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Don Melton on Steve Jobs and other news from April 10, 2014
Former Apple engineer Don Melton posted a heartwarming and fascinating post late on Thursday highlighting his memories of working with Steve Jobs. The entire post is well worth reading in its entirety as it provides a more up-close and personal glimpse into a side of Jobs that doesn't often get a lot of ink. The post is packed with a number of interesting stories regarding the development of Safari (the team at Apple Melton worked on) along with a few memorable anecdotes detailing Jobs' kindness, his sense of humor, and of course, his uncompromising pursuit of excellence. One quick story with sharing is how the idea of putting Safari's URL progress bar into the browser's URL address view came about: Steve didn't like the status bar and didn't see the need for it. "Who looks at URLs when you hover your mouse over a link?" He thought it was just too geeky. Fortunately, Scott and I convinced Steve to keep the status bar as an option, not visible by default. But that meant we had a new problem. Where should we put the progress bar to indicate how much of the page was left to load? Before, the progress bar lived inside the status bar. So we needed to find it a new home. We discussed all sorts of silly ideas including making it vertical along the edge of the window. ... The room got quiet. Steve and I sat side-by-side in front of the demo machine staring at Safari. Suddenly we turned to each other and said at the same time, "In the page address field!" Smiles all around. Which I followed with, "I'll have a working version of that for you by the end of the week." Over-committing my engineering team, of course. But I didn't care. I had just invented something with the Big Guy. True, it was a trifle, but there's no feeling like sharing even a tiny byline with Steve. Again, the entire post is a must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in one of the tech industry's all-time great visionaries. Other quick hits from Thursday includes: AltConf2014, the alternative conference to WWDC, has announced its speakers for this year. AltConf will be held across the street from WWDC in San Francisco on June 2-6. Entry is free and is on a first-come, first-served basis if you have a ticket. Donations are voluntary. Speakers include Michael Lopp, Andy Stone, Brianna Wu, Saul Mora, Josh Michaels, Mike Lee, Orta Therox, and Aaron Hilleglass. Remember Boxee? If you were a member of the forums during its heyday, the service is notifying users that a hack caused data for more than 158,000 users to be exposed. This includes names, emails, full message histories and partial login credentials.
Funny moments with Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs has been called many things: genius, visionary, and of course, temperamental. However, every now and then Steve gave the public an example of his sense of humor. As you might expect, it was biting, sharp and smart. Here's a collection of funny moments from the late Mr. Jobs.
Today is Apple's 38th birthday
On Thursday April 1, 1976 Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne started Apple Computers. Their first product was the Apple I computer kit, built by hand by its designer Steve Wozniak. The Apple I consisted of just a motherboard, leaving users to provide their own keyboard, monitor, and case. It went on sale in June of that year for $666.66, or $2,773 in today's dollars. Now Apple is 38 years old. 456 months, 1,983 weeks, and 13,879 days of existence. In the years since its founding, the company has released groundbreaking computers from the Apple II to the Macbook Pro, constantly pushing its products to new levels of innovation. These innovations revolutionized MP3 players (launching the iPod in 2001), tablets (the iPad in 2010), and smartphones (the iPhone in 2007). Of the founding pioneers of the company, two are still alive today. Steve Jobs left the company in 1985 after a power struggle with the board of directors, but returned in the late 90s to help save the company. Without Steve Jobs, Apple may very well have gone bankrupt. Under his leadership as CEO Apple introduced the iPod, iPad, iPhone, iMac, and its own digital content retailer, iTunes. Jobs passed away in 2011 following a struggle with pancreatic cancer. Steve Wozniak left Apple in 1987 and continued his work as an entrepreneur, starting a new company called CL 9 which developed the first programmable universal remote control in 1987. Beyond his business pursuits Wozniak also taught 5th grade and appeared on Dancing with the Stars. He continues to work part time with Apple to this day. As for Ronald Wayne, his story is a slightly sad one. Wayne was an important part of Apple's founding, writing the original partnership agreement and drawing the company's first logo. For his work he was given a ten percent stake in the company, which he sold shortly after the company was founded out of fears he might be responsible for any debt the company accumulated. He reportedly sold his shares in the company for $2,300, or $9,657.88 in modern dollars. If he had held onto his ten percent he would be a billionaire today. In 2010 he explained the sale to the San Jose Mercury News. "I don't waste my time getting frustrated about things that didn't work out," he says. "I left Apple for reasons that seemed sound to me at the time. Why should I go back and 'what if' myself? If I did, I'd be in a rubber room by now." Happy birthday, Apple. You've been a source of innovation and technological foresight for almost four decades now. We can't wait to see what the next four decades will bring.
