Steven Levy, on how he came to be part of the Mac’s 1984 launch:

Almost no one remembers who played in the Super Bowl (the Los Angeles Raiders lost to the Washington Redskins. Like I said, 1984 wasn’t like 2014). But the commercial, aired two days before the Mac launch, is part of history, and many can recite the tagline verbatim: “On January 24, Apple will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ’1984.’”

Jobs also planned a massive advertising campaign to follow, including a complete mini-publication that would run in multiple magazines. But, as he would do often in his subsequent career, Jobs relied on the news media to provide the narrative focus for his effort. He decided to give the exclusive story, along with early access to the team, to Newsweek and Rolling Stone, though he also gave briefings to a new magazine called Macworld.

I was the Rolling Stone writer.

Great read.

MacWorld’s Jason Snell spoke with Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Bud Tribble, vice president of software technology, and Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering, about the Mac’s thirty years of evolution.

Phil Schiller:

“Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they’re all gone,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, in an interview on Apple’s Cupertino campus Thursday. “We’re the only one left. We’re still doing it, and growing faster than the rest of the PC industry because of that willingness to reinvent ourselves over and over.”

Bud Tribble:

“An incredible amount of thought and creativity went into the original Mac metaphor,” Tribble said. “So there are some extremely strong threads of DNA that have lasted for 30 years. The sign of the strength of them and the underlying principles behind them—that the Mac should be easily approachable and learnable by just looking at it, that it should bend to the will of the person and not bend the person’s will to the technology—those underlying threads also apply to our other products.”

Craig Federighi:

“The reason OS X has a different interface than iOS isn’t because one came after the other or because this one’s old and this one’s new,” Federighi said. Instead, it’s because using a mouse and keyboard just isn’t the same as tapping with your finger. “This device,” Federighi said, pointing at a MacBook Air screen, “has been honed over 30 years to be optimal” for keyboards and mice. Schiller and Federighi both made clear that Apple believes that competitors who try to attach a touchscreen to a PC or a clamshell keyboard onto a tablet are barking up the wrong tree.

“To say [OS X and iOS] should be the same, independent of their purpose? Let’s just converge, for the sake of convergence? [It’s] absolutely a nongoal,” Federighi said. “You don’t want to say the Mac became less good at being a Mac because someone tried to turn it into iOS. At the same time, you don’t want to feel like iOS was designed by [one] company and Mac was designed by [a different] company, and they’re different for reasons of lack of common vision. We have a common sense of aesthetics, a common set of principles that drive us, and we’re building the best products we can for their unique purposes. So you’ll see them be the same where that makes sense, and you’ll see them be different in those things that are critical to their essence.”

The idea that Google’s Android mobile software is both “free” and open-source is so often repeated that it is virtually an article of faith online. There’s only one problem: neither is strictly true.

Google doing what Google does.

Great site put together by Jonathan Zufi, the man behind the Iconic book.

This sleek 2×6 Thunderbolt audio interface for Mac combines the same high-quality 24/192 kHz audio conversion of Universal Audio’s acclaimed Apollo series with onboard Realtime UAD SOLO or DUO Processing. With its ergonomic desktop design, rugged aluminum construction, and front panel headphone and instrument connections, Apollo Twin allows Mac users to record in real time (at near-zero latency) through the full range of UAD Powered Plug-Ins.

I had some time to play with this today and it’s gorgeous. It’s like a mini version of the Apollo that delivers the same high-quality audio that we’ve come to expect from UA. It’s rugged too, so it will travel well.

I need one of these guitars. NEED.

The AC15C1-V-RD limited edition features a Celestion V-Type speaker, custom “British Garnet red” tolex and Bronco patterned Tygon grill cloth. This custom colour projects a powerful presence in any environment – on stage, in the studio, or at home. The V-Type speaker has been built using a carefully balanced ‘recipe’ of both old and new design techniques. It’s a sweet-sounding speaker with a superbly balanced tonal signature that imparts a vintage musicality with authentic Celestion tone that’s suitable for any playing style.

I want one of these amps. I love the Vox sound.

Korg releases Gadget for iPad, a mobile synthesizer studio that offers the ultimate mobile synth collection for iPad. It was designed for anyone looking to explore software synthesis, musicians looking for a diverse palate of synths in one integrated app, or those looking to take their iPad music production to the next level.

Avid today introduced Eleven Rack Editor, providing owners of the Eleven Rack guitar system with a faster, more open workflow for creating and editing high-quality, inspiring guitar tones. The no-cost application makes Eleven Rack software control available for Pro Tools 11 and third-party digital audio workstation solutions.

