re:A little more history...

[Lars T.]

Looks like a spanish online music store to me.

Hertzfeldt?

[Mahtar]

For a moment, I confused Andy with Don Hertzfeldt.

I'm such a consumer whore.

Re:Hertzfeldt?

[Carthag]

I'm such a consumer whore.

And how!

Re:Hertzfeldt?

[default luser]

Do you want to go see a movie?

Re:Hertzfeldt?

[Quobobo]

I'm feeling fat and sassy.

Interpreted code and high volume traffic

[commbat]

"As a plus, Hertzfeld notes in the faq that the python code running the well-designed and easy to navigate site will be made public in the near future."

Shows if you want to run a site written with an interpreted language and expect Slashdot level interest, you'd better be running it on one hell of a monster machine.

Sheesh!

Re:Interpreted code and high volume traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it seems to be holding up quite well, it's just a bit slow.

PHP would have puked its guts all over the place by now.

Re:Interpreted code and high volume traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

Java servlets on a decent machine could handle 200 requests per second of the kind of pages that site is generating. For comparison, /. handles 3 page requests per second.

Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[ObviousGuy]

I think it boils down to the core concept that "users do not want to use a computer". From this leads designers to think of ways of alleviating redundancies and mundanity and in its place add comfort and features. The Mac UI really was a significant milestone for computers when it was first introduced. The GUI concept was a long time in coming and the Mac was so far ahead of the rest that it is only the lack of business acumen of the folks at Apple that hampered such a revolutionary product.

Even today the interface is still significantly different and better than the alternatives. The concept of only a single window frame with a single menu bar at the top of the screen is easy for new users to grok. The reduction of mouse buttons to one makes such things as "Press the right-click... nono the button on the right... no, don't double click it, only click it once... no, press Control-Z to undo that... no, just stop touching the computer until I can come over, mom" a thing of the past. Who would have thought that a seemingly backwards step as the single mouse button would be such a revolutionary step forward for computing?

It's almost like Apple has sucked all the brainpower out of Silicon Valley and packed it all into their Macintosh line. I have never owned a Mac, but I have many friends who do and who constantly rave about how much they love it. And I believe deep down that the reason they love it so much is because fundamentally they hate computers, but their Mac behaves unlike any other computer out there. It does its job and gets out of the way, unlike other operating systems which force you to spend half your time fiddling with screen refresh rates and Config menus just to get down to your real business.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[Becho62282]

I think one of the reasons Apple's UI's have always been favored by their users is their simplicity, and at the same time their high level of sofistication.

Making a UI easy enough for a first time user to just turn the machine on and instantly have things act like they would like them to, or expect them to has always been a feature that Windows never accomplished. I remember sitting and using a Mac for the first time when I was 6 (in 1990) and I didn't need any help from our teacher to use it (no comp at home till later). It just worked and acted like I thought it should. My first Windows experiece was Win3.1 in '94 and that peice of junk just stank. My comp at home by that point was using Mac OS 7.1 and functioned amazingly while this Win3.1 thing was barely useable.

As I grew up and PC's did too eventually Windows came to being a fairly useful OS, while it still seems to fail miserably with it's UI, it has gotten some things right. Apple has responded with the greatest UI I have ever experienced on any platform, Windows, *nix, Mac. OS 10.3 is just amazing, it's slick, user friendly, colorful (but not cheezy), and best of all IT WORKS!

The thing that Apple has done with it's UI is amazing, it has changed with the landscape of the computing world, and always been the forefront of what every other UI seems to want to become. Sadly for the average user (aka Windose drones) they won't get to see an interface this user friendly ever. Apple just keeps pushing forward the computing experience for people, and I am glad people are starting to finally take notice

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[prockcore]

The reduction of mouse buttons to one makes such things as "Press the right-click... nono the button on the right... no, don't double click it, only click it once... no, press Control-Z to undo that... no, just stop touching the computer until I can come over, mom" a thing of the past.

First of all, Apple invented the double click, which totally breaks the motif that Apple intended to create with the introduction of the mouse.

Secondly, by getting rid of the right mouse button, Apple introduced things such as "control click.. no, control, not option.. no, not alt.. control.. yeah" You will never convince me that control clicking, or click-and-hold (which doesn't even work outside of the finder) is an adequate replacement for a second mouse button.

Of course you can plug in a multibutton mouse into the mac and it works, this doesn't help people with laptops.

The lack of a right mouse button and a scrollwheel on mac laptops makes things very frustrating.. and we have to resort to installing things like SideTrack to do things with the touchpad that PC touchpads do by default.

In fact, Apple should just integrate SideTrack into the OS, or add a damn scrollwheel.

Don't forget other UI disasters Apple is responsible for like Home and End keys that never seem to do what you expect.

For example, in Safari, I expect that when I'm editing a text field, if I hit home, the cursor should move to the beginning of the field, not scroll to the top of the page. If I'm selecting emails in mail.app, hitting up and down selects the next and previous emails, but hitting home doesn't take me to the top of the email list, it scrolls the currently selected email.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[Riktov]

The reduction of mouse buttons to one makes such things as "Press the right-click... " a thing of the past. Who would have thought that a seemingly backwards step as the single mouse button would be such a revolutionary step forward for computing?

Although for most users at the time, who had never before seen any mouse, let alone a three-button Xerox Alto or two-button Microsoft mouse, the Mac one-button was the first and original. Let's just say it was Microsoft's seemingly revolutionary two-button mouse (or more to the point, windowing environment,) that turned out to be a backwards step.

Nonetheless, could you live without the scroll-wheel? You must admit that's a worthwhile innovation, and it's astounding that Apple still hasn't appropriated it.

The concept of only a single window frame with a single menu bar at the top of the screen is easy for new users to grok.

Sorry, I have always considered this a confusing, bad design. It's a relic of single-tasking from the original Mac OS. The problem is that it's not just a single window frame. In the original Mac with single-tasking, the desktop was monopolized by a single app, even though that app might have multiple windows. But with multitasking, all the windows from different programs are on the desktop, yet there is no visual mapping from the menubar to its associated windows in the foreground program.

Fitt's law be damned, in a windowing GUI, a window defines the territory of a program, and that's where everything should fit.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[typhoonius]

Don't forget other UI disasters Apple is responsible for like Home and End keys that never seem to do what you expect. For example, in Safari, I expect that when I'm editing a text field, if I hit home, the cursor should move to the beginning of the field, not scroll to the top of the page. If I'm selecting emails in mail.app, hitting up and down selects the next and previous emails, but hitting home doesn't take me to the top of the email list, it scrolls the currently selected email.

Use Command+Left to go to the beginning of a line or Command+Right to go to the end of a line. Alt+Left and Alt+Right skip words. It's not a bad system necessarily, just one you aren't used to.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[prockcore]

But with multitasking, all the windows from different programs are on the desktop, yet there is no visual mapping from the menubar to its associated windows in the foreground program.

This is true. The single menu bar does save space, and it is consistent (two bonuses in my book), but it does feel like it isn't part of the app. I think that most users forget the menu is even up there.

To many people, the toolbar has become the menubar.. originally the toolbar was a place to put the most common things from the menubar, but now it has become a place to jam everything. The menubar has become almost completely redundant.

It also violates HIG which says that UI elements shouldn't ever be context sensitive. i.e. a button shouldn't disappear and reappear based on what you are doing (it should grey out instead).

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[sapporo]

Sorry, I have always considered this a confusing, bad design.

IMHO, there's more to that design decision that you think. The fact that the Mac's menu bar is placed at the top of the screen makes it a lot easier to point at with the mouse, because you simply cannot move the mouse pointer too far. This makes it far superior in terms of usability that Windows-style menus at the top of each window.

For more details, I recommend reading "The Humane Interface" by Jef Raskin. UIs should be based on scientific usability studies, not developers' tastes - that's what Gnome and KDE suffer from.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO, there's more to that design decision that you think. The fact that the Mac's menu bar is placed at the top of the screen makes it a lot easier to point at with the mouse, because you simply cannot move the mouse pointer too far. This makes it far superior in terms of usability that Windows-style menus at the top of each window.

But by exactly the same argument it is a horrible mistake to have min/max buttons and scroll bars on each window. The scroll bars should be at the very right of the screen, and min/max buttons at the top of the screen.

Design is always about compromise. Jef did some great work, but again: don't forget that his original studies were done with the premise of a single-tasking system.

The 1 or 2 button mouse preference comes down to the same thing. No, he did NOT prove that a 1 button mouse "is better". What they did show is that under the presumption that it is more important for a novice (who is unlikely to ever control-click or command-click) to use the system than a power user, then it is better to have a one-button mouse. This lead to the compromise that many power users have to put up with a single button on their trackpads, or lug around an extra mouse with their laptop.

Jef has also published a lot of nonsense IMHO, like "red being a bad color for the close button since it attracts attention".

