Mac Folklore Radio

Order David Pogue’s “Apple: The First 50 Years”. Watch the livestreamed Apple 50th event at the Computer History Museum.

Original text by Konstantin Othmer and Bruce Leak for Apple’s develop! magazine, December 1992, March 1993, and June 1993. Apple’s MicroBug documentation: Technote TN1136. Running MacsBug on an alternate monitor: “Using Touch and Go Breakpoints with Two Monitors”. Spaceward Ho! for iPad and Classic MacOS. Original product website (broken). Watch a Let’s Play of Spaceward Ho! by Effing Controller who also has hilarious playthroughs of F/A-18 Hornet and Marathon. See also: Debugging Macintosh Software with Macsbug by Konstantin Othmer and Jim Straus.

Original text from Maclopedia. While I wasn’t looking, Frank Casanova parted ways with Apple in 2024. Whoops. John Buck’s book on Apple’s Advanced Technology Group, Inventing the Future, is worth your while. John is also on the fediverse. Stick around and you might pick up some extra dirt. Unedited versions of the Macintosh Quadra 700/900 launch, the Macintosh IIfx launch, and the WWDC 2004 announcement of QuickTime 7’s support for H.264.

Original text by Steve Hayman. NeXT Mail clips from the NeXT launch event in Tokyo and the NeXTSTEP Release 3.0 demo VHS tape.

Original text by Jecel Mattos de Assumpçao Jr, 1998. Rainer Brockerhoff, who also participated in the Unitron 512 project, provides additional background at Low End Mac. More about Brazil’s reserved market policy, a.k.a. the National Policy of Informatics. More about Jecel’s projects in this 2019 presentation about SmallTalk-oriented hardware and the Merlintec website. Our Friend The Computer discusses the political and financial circumstances surrounding the Unitron 512. As so often happens in weird corners of the Internet, people have somehow obtained copies of Unitron’s ROMs and put them under the microscope.

Original text by Tim Warner, Macworld, August 1995. Additional clone cancellation fallout information from Macworld, October 1997. Original Power Computing magazine ad. Clearly the Mac OS clone program failed due to the absence of discount furniture warehouse-style radio advertising. Gary Davidian: “As far as I know, nobody ever made a CHRP machine.” “Mr. OS/2” David Barnes talking about IBM’s intention to support Mac applications running on top of Workplace OS. IBM’s repeated attempts to run all existing OSes on top of one OS and one hardware architecture lead to the incorrect assumption that PowerPC Macintoshes would run DOS and Windows right out of the box. Insignia Solutions’ SoftWindows marketing department did what came naturally. The Motorola StarMax 4000-series motherboard, designed and manufactured entirely by Apple. Jean-Louis Gassee: “We used PReP as the basis for the design of the BeBox…”

Original text by Konstantin Othmer and Bruce Leak for Apple’s develop! magazine, May 1992 and June 1994. “These problems are supposed to be tough. If you don’t get a high score, at least you’ll learn interesting Macintosh trivia.” More about Bruce Leak’s time on the original QuickTime team. Gary Davidian PRAM stories from his CHM oral history (video, transcript). See also: Debugging Macintosh Software with Macsbug by Konstantin Othmer and Jim Straus.

Game Hall of Fame text by Steven Levy, Macworld January 1992. Review of Glider 4.0 by Toni Thompson, Macworld February 1992. I wonder if that’s the Toni Thompson who did the graphics for the Apple II version of Temple of Apshai? John Calhoun interview by Richard Moss at MacScene. Buy Richard’s book, The Secret History of Mac Gaming. Tanara Kuranov, a.k.a. Gamer Mouse covers games that helped make the Mac (and only the Mac) special. Glider Pro and Glider 4 playthroughs.

Original text by David Pogue, Macworld June 1996. The database review mentioned in this article might be one of these two. Review of the hilariously terrible Brother HL-8 printer and two (yes, two) attempts at Macintosh drivers for the HL-8. Review of the smoking hot Envisio Notebook Display Adapter (1992). Audio version. “If you’ve worked for the company, can you write the review? No.” Pogue found himself in a similar conundrum. His review of Finale 1.0 included the disclaimer, “Since writing this review in September 1988, David Pogue has become a paid consultant for Coda Music Software.” One reader applauded Macworld for this disclosure but still argued it was a conflict of interest. Pogue stated, “My future reviews for Macworld will not include music software,” though that was not to last very long. See his 1994/1995 reviews of AutoScore, Practica Musica, MOTU’s Performer, and Opcode Vision. I don’t recall and was unable to dig up any rebuttal ads targeting David Pogue. If anyone out there is in the know and feels like naming names, drop me a line and I’ll update this episode. David, are you reading this? :-)

