History

This was a fascinating nugget from a deep dive into the very early reviews of the very first iPhone. The world has changed so very much since the iPhone release. This review brought back waves of nostalgia, back when it was not clear if the iPhone would catch on.

This is audio only, about 30 minutes long, but a fascinating look at the history of Apple and China. Lots of key moments in the relationship highlighted, starting with Steve Jobs and the birth of the relationship as China pitches Apple for the chance to manufacture the iPhone.

My buddy Kirk McElhearn sent me this link.

First things first, look at the thumbnail for the Mac Programming Books section. One of the first books I ever wrote. Which makes me vintage. Do I get a special badge for that?

That aside, there are a ton of high-quality scans here, including a bunch of my books. Not sure how these were done, not sure how I feel about this. This stuff is old, vintage is an appropriate word here, but this is a chunk of my life’s work put up for the taking, without permission.

And that said, I guess I’m OK with that, at least as far as my stuff is concerned. Every one of these editions is long out of print. So enjoy, if any of this floats your boat.

Parker Ortolani, 9to5Mac:

Even though WWDC technically started in 1990, let’s start where things got interesting, which is in 1997. Apple was on the brink and Steve Jobs had just returned to the company following the NeXT acquisition. This was the first time since his return that Steve himself appeared at WWDC.

Parker did a great job pulling this post together. This wonderful collection of prose, pics, and video brought on huge waves of nostalgia.

Ran across this old folklore.org post, thought you might enjoy it.

Andy Hertzfeld, member of the original Macintosh team:

The Macintosh User Interface wasn’t designed all at once; it was actually the result of almost five years of experimentation and development at Apple, starting with graphics routines that Bill Atkinson began writing for Lisa in late 1978. Like any evolutionary process, there were lots of false starts and blind alleys along the way. It’s a shame that these tend to be lost to history, since there is a lot that we can learn from them.

Fortunately, the main developer of the user interface, Bill Atkinson, was an avid, lifelong photographer, and he had the foresight to document the incremental development of the Lisa User Interface (which more or less became the Mac UI after a few tweaks) with a series of photographs. He kept a Polaroid camera by his computer, and took a snapshot each time the user interface reached a new milestone, which he collected in a loose-leaf notebook. I’m excited to be able to reproduce and annotate them here, since they offer a fascinating, behind the scenes glimpse of how the Mac’s breakthrough user interface was crafted.

Follow the headline link, dig in. This is historic stuff.

Just start scrolling and clicking, or sliding and tapping, find your favorite.

I especially love the Steve Jobs quotes. Some gorgeous work here.

This is a bit of an experiment. If it worked, you’ll see a pretty cool video embedded below, a walking tour through a boatload of Apple products, all in one packed room. If not, here’s a link to a page with the video. Worth seeing.

Later that same morning: So the embed worked, cool. This one is worth seeing on your iPhone, looks really great. Reload this post, tap the “full screen” arrows in the video, then hit play. Gorgeous.

Let’s take a walk down  memory lane… from u/fingerzdxb

Jason Snell, Macworld, with a nostalgic look back at a critical transition for the Mac, one that occurred 20 years ago.

Side note: I was at Metrowerks at the time, and had the chance to play with early betas of that first new re-roll of MacOS. I remember being mystified by the completely reinvented Finder, especially the multi-column browser, lifted from NeXT’s interface. It felt like a forced fit at the time, but now I can’t imagine going back to the old version.

Interestingly, Steve left Apple and came back on September 16th, leaving in 1985, then returning in 1997.

Follow the headline link for the full list, or this link to get right to the decade old Apple front page.

Just me, or did Apple use to have much more focus on beautifully manicured hands?

K, so I’ve mixed two things together in that headline. But still.

From Reuters:

Germany’s Volkswagen is not concerned by any Apple plans for a passenger vehicle that could include the iPhone maker’s battery technology, its chief executive Herbert Diess said.

And:

“The car industry is not a typical tech-sector that you could take over at a single stroke,” Diess was quoted as saying an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

“Apple will not manage that overnight,” he added.

Of course, the headline referred to the mother of all Claim Chowder, this Daring Fireball post from 2006, where Palm CEO Ed Colligan famously addressed the upstart iPhone’s entry into the smartphone space. Worth a re-read.

Not counting the two Steves, any guess as to the name of Apple’s employee number one? Follow the headline link for the answer and an interview from back in 2016.

And for a fun little rabbit hole, follow this link, which will take you to a list of other interviews from the Hacker News Employee #1 series, including interviews with folks from Amazon, Tumblr, and Airbnb.

Andy Hertzfeld is at the root of the Macintosh tree, part of the small team that brought that original Mac to life. He was also a friend of Steve Jobs and his site Folklore.org is a keeper of the old stories and a rabbit hole that is well worth your time.

Andy recently did an episode of the DNext podcast. It’s not a look back, so much as a sharing of thoughts. I enjoyed every minute of it, thought you might too. You can find DNext in your favorite podcast app as well as by following the headline link.

Cake:

Wayne Goodrich was the producer for every keynote Steve gave after his return to Apple. Before that, Wayne helped him create presentations at NeXT and Pixar. He is writing a book about what it was like on the inside.

A fascinating Q&A with pics and “working with Steve” anecdotes. Great read.

Ben Zotto:

Apple’s second computer — its first to have a case — launched in 1977, and that boxy beige Apple II was soon everywhere: in classrooms, living rooms and offices. At the vanguard of a generation of personal computers to come, it featured a particular and carefully-chosen beige. But what did that look like? Those first machines — the ones that have escaped landfills anyway — have shifted in color over 40 years. The documented public record is sketchy and confused. But I stumbled upon a way to investigate what Apple Beige was like.

The article itself is interesting, but what drew me in (via kottke.org) was the photo, there at the beginning, of that bottle of official Apple beige touch-up paint.

That shade of beige was Apple’s color for a long time, from that first Apple II case, through the first generation of Macintosh. Since then, we’ve seen shades of gray, returns to platinum, wild runs of neon acrylics, then experiments in aluminum.

But that particular shade of beige is with me forever.

Om Malik:

I peered over the edge and saw a group of off-duty paramilitary servicemen taking selfies with their backs to the scene. They were capturing the moment using nothing but the cameras on their smartphones. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Here I was, standing high above, with a camera rig that cost as much as a second-hand sedan, waiting for the perfect light as I took great care to keep my own shadow out of the frame. And there they were, recording the same moment with faint regard for the quality of the light or the image itself. Instead, they were letting the chips figure it all out as they strained to document their own presence.

And:

In many ways, the iPhone reminds me of another groundbreaking camera: the Brownie. Launched at the turn of the last century, the original Brownie was the catalyst of change that helped us record our own history — exactly what those servicemen were doing more than a century later as I labored at my art.

This essay took me down memory lane, thinking about my very first camera, an Olympus OM-1, a camera I took everywhere with me, through college and my first trip overseas.

That original iPhone sacrificed quality but put a camera in everyone’s pocket. It changed the world.

This is a lovely read, all the way through.