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[Bones3D_mac]

"Sorry, I have always considered this a confusing, bad design. It's a relic of single-tasking from the original Mac OS. The problem is that it's not just a single window frame. In the original Mac with single-tasking, the desktop was monopolized by a single app, even though that app might have multiple windows. But with multitasking, all the windows from different programs are on the desktop, yet there is no visual mapping from the menubar to its associated windows in the foreground program."

There is good reason for the way the Mac OS handles itself the way it does. While it would seem like a good idea to contain all parts of a program within a single window, there are several problems with this... many of which become very confusing to the end user.

• Too many menus!
• 
  As the user begins opening more and more applications, it takes longer for the user to find the correct menu among several windows. Going by the Human Interface Guidelines, a single menu on the screen reduces the time needed to locate the correct item. The menu also identifies the currently active application by displaying the application name/icon within itself.
  
  
• Where did my menu go?
• 
  By making the menu part of the window, the menu is forced to travel around the screen with the window, unless the window is maximized to full screen. By locking the menu into a single, isolated place on the screen, it causes the interface to become much more predictable for the user. Predictability equals efficiency.
  
  
• How do I create a new document after closing the last one, without having to relaunch the entire application?
• 
  With a menu stored entirely within a window, you can't... unless your application displays windows within other windows. Under the Human Interface Guidelines, this isn't an issue. The app continues running until the user decides to kill it himself. As applications get bigger over time, so does their load time. The time wasted per year by creating a new instance of an app each time the user mistaken closes the previous document when he meant to create a new document, could add up to hours or even days worth of time.

There are other issues, but these are the major ones that tend to cause the most trouble. This is not to say there aren't problems with the Mac OS in it's current form though. For whatever reason, Apple apparently did away with most of the Human Interface Guidelines somewhere between Mac OS 8 and Mac OS X. As a result, things are now much more complicated than they need to be. So, if there is a problem with something in Mac OS 9/Mac OS X, blame Apple... not the Human Interface Guidelines they should have been following.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[n3k5]

I have never owned a Mac, but I have many friends who do and who constantly rave about how much they love it.

Macs seem to be much more likeable than PCs indeed. However, there are other things Mac owners admit to be factors in them constantly raving about how much they love their machines. For example, they have to pay a much higher price for their hardware than PC people, so they try to eliminate doubts about wheter it was really worth it. They already have the machine, so it _must_ be worth it. And, of course, raving about how much your PC can do and how super the OS and everything is doesn't make as much sense, because most people already know about these things, they're taken for granted. It's the standard Macs are compared to. No question, they come out on top in many areas, but just the fact that Mac users praise their machines is absolutely no indication that Apple owns all the brainpower of Silicon Valley; they don't.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[Pyrometer]

The concept of only a single window frame with a single menu bar at the top of the screen is easy for new users to grok.

Sorry, I have always considered this a confusing, bad design. It's a relic of single-tasking from the original Mac OS.

I always thought this myself comming from the Windows land, however, think of it this way ...

It is a multi-tasking OS, however, as a user you can only interface with one thing at a time. Hence you can only interfact with a single menu item no matter how many menu items are displayed on the screen. Therefore, the fact that there is only a single menu item is a moot point.

In regards to the "visual mapping", that is why it is a standard on the Mac to have the application name as the first entry in the menu item. It gives you that visual mapping so to speak ... off course it is generally obvious which application you are working with in any case.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[JabberWokky]

Interesting. I use KDE, which can either do a Mac style menu across the top or menus-in-apps. Here's an interesting point:

On my desktop, I use xinerama, either two or three monitors (I have gone as high as five in the past). I use menus-in-apps (aka Windows style). I load many many apps and have them spread out all over the place. I also tend to open new URLs in new windows.

On my laptop, I use a single 1024x768 monitor. I use menu-at-top (aka MacOS style). I load only a few apps, and have them all maximized (in general). I tend to use tabbed browsing significantly more.

In both I use Konsole (the KDE terminal app) in a uniform manner... lots of tabs, a primary shell, a root shell, and then several task shells. I use the second desktop in both as a place to kick windows that either are running "in the background" (conceptually, a la xmms) or interesting tangents that I ran across while working on a task (web pages found while googling for something else, half finished documents I was working on, etc).

I also used to be an emacs kinda guy, and now I use vi. I use Kate often as well (the file sidebar is very handy for making small changes to many files).

It's interesting, because the menubar difference is very natural, and I move back and forth with no difficulty. I can't recall the last time I hunted for the menu with a false start. For the single screen, MacOS style is the best, especially with a eraserhead mouse. For many screens, Windows style is better because I don't have to move across several monitors to hit a menu.

--
Evan

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[mdwh2]

How do I create a new document after closing the last one, without having to relaunch the entire application? With a menu stored entirely within a window, you can't... unless your application displays windows within other windows. Under the Human Interface Guidelines, this isn't an issue. The app continues running until the user decides to kill it himself. As applications get bigger over time, so does their load time.

Actually this is something that caused me trouble on MacOS - I kept feeling that when I'd closed all the application's windows, and it was no longer visible, that the application should have closed. Instead I had to remember to manually exit them. Maybe waiting a second for an application to load is annoying, but no more so than an application unnecessarily consuming resources, and I find it preferable to not have to make it quit myself, which would usually take more time than reloading the application (and indeed, it seems to go against Apple's philosophy of "doing things for the user whether they ask to or not").

Alternatively, the method of having a "main" window that remains open when all the document windows have closed works okay, and gives you a clear visual sign that the application is still running.

Still, I agree that menus at the top of the screen is much better for various reasons (the Amiga did one better on menus, in that you could keep the menu open with the right mouse button whilst you could select - or unselect - multiple items with the left button, instead of having to open the menu several times).

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[shotfeel]

Nonetheless, could you live without the scroll-wheel? You must admit that's a worthwhile innovation, and it's astounding that Apple still hasn't appropriated it.

Not at all. One of Apple's primary goals is to sell the easiest-to-use computer in the world. A simple, one-button mouse fits that description. Its ergonomically more sound, and can be used much easier by young kids and anyone with motor control difficulties.

Besides, once you get past 1 button, everyone has their own preference on how many buttions there should be, so IMO it just wouldn't work to sell one kind of >1 button mouse. Then you're getting into the economics of offering more choices at added cost to all customers.

There really is a reason Apple is still bundling one-button mice.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[This is outrageous!]

Fitt's law be damned, in a windowing GUI, a window defines the territory of a program, and that's where everything should fit.

That's exactly what the Mac does, once you understand that part of that window (viz. the menu bar) is conveniently placed at the top of the screen. What they did, you see, is go past your preconception that a "window" has to be connected.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[This is outrageous!]

To many people, the toolbar has become the menubar.. originally the toolbar was a place to put the most common things from the menubar, but now it has become a place to jam everything. The menubar has become almost completely redundant.

On the Mac, orgiastic toolbars were introduced by MSWord 6, which replaced the original (native) MSWord by a bastardized Windows port which was universally hated. All right, to each his own ;-)

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[poot_rootbeer]

Okay, I will grant that there are some good arguments for the Mac-style single-menu interface, but when it comes down to it I PREFER Windows-style menus -- it seems more logical to me.

A truly great GUI would allow users to select their preference from both kinds of behavior.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[kisrael]

Someone mod parent up, it deserves to at least be seen.

The basic point is that people who hide behind usability studies and labwork, and say that "developer common sense" is misguided and unworthy of consideration, often miss the assumptions that their usability labwork has to make... whom are you making it easier for? The n00b, the "regular joe", the poweruser?

Though I think my biggest challegne as a developer is assuming what I'm used to is "best"...on the other hand, working like everything else is a big advantage, even if it can be "proven" that (all other things being equal, and they never are) the non-popular system is somehow "better". It's one (not nec. only) of the reasons QWERTY will be with us for as long as people use anything resembling a keyboard.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[MoneyT]

The application vs it's windows seems more a matter of preference. It always seemed to make sense to me to be able to close all the open windows and start fresh without having to releaunch the app. And of course with programs like iTunes and Mail and such, it allows one to keep programs open without having a window lying about.

I think it's all preference though, probably based on which system you used first.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[Idarubicin]

Even today the interface is still significantly different and better than the alternatives. The concept of only a single window frame with a single menu bar at the top of the screen is easy for new users to grok. The reduction of mouse buttons to one makes such things as "Press the right-click... nono the button on the right... no, don't double click it, only click it once... no, press Control-Z to undo that... no, just stop touching the computer until I can come over, mom" a thing of the past. Who would have thought that a seemingly backwards step as the single mouse button would be such a revolutionary step forward for computing?

In any properly designed application, it should be possible to accomplish all tasks without using the right-click context menus. The left button is all that a beginning user needs. Mention that there is a right mouse button, but that they don't need to use it. Inform them if they do inadvertantly click it, they can press Escape and no harm will be done--this is useful in a number of situations, actually.

The right click is a useful feature for most users--it shouldn't be written off because it might complicate things slightly for neophytes. Actually, there's nothing that prevents you from giving a new PC user a mouse with only one button, if they are likely to have trouble with two.