This is huge news for Eleven Rack owners, like me. As a standalone app, I can now use Eleven Rack with any of my software applications.

Gretsch is a legendary brand, but I don’t know how I feel about this acoustics.

Enjoy incredibly fast and powerful editing of high-quality pictures. Fully optimized for the new Mac Pro, Pixelmator makes image editing completely seamless. Leveraging the full power of dual-GPU architecture, Pixelmator now supports 16-bit per channel images for the first time.

There are so many changes in this new version, including the ability to order prints and many other features. Great update.

My Taylor is the best acoustic I’ve ever played.

Wired:

It takes a special kind of magic to make an electric one-wheeled motorcycle not terrifying to ride, and Ryno Motors has pulled it off. The microcycle, which has a single 25-inch motorcycle tire and reaches speeds up to 10 mph, uses a combination of gyroscope sensors and accelerometers to balance itself.

I saw this when I lived in Portland OR and it looked very interesting – if just as dorky as a Segway. If they were legal in your town, would you buy one?

Ars Technica:

To get “online” was to sit down at your computer, open up an application called a “terminal program” (or just “term program” for short), pull up your carefully hoarded list of BBS phone numbers, and start dialing. Inevitably, most would be busy and you’d have to wait, but eventually you’d be treated to the sweet sound of ringing through your modem’s speaker, followed by the electronic beeping and scratching of a modem handshake.

I remember all of this. In related news, I’m old.

Test Your Vocabulary:

English has the most words of any language on Earth.

TestYourVocab.com is part of an independent American-Brazilian research project to measure vocabulary sizes according to age and education, and particularly to compare native learning rates with foreign language classroom learning rates.

According to the test, I know over 36,000 words. I bet a lot of them are just different words for beer.

CNET:

If you’ve ever wanted to take a spin around the “Top Gear” test track in the UK, but don’t qualify as a Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, now’s your chance.

As a fan of the UK TV show Top Gear, I really enjoyed “chasing” The Stig around their track.

The mechanics of this particular scam are fairly sophisticated. Most readers would be cautious enough to avoid this trap, but even so, this is worth a read.

When Ian Fleming created the James Bond character, he equipped him with a .25 calibre Beretta M418. Avid Bond fan Geoffrey Boothroyd objected to this choice (too light, limited stopping power) and wrote a letter to Fleming:

I have, by now, got rather fond of Mr. James Bond. I like most of the things about him, with the exception of his rather deplorable taste in firearms. In particular, I dislike a man who comes into contact with all sorts of formidable people using a .25 Beretta. This sort of gun is really a lady’s gun, and not a really nice lady at that. If Mr. Bond has to use a light gun he would be better off with a .22 rim fire; the lead bullet would cause more shocking effect than the jacketed type of the .25.

May I suggest that Mr. Bond be armed with a revolver?

Great story.

Users of flagship smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone 5s and Samsung’s Galaxy S4 are continuing to suck down more data than their tablet-wielding counterparts, according to a large-scale survey of mobile data consumption in 2013 conducted by JDSU (which last year bought mobile data analytics company Arieso, the company that previously ran the annual survey).

Is there something about the evolution of the architecture of mobile phones that makes later models consume more data? Is there a correlation to the adoption rate of the most recent OS rev? In other words, the latest model of a phone enables faster transmission speeds and typically runs the latest OS. Or is there something more complex at work here?

The story behind what may have been the biggest Internet failure in history involves an unlikely cast of characters, including a little-known company in a drab building in Wyoming and the world’s most elite army of Internet censors a continent away in China.

On Tuesday, most of China’s 500 million Internet users were unable to load websites for up to eight hours. Nearly every Chinese user and Internet company, including major services like Baidu and Sina.com, was affected.

Technology experts say China’s own Great Firewall — the country’s vast collection of censors and snooping technology used to control Internet traffic in and out of China — was most likely to blame, mistakenly redirecting the country’s traffic to several sites normally blocked inside China, some connected to a company based in the Wyoming building.

Fascinating.

Is this creepy? A form of stalking? Not sure, but it certainly is clever and a great little read. And, bottom line, it worked!

While at NAMM, Jim joins Dan and special guest Merlin Mann to talk about their favorite Macs new and old, the future of the computer in the home, the power of portable and wearable devices, amps, guitars, Yamaha’s purchase of Line 6, new gear, why Jim isn’t getting a new Mac Pro, and more.

Sponsored by OmniGraffle (use code for % off), Harvest (use code 5BY5 for 50% off), Hover (use code BEARD for 10% off your first purchase), and Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME114 for 25% off).

I love the idea of this. Watch the movie on the site to see it in action.