Original text by John Calhoun. MacScene’s interview with John re: The History of Glider. Part 1, Part 2. Mr. Advisador for the Newton has been revived! Told you it was creepy. Original Newton version. The Computer Chronicles covers Glider at Macworld Boston 1994. Today, as back then, you’re not supposed to notice that the game was first released five years prior to this show airing; you’re supposed to be amazed that anyone is saying anything positive about the Mac at all. Yes indeed, Jeffrey Robbin, an Apple employee, wrote SoundJam, the Classic environment for Mac OS X, and Conflict Catcher. Casady and Greene turned out the lights in 2003. In their own words. Casady & Greene’s website in happier times.

Actions speak louder than words: a look at Apple’s extremely quiet Mac OS licensing program. Original text by Charles Piller. Macworld Boston 1994, Tim Bajarin: Apple has to either start licensing, or lower their prices. A DTK PowerPC 601 box running Windows NT/PowerPC at PC Expo 1994. TNPC and Mitac showing off PowerPC systems at COMDEX 1994. Heads of Mac OS licensing: Don Strickland’s website. In memoriam. Larry Lightman’s other business: Waffle-Crete. Do you suppose any Waffle Houses have been constructed with Waffle-Crete? Jon Rubinstein talks about disbanding NeXT and founding FirePower Systems, only to have IBM pull the rug out from underneath the whole PowerPC personal systems scene. (transcript, pages 53-58) Phil Schiller used to work for Macromedia? The Pioneer MPC-GX1 Macintosh clone lands in Mac84tv’s workshop. Windows NT/PowerPC on Macintosh PowerBook G3/G4 and iMac hardware: source code, video demos. Gary Davidian, developer of the 68K emulator that underpinned the Power Mac’s success, talks about CHRP and his time at Power Computing. (transcript, pages 33-41)

Original text by Jim Black. Previous John Carmack episode: The Steve Jobs Rollercoaster. Peter Graffagnino’s appearance at NeXTEVNT 2015. Peter is interviewed by fellow Pixar veteran Michael Johnson. Some of the original Mac team demonstrating Steve Jobs’ favourite hand gesture (scroll down). John Carmack’s appearance at Macworld San Francisco 1999. “The only thing you want to do with the Mac as a serious gamer is you wanna pull out the silly one button mouse and plug in a three button mouse pretty quick.” Steve Jobs Deer Hunter quote from Macworld New York 1998.

Apple’s licensing approach (ca. 1994-1997) is a bad idea. Original text by Steven Levy, Macworld January 1995. Andy Bechtolscheim quote about SPARC licensing and Macintosh clones: “Sun had a unified business… it wasn’t really selling separate software. … that whole notion of defining success [as] ‘other people adopt your thing’… Apple was criticized for being a closed system, then they licensed SuperMac … to build clones …. and the first thing Steve Jobs did when he came back to Apple was he killed all the clones, right? ‘cause if you cannot build a better system yourself, you don’t need the clones for sure, right?” Transcript. Guerrino de Luca’s time with Apple goes back to at least 1992 (appearance at 1m52s), included a stint at Claris, and ended shortly after Steve Jobs returned in 1997. Guerrino’s last appearance with Apple. Don’t worry; he did fine for himself–he went to Logitech and was its president and CEO until 2008. Guerrino bookending Apple’s System 7.5 promo video. Given Apple’s tendency to undergo frequent reorgs throughout the ’90s, Don Strickland did not last as head of licensing operations. Unfortunately Don passed away in 2022 though his website is still up. Compaq was a much more creative and technically significant company in its early days before it was forced to produce bargain basement PCs. Rod Canion’s excellent and highly entertaining (for nerds) book “Open” recounts the story. Power Computing only made it halfway to its goal of selling 100,000 Macs in its first year.

How Macintosh could have taken over the world. Original text by Guy Kawasaki, Macworld February 1994. Various 1993ish Apple commercials courtesy of RetroByte.

Why does System 7.5 take so long to start up? Original text by Steven Levy, Macworld April 1996. Avoid conflating Moore’s Law with Dennard scaling. 65scribe has an easily-digested summary of Dennard scaling in his extensive Power Mac G5 coverage.