Mind you, I agree with you about the ease-of-use benefits of a fixed menu bar.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[Anonymous Coward]

> The fact that the Mac's menu bar is placed at the top of the screen makes it a lot easier to point at with the mouse, because you simply cannot move the mouse pointer too far.

Exactly - a lot of wanabee designers don't understand this. They need to look up Fitt's law. Anything placed at the edge has an infinite accuracy for the user (when using a pointing device).

_Michaelangelo_

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[pavon]

Secondly, by getting rid of the right mouse button, Apple introduced things such as "control click.. no, control, not option.. no, not alt.. control.. yeah" You will never convince me that control clicking, or click-and-hold (which doesn't even work outside of the finder) is an adequate replacement for a second mouse button.

Historically this isn't correct, because if you look at the mice (ie Xerox Parc) at the time, the multibutton system was a mess. Mice had three buttons whose use was very arcane. I wish I could remember exactly how it worked, so I could give some examples. I think selecting a peice of text involved clicking the begining of the selection with one button then the end of the selection with another button. It was full of modes, and very prone to error. Apple pioneered the click-drag-release method of selecting, among many other things. In general they simplified all the things that could be done with a three button mouse at the time to be done with a single button mouse. This was indeed a huge improvement and much easier to use. Which is why when Microsoft came along they made the behavior of the first mouse button nearly identical to the Machintosh. Different applications also some additional adhoc behavior to the second mouse button, until settling on context menus, which are really nice. Seeing this, Apple latter added context menus using control-click functionality.

So the problems were not caused by getting rid of the extra buttons, but rather by not adding some latter on when they increased the functionality. In fact the old Mac UI experts that I have heard from (tog, raskin) agree that you could make the mouse better with multiple buttons - if the usage is consistant and simple. Tog has specifically advocated for adding a context menu button to the mouse on the Machintosh. Raskin has given several ideas (aimed more for next generation non-WIMP systems) including seperating the select and move functionality to seperate buttons to avoid some of problems that arise from having the two on a single button. They also love scrollwheels.

Don't forget other UI disasters Apple is responsible for like Home and End keys that never seem to do what you expect.
Apple has always used home and end to go to the begining and end of a document. The only reason it doesn't do what you expect is because you are use to windows. If you had learned mac first you would be complaining that in windows the Home and End keys never did what you expect.

If I'm selecting emails in mail.app, hitting up and down selects the next and previous emails, but hitting home doesn't take me to the top of the email list, it scrolls the currently selected email.

Thats a legitimate problem. They should fix it. But it isn't related to home and end in general, but rather confusion caused by effectivly having two items (the message list and the preview) in focus at the same time.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[Lars T.]

Urrm, yeah, that's why all OSs that need more than one mouse button still require you to use keyboard/mouse-click combinations.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[Lars T.]

One more thing: Most people use Windows apps in Maximized mode. Now the menu is on top of the screen - almost, there is still the window's title bar above.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[Lars T.]

A second to load? You must not use anything remotely complex. And "doing things for the user whether they ask to or not" is definitely Microsofts motto - No, I don't want to fucking select the whole word.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[mdwh2]

A second to load? You must not use anything remotely complex.

You must not use an OS that has any form of disk caching..

Sure, when first loading it may take say about 3 seconds (Word here takes less than 2 seconds, PaintShopPro about 3 seconds, and Borland C++ 5 seconds), but even that time is less than the time it takes me to perform that extra "Quit" operation. And reloading an application straight afterwards when I've closed that last document window takes less than a second.

As for mottos, maybe it's Microsoft's motto as well as Apple's these days.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[debugdave]

Don't forget other UI disasters Apple is responsible for like Home and End keys that never seem to do what you expect.

Press up or down on a single line text box to go to the beginning or end of the text.

Dave

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, the home and end keys don't always work in all programs. some programs don't know what they are. i'm not talking about old programs like macpaint either...

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[Paradise Pete]

I kept feeling that when I'd closed all the application's windows, and it was no longer visible, that the application should have closed. Instead I had to remember to manually exit them.

I agree. In fact, I modded my car so when I put it in park it automatically turns off the engine. Those times when I didn't want that? Well, it only takes a second to start it back up. Then I made it so that when I open the door it automatically boots me out into the street. If I didn't want to get out, well, it's not hard to dust myself off and get back in.

Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Cocoa apps you can usually use Emacs C-a and C-e too. But all the M- bindings are gone because that's how you type special characters.

iPods predicted in 1984?

[ObviousGuy]

I was watching CNN the other day and they were doing a small segment about the Mac anniversary and showed the 1984 commercial. It was the first time I noticed this, but the running girl seems to be wearing an iPod on her hip.

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[mr100percent]

The 1984 adhas been sorta re-released by Apple, with the iPod added in. Looks like a pretty good post-addition, doesn't look very obvious of an edit.

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[ObviousGuy]

Heh. Now if they showed Big Brother heaving a hammer at her first and her ducking out of the way quickly before she shoots back, then it would be perfect!

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[the JoshMeister]

So you can compare, here's a link to the original commercial, which you can see didn't have an iPod in it. ;o)

(As has been mentioned, Apple digitally added the iPod in the 2004 version of the commercial.)

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[Radon Knight]

Does anyone know of a site where you can download the movie and save it to disk? The ad was, I believe, directed by Ridley Scott (of Alien and Blade Runner), so I'd like to keep a copy for myself.

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[byolinux]

Download this...

http://tinyurl.com/3arpf

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[CGP314]

Indeed. Big Brother Jobs corrected a mistake in the origional ad and ammended it to show us his forsight.

--
In London? Need a Physics Tutor?

American Weblog in London

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[allgood2]

You can get the new ad from the Apple site, along with tons of other items. See http://www.apple.com/quicktime/whatson I'm not certain where the ad is exactly locate, but its on the site somewhere.

Otherwise a site that gives you access to some of Apple's more memorable ads is http://www.redlightrunner.com/appleads.html This site has the original 1984 ad, but not the newest version.

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[allgood2]

just found the exact url http://www.apple.com/hardware/ads/1984/

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[Xyde]

From comparing the movies together, it appears they re filmed that whole sequence - they don't look like the same women (one is taller, slightly older)

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[Bertie]

How ironic, considering that Winston Smith's job in 1984 was rewriting old newspaper stories so that they reflected the current state of affairs.

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[mbbac]

The version that has been edited to include an iPod is here.

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[ervinocus]

Well, more than an ironic coincidence it is easy to suppose that it is a volountary citation...

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[unother]

1984:

Apple is at war with IBM. Apple has always been at war with IBM. Microsoft is our ally.

2004:

Apple is at war with Microsoft. Apple has always been at war with Microsoft. IBM is our ally.

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[easter1916]

Why would that make it perfect? Really, I'm missing your point.

Re:iPods predicted in 1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a George Lucas reference. Pay attention please. ;)

Well designed and easy to navigate..

[XaXXon]

When it's not /.'d...

*sigh*

Where do I go to pay for a subscription? (rhetorical)

Re:MS co-founder?

[Richard M. Nixon]

Well, the site is /.'d, but is he talking about Bill Gates?

I can get to it, it took a little bit to load but I got it now. At least the article that talks about the game.

The game they are talking about is Donkey.
(Somehow I doubt that's related to Donkey Kong.)

It says the authors were Bill Gates and Neil Konzen, it was written in BASIC, poorly animated, and called Donkey because at certain points in the game a "donkey" appeared in the middle of the road and you would then have to quickly hit the space bar, or the game would end. (I'm guessing the space bar was for stopping?)

That article also mentions that MSDOS was a clone of an earlier version of CP/M.

Re:... and its Slashdotted already

[Anonymous Coward]

the power of python!

Re:Cheapest Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

go to lowendmac.com and look into getting a blue and white G3. it can be upgraded if you like, but it it'll run OSX and Darwin...

Re:MS co-founder?

[javiercero]

LOL! Nice try at Troll dom. Actually it was Allen who wrote most of the code, and it was not DOS but BASIC. One is an operating system, the other one is a language. Actually Bill Gates did not graduate from Hardvar, and it got there due to family conections not sheer brilliantness (scion). Oh, and he claims he dropped out, officially he got in trouble with the administration because the machine him and Allen used to develope the basic code, a PDP, did not belong to them.. but rather the school. They actually moved the computer that was not their property to their dorm room, they used university property to develop a commercial language. Actually BASIC was not even their own invention, so they basically made a port of the language.

DOS was not an MS product, they bought the code from a Seattle based company. As far as I know MS were in the compiler business before 1981, and I doubt Gates wrote a single line of DOS code, he definitively was not in any shape way or form the main architect/coder of DOS. And if you even had any remote idea about what you are saying, you'd know that the DOS that gates and CO. bought was a quick and dirty copy of CP/M-86.

Gates may be a good marketer and commercial thug, he is by no means a decent coder. And BTW next time try harder, pulling a never existing article from Byte out of your arse is just too boring.

