Macintosh Folklore Radio

From the days before the hot-selling PowerBook 100 series, David Pogue reviews a sleeker, less expensive alternative to Apple’s 1989 Macintosh Portable. Original text from Macworld, September 1990. Enjoy some gorgeous photos of the original Outbound Laptop System from applerooter.net.

NuTek’s years of labour finally bear fruit–kind of. The trail of NuTek coverage stops cold after early 1994. We don’t know exactly what happened but this review provides some strong hints. Original text from Macworld, February 1994. The review states you can toggle between the Duet’s Mac and PC modes from the front panel. Nothing is labelled “Mac/PC” in the advertisements. Did they change the silkscreen for production models? Wouldn’t it be funny if they just wired up the turbo button or the keyboard lock switch and left the labels as is to cut costs? Benjamin Chou is still around, helping startups.

NuTek’s plan for Macintosh World Domination: a clean room implementation of the ROMs and System 6, cheap hardware, and enough investor money to survive the inevitable legal assault from Apple. Macworld speculated a Macintosh clone with a 68030 CPU, colour monitor and hard disk could cost just $600USD at a time when lowly Macintosh LC systems sold for $2700USD. The faster 32-bit data path IIsi sold for $3700 in complete configurations, and the more expandable IIci, $6,000USD and up. Original text from Macworld, April 1991. Advertisements for the NuTek One and Duet. Why use custom chips instead of off-the-shelf parts? IBM PC clone production went into high gear thanks to PC-compatible BIOS vendors like Phoenix and chipset manufacturers like Chips and Technologies. Did you know C&T founder Gordon Campbell went on to co-found 3dfx, the Voodoo company? Savour the varying quality of different IBM PC compatible chipsets. John Warnock gave Apple a good needling in this article, likely because of the ongoin

InfoWorld (13-May-1985) profiles Andy Hertzfeld one year after his departure from Apple. Original text by Kevin Strehlo.

Steve Jobs says of the Mac’s logic board “The lines are too close together!” while Burrell Smith surreptitiously adds some means of expansion. Original text from folklore.org: PC Board Aesthetics, Diagnostic Port. Jef Raskin: Design Considerations for an Anthropophilic Computer Jerry Manock/Jef Raskin/Bill Atkinson “convection enhancement device” quote from “The Macintosh at 20” panel hosted at Macworld Boston 2004. Fiennes on management’s tentative request for iPhone motherboard layout refinement. Pixar on attention to detail: “We sand the undersides of the drawers.” Adrian Black showing the 512k expansion decoder circuit to the left of the 68000. MacGUI’s detailed history of Mac 128K memory upgrades: the Dr. Dobbs article, the early 128k adopter outrage, the high list prices for the Apple 512k upgrade kit. MacGUI’s collection of original Macintosh memory upgrade boards. Steve from Mac84TV tries out a 3DFX Voodoo2 card for the Rev A iMac’s Mezzanine slot.

Burn a NeXT Cube, they said. It’ll be easy, they said. Original text from Simson Garfinkel. Simson maintains a complete NeXTWorld archive on his website. Photos from the actual burning. Rich Page quote from Part 1 of his CHM Oral History. CHM interview with Dan Ruby, NeXTWORLD Magazine’s driving force and editor-in-chief.

Steve Hayman and diskzero recall the death and unlikely rebirth of NeXT. Original text from blog.hayman.net (Remembering NeXT’s Black Monday, Apple & Next 25 Years Ago Today). Additional text from diskzero on the orange website. Thanks to thj for the submission! Audio clips from these interviews packed with insight into Apple’s resurgence in the 2000s: Avie Tevanian: CHM interview video (1, 2) and transcript (1, 2) Jon Rubinstein: CHM interview video (1, 2) and transcript NeXTEVNT 2015 with Michael Johnson, Doug Menuez, Peter Graffagino and Don Melton Scott Forstall at CHM’s iPhone Tenth Anniversary panel (second half) What happened to Dell’s WebObjects-based online store? (left/right channels out of phase; use headphones) Watch perhaps the coldest crowd ever put in front of Steve Jobs as they take in a demonstration of a flight booking web application built in WebObjects running on Windows NT in 1996–at a Microsoft conference, no less. [originally hosted at

Sheldon Breiner (1936-2019) gives Apple a taste of its own medicine. Sheldon’s bio at breiner.com. Stanford Alumni Magazine on Sheldon’s quest to find a giant 3,000 year-old Olmec head. Yes, that’s the late Gerry Davis mentioned in Triumph of the Nerds. Gerry Davis on his relationship with Gary Kildall in his own words. Not very much ado about Symantec’s Bedrock: [1, 2, 3, 4] Original website for Altura Software’s Mac2Win framework. Lee Lorenzen CHM interview covering Xerox PARC, Digital Research, GEM, Ventura Publisher, Fractal Design Painter and the birth of Mac2Win. Developer Jonathan Hoyle on a Mac2Win easter egg. Jonathan Hoyle grilling Steve Jobs about Apple’s developer predicament in 1997. (Hoyle identifies himself in other WWDC 1997 sessions.) Original text from Macworld, November 1992.