Top Apple engineer details how the original iPhone was developed
The Wall Street Journal has published a rare authorized interview with Apple senior software engineer Greg Christie who detailed the arduous process involved in getting the iPhone from a concept to a shipping product. In February of 2005, Steve Jobs gave Christie's team an ultimatum -- either deliver a concept that wow'd or the project would be handed over to another group. At the time, Christie writes that his group was still struggling to figure out just what the iPhone's software would look and act like. "Steve had pretty much had it," said Mr. Christie, who still heads Apple's user-interface team. "He wanted bigger ideas and bigger concepts." Mr. Christie's team devised many iPhone features, such as swiping to unlock the phone, placing calls from the address book, and a touch-based music player. ... Mr. Christie's team pored over details like the perfect speed for scrolling lists on the phone and the natural feel of bouncing back when arriving at the end of a list. He said his team "banged their head against the wall" over how to change text messages from a chronological list of individual messages to a series of separate ongoing conversations similar to instant messaging on a computer. Timing of Christie's WSJ interview isn't coincidental. With Apple and Samsung preparing to battle in California next week, Apple made Christie available in an effort to demonstrate, outside of the courtroom, that many of the iPhone's innovations only seem obvious in hindsight. Put differently, Apple wants everyone to know that the iPhone was in every which way an original device that Samsung "slavishly copied." The entire interview is well worth a read and is chock-full of interesting details, including the fact that the original iPhone team was "shockingly small" and that Steve Jobs obsessed over every detail of the device, from how email messages were displayed to which album covers were best suited to show off the device's Cover Flow feature. Adding somewhat of a chronological framework to the iPhone development story, Christie notes that he was tapped by Scott Forstall to join the iPhone project in late 2004. Once Steve Jobs was sufficiently impressed by the project's progress, it was green-lit. And so began what Christie referred to as a "2 1/2 year marathon." Interestingly, Fred Vogelstein's recently released book, "Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution", reveals that the iPhone was still far from a finished product on the day Jobs dazzled the Apple faithful and introduced the world to the iPhone at Macworld 2007. Based on interviews with then Apple senior engineer Andy Grignon, Vogelstein writes: The iPhone could play a section of a song or a video, but it couldn't play an entire clip reliably without crashing. It worked fine if you sent an e-mail and then surfed the Web. If you did those things in reverse, however, it might not. Hours of trial and error had helped the iPhone team develop what engineers called "the golden path," a specific set of tasks, performed in a specific way and order, that made the phone look as if it worked. But even when Jobs stayed on the golden path, all manner of last-minute workarounds were required to make the iPhone functional. On announcement day, the software that ran Grignon's radios still had bugs. So, too, did the software that managed the iPhone's memory. And no one knew whether the extra electronics Jobs demanded the demo phones include would make these problems worse. Of course, by the the time the iPhone launched a few months later, Apple had successfully worked out many of the kinks. Oddly enough, the iPhone's biggest problem upon launch was actually that it was too popular, thereby resulting in horrendous data speeds on AT&T's ill-prepared network.
Steve Jobs sobbed in the wake of Antennagate
In a recently discovered video on 99u, former Apple VP of Marketing Communications Allison Johnson details what it was like working in Apple's marketing department under the always watchful eye of Steve Jobs. Recalling her time at Apple, Johnson describes how there were two words within Apple's marketing department that were considered dirty; "brand" and "marketing." The reason, Johnson explains, is that the word "brand" in Steve's mind was too closely linked to "artificial" things like television advertising. Instead, Jobs wanted to focus more on people's relationship to the product. As for the "marketing" moniker, it was avoided because it's typically associated with selling to somebody as opposed to educating them. Indeed, a common theme put forth by Johnson was that Apple's marketing department was primarily concerned with educating consumers and showing prospective buyers what they can do with the product. One particularly interesting relayed how the marketing department at Apple worked closely with the product development teams. The marketing team was right next to product development and engineering team, so we understood deeply what was important about the product, what people's motivations were... what they hoped the product would achieve, what roles they wanted it to play in peoples lives. And because we were so close, we were able to translate that to our marketing efforts. Using the iPhone as an example, Johnson explains that there were any number of different advertising angles the company could have pursued for such a revolutionary device. Nonetheless, they chose to focus on just three things; that the iPhone was a phone, an iPod, and the Internet in your pocket. As for what it was like working for Jobs, she explained that it entailed "playing your best game every single day." Johnson further elaborated on how Apple's position as widely discussed and followed company gave it advertising advantages not many other company's can enjoy. For instance, during the six-month period after the iPhone introduction and before the iPhone launch, Apple only released one TV ad as it could rely upon the Apple community to talk, write, and read about the device. This phenomenon, Johnson said, is unique to Apple. "I don't think there are a lot of companies that can operate that way." During a Q&A portion of the interview, Johnson relayed two interesting stories about Jobs which serve to demonstrate how passionate he was about the arts and Apple itself. First, Johnson recalls how momentous it was for Apple to finally land The Beatles catalog of music on iTunes. In conjunction with that, Apple sent a team to the UK to pick up over a thousand never-before-seen photographs of the band. When brought back to Cupertino, Steve Jobs pored over the photos as they laid upon a boardroom table, walking around "in tears." For Jobs, it was an important milestone and a "really special moment." Second, Johnson recalls how emotional Jobs became in the wake of the Antennagate saga. Jobs, Johnson explained, was beyond sad and angry about the issue and how it was getting portrayed in the media. With Apple's core leadership team, along with the company's product and marketing teams sitting around a boardroom table, Jobs pounded the table saying, "This is not the company I want to be, this is not what we are building. We don't want to be that company, we don't want people to think about us this way." Driving the point home, Johnson explained that whereas The Beatles moment was one of tears, "this was sobbing." Jobs cared so much about Apple, Johnson explained, that the two were very much one and the same.
1979 Apple II ad goes biblical [Photo]
While Apple has launched a number of iconic ad campaigns over the years, some of the company's early ads from the 1970s are a little questionable. As a case in point, I recently came across this biblically-themed 1979 ad for the Apple II. The ad below touts a contest which asks readers to answer the following question in a thousand words or less: "What in the name of Adam do people do with Apple Computers?" If you read the fine print below, you'll note that contest winners were given a one-week all expense paid trip for two to Hawaii. To enter, drop by your nearest Apple dealer and pick up an entry blank. Fill it out. Then write an article, in 1000 words or less, describing the unusual or interesting use you've found for your Apple. Funny to think of a time when a dedicated Apple retail store seemed preposterous, not to mention a time when people had to physically go into a store to pick up an entry form for a contest. What's also interesting is that Apple today utilizes similarly themed ads. While it's of course discarded the peculiar homage to Adam and Eve, as well as user-driven contests, Apple's recent ad campaign for the iPad has honed in on the myriad of interesting things people are using Apple's tablet for.