I'll play devil's advocate

[Torgo's Pizza]

Okay I'll bite. Was Donkey.bas the greatest thing in the world? Heck no. But it isn't as bad as this article makes it out to be. Donkey was never meant to be a true game. It was friggin' demo. I remember running and thinking, okay that's nice. What else is there?

There was plenty. The PC when it was first introduced ran all the Infocom games at the time. It ran Wizardry and all the Epyx games. Sure it wasn't as homey as the Apple II my friend had, but all the business were buying it.

I'm opening myself up for -1 Trolls and Overrated, but the PC wasn't *that* bad. It's easy to take a swipe at Gates for something thrown together at the last minute. It's not like he was making Choplifter or anything. In the end, the PC's open architecture that led it to be the computer platform of choice. The C64, Amiga, Atari ST were all great gaming platforms but just couldn't keep up with the ever upgrading of the PC. The roots of today's Half-Life 2, Doom 3's and Counter-Strikes all have roots with that first PC so long ago.

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[javiercero]

Actually the PC was not "open" at all, IBM was not too happy when the clones started appearing.

It was copied, that is for sure, but it was far from "open." A plagiarized design doesn't make it "open" in the same fashion that a blown up safe lock box is also an "open" box.

And most of the games you mention have more in common with the machines you dissed than the actual original PC. I.e. most of the Doom engine was actually developed in NextStep, a lot of the 3DS software that game designers adopted in the 90s come from an Atari ST design program, most of the multi channel audio we know assume as standard was inspired by the Amiga (.mod's were the .mp3's of the 80s! :)), and on and on.... the PC ended up becoming more like the mac, the amiga, and the ST, not the other way around... to the point where current PCs have far more in common with those platforms in "spirit" than the original PC.

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

It was copied, that is for sure, but it was far from "open." A plagiarized design doesn't make it "open" in the same fashion that a blown up safe lock box is also an "open" box.


Um...no, it wasn't plagerized. The people who made the first clone were locked in a room and didn't come out until they finished their clone. All they did was pass the output of their design to people outside of the room who would either say whether the outout of the clone chip was the same as the IBM chip.

IBM did themselves in by assuming that no one could make a duplicate of their design. Based on this assumption, they didn't bother to copyright/prevent people from making the motherboard EXACTLY like they did.

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the quote "Needless to say, we were not very impressed with it. From the perspective of the Macintosh that we were already in the midst of bringing to life, it seemed like ancient history the day it came out."

Ironic that that machine immediately made the Mac ancient history...

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[Trurl's Machine]

In the end, the PC's open architecture that led it to be the computer platform of choice. The C64, Amiga, Atari ST were all great gaming platforms but just couldn't keep up with the ever upgrading of the PC.

How would you explain the success of the consoles, then? They are usually as closed as can be; the upgradability potential of a Sony Playstation nowhere matches the potential of said Amiga. Commodore and Atari failed because of their incredibly foolish marketing, but not because "open" is better than "closed" in gaming industry. On the contrary, open architecture is interesting for an engineer or at least a hardware geek, who simply likes to tweak his system - but for a gamer it's just a pain in the ass (the drivers! the compatibility issues! the crashes! the horror! the horror!). For a gamer the best solution is: buy a relatively cheap console this year... and just throw it away (or hand it down to a younger cousin) two years later, replacing it wit the newer model. And don't waste your mind on any technical issue ("how the heck should I know what version firmware is it?"), just keep on fraggin'.

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[kinnell]

In the end, the PC's open architecture that led it to be the computer platform of choice

I think you'll find that it was IBM's name that made it the platform of choice - IBM had a reputation for business computing, therefore the IBM PC was a serious computer. It took a long time for the PC architecture to become open, and this happened long after the PC was the platform of choice.

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[kfg]

The computer was open architecture. A collection of parts, with the capability of freely swapping those parts out for others from any vendor. Those parts themselves, such as the Intel chips, were freely available on the open market. Making an IMB PC clone is no more "plagerizing" than making a car would be.

The BIOS was propriatary and it was the clean room reverse engineering of such that allowed the true clone.

KFG

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, in many ways the PC was open. The schematics were listed in an appendix to the manuals, it used over-the-counter hardware parts, and the operating system and main system software was made by a third party, who had rights to resell it (well, they sold it in a slightly different form). The only part which was closed was the BIOS, which was clean-room reverse engineered.

By contrast, you couldn't make a Mac clone: the system software was closely guarded by Apple. Cloning MacOS is a much harder task than cloning a simple BIOS. The Amiga was worse: you'd not only need to clone the OS, but the custom chips, too, because Commodore certainly wasn't going to sell them to clone manufacturers. Maybe you could have cloned the ST (I think part of the system software, GEM-DOS, came from DRI and I don't think there was anything spectacular about the hardware). Nonetheless, in this sense (the business aspect of the computer) PC's of today have very little in common with Macs and Amigas.

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[dpbsmith]

Agreed. I've always been puzzled by the mutation of the IBM PC in PC folklore from "open-as-in-expandable" to "open-as-in-free." The IBM BIOS was always protected by copyright. EARLY articles about the IBM PC make it clear that "open" referred only to the ability to add interface cards. A lot of early personal computers were "open" in that sense. Indeed, the earliest personal computers were selling dreams in the sense that they didn't have much hardware or software and the purchaser was buying a belief that third-party hardware and software would materialize in the future.

IBM did not intend for there to be a clone market. Notice how they changed the bus structure every time their competitors got good at reverse-engineering the PC bus? First, the PC bus, then the AT bus, and then the patented-to-the-hilt Micro Channel.

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[bokmann]

I was 16 and working as a stock boy at a computer store hen the first IBM PC clones came out. People would look at them as if they were looking at a piece of alien technology.

The hardware for the IBM PC was amazingly open, because IBM wanted other companies to make components to fit in the expansion slots. IBM has copyrighted their BIOS, thinking that made the design reliant enough on them. Even if a company copied the hardware, they would have to license the bios.

Then came a 'clean room' implementation. A group of engineers that had never seen the bios code looked at the API, and made their own implementation.

Te problem with the original clones was they did not include a copy of basic in ROM, like the original PC... This meant that many programs would not run. You could actually buy Basic as a program you could load, but that used up 16k of RAM... a lot when the computer might have had 64k. (IIRC, that was Microsoft Basic.)

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

How can parent be modded "+1 Interesting"?! The PC came out in 1981, the Mac in 1984. The post isn't interesting, it's an idiotic and misinformed troll!!!

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[poot_rootbeer]

I agree with parent.

When my Dad brought home an XT, my 7-year-old self LOVED to play Donkey. The 16-color textmode graphics may not have been as pretty as what other 8-bit compters of the time were cranking out, but the game was SIMPLE and FUN.

Remember, the IBM PC belonged to a legacy of BUSINESS computers. It was optimized for working on spreadsheets and driving line printers, not games and entertainment. That came later.

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[kisrael]

Being able to program something (graphical no less) in a built-in BASIC is an openess that almost all of today's computers lack...

The thing about PCs was that the sound and graphics were always an add-on, most other computers had a higher (but less upgradeable) A/V capability out of the box. They were more like gaming consoles in that regard.

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[Lars T.]

No, the first people to build a PC clone copied the primitive hardware and put a copied ROM in it. Ohh, the golden days of 9x% IBM compatible computers

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing in common except that now all of the system chips (in a PC) are custom and almost nothing is an "off the shelf" commodity items? Trust me, ATI is not going to give you schematics for the inner workings of a Radeon GPU any more than Intel is going to give you schematics for the inner workings of an 865 system chipset.

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

The only part which was closed was the BIOS, which was clean-room reverse engineered.

Yes and no. Compaq and others did clean-room reverse engineer the BIOS but it wasn't closed by any means; I remember IBM service manuals from my mid-80's ComputerLand service days with BIOS assembler code listings....

Re:I'll play devil's advocate

[zonker]

yes, but did you play GORILLA.BAS a few years later? i loved that game and my cousin and i made several different varients of it. it was my first intro into programming.

let the games begin

[humankind]

It's really interesting to watch the Mac viral marketers come out of the woodwork for stories like this.

Re:Cheapest Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Froogle says that there are beige G3s going for a bit more than $200, but they don't 'officially' support OS X, becuase they don't have USB. I'm 95% sure that it would work though, especially if you were willing to settle with 10.1 or 10.2, as opposed to to 10.3. The cheapest machine that is offically supported would probably be an old iMac going for about $300. The original bondi blue one probably has some collectors value, especially if you can get your hands on a Rev. A.

Oh, that's why it's so slow....

[vought]

I started surfing folklore.org earlier this evening and I was nearly finished reading everything when...

Slashdot hit.

I had an idea, so checked here withi 20 minutes, and sure enough, it was the banner story. Shit. I was almost done reading the whole story of Macintosh as interpreted by Andy H.

Re:Oh, that's why it's so slow....

[kisrael]

It seems like it still hasn't recovered, as of noon Eastern on Tuesday.

