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Time capsule containing Steve Jobs' mouse lost for 29 years
The other day, blogger Marcel Brown wrote about a cassette tape that had been found and given to him. That tape contained a recording of Steve Jobs speaking at the International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) in 1983, and has been widely reported as proof that Jobs was envisioning iPad and iPhone-like devices even back in those days. One other fun tidbit from Brown's post was the hint that Jobs had contributed something to a time capsule (no, not the Apple backup device) that was buried during the conference. Today, Brown posted a followup about the time capsule. Apparently, while Jobs was giving his talk at the IDCA, he was using an Apple Lisa that was connected to and controlling six slide projectors. Jobs was asked by one of the conference participants to donate an item to be buried in a time capsule for either 20 years or until the year 2000, so he thought about it for a second, then unplugged the Lisa's mouse and handed it to the man. Well, unfortunately nobody is quite sure where exactly the time capsule was buried. In order to dig up this piece of Jobs history, Brown is organizing an effort to recover it. If you or anyone you know attended the IDCA in 1983 and might have an inkling of where the time capsule is hiding, please contact Brown. With any luck, the mouse and other artifacts might be unearthed on the 30th anniversary of the conference.
The cost of Apple's products, adjusted for inflation
A site called VoucherCodes recently tried to figure out if the $499 entry-level iPad really is as good a deal as many have claimed. They analyzed the cost of several of Apple's products, adjusted for inflation, and some of the results are pretty astonishing. The first Apple computer ever created, the Apple I, cost $666.66 in 1976. Adjusted to 2010 dollars, that Apple I would cost $2,540, which isn't too bad. But the Apple Lisa, Apple's first stab at creating a computer with a Graphical User Interface, cost $9,995 in 1983, or a staggering $21,745 in today's dollars. Sure, the GUI was a cool bit of innovation, over $20,000 for a personal computer? Comparing the iPad to previous Apple portables is even more interesting. Apple's first portable computer cost $6,500 in 1989 -- which would be almost $11,400 today -- while the $699 Newton from 1993 would cost nearly $1,050 in today's dollars. Most intriguing of all is that the first iPod, released for $399 in 2001, cost $488 in today's dollars. That's just $11 under the cost of the iPad, a device that has far more storage, processing power, and access to more features than the first iPod could even dream of only nine and a half years ago. Apple's handhelds are cheaper than ever, even when you bring inflation into the mix. Within my lifetime alone, computers have gone from luxury items and objects of curiosity, something people would have to save several months of paychecks in order to buy, to something people buy on a whim, for a week's pay, and carry around with them in their pockets. It's not surprising that the cost of computers has come down over time, but when charts like the one at VoucherCodes drive home just how much prices have dropped in terms of the real value of the US dollar, it's pretty amazing.
Blast from the Past: Apple Lisa
It's 1984. Meet the Lisa. I'm warning you now, this video is not short. It starts with a nostalgic look back by the expert who more than twenty years earlier introduced the Lisa in a televised interview. He talks about the moment in time, the technology, and his rhinoplasty. You may want to skip a few minutes into the video. One of the things I love so much about this video is seeing the menus in their original forms. They're so familiar and at the same time, you're struck by the differences. It's also great to see the core set of Mac Apps that shipped with the Lisa and watch them in action, like the word processor and drawing programs. You get a sense while watching about how revolutionary the Mac leap forward was (and as an Alto and Smalltalk user, I assure you this was way beyond anything from Xerox). It's also fascinating to see how slow things were. Watch how long it takes for the calculator to load! And notice the 5MB hard drive enclosure on the top of the machine. What an amazing thing to have to think about the Lisa being able to run more than one program at a time, while the Mac could not. Of course, this was around the same time of the height of the Symbolics Lisp Machine, which could pwn the Lisa in almost every way possible, but was way beyond the Lisa in cost.
Lisa sales binder
The Lisa was Steve Job's pet project until he switched to the Mac (oh, Steve, how mercurial you can be!). It was a revolutionary device that didn't sell well for the same old reasons: lack of software, and price.However, Apple did try and sell a boatload of them (I mean, they wanted to make money). Charles Eicher has spent some time scanning in a Lisa marketing brochure so that we could all look back and ponder a world that might have been.Lisa picture from The Mac Geek.