Steve Jobs on mouse design and how the Apple Pro Mouse was conceived by happenstance
Though Apple popularized the mouse when it introduced the Mac in 1984, the company hasn't always been a bastion of popular, or even elegant, mouse design. For instance, Apple's hockey puck mouse, originally introduced with the Bondi Blue iMac, is a perfect example of utilitarian design gone astray. Indeed, the mouse is largely considered one of the worst Apple product flops of all-time. In the wake of the forgettable hockey puck mouse, Apple had to go back to the drawing board and come up with a successor. On this note, Cult of Mac was able to chat with Abraham Farag, a former senior mechanical engineer of product design at Apple. Farag details how he and his team ended up coming up with the successor to the hockey puck mouse simply by happenstance. "It all started with a model we did not have time to finish," he says. "We had made six of these great form models to show Steve," he recalls. "They were fully done, with all the parting lines cut in for buttons and different plastic parts, and all the colors just right." At the last minute, the design team had decided to create a model that would echo the look of the Topolino mouse which shipped prior to the hockey puck. The only problem was, the model wasn't finished. They hadn't had time to draw buttons on to the model to indicate where they would go. "It looked like a grey blob," Farag says. "We were going to put that model into a box so people wouldn't see it." However, when Jobs turned up things went awry. "Steve looked at the lineup of potential forms and made straight for the unfinished one," Farag says. "That's genius," he said. "We don't want to have any buttons." "That's right, Steve," someone else piped up. "No buttons at all. Of course, this entailed more work for Farag and his team as they now actually had to design the mouse that so excited Jobs. They eventually figured things out and arrived at a design that would become known as the Apple Pro Mouse. Originally released in 2000, the Apple Pro Mouse was also notable for being the first Apple mouse to discard the age-old trackball in favor of an optical tracking system. Providing a bit more insight into Jobs' psyche as it applied to design, Farag relays that Jobs was vehemently opposed in principle to the idea of a multi-button mouse. You see, Jobs believed that if a UI was intuitive enough and designed with great care and precision, "you should be able to do everything you needed to do with one button." And speaking of Jobs' disdain for superfluous buttons, I'm reminded of this story detailing Jobs' hate for Apple's Extended Keyboard back when he was at NeXT.
Throwback: hands-on with the original iPhone
The original iPhone was released in the US on June 29, 2007. Mere hours later, our old friend David Chartier posted his first impressions of the 8 GB marvel. It's fun to reflect on our glee over the debut of such ground-breaking device. Note the old-school TUAW logo while you're at it! David notes that "Google Maps is surprisingly responsive, even over EDGE." Could you imagine praising EDGE speeds today? How quickly we become jaded. Also: Google Maps installed by default! Some experiences are the same. In 2007, we noted: "The SMS app looks like iChat and almost sounds like iChat; it features a different sound for incoming SMSes, but the default iChat sound for sending SMS messages." We still have the colored speech bubbles and old iChat sound. Also, "Snapping a picture on the camera features a virtual shutter that snaps shut and open again once the picture is done being snapped and saved. Kinda silly, but more entertaining than a 'saving' or 'please wait' message." Then there's this: "The 160 dpi display is even more gorgeous than in the videos and up on stage in a keynote." Oh, my. How far we've come.
When Carl Sagan sued Apple ... TWICE
In the early 90s, Apple began working on the Power Mac 7100, a product that was internally given the codename "Carl Sagan." The impetus behind the codename was a riff on Sagan's catchphrase "billions and billions", the implication being that the 7100 would go on to make Apple billions of dollars. Concurrently, Apple was also developing two other Power Mac computers codenamed Piltdown Man and Cold Fusion, the former being a reference to a notorious scientific hoax and the latter being a discredited type of nuclear reaction. When these internal codenames were first revealed in a 1993 issue of MacWeek, Sagan was concerned that the use of his name might be misconstrued as an official endorsement. Some also speculate that Sagan was not keen on having his name being associated with two prominent examples of pseudo-science. In January of 1994, Sagan wrote the following letter to MacWeek: I have been approached many times over the past two decades by individuals and corporations seeking to use my name and/or likeness for commercial purposes. I have always declined, no matter how lucrative the offer or how important the corporation. My endorsement is not for sale. For this reason, I was profoundly distressed to see your lead front-page story "Trio of Power PC Macs spring toward March release date" proclaiming Apple's announcement of a new Mac bearing my name. That this was done without my authorization or knowledge is especially disturbing. Through my attorneys, I have repeatedly requested Apple to make a public clarification that I knew nothing of its intention to capitalize on my reputation in introducing this product, that I derived no benefit, financial or otherwise, from its doing so. Apple has refused. I would appreciate it if you so apprise your readership. Carl Sagan In the wake of Sagan's letter, Apple changed the codename of the Power Mac 7100 to "BHA", a string which stood for "Butt-Head Astronomer." When Sagan became aware of this, he decided to sue Apple for libel. That this dispute even went to court in the first place is beyond comical. Just imagine Apple arguing, as it did, that the phrase "Butt-Head Astronomer" doesn't constitute libel because it's merely the expression of an opinion that no one would misconstrue as fact. Not surprisingly, the case was dismissed just as quickly as it was brought. The court ruling reads in part: There can be no question that the use of the figurative term "Butt-Head" negates the impression that Defendant was seriously implying an assertion of fact. It strains reason to conclude that Defendant was attempting to criticize Plaintiff's reputation or competency as an astronomer. One does not seriously attack the expertise of a scientist using the undefined phrase "butt-head." Following this legal defeat, Sagan sued Apple yet again, this time for using his name at all in the first place. Apple emerged victorious once more, prompting Sagan to appeal the decision. Presumably not wanting to engage Sagan in a string of legal proceedings, Apple and Sagan in November of 1995 were ultimately able to reach a confidential settlement agreement out of court, with Apple apologizing for any unintended stress it caused the famed astronomer. In a statement on the matter, Apple's patent director at the time, one Paul D. Carmichael, said: Dr. Sagan has made great contributions in many areas of higher learning and in particular has made complex subject matter interesting and understandable to a wide audience. Apple has always had great respect for Dr. Sagan, and it was never Apple's intention to cause Dr. Sagan or his family any embarrassment or concern. The engineers at Apple, though, weren't going to go down without some sort of fight. As such, the final codename for the Power Mac 7100 was "LAW", a string which stood for 'Lawyers are Wimps." As an epilogue to this somewhat bizarre story, the Power Mac 7100 debuted in March of 1994 but never went on to generate billions and billions of dollars for Apple.