Not a ringing endorsement for its Python backend.

For that matter, any site dedicated to a computer that has a history of advocacy war better put its house in order, server-wise, because even if the server has nothing to do with the computer system in question, it invites ridicule...

Offtopic: python

[Negative Response]

that the python code running the

Site is terribly slow, it is running python all right.

Mirror?

[bluewee]

Anyone got a mirror?

Nostalgic

[CHaN_316]

Just looked at that site, and saw the 1998 iMac. I shuddered when I saw those awful hockey puck mice that Apple chose to include with iMacs. Worst episode ever....

At my university, they replaced them pretty quick with *REAL* mice. (Yes, I risk of sounding like a troll... but you know what I mean if you've ever used one of those mice)

But the Macintosh Classic brought back some fond memories of elementary school. I remember sitting in computer class, and the teacher would say, now double click on clarisworks, and then she'd lecture for about 5 minutes then let us use the program.... because clarisworks took that long to load.

Re:Nostalgic

[unother]

At the risk of sounding like a troll myself, I wish to publish a quick defence of the "hockey-puck" mouse.

The problem was ergonomics, and the manner in which most people hold mice, which is not ergonomically sound. The mouse is supposed to be held lightly, not tightly, the thumb on the left and third finger on the right (if right-handed), with the first two fingers resting atop it. When held this way, it works fine. You also find yourself much less at risk of getting "mouse-strain".

Unfortunately, many people hold a mouse in a sort of "death-grip". The end result are those monstrosities that Microsoft comes out with (I like to call them WarMice) which are only comfortable when held in said manner! I believe Apple was trying to gently "re-train" people to hold the mouse in an ergonomically correct fashion. Unfortunately, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks."

As a point of demonstration, I've never had a problem with those mice--but that's if, and only if, they are held in the manner I just illustrated. Try the "death-grip" approach and, well, you'll find yourself frustrated. [N.B.: Apple included "dimples" on the sides of the mouse as tactile feedback for this, as well.]

Re:Nostalgic

[Rxke]

Some people are strange, i must be one of them, because i still use that puck. Wouldn't change it for another one, too. Only thing that lacks is a scrollwheel, but i mostly use keyboard shortcuts extensively, so i don't miss that option too much.

'Normal' mice feel 'too big' for me, lately, esp. that horrible first optical Mac mouse...

Re:Nostalgic

[gryphokk]

The problem for me was not one of grip -- it was one of feedback. You note that:

[N.B.: Apple included "dimples" on the sides of the mouse as tactile feedback for this, as well.]


I guess I never found those dimples. But the mouse didn't stay oriented to one direction. So I think I'm pushing the mouse up, and my pointer goes zooming off to the left. I always had to look away from the screen, locate the mouse cord, and re-orient it to forward. I still hate those things, though I know great users who still won't use anything else.

Wacom for me, brother. Use the pen in photoshop, the wireless mouse on everything else, and just keep the tablet glued to the desktop.

Re:Nostalgic

[ncc74656]

Some people are strange, i must be one of them, because i still use that puck. Wouldn't change it for another one, too. Only thing that lacks is a scrollwheel...

...and a second button.

(I use a Microsoft optical mouse with my beige G3. It's shared with two other machines through a KVM switch and a PS/2-to-USB adapter. PS/2-to-ADB would've been nicer, but it would've been much more expensive.)

Inside the Apple Studio with... Andy Hertzfeld

[Anonymous Coward]

An interview with Andy Hertzfeld

For those interested in Apple history...

[the JoshMeister]

Here are several other great Apple history resources.

Sites:

• www.apple-history.com is one of the best Internet sources, with information on every computer Apple ever produced
• apple.computerhistory.org has year-by-year info on Apple with some cool, hard-to-find pictures

Books:

• The Second Coming of Steve Jobs by Alan Deutschman
• Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company by Owen W. Linzmayer
• Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything by Steven Levy

Other:

• Pirates of Silicon Valley is a largely inaccurate but quite enjoyable movie about Apple's beginnings =)

Re:For those interested in Apple history...

[bhtooefr]

Apple2History.org is also VERY good, especially if Apple I/II-era history is your thing. VERY light Mac coverage, but it was written towards the Apple II, not the Mac.

It still is in Australia...

[netsrek]

It's the name of the Apple higher ed magazine here in Australia.

Liked DONKEY.BAS?

[Dahan]

If you liked DONKEY.BAS, try the all new Donkey .NET!

Re:Liked DONKEY.BAS?

[Riktov]

From the page: Structured Exception Handling. This new object-oriented construct in Visual Basic .NET enables a highly robust way to handle run-time errors in your code.

Hey, I don't want to catch() anything this Donkey throw()s!

Re:Liked DONKEY.BAS?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the IBM PCDOS 1.10 version - anyone have the original MSDOS 1.0 version with Gates' name in the code?

Re:Liked DONKEY.BAS?

[cancerward]

It's strange, PC-DOS 1.10 can be found in many places, but PC-DOS 1.00 is nowhere to be found! (You mean PC-DOS 1.00 from 1981, because there was no MS-DOS until 1982.)

PC-DOS 1.00 Filelist and screenshot; the wrs0286 abandonware site has a PC-DOS 1.00 zip file but it's actually version 3.30.

Re:Liked DONKEY.BAS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Version 1.00 is practically exactly the same, the apple people must have had some prerelease DOS. There's no author names given. diff gives:

$ diff DO.BAS donkey_bas.txt
2c2
< 950 REM Version 1.00 (C)Copyright IBM Corp 1981
---
> 950 REM Version 1.10 (C)Copyright IBM Corp 1981, 1982
13c13
< 1060 LOCATE 13,9,0:PRINT CHR$(179)+" Version 1.00 "+CHR$(179)
---
> 1060 LOCATE 13,9,0:PRINT CHR$(179)+" Version 1.10 "+CHR$(179)
15c15
< 1080 COLOR 15,0:LOCATE 17,7,0:PRINT "(C) Copyright IBM Corp 1981"
---
> 1080 COLOR 15,0:LOCATE 17,4,0:PRINT "(C) Copyright IBM Corp 1981, 1982"

Re:Cheapest Mac

[boaworm]

I'm looking to get the cheapest Mac that runs Darwin.

There is a difference between the cheapest Mac that runs OS X, and that runs Darwin. Darwin (the core) will run on a lot older hardware than OS X itself. For instance, you can run Darwin on the PowerMac 8NNN series, but dont try to take a retail OS X and install.

Have a lookt at Low End Mac and Accelerate your Mac. Perhaps they can give you some kind of hint. Now finally, i'd just like to point out that if you indeed want to run OS X, keep in mind that the "minimum requirements", like 128MB ram, is NOT sufficient imho. My G5 even choked on 512MB :)

Re:MS co-founder?

[Quirk]

Not to forget gorilla.bas another super game. BASIC was authored in 1963 by mathematicians John George Kemeny and Tom Kurtzas out of Dartmouth College.

Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm boggled about how a comment about Apple's design and history can be off-topic in a story about Apple's design and history.

Re:Amazing

[ncc74656]

I'm boggled about how a comment about Apple's design and history can be off-topic in a story about Apple's design and history.

You're new here, aren't you?

Close but no cigar for you!

[rufusdufus]

BASIC was written by Bill Gates, not Paul Allen. Microsoft was founded in 1975 and release its first product, BASIC in 1976.

The original author of Q[uick and dirty]DOS was Tim Patterson who much later went to work for Microsoft in the compiler group. Bill gates did not work on the code.

Re:Close but no cigar for you!

[andyr]

Bill Gates wrote a BASIC interpreter (for the Altair ??)

Cheap shots aside, (Sir) Bill by all accounts did an excellent job of sqeezing it into a very small space.

Credit where it is due.

Cheers, Andy!

I guess the real question here is...

[cscx]

Does it work with Mono?

Speaking of Apple History...

[MochaMan]

They are responsible for what I am sure must have been the longest line-up in history!

Re:Speaking of Apple History...

[chrispy666]

Yeah, I was there !! and I wish I hadn't waited from 08:00 til 14:43 for it !

the store looks nice, but really not as stunning inside as it is from the outside. The week-end after, one could enter the shop without even queuing at all. talk about useless hype...

Re:Speaking of Apple History...

[Artifex]

Yeah, I was there !! and I wish I hadn't waited from 08:00 til 14:43 for it !

the store looks nice, but really not as stunning inside as it is from the outside. The week-end after, one could enter the shop without even queuing at all. talk about useless hype...

That line looked insane! I've participated in holiday parades that were shorter than that. What made you think that going there that day would be so much cooler than a week later? Were they offering free stuff, or discounts?

Must not have been useless hype, if it drew all of you in.. :)

Re:Speaking of Apple History...

[Jon Abbott]

I was born and raised in Orlando, FL, home of many theme parks... I have to say that the line shown in that video rivals all lines I've ever stood in at theme parks (yes, even including "King Kong" when the ride first came out at Universal Studios)!

Re:Speaking of Apple History...

