tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80281507486800504612024-03-16T11:53:05.312-07:00Adjacent to Greatness<i>I've seen things you people would believe.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-46630755714318825182022-03-29T15:59:00.000-07:002024-01-23T21:55:21.581-08:00<p> </p><div class="left_inner_box_inn" style="background-image: url("http://cdn.mactech.com/sites/all/themes/custom_front/images/left_box_wraper.gif"); background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat-y; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666; float: left; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 18px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; text-size-adjust: auto; width: 601px;"><h1>Mac OS X Programming Secrets</h1><h2 style="padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">ADHOC/MacHack: I Love the Nightlife<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></h2><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;"><i>by Scott Knaster</i></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">If you're a Mac programmer, you've attended your share of computer conferences, such as Macworld Expo, Java One, and Apple WWDC. But unless you've been there, you've never experienced anything like ADHOC, the Advanced Developers Hands On Conference, formerly and still occasionally known as MacHack. ADHOC starts at midnight and takes place in the tourist mecca of Dearborn, Michigan, and those facts give you a good start toward understanding just how strange and wonderful ADHOC is.</p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">In this month's column, I'll describe my visit to ADHOC/MacHack 19, which took place July 21-24, 2004. Wrapped inside is some actual technical content, a nifty iPod project that isn't nearly as cool as Tim Monroe's program-your-iPod article a few issues ago, but that has the advantage of being actually real.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><h3><center>Day 0: It's Time To Start<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></center></h3><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">ADHOC begins on Thursday, but it's really Wednesday, and...well, I'll just let this exchange from the conference FAQ explain:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;"><b>Q: When should I be there?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></b></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;"><b>A: The best time to arrive is sometime on Wednesday before the conference begins. The conference begins at midnight, Thursday, which is really just a minute after 11:59 PM Wednesday. Don't get confused and think that you can arrive on Thursday. If you arrive on Thursday, you've already missed the keynote.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></b></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">So I got on a plane on Wednesday, in time to arrive and watch the keynote as Thursday began. My flight from San Jose to Chicago was late, of course, which managed to eat up my layover time at O'Hare almost perfectly. Due to a quirk in the universe, I was able to trade little-used frequent flier miles for a seat in first class, which meant more service, a bigger seat, and, I'm pretty sure, a higher quality of air freshener.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">I arrived in Detroit just late enough to have missed my chance to attend a baseball game, and headed to the glorious Holiday Inn Fairlane in Dearborn, home of ADHOC/MacHack.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;"><a href="http://www.adhocconf.com/index.html" style="color: #0e639f;">http://www.adhocconf.com/index.html</a></p><h3><center>Day 1: Night Fever</center></h3><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">I checked in at the hotel, leaving my cable-and-battery-laden bag in my room. I registered for the conference and happily greeted beloved organizers Carol Lynn