Apple device sales have finally caught up with Windows
In the early days of Microsoft, Bill Gates' vision for the company was a "computer on every desk and in every home," all running Windows of course. And as John Gruber wrote in his short but astute summary of Microsoft's history, the amazing thing is that Gates actually realized this dream. By the mid-90s, if not a few years earlier even, we were living in a Windows world. At its peak, Windows share of the computer market checked in at an astounding 95+%. Even today still, the majority of desktop and notebook computers are running some variant of Windows. But the computing world today is vastly different than it was 20 years ago. While Bill Gates' original vision centered on a computer on every desk, the battle today is to put a computer in every pocket and in every hand. Over the past six years, mobile devices have flourished and our definition of "computer" has fundamentally changed. While the computer of yesteryear was essentially a clunky beige box paired with an frustratingly heavy and awkwardly shaped monitor, the modern definition has expanded to include tablets and smartphones; hyper-light and super portable devices capable of accessing the entire history of the world's information from anywhere in the world. That being said, Benedict Evans last week posted a chart which encapsulates how the dynamic of computing marketshare has been completely turned on its head in just a few short years. If we count iOS devices as computers, and indeed, there are more reasons to do so than not, last quarter marked the first time Apple sold about as many computers as Microsoft. Evans writes: A symbolic moment, this: in Q4 2013 the number of computers* sold by Apple was larger than the number of Windows PC sold globally. If you add Windows Phone to the mix they're more or less exactly equal. This quantum leap in mobile computing is precisely why Tim Cook has been so vocal in championing the notion that that we're currently living in a post-PC era. With the iPhone and the iPad, Apple finds itself at the forefront of the post-PC revolution that Microsoft keeps trying to convince itself isn't happening; hence the mishmash that is Windows 8. The following chart from Horace Dediu of Asymco further serves to illustrate how the computing landscape shifted with the advent of the iPhone and iPad. But the bigger story is how Apple's mobile platform has nearly reached the sales volume of Windows. In 2013 there were only 1.18 more Windows PCs than Apple devices sold. Odds are that in 2014 they will be at parity. At Macworld 1997, Steve Jobs said that the "battle for the desktop is over. And we lost." What was not apparent at the time was that the next battle would be fought over portable consumer technologies -- MP3 players, smartphones, and tablets. And now, 17 years later, Apple has finally caught up to Microsoft.
The original Mac icon was inspired by Matisse, not Pablo Picasso
You might recognize the illustration on the right as the original Mac icon, a fixture on much of the early packaging materials and manuals that came with the early Macs, not to mention the icon that greeted users on the Mac OS startup screen back in the day. While it was long assumed that the icon was inspired by the work of Pablo Picasso -- it was even referred to as the 'Picasso Mac' for many years -- Cult of Mac recently discovered that the artist responsible for inspiring the bright, colorful squiggly lines was not Picasso, but rather French artist Henry Matisse. Originally designed by Tom Hughes and John Casado, Cult of Mac reached out Casado who explained the impetus behind the iconic, well, icon. I thought I could shed some light on my inspiration for the trademark for the first Mac. I was given the assignment by Tom Hughes after it was determined that Folon's version wasn't going to work for business reasons. I met with Steve and Tom and spent some time interviewing and talking to all the players. After a few weeks, I came back to the group and made my presentation. In that presentation, I said that the inspiration for the drawing style was Matisse, whom I so admired as an artist. The idea of the graphics being 'Picasso style' was, as I remember, a journalist's description at the time of the launch. I think since no one ever ask[ed] me or Tom where the influence came from, it became fact. I never stated it publicly, only when asked during design forums.
Apple employee badges from 1984
In addition to helping digitize Steve Jobs' now famous Mac introduction, former Apple employee Scott Knaster recently posted this photo depicting old Apple employee badges, providing us with an interesting trip down memory lane in the process. For all you Apple history buffs out there, take note of John Sculley's badge nestled up at the top, flanked to the right and left by legendary Apple engineers Burrell Smith and Andy Hertzfeld, respectively. Apple employee badges from an unused 1984 ad. Of note: Andy Hertzfeld, Burrell Smith, John Sculley, Barbara Knaster. pic.twitter.com/N5JyhO3vVj - Scott Knaster (@scottknaster) January 25, 2014 Incidentally, Hertzfeld still has his badge today.
Behind the scenes of Apple's "1984" ad
In a recent interview with Forbes, former Chiat/Day ad executive Steve Hayden relays a number of interesting nuggets regarding the creation of Apple's now iconic "1984" commercial. First, and what shouldn't come as much of a surprise, Steve Jobs was heavily involved in the overall tone and creation of the ad. Hayden recalls that Jobs' memo for what the commercial should be was short and to the point, "Stop the world in its tracks." With respect to the "Why 1984 won't be like 1984" line, Hayden explains that it came from a San Francisco writer named Gary Gussick during a brainstorming session. While that line was initially set to be the crux of the commercial, famed ad man Lee Clow thought there should be more oomph to it. That iconic tag line was only the beginning of the story. Initially, Gussick had just paired it with a simple image of an Apple computer. It was effective, but it wasn't going to stop the world in its tracks. We showed the idea to Lee Clow, and he said 'It's not enough to just say that. You have to shatter the image that's in people's minds.'" Clow came up with the concept of a young woman running onto the set and throwing a baseball bat at The Dictator haranguing people on the screen. "Shortly after that we met with Ridley Scott, who was in Los Angeles shooting Blade Runner," Hayden recalls. " And he took one look at the board and said 'A baseball bat is far too American. If you gave her a sledgehammer to throw at the screen, it would be a more universal symbol.' Scott pointed them toward Fritz Lang's cinema classic Metropolis, and suddenly 1984 had its signature dystopian look. Now interestingly enough, Apple's "1984" ad almost didn't run at all as Apple's board, upon viewing a cut of the ad, were none too thrilled. Apple at the time had purchased two minutes worth of Super Bowl ad time, with 60 seconds allotted to run the full "1984" ad and two 30-second spots allotted for two Mac demo commercials. At Apple's behest, Chiat/Day's media department tried to sell off the ad time and managed to offload the two 30-second spots. With a minute of ad time left, Apple had two options: Air the two demo spots. Or 1984. "It came down to the close of business on Friday before the Super Bowl," Hayden recalls. The decision was, of course, to air 1984. Who made the decision? Steve Jobs. The full article contains a lot more behind the scenes info and is well worth checking out. Lastly, here's some "1984" trivia to impress or bore your friends with this Sunday. Contrary to popular belief, "1984" did not air only once. In truth, the full 60 second ad originally aired on December 31, 1983 on a TV station in Twin Falls, Idaho. Why? So the ad would be eligible for that year's advertising awards. Furthermore, 30-second versions of the 1-minute ad were later aired during other television programs.