[chrispy666]

Yeah, well, I had a sunday to kill... and it was my first experience in an Apple store... they were giving away t-shirts, but only had about 2000 of them... and i was like number 2400 so out of luck :/

I didn't really go because of the hype... but when u wait from 8 to 10 am then you think "geez, if I leave the queue now, I would have waited for nothing" so that made me stay in the long queue that was going down to almost Tokyo station. Hopefully the Tully's coffee shops were on the way...

However I DID enjoy the foot bath when I finally got home that day !

Re:Speaking of Apple History...

[fshalor]

This line is one of the most awesome things I've seen in a while... It makes me feel pride in typing this reply on an iBook whilest listening to an iPod...

I second Jon.. the line far exceded those of Kennedy Space Center + Universal Stuios, etc.

Sometimes it is hard to imageing the crazyness of the human race; this reminded me a bit of what real people will do.

Then again, it was a sunday.

Uh, check the history books

[Brataccas]

I'm soooooo tired of people claiming Gates (or MS for that matter) created BASIC. The language and compiler were invented in Dartmouth while nine-year old Bill Gates was hundreds of miles away in his nice cushy private school in WA. Hell, even the original C reference pre-dates the formation of MS.

As was mentioned by another poster, MS is a marketing marvel, but this myth about it's founders being technnical geniuses has just got to go. It scares the kids...

Very early MS history.

[rs79]

Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote a ROM BASIC they sold to Altair/MITS, an S-100 CP/M computer with real neat switches and lights. Ironically it was written on a PDP-11 running what would ultimatly become SCO UNIX. The Altair was a neat machine, but no it didn't run Linux and no you wouldn't like to see a Beowolf cluster of them.

Microsft DOS came from Seattle Computer Products QDOS; MS licensed QDOS-86, told IBM they had an exclusive (a lie) and the rest was history.

QDOS was a bad clone of CP/M, which was written by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, which was sold to Novell which was sold to Caldera, now SCO. Gary originally worked at Shugart and, lucky devil that he was, ended up with a very expensive 8" floppy drive. He decided to write a disk loader for it, hence "Disk Operating System" or "DOS". The rest of us loaded software from casette tapes using the BIOS; disk drives were very evry expensive.

Back in the day, Digital Reaserch sold Operating Systems and Microsoft sold languages. When DR decided to sell a langauge around '83 the rumor was MS retaliated by selling an OS. The motivation may be a myth, but it was a popular one back then.

Gates pubilshed some undocumented Z-80 instructions in, I think, Dr. Dobbs. It was the last usefull thing he ever did.

Re:Yeah, it holds up so well under load

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't anybody code in C any more?

Oh, for fuck's sake. Yes, people code in C, when they're writing applications. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a web interface written in C? There are some C-based CGIs out there, but very few in widespread use. That's because they take longer to develop, each fresh C-built interface introduces potential new vulnerabilities, etc. It's easier and less time consuming to rely on someone else's C coding (the interpreter for a scripting language) than to write the C yourself.

Web development, for whatever PHB reason, is supposed to be "fast." When writing a content management system for the web, especially if you need to interface with an SQL backend, C is not the fast track to completion. The C code may execute faster, but alas, on the web no one cares. PHP, Perl, and even Python will get your development done long before writing it in C, and without nearly as many potential vulnerabilities. If you can write good PHP/Perl/Python code, the only time you worry about security is when the interpreter is found to be vulnerable, and then it's only a few minutes to upgrade.

To put it bluntly: it's far easier to write shitty C code than it is to write shitty PHP/Perl/Python code, where "shitty" includes potentially crippling vulnerabilities. When it comes to web development, you leave the low-level malloc()s and memcpy()s up to the interpreter developers, and you put your own man-hours into higher-level scripting.

Mac information

[aarku]

http://everymac.com/ has some good Macintosh information, specs, and history.

Re:MS co-founder?

[G-funk]

Actually gates did write some parts of the early parts of dos, namely the FAT filesystem.

Eazel

[Anonymous Coward]

Strangely, Eazel's webpage now displays jibberish...

Not so strange; the company--it was a company intending to build a commercial environment from GNOME, not a "GNOME UI polishing group"--tanked.

Re:Eazel

[Jon Abbott]

Even if they did tank, I still find it strange that their website displays jibberish... If they were holding on to the domain, they could have at least directed folks to GNOME.org, or made a huge error 404 page as their homepage.

Re:Bicycle - no surprise

[JumperCable]

Then, one guy had this idea to measure how efficient a human being is on a bicycle. It was awesome, he was drastically more efficient, able to go further and without burning as many calories. It knocked the bird out of first place.

No surprise they were enamored by the efficiency of a bicycle. After pounding on my old Apple II/e's keyboard through grade school & high school almost anything was bound to be more efficient. Those were keys of lead. Even an old-fashioned manual typewriter was easier on my hands. It definitly kept the phrase "pounding the keyboard" going strong. At least it turned me into a really good typist.

Although I have to admit I was so fascinated by the thing at the time I really didn't mind. Graphical interface? Mouse? *Phhft* who needs 'em.

SCO ownes all

[houghi]

Microsft DOS came from Seattle Computer Products QDOS; MS licensed QDOS-86, told IBM they had an exclusive (a lie) and the rest was history.

QDOS was a bad clone of CP/M, which was written by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, which was sold to Novell which was sold to Caldera, now SCO.

If MS-DOS is from QDOS, there will be some code in QDOS. QDOS is from CP/M so there must be some code from that in it as well. So some of the code was owned by SCO. Wich means that SCO ownes the code to all off MS codes.

The real problem is not if SCO ownes MS codes. The problem is who /. readers are going to cheer for when SCO is suing M$ over the code.

Re:SCO ownes all

[Queuetue]

The problem is who /. readers are going to cheer for when SCO is suing M$ over the code.

I think I would find myself rooting for the lawyers.

Re:SCO ownes all

[CTachyon]

If MS-DOS is from QDOS, there will be some code in QDOS. QDOS is from CP/M so there must be some code from that in it as well. So some of the code was owned by SCO. Wich means that SCO ownes the code to all off MS codes.

Actually, QDOS just copied the "look and feel" of CP/M, not the code. That's like saying that Microsoft copied actual Apple code (Steve: "Oh, here Bill, go right ahead!") in making Windows, or that various X Window Managers copied actual Microsoft code (Bill: "Hey, this Linux thing is so spiffy, I'll just let you guys borrow my code. Here, I'll even make a tarball for you.").

Re:SCO ownes all

[tbone1]

I think I would find myself rooting for the lawyers.

Seek help.

Now.

Re:SCO ownes all

[Queuetue]

Well, I didn't say I'd be proud of it, but .. who else would you root for? At least the lawyers would be stealing from them both.

Re:Bicycle - no surprise

[bhtooefr]

I cheated - I actually had an AppleMouse // (except all I had was the mouse, the manual, and a mousepaint disk - no controller card for me!) In fact, the mouse itself was the Apple MO100 (AFAIK), same as the one used on the pre-ADB Macs. About three apps worked with that mouse (I had the hardest time getting Publish It to even go into the config panel - damn broken //c keyboard).

The //c I used was great, except for the fact that the whole computer once got rained on big time. It was dried out, but the keyboard was damaged, so many keys stuck, and several keys would repeat MUCH too quickly. To see the effect, dunk an old Giga Pet in water for a while, and after it's dried out, try to use it. Similar keyswitches (but the Apple had plastic keys with something to give them some click), same water susceptibility.

So What Ever Happened To Burrell Smith?

[Schwarzchild]

Anybody have any idea what happened to this wizard of the Macintosh?

Re:So What Ever Happened To Burrell Smith?

[Gogo Dodo]

I rummaged around Google and found that Burrell Smith left Apple and formed Radius. Checking the Internet Wayback Machine, Radius sold the monitors tech to miro displays and renamed itself to Digital Origin. Digital Origin merged with Media 100. However, Burrell Smith seems to have disappeared.

I'd be curious on where everybody in these stories currently are. Well, we know what Steve Jobs is up to.

Site software

[jez9999]

"As a plus, Hertzfeld notes in the faq that the python code running the well-designed and easy to navigate site will be made public in the near future."

Great. Maybe Slashdot could consider using it...

Damn, there's Dick Nixon checkin in from his grave

[Anonymous Coward]

Why assume the moniker of a dead tricky dick? surely you could have done better.

It was supposed to be a cow

[Anonymous Coward]

Neil Konzen drew the donkey and it was supposed to be a "cow".

Taken from Gates (Stephen Manes & Paul Andrews, Simon & Schuster, ISBN-0-671-88074-8)

Re:Cheapest Mac

[selderrr]

Now finally, i'd just like to point out that if you indeed want to run OS X, keep in mind that the "minimum requirements", like 128MB ram, is NOT sufficient imho. My G5 even choked on 512MB :)

I disagree. I run Jaguar on an old Bondi-blue G3 imac at 233Mhz with 96MB Ram !