Don Melton, former WebKit and Safari team lead at Apple, recalls some close encounters with Steve Jobs. Original text from Don’s website. Don did a wonderful interview about his computer journey before, during, and after heading the Safari project on episode 11 of the Debug podcast. Steve Jobs Quote Compilation Index WWDC 2004: “Our competitors buy the panels we reject” All Things D 2007, Bill Gates: “He’s really pursued that with incredible taste and elegance… I’d do a lot to have Steve’s taste” Game Changers, Guy Kawasaki: “It’s a perfect match because he’s a showman who can really introduce a product, and he has great products to introduce” WWDC 1997 Keynote: “The line of code that a developer can write the fastest, the line of code the developer can maintain the cheapest, and the line of code that never breaks for the user is the line of code the developer never had to write.” MWSF 2001 (Titanium PowerBook G4 intro): “We have the most powerful notebooks in the world … but they have the sex. We wan

Guy suggests Christmas gifts for figures in the Macintosh world circa 1993. Apple Board of Directors interview clip from the Macworld Boston 1997 keynote, the most depressing Apple keynote on record excluding every smarmy self-congratulatory Tim Cook keynote ever. Hard Drive by David Pogue is out of print but available from used booksellers. Original text from Macworld, January 1994.

Chris Espinosa on… discovering computers in high school the Homebrew Computer Club unusual user group personalities “after school Apple II demo time” at Apple headquarters the mad dash to rewrite the Apple II manual the product documentation conundrum the open secret about the LaserWriter driver in early 1985 how Caroline Rose and others drove simplicity in Macintosh software development Original text from the “Making the Macintosh” exhibit at Stanford University Library. Original tape available if you’re in the neighbourhood and feel like preserving it and uploading it to archive.org. :-) More Chris Espinosa: on Twitter and Tumblr with some early Apple history tidbits [1, 2, 3]. My favourite: Chris gently walking you through an upgrade to System 7 while highlighting its advantages over Windows 3.0.

Chris Espinosa tries to build a Steve Jobs-approved calculator. Original text from folklore.org. My favourite classic MacOS calculator was ProCalc. While trying to find ProCalc, I found PowerCalc by John Mauro who went on to co-invent Gorilla Glass, used in every iPhone and iPad.

Testing software on real world users often yields surprising results. Origin of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines video with Chris Espinosa reading Bruce Tognazzini’s “Apple Presents Apple” user testing post-mortem. Original text from folklore.org.

Early Macintosh developer documentation had a bit of a rocky start. Caroline Rose also did some technical documentation work for NeXT. Caroline’s website is hosted by Andy Hertzfeld/differnet.com. Outro clip from Joanna Hoffman’s delightful interview with the Computer History Museum which you should at least read through, if only for the story of her sneaking into and out of Russia without official clearance. [video 1/2/3, transcript 1/2/3] Original text from folklore.org.

Apple’s marketing poets meet Mercedes-Benz, Latin, and Sylvester Stallone. Original text from Macworld Magazine, August 1993.

Which Mac is the current bestseller? Is Apple giving up on industrial design? Why did you screw Quadra 900 customers by introducing the 950 just five months after the 900? Editor-in-Chief of Macworld Jerry Borrell sits down for some Q&A with Eric Harslem, Apple’s Vice President of Desktop Computers in 1992. Simpler times: an Apple VP discussing future product plans and openly admitting mistakes, in this case with the Mac Portable. You don’t see Tim Cook apologizing for the butterfly keyboard or the abysmal state of OS X from 2009 onwards, do you? Come back, Eric! Original text from Macworld Magazine, September 1992. Eric in 2012 speaking about his donation to the Mathworks Endowment at Texas State University. Some months after this interview was published, Eric, along with Apple’s head of PowerBook development, jumped ship to Dell in 1993 to help turn around its notebook division. The Apple New Product Process (ANPP) lives on even though Jonathan Ive did his best to prioritize thinness and visual

Guy boils down your Macintosh purchase decision to three choices from Apple’s bloated 1993 product lineup. Apple has arguably suffered from The Ginza Syndrome(tm) since the days of the Apple II. :-) Original text from Macworld Magazine, June 1993.

This is not Macintosh-related whatsoever but it’s Guy Kawasaki, it was in Macworld, and he had some fun flying in an F-15 fighter jet. Original text from Macworld Magazine, July 1993. Get your own copy of The Macintosh Way at used booksellers. Watch a Let’s Play of F/A-18 Hornet in an emulator or play it on your iOS device. I had a copy back in the day. I knew nothing about flight simulators and could not figure out how to do anything, not even exit the game. Flailing at the keyboard, I went from zero to takeoff because I accidentally hit Delete which fired up the afterburners. That was pretty cool.

It’s late 1993, Apple is sinking, PowerPC Macs haven’t arrived yet, the Macintosh system software is showing its age, and John Sculley is out. Incoming CEO Michael Spindler to the rescue! Guy Kawasaki’s advice for Apple’s then-new leader. If you’re having trouble falling asleep, Sculley and Spindler talking about Apple’s plan for the 1990s should help. Original text from Macworld Magazine, October 1993. Spindler introduction clip from the Power Macintosh Reseller Training video.

Listener request from Charkes (not a typo): more Guy Kawasaki! Here’s Guy on the pros and cons of working from home. Who the heck is Guy Kawasaki? Remember that in 1994, there was no way any MIS/IT manager would be caught dead letting Macintoshes in the door and onto their corporate network, there was not one but 20 major online electronic mail services worldwide, and Apple quoted PowerBook battery life at 2-3 hours. Original text from Macworld Magazine, June 1994.