When Steve Jobs played Dating Game host with Bill Gates as a contestant [Video]
Thirty years ago last Friday, Steve Jobs introduced the Macintosh to the world. About three months before that, Jobs took the stage at an Apple sales conference where he hosted the "Macintosh Software Dating Game." As revolutionary as the Mac was, it was important for Apple to get the support of big software players in order to see the platform to truly take off. That said, the game's three contestants represented software companies that were extremely important in the '80s: Fred Gibbons from the Software Publishing Corporation, Mitchel Kapor from Lotus and a very young Bill Gates, who was wearing some comically big glasses. This video is where Gates famously heaps praise upon the Mac. When Jobs asks him if the Mac will be the third industry standard, Gates replies: Well to create a new standard it takes something that's not just a little bit different. It takes something that's really new and really captures people's imagination. And the Macintosh, of all the machines I've ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard. Earlier in the video, Gates said that Microsoft in 1984 expects to get half of its revenues from Macintosh software, a statement which elicited a ridiculously giddy smile from Jobs. Now what's interesting is that Jobs had given Gates early access to the Mac in exchange for a promise that Microsoft wouldn't ship "any software that used a mouse until at least one year after the first shipment of the Macintosh." That tidbit comes straight from Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original Mac team members. Just one month later, however, Microsoft demoed Windows 1.0, mouse and all, at Comdex 1983. According to Hertzfeld, Jobs "went ballistic" when he found out. And to think, Jobs and Gates were as thick as thieves just a few weeks earlier. Following what Jobs likely categorized as a betrayal was a Jobs/Gates confrontation you may have heard before, with Gates defends Microsoft's actions. As Hertzfeld recalls it: "You're ripping us off!" Steve shouted, raising his voice even higher. "I trusted you, and now you're stealing from us!" But Bill Gates just stood there coolly, looking Steve directly in the eye, before starting to speak in his squeaky voice. "Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it." Incidentally, before Jobs and Gates took the stage at the 2007 AllThingsD Conference, the dating game video clip was shown to the entire audience.
A 1984 view of the Mac: It's a 'calculated risk.' IBM will remain the standard
New technological advances are often accompanied by a chorus of naysayers who, for whatever reason, are so fixated on the status quo that they can't possibly fathom anything different from taking hold. As a company with a number of game-changing products to its name, Apple is all too familiar with these naysayers who are so often focused on what a new product lacks that they often ignore the potential it creates. We saw it with the iPad; we saw it with the iPhone; and we saw it with the iPod. But apprehension and skepticism of Apple's technological innovations existed long before Apple began attaching the "i" prefix to its products. Even the original a Mac, a product that completely leapfrogged the competition and catalyzed a computing revolution, wasn't immune from the skeptical glare of critics. Case in point, this NPR broadcast from January 25, 1984, recorded just one day after the Mac was introduced. Writer Peter McWilliams, author of The Personal Computer Book (published in 1982), called the Macintosh "a mistake." The program features an interview with computer expert McWilliams who espouses a pessimistic take on Apple that we still see today. What you get is a screen, a 9 inch screen, you get a keyboard without any numeric keypad on it, you get 128k of ram, which is internal disk storage, and you get a 3.5 inch disk drive. A great deal of this stuff is non-standard. ... The standard is 5 and a quarter inch, and they've made a corporate decision that the 3.5 inch drive is going to make it. i don't see it myself. This whole computer is a calculated risk on Apple's part. If the world is ready to accept a brand new standard, this machine will make it. If it's not, the machine won't make it. And it will have certain specialized applications like in architectural firms and so forth. But on the whole, it's gambling that the world is ready to accept a new standard. My personal point of view is that the world is not. The standard for personal computers is the IBM standard and it will continue to remain such for quite some time. Has anyone ever bet against Steve Jobs and won?
How video footage of Steve Jobs' Mac introduction was 'found' after 20 years
You've all seen the video. And given that we just celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Mac, you may have viewed the video a couple of times just in the past few days. I'm referring, of course, to the famous clip of a 29-year-old Steve Jobs, bow tie and all, introducing the Mac to the world. There's an interesting backstory to the above video, however, that most people likely aren't aware of. As it turns out, the video above was recorded by Apple employee Scott Knaster from a TV broadcast in 1984. And for the next 20 years, the video just sat on a shelf. But when Andy Hertzfeld, who worked on the original Mac, was putting together Folklore.org, Knaster told Hertzfeld that he had video of Jobs' Mac introduction in his possession. Hertzfeld then watched the video to aid him in writing an article about the event and soon thereafter came calls to put the video up online. One looming problem, though, was that the video was recorded in Beta. In a recently published and must-read blogpost for any Apple history buff, Knaster writes: After a few days I did actually hear from someone who wanted to digitize the ancient video. He was a video producer in Germany who went by the name majo. This guy had a website with a bunch of Mac stuff and other things. majo promised to digitize the video and post it for anyone to watch and copy (this was before YouTube). For some reason, despite the fact that I had never met him and he was 5,000 miles away, I decided to trust him. I put the precious videotape in a mailer and shipped it off to majo in Germany. And the rest, as they say, is history. The video went up on majo's site on January 24, 2005, offering the masses their first glimpse at a vintage Jobs product introduction. Now seeing as this was before the dawn of YouTube, and seeing as how the clip was 20MB, Majo's site was overwhelmed with traffic and crashed. Indeed, if you check out the Slashdot page the story appeared on back in 2005, the majority of the comments involve people talking about site mirrors and torrenting the video. Make sure to check out Scott Knaster's blog entry for the full story. It makes for a great stroll down memory lane. It also reminds us how friggin' amazing YouTube is. Also be aware that the full Mac intro presentation on January 24, 1984 was part of a larger annual shareholders meeting that lasted a whopping 1.5 hours, beginning interestingly enough with a special message from then Apple CEO John Sculley. If you have some time to kill, indulge in the video below. We recently highlighted comments from Sculley who revealed in a commemorative post that Jobs was beyond nervous and scared moments before taking the stage; rather understandable given that he was just a 29-year-old making a world-changing announcement. No pressure. As a final note, if you can't get enough of Mac nostalgia, be sure to check out this never before seen video of Steve Jobs and the original Mac team demoing the Mac in public for the first time.