And it runs just fine. There's only a limitation in startup time (don't power it of : sleep it if you need to. Boot time is around 10 minutes) , most of the iApps (which are to big to fit on the 2GB harddisk anyway) and MS Office (to big also, but easily replaced by textEdit or shareware alternatives).

I run my mySQL/PHP/apache test setup on it, my iCal, and my accounting. Perfect.

Apple History

[tonywestonuk]

1984 - Apple is Dying

1988 - Apple is Dying

1992 - Apple is Dying

1996 - Apple is Dying

2000 - Apple is Dying

2004 - Err, Ipod might save 'em

Hat switches on mice?

[0x0d0a]

Nonetheless, could you live without the scroll-wheel? You must admit that's a worthwhile innovation, and it's astounding that Apple still hasn't appropriated it.

I'm peeved that nobody has produced a mouse/trackball with a hat switch. Who wants a scroll wheel when you can have a hat switch? This is even more true now that hacks like horizontal scroll wheels are coming out.

Sorry, I have always considered this a confusing, bad design.

Second that. It makes perfect sense to someone who has been using a Mac for a while, but for newbies (I remember trying to get some people familiar with the Mac), the "programs running with no windows open" concept just doesn't mesh. It was a sexier and more usable version of Switcher, but friendly it was not.

On the *other* hand, I loathe and despise MDI, so I'm not exactly certain that old-style PC programs had it right...

Re:Hat switches on mice?

[macwhiz]

I'm peeved that nobody has produced a mouse/trackball with a hat switch.

Somebody has made a mouse with a switch like you desire. IBM makes a mouse with a ScrollPoint on top. You can scroll vertically or horizontally. You can also click with it, although that does require some practice, patience, and coordination.

Apple let their UI experts go?

[0x0d0a]

For whatever reason, Apple apparently did away with most of the Human Interface Guidelines somewhere between Mac OS 8 and Mac OS X. As a result, things are now much more complicated than they need to be. So, if there is a problem with something in Mac OS 9/Mac OS X, blame Apple... not the Human Interface Guidelines they should have been following.

I agree. I cannot figure out what motivated it. Changes could have easily been made without throwing the whole thing out.

Anyone know what happened politically at Apple that resulted in such a change in UI design (from design-for-ultra-usability to design-for-eye-candy)?

Re:Apple let their UI experts go?

[MoneyT]

Anyone know what happened politically at Apple that resulted in such a change in UI design (from design-for-ultra-usability to design-for-eye-candy)?


A need to sell. Apple had been promising OS X for many many years (not always in that name) and had failed to deliver. There were lots of high expectations, and when writing a new OS like this, it's obvious your first version released is not going to be up to par. As such, they needed something pretty. Something that looked astheticaly pleaseing to offset the lack of comfort from a sub-par version. And so they generated OS X without a lot of the HIG and a lot of flare. And it worked. You'll notice that the flare has over the past revisions been toned down, and the usability has come back. In all, it was a trade off untill they could get some really well optimized code.

Still flawed

[0x0d0a]

Except for the fact that this collides with the standard key bindings used to go forward and back in web browsers.

Actually, I don't have a huge problem with Home/End working one way or the other. (Where Mac style is Home/End == begin/end of document, and Windows style is Home/End == begin/end of line, and Ctrl-Home/End == begin/end of document. I *do* have problems shifting back and forth, however, which I find extremely disruptive.

I tend to feel that the Mac chose a better system. The closest keys to Home and End are Page Up and Page Down, which move the viewable area of the document. As a matter of fact, in my emacs/xemacs setup, I have Home and End bound like the Mac, and Insert and Delete set up to scroll the *window* (rather than the cursor) up and down, a la lynx or links.

Re:Cheapest Mac

[sandbagger]

Hi:

I was running 10.3 on a 300 mHz blue and white and the speed bump over 10.2 for finder operations was a nice surprize. Now that I've got a 900 mHz upgrade in the box, it's even nicer.

Sure it's not the fastest thing on the block, but there's a lot of life in those old blue and whites.

Re:Cheapest Mac

[dcw3]

Same as the other respondant above, though mine isn't as "low-end" as his. My iMac DV (400MHz G3 w/192M RAM) runs OS X just fine, along with Safari (works great on my cable modem), Office X and folding@home, all full time. I think I've needed to reboot it maybe twice in the last year. I'm just now thinking about upgrading, but just because I can, not because I have to.

well-designed website?!?

[Bob-o-Matic!]

"As a plus, Hertzfeld notes in the faq that the python code running the well-designed and easy to navigate site will be made public in the near future."

I don't know about well-designed and easy to navigate, this page is taking forever to render for me!

Another Advantage to the Global Menu

[TimTheFoolMan]

In addition to helping with the plethora of menus you've described, the Macintosh-style menu has a major advantage over the current Windows-style taskbar: Infinite height. More specifically, you cannot "miss" the menus by going to high.

In contrast, you have to hit the correct horizontal range, but also the correct vertical range, both for Windowed menus, and for taskbar buttons. If you move a long-term Mac user to Windows, they will constantly battle with this, as they're accustomed to just mousing up to the top of the screen, clicking, and then just scanning back and forth to find the right menu.

In Windows, this just is dramatically more challenging, so most users never develop that habit.

Tim

Re:Another Advantage to the Global Menu

[Trejkaz]

Actually Windows taskbar buttons can't be missed by going too low, so that part is at least not quite so bad.

Re:Another Advantage to the Global Menu

[TimTheFoolMan]

On this machine, running Win2K, I can miss the buttons by going too low. There is at least 2-3 pixels of space below each button.

I noticed this the first time I used Win95, and it's bugged me ever since.

Tim

P.S. It's even more annoying when you're using a trackpoint device.

Re:Another Advantage to the Global Menu

[Trejkaz]

Ah, right. Apparently that's been fixed since 2001 then.

Donkey.NET -- Monkey.MONO

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it work with Mono?

Yes - It's called Monkey.NET.

Haiku...

[criordan]

Bicycle rider More efficient than eagles Get out of his way

Donkey wasn't supposed to be PLAYED

[brocktune]

Article is /.'ed, so I assume the game is Donkey. It was merely a technology and programming demo, it was obviously not intended to be played as a game. It was the first non-trivial program I ever saw - IIRC, a couple thousand lines of interpreted BASIC. I learned how to write simple graphics programs by studying the source. (320x200, 4 color CGA left a lot to the imagination)

Almost everyone my age learned to code the Apple II, but I had the original 8088 PC and had to make do with what I had. Took me all summer of cutting grass to save $300 to buy that friggin' CGA card.

mod parent up, please.

[Artifex]

That's an excellent explanation. I'd suspected it had a lot to do with having to move around a lot to keep from getting injured or slowing the horse down, but as you might have surmised, I haven't ever ridden a horse myself. Even if I had, your explanation was worth reading :)

Re:mod parent up, please.

[kfg]

And before I was researching bicycle dynamics (didn't really learn much about bicycles, but I learned a lot about data acquisition since I had to scratch build all my testing gear) I was a kid in Vermont shoveling shit in exchange for riding time.

Another reason the bicycle ended the reign of the horse. And all that shit happens because an idle horse burns fuel and requires maintainence, a lot of it.

Bicycles don't run up $3000 dollar vet bills and then die anyway either.

KFG

farkdotcom

[X_Bones]

I remember playing this game when I was about 7, on my grandma's brand-new 286. I thought the object of the game was to hit the donkeys...

Moore's Law and the Mac

[This is outrageous!]

Serendipity... Just yesterday I came across folklore.org via John Gruber by way of Rainer Brockerhoff who added this observation of Chris Hanson: in 20 years, from the Macintosh 128 to the dual G5, the specs increased thus:

CPU frequency: 512-fold
RAM: 4096-fold
Removable storage: 1792-fold
VRAM: 3066-fold
Network speed: 4551-fold
Mouse buttons: 1-fold
Price: 1.015-fold

i.e., they kept the price point.

As it happens, while advising a friend on how much memory to buy in 2004, I had just looked at how Apple's nominal RAM stacks up against Moore's Law. Pretty much confirmed, if you ask me:

1976: $ 666, 8 kB ( Apple I)
1980: $1200, 32 kB (Apple II+)
1984: $2500, 128 kB (Macintosh)
1987: $2000, 512 kB (Macintosh 512k)
1990: $1500, 2 MB (Macintosh Classic)
1993: $1440, 8 MB (Macintosh Quadra)
1998: $1300, 32 MB (iMac G3)
2001: $1500, 128 MB (iBook G3)
2004: ?

Re:Moore's Law and the Mac

[ChibiLZ]

The price went UP??? Macs are ridiculous. For each iteration of my computers, they usually get CHEAPER...

Re:Moore's Law and the Mac

[Jonas the Bold]

The prices went up by 1.015. That definately doesn't beat inflation, so they have gotten cheaper.

This data isn't all positive

[0x0d0a]

Steve Jobs is one of the best things to happen to the Mac from a marketing standpoint. He's also made a lot of frusterating technical decisions. This article from the same site describes how Jobs comes down heavily on the side of having Macs be closed systems, essentially simple information appliances that users should never touch or open up. He's not into clones, expandability, modifications, or any of that.

And he's the CEO of Apple now, and sure enough, we get lots of all-in-one models.

Slow like Python

[amightywind]

As a plus, Hertzfeld notes in the faq that the python code running the well-designed and easy to navigate site will be made public in the near future

What a great site. An important historical record. Perhaps the Python would explain why the site is so slow. Python is a scourge.

Re:Slow like Python

[1019]

And now (as of 1604EST on Jan 27,03) it seems to be down admist a sea of 500 Internal Server Errors.

Oops?

User testing

[tgibbs]

The difference is that Apple actually tested out their user-interface features on users, rather relying up some designer's theoretical notions. This led to crucial insights like, "it's much faster to access a menu bar that's always at the top of the screen, rather than one that's at the top of a window." Like many aspects of human engineering, this is the sort of thing that seems counter-intuitive, because at first thought it seems more logical to associate the menu with the thing that it affects.

Re:Bicycle - no surprise

[shotfeel]

After pounding on my old Apple II/e's keyboard through grade school & high school almost anything was bound to be more efficient.

Ahhh, youth.

If you think that was bad, try pounding through on a manual typewriter.

Or writing it all by hand.

Re:Bicycle- a man on a bicycle would be like a

[alfredo]

car that gets 1,600 miles per gallon. At least that was what was batted around in the bicycle industry of the late 70's.

12 mph on a loaded touring bike and depleted sugar is a dream at 10,000', trust me on that.

Had a friend who worked with Eddie B in Colorado Springs.
he coached the women for a bit.

Re:Cheapest Mac

[alfredo]

Running Panther and YellowDog Linux on a Rev B iMac. Both run well with 256mb RAM.

Windows Media Player 9

[chocolatetrumpet]

Windows Media Player 9 behaves as a windows application does - when you close the last media player window, the application quits.

It might sound nice at first, but I would rather have predictable (though possibly un user-friendly) behavior all the time, rather then inconsistancy.

DONKEY.BAS

[Flagran]

Donkey was a fun little program... it fascinated me because I was about 4 years old when we got our 4.5Mhz (9Mhz turbo!) IBM 8088 machine.

There was a two-lane highway running from the bottom of the screen from the top and you were driving along it. The spacebar was used to switch lanes. Your car moved up the screen and the donkey moved down the screen. The objective of the game was to avoid a collision with the donkey. It got harder as the game went because each time the donkey appeared you were a little bit closer to the top of the screen, and therefore had less time to react.

It's true.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only Apple bicycle development work was the seatless model that allowed the homo rider to fully enjoy the steel penetration.

Re:Bicycle- a man on a bicycle would be like a

[kfg]

Yeah, well, ya always gotta tack that "standard conditions" disclaimer onto things. Sea level, flat, still air, Colnago, silks, yadda yadda yadda.

Pre Eddie B we had Stan Swaim and The Dorset Training Group in Vermont. That's about as close to a national program that there was. Anybody who felt they needed to tune up before a nationals or an Olympic tryout or something would head there. Lovely riding country and the altitude is just pleasant.

It was all very chummy and informal. Our international results stank. But I miss it.

KFG

I'm sorry but...

[rs79]

I must be stupid I just don't get Perl, PhP, Python or what have you. I worked with Dave Conroy in 1976 and learned C on what he wrote then for a PDP-11 which today is GCC and it must have ruined my brain, I guess, as noting else seems to click with me. I find Perl inearly mpossible to understand, but can read any C very easily.

I use a code generator I wrote to do all the gruntwork, but yes, every web interface I write is in C and I'll race anybody with any other language in terms of development and holding up under load or bad input.

Kung-Fu Death Grip

[CHaN_316]

<sarcastic>
Well Apple should have studied more about geeks when designing their mice. As you know, us geeks work with our hands a lot. Since our hands get such a great work out every day, we naturally develop a kung-fu death grip. Apple should have seen that problem coming :D ... Anyways, I have to hold my mouse using a warrior's grip because I wield the mouse as a digital weapon. Muaha.
</sarcastic>

Re:Cheapest Mac

[easter1916]

My G3/600 i[ce]Book runs great with 640MB and Panther... must be something wrong with your G5.

Re:Cheapest Mac

[tgibbs]

Since it uses virtual memory, OS X doesn't require a lot of memory to run. But it really speeds up when you feed it RAM, up to about a gig or so. Many of the older Macs that people think are too slow to run OS X are just slow because of the limited RAM. Load them up with now-cheap RAM, and they get a lot snappier.

The real bicycle chart

[Dutchmajician]

The chart in question showed energy consumed per unit distance traveled. At bottom a cluster of various creatures and vehicles including man, with birds at the top. A big gap then half way up was a human on bicycle. Another big gap and then at the top, jet passenger aircraft. In Scientific American a long time ago. It was a sidebar and might be hard to search for.

Re:Yeah, it holds up so well under load

[buckminsterinsd]

an obviously brokenhearted rs79 wrote:

>> Doesn't anybody code in C any more?

an irate AC responded:

> Oh, for fuck's sake. Yes, people code in C, when they're > writing applications.

snip 8-------

I fully understand how rs79 feel about his trusty old tool but I gotta agree with the snotty AC on this one. Having developed EDA apps in C for almost a decade, there's no question that I get alot more done quicker using Perl than I ever could using C. And the argument that ya can't use interpretive languages for big nasty apps like place and route is only partially true.

It's just too damn easy in C to shoot yourself in the foot. Even worse is when ya got several people writing C code running in a single binary. Ya might as well be coding while juggling hand grenades. Sure, I realize how much fun it is to do that all nite long, esp. while naked and high on illicit narcotics but we gotta face facts and march headlong into the 20th century.

And hey, rs79, like me, don't ya miss the good ol' days? Ya know, back before all the developer jobs got flushed and shipped off to some stinking, lousy third world country like Texas. Yeah, back when all us software weenies were pulling down the big bucks, driving big steaks, eating fast cars and boinking promiscuous young women. Big sigh....

oh BTW, I thought that "real programmers" like us only used assembly language....

best regards,

buck

Re:Damn, there's Dick Nixon checkin in from his gr

[Anonymous Coward]

Why assume the moniker of a dead tricky dick? surely you could have done better.

I'm not dead. I faked my own death because of the darn liberals.
Make me your friend to find out more.

Shoelaces

[rixstep]

we were amazed

I think it's fairly certain Konzen wrote that program. From an engineering standpoint, Gates has never been able to tie his shoelaces.

But denigrating the IBM machine because it wasn't the Mac is missing the point: backward compatibility. IBM spent a lot of $$$ and effort getting CP/M ISVs to make the leap. To quote Steve Jobs: 'When developers no longer write applications for your computer, that's when it really starts to fall apart.'

What about exercise bikes?

[sorbits]

It is interesting to note, however, that not only is a man on a bicycle more energy efficient than a swimming dolphin, but he is more energy efficient than the same man riding a horse.

To me it sounds like biking is a rather inefficient form of exercising then? i.e. it would be much better just to walk?

Re:Cheapest Mac

[selderrr]

true, absolutely true. But older macs often have insufficient memory banks. Especially the old iMacs... And to make things worse : you can not install it yourself in a practical way (newer iMacs are a lot simpler). And on top of that, many dealers are incompetent when it comes to RAM knowledge. They install the wrong type of ram, or do not know the maximum capacity. My rev-A bondi blue imac for instance : the local dealer swore to me that 96MB was max for that type of machine. A quick google proved otherwise, with people who have an actual 256MB Machine running. Which he dismissed as nonsense. He refused to futher upgrade, and I won't do it myself as not to wreck the machine...

Still, I'm fairly happy with it, for what it needs to do. I don't think the speed difference would matter a lot to me, as most of these apps have low-update freq, or run as console apps which use very little ram. My tiBook handles the rest.

Re:Cheapest Mac

[tgibbs]

Yes, the early iMac and some of the Powerbooks are exceptions to the general rule of Macs being simple to upgrade. I just bought two 256 MB RAM chips to upgrade an iMac to 512 MB, but I haven't installed them yet. It looks a lot like upgrading a G3 powerbook, which I've found to be a bit tricky. Online dealers like OtherWorld Computing will provide accurate info on what a Mac can take (which is often more than Apple's Specs say, which frequently don't take account of newer chips) and will sell you chips guaranteed to work in your model. Another useful reference is LowEndMac

Kicked out for stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and he claims he dropped out, officially he got in trouble with the administration because the machine him and Allen used to develope the basic code, a PDP, did not belong to them.. but rather the school. They actually moved the computer that was not their property to their dorm room, they used university property to develop a commercial language.

Actually, the computer didn't belong to the university. He broke into a Harvard account on a government machine at an air force base and racked up a very large bill. He was unrepentant when caught so they kicked him out.