Never-before-seen video of Steve Jobs and the original Mac team demoing the Mac in public for the first time
Thirty years ago last Friday, Steve Jobs unveiled the Mac at Apple's annual shareholders meeting. In light of this momentous anniversary, a never-before-seen video has emerged showcasing Jobs, just a few days later, demoing the Mac to a public audience for the first time. Harry McCracken of Time was able to track down the following video, which features Jobs, along with key members of the original Macintosh team, presenting, showing off and demoing the Mac to The Boston Computer Society in late January 1984. Touting the Mac as the third computing industry milestone, Jobs was all smiles as he showed off Apple's latest creation. Dripping with nostalgia, the video is a must-watch for anyone with even a passing interest in the history of the Mac. What's really incredible is that the video really drives home just how revolutionary the Mac was at the time. For instance, when Bill Atkinson demos MacPaint, it's really great to see the crowd marvel with applause at graphics functions that we've come to take for granted. At over an hour and a half, the video is long, but well worth watching in its entirety. There's a whole lot to take in, from Jobs talking about how the Mac was the first computer ever designed to be sold to tens of millions of people to a Q&A session where a panel of Apple employees (including Woz and Andy Hertzfeld) fields questions as far ranging as the future of the Apple II, the status of the Apple III and whether or not there will ever be a Mac with more than 128k in one drive. There's even a question, understandable at the time, asking if the mouse was more of a feature or a handicap. The panel answers that, with experience, they far prefer using a mouse over a keyboard. Also worth checking out is a great clip (at about the 37:40 mark) of Jobs comparing the revolutionary nature of the Mac to the telephone. Now, if you go back about a hundred years, to the 1880s, there were approximately [20,000 to 25,000] trained telegraph operators in the United States. And you really could send a telegram between Boston and San Francisco, and it'd take about three or four hours and go through the relay stations. It really worked. And it was a great breakthrough in technology that had been around for about 30 or 40 years. And there were some people that talked about putting a telegraph machine on every desk in America to improve productivity. Now what those people didn't know was that about the same time, Alexander Graham Bell filed the original patents for the telephone -- a breakthrough in technology. Because putting a telegraph on every desk in America to improve technology wouldn't have worked. People wouldn't have spent the 20 to 40 to a hundred hours to learn Morse code. They just wouldn't have done it. But with the telephone, within 10 years there were over 200,000 telephones on desks in America. It was a breakthrough, because people already knew how to use it. It performed the same basic function, but radical ease of use. And in addition to just letting you type in the words or click in the words, it let you sing. It let you intone your sentences to really get your meaning across. We are at that juncture in our industry right now. There are people suggesting that we should put a current generation box on everyone's desk to improve productivity. A telegraph, if you will. And we don't believe that. We don't think it'll work. People will not read those damn 400-page WordStar manuals. They won't carry around these cards in their pockets with 150 slash-W-Zs. They're not going to do it. And what we think we have here is the first telephone. And in addition to letting you do the old spreadsheets and word processing, it lets you sing. It lets you make pictures. It lets you make diagrams where you cut them and past them into your documents. It lets you put that sentence in Bold Helvetica or Old English, if that's the way you want to express yourself. There's also a clip (at around the 27-minute mark) where we see trusty ol' Bill Gates singing the Mac's praises. In the software business, volume is everything. You want to be able to sell into a large set of machines. Microsoft is choosing this Apple Macintosh environment because over time the other environments won't be interesting Make sure to watch the video and remember to head on over to Time, where McCracken details how he was able to get ahold of the rare video clip in the first place. It's quite a story.
Apple puts up celebratory posters with names of every Apple employee, past and present
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Mac, Apple this past Friday really went all out, a noteworthy feat for a company that doesn't tend to bask in the glory of their past successes. Apple's website, for instance, has been completely revamped and now features an engaging look back at 30 years of Mac computing. What's more, Apple CEO Tim Cook, along with other Apple executives, made themselves available for rare interviews with Macworld and ABC News. And last but not least, Apple on Friday evening held a good ole' fashioned party on its campus featuring a live performance from the band OneRepublic. "We don't spend a lot of time looking back," Cook said as he addressed throngs of Apple employees. "We spend all of our time looking forward and working on the next big thing. But we're making an exception for today, because 30 years ago today, the Macintosh was born." One of the cooler, though perhaps subtle, things Apple did to commemorate the Mac's 30th birthday was to put out commemorative posters that contain the names of every single employee that ever worked at Apple in order of their badge number. There are reportedly 10 giant posters in all. The text at the bottom of each poster reads: A promise to everyone, kept by every one of us. On January 24, 1984, we made a promise to take the power of technology from the few and put it in the hands of many. This series of ten poster recognizes all those who have helped turn that promise into reality. In other words, every single person who has ever worked at Apple. Apple Engineering Project Manager Michael Jurewitz posted a photo of one of them. It's hard to tell form this distance, but the poster is comprised of the names of past and present Apple employees. Thankfully, Jurewitz goes in for a closer look. And what prime placement, right on the leaf! There I am! #30YearsOfMac pic.twitter.com/gQ9P1UP1CU - Michael Jurewitz (@Jury) January 24, 2014 You can check out some brief concert footage along with Tim Cook's remarks from the event over here, courtesy of Instagrammer Mindy Hu.
What was your first Mac? Your favorite Mac of all time? TUAW staff answers all
Thirty years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced the world to the Macintosh, a computer that without question fundamentally changed the face of computing. Since that momentous day 30 years ago, Apple has released an inordinate number of Mac models. Though the Apple brand is now associated with words like "hip" and "cool" -- we can thank the iPod for that -- there was a time when using a Mac was decidedly uncool. Consequently, people who proactively sought out a Mac and were willing to pay extra to get a whole lot more are likely to look back at their first Mac with a nostalgic lens. Even those who first came to the Mac during the Steve Jobs Part 2 era are likely to remember their first Mac with fondness. Because after all, once you go Mac, you never go back. That being the case, we thought it'd be fun and interesting to ask the talented folks here at TUAW a pair of questions to commemorate 30 years of all things Macintosh. 1) What was the first Mac you ever owned? 2) What is your favorite Mac of all-time? Michael Rose 128K original, baby. And, as all true Mac users know, the best Mac of all time pound-for-pound was the SE/30. Although the 15" retina MBP is a close call for best ever. Chris Rawson The first Mac I ever used was the SE/30. My middle school computer lab bought about 20 of them in 1990 to replace the ancient Apple ][e beasties we'd been using before. This was my first encounter with a computer running a GUI, and it was a revelation. I instantly felt that was how computers should have been all along. No more typing obscure nonsense into a CLI to open a file -- just double click an icon, and boom. No more spending an hour coding in BASIC to draw a blocky, pixelated image -- just open Paint and start drawing lines, circles, etc in real time. It felt like the possibilities were endless... so naturally, all our computer instructor did with them was use them to teach us how to type. Oh well. My favorite Mac is probably the one I own now: my trusty, crusty, rusty 17" 2008 MacBook Pro. I've had that thing for close to six years, and it's still humming along. I occasionally consider upgrading, but I've never really felt the need. My iPad Air is pretty much my primary device now; I mostly only use my Mac for media streaming to my Apple TV, or for the "heavy lifting" sort of stuff that the iPad isn't so great at, like Photoshop. Mel Martin I had the original Mac back in 1984. It was a wonder but I absolutely hated swapping floppies back and forth to write a letter or report. My old Apple II didn't have that affliction. I think my favorite Mac was the Mac II that first allowed color graphics. What a concept! Megan Lavey-Heaton First Mac I ever used: Graphite iMac Favorite Mac model: My favorite Mac tends to be whichever one I'm using at the moment, though I have all sorts of love for the current-generation MacBook Air. It's really pushed the envelope regarding power and being able to tote around a laptop without breaking your back (or the bank). Kelly Hodgkins The first Mac I used was the Classic, which was installed in my college computer lab. The first one I owned was the Power Macintosh 6100, which was a going away present from my family when I entered grad school. My favorite Mac has to be the MacBook Air, 2013 model. The small size, powerful performance and long battery life are a great combo. Even with the base model that has 4GB of RAM, I haven't encountered any limitations that made me regret my purchase. Dave Caolo The first Mac that I ever used was an SE/30. My first job out of college was teaching, and there was an SE/30 on the desk in the office. I can remember being struck by how small it was. My college had mammoth PCs in its computer lab. I also remember thinking the display was razor sharp, which is hilarious today. The first Mac I ever bought was a 333Mhz iMac G3. Strawberry. I loved that thing. I dearly loved my PowerBook 150. When I was teaching we collected and analyzed a LOT of data with Microsoft Excel. That old PowerBook ran Excel 4 like a dream. Plus, it was a laptop! A computer that you could carry around! What decadence! Victor Agreda Jr My dad bought a SE/30, which I used to connect to the Internet and download a virus (it was in a Monty Python sound set). That same SE/30 sits in my bedroom today, a victim of a fried capacitor (which can be fixed) -- it was upgraded to allow an external color monitor and had, at one time, a Jaz and Zip drive connected to it. This machine was used well into the 1990s! My first personal Mac was a Centris 610 with Apple's ergonomic keyboard. The less said about that pizza box abomination the better. Steve Sande 1. Although I went to a NYNEX Business Center the day the Mac first showed up in Denver to see it for myself, I didn't actually buy one until December of 1984. At that point, those "business sales" folks at NYNEX Business Center were doing a "Test Drive A Mac" promotion in which you could borrow a Mac for a few days if you filled out a credit application. I did so, and ended up buying the machine I brought home. It was one of the initial Fat Macs, a 512K model, and I bought an Imagewriter printer to go along with it - I think the final bill was over $3500. A little over a year after I got it, Apple came out with a revised ROM chip that made it a 512KE and bumped the capacity of the main floppy drive to 800 KB. I really loved the Mac's interface and the friendliness of the machine. I didn't love the swapping of floppies, but I was too cheap to buy a second disk drive considering how much I spent on the computer in the first place. My worst experience with floppy-swapping came with Lotus Jazz, which was an office suite that was almost unusable. If I remember correctly, I got my first hard drive - an Apple HD 20 - in early 1986 because of that. By the way, that 20 MB drive cost me about $1500. 2. My favorite Mac of all time has to be the Mac IIcx that I got in 1989. This was my first color Mac, it was much more compact than the Mac II (and less expensive), and even better, it had a built-in hard drive (I think 80 MB?). Awesome machine, and I used it for years while I was running my old Mac BBS "MAGIC". But now? I absolutely love my late 2012 27" iMac -- 3.5 GHz quad-core i7, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB Fusion Drive. Damn, this thing is fast. Kelly Guimont I spent a LOT of time on a ][e, for a bunch of reasons, but since that doesn't count as a Mac I'd have to say the first Mac I used regularly was the Classic. The first one I owned/bought myself was the PowerBook 1400cs. And that's also the answer to my favorite machine. I loved my Powerbook SO much. Slide off the speaker grill, lift up the keyboard, and BAM! Innards. It was awesome. I only miss swapping stuff out of expansion bays because I had a battery that fit in the floppy/CD slot that was awesome. I do not, and will never EVER miss the HDI SCSI connector. Seriously. Ilene Hoffman My first Mac was the Macintosh 128. After learning on PCs, it felt like a toy and at first I found it insulting to use. After discovering all the neat stuff I could do with the fonts and writing though, I changed my mind. I still have it, although I upgraded it to a Mac Plus, and as of 2 years ago when I fired it up, it still worked! I disagree with Mike re: the SE/30. The best Mac by far was the Mac IIci. Versatile, robust, it was awesome! And it ran forever. My second favorite Mac and favorite laptop: the Pismo! That was a G3 FW machine and it also still runs, as opposed to my G4 Powerbook. Michael Grothaus 1. The G4 Cube. I was a Windows guy, but I fell in love with OS 9 the moment I used it. Unfortunately, my Cube was defective and only lasted for a few weeks. I returned it to Mac Mall and bought a G4 tower instead. I fell in love with how easy that was to upgrade. 2. The current 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. Thin, light, insanely fast, super long battery life, and ultra portable with a large screen. Everything a writer on the go could ask for. TJ Luoma My first experience using a computer was an Apple IIe that was in a lab at my school. I think I was in 8th grade at the time, although I might have been a high school freshman. The only thing I can remember doing on it is writing a program in BASIC (I presume) that filled up the screen with random colored blocks. And the only reason I remember that is that it impressed a high school cheerleader who was there in the lab at the same time. (Heather... something...) In college (www.allegheny.edu, same alma mater as Marco Arment, although I was a few years ahead of him) we used NeXT Computers. That was where I had my first real experience with a modern computer and what it could do. It's also where I started to learn how to help other people use computers. And where I started tinkering with Terminal :-) When I graduated, a friend I had met online gave me his NeXTStation (he had recently purchased an Intel machine). My first Mac of the modern era was a PowerBook G4 which I believe was the _last_ Mac made before the switch to Intel was announced. (Timing has always been my forté in life.) Richard Gaywood 1. I am pleasingly non-traditional for an Apple blogger. I hated pre-Unix Macs. I used them a few times, but I despised the ugly, uncomfortable mouse, the unfamiliar GUI, the weird UK keyboard layout, the awful memory management model, and various other things that offended my nerdy sensibilities. I was a DOS user from the late '80s to '98 or so, reluctantly switched to Windows, then gradually spent more time in Linux until 2001. I also dallied with Solaris and BSD. By that point I was doing everything bar gaming in Linux, although I had a job on the side supporting Windows at a local firm. When I started my PhD, Cardiff University offered to buy me a laptop. A colleague had recently switched to OS X (10.1 then I think) and was raving about it. I spent some time with his machine and convinced myself I could get comfortable with this and asked Cardiff to order me a pretty stacked 12" iBook. I loved that little computer. It had most of the Unix tools I wanted out of the box, and could easily compile and install anything else I wanted to add. It didn't have the hassles that Linux still put me through with things like printer and scanner drivers or configuring graphics settings, none of which were insurmountable but combined had eventually ground me down and put me off Linux on the desktop. And the form factor was sublime: tiny, light, good battery life, and it instantly and reliably went into and out of standby when I closed and opened the lid. I'd never seen a Windows computer that handled that well. Plus it had wifi, which was moderately exotic at the time. That iBook used to hang around in the lounge of the shared house I lived in and was quickly nicknamed "the small white Internet" because it was the computer we all reached for when we needed to look at something on the web. Everyone liked it (and several of those people own Macs now). Sadly I quite literally worked it to death during my PhD. Four logic board faults due to a manufacturing defect (cheers, Apple), the last of which came -- the night before I submitted my final draft -- outside the extended warranty period. 2. I've only owned four in total: that 2001 iBook, a 1999-era PowerMac G4 I inherited, a 2008 MacBook Pro, and my 27" 2011 iMac. The iMac is by far the most desirable, I love the huge screen and raw power. But the Mac I am fondest of was that iBook. You never forget your first, right? Yoni Heisler My first Mac was the trusty and understandably overlooked Mac LC, originally released in late 1990. I was hooked immediately. My favorite Mac of all-time isn't so much a specific model as it is an entire series, namely Apple's line of aluminum iMacs. Though Apple has made subtle changes to the design over the past few years, I think the aluminum iMac is the epitome of desktop computing. I'm not sure how Apple can really improve upon a design that's essentially just a giant monitor. What was your first/favorite Mac? But enough about us, let's talk about YOU! Please speak up in the comments below and reminisce about your first Mac, your favorite Mac, or perhaps, your most hated Mac.
Steve Jobs was beyond scared before his triumphant 1984 Mac introduction
Steve Jobs was a master showman with an unparalleled ability to introduce a new product with flair and panache. I personally think his 2007 iPhone introduction was a public speaking triumph, setting a new bar for product announcements. This Friday marks the 30-year anniversary of another of Jobs' great product announcements: the 1984 unveiling of the Macintosh. If you take a look at Jobs' Mac introduction, it's vintage Jobs to the core. Confident and charming, Jobs was enthusiastic and all smiles as he showed off the latest and greatest from Apple. But behind the scenes, before taking taking the stage, Jobs was beyond scared about the moment that stood before him. After all, it's not every day one gets up and announces a machine that would forever change personal computing. In an article penned for CNET, former Apple CEO John Sculley writes that while Jobs was nothing but grace once he took the stage, it was an entirely different story behind the scenes. You may be surprised to learn that as Steve and I stood behind the curtain moments before he was to go on stage, Steve was terrified. "I'm scared sh*tless," Steve whispered to me. "This is the most important moment of my entire life. Everything I have dreamed about and worked on for years will actually happen in the next few moments." ... Steve started to shake almost uncontrollably. He was wearing a gray blazer, white shirt, and a green bowtie. His black hair was long and flowing. At just 27 years old, he looked handsome and more like a Hollywood celebrity than a Silicon Valley geek. "I am so scared," he repeated. "I'm not sure I can talk." I grabbed him firmly in a big hug. "Get over it," I said. "You are Steve Jobs. You have told us you are about to change the world. Now go out there and do it." And change the world he did. Of course, the Jobs/Sculley friendship would soon collapse on account of dwindling Mac sales during the 1984 holiday shopping season. Sculley blamed Jobs for lower-than-expected Mac sales while Jobs in turn blamed Sculley's poor management skills. By May of 1985, following a few months of corporate in-fighting and an attempted coup by Jobs, he was officially relieved of his duties as Apple VP and general manager of the Mac department. A few months later, he would leave Apple altogether, whereupon he would found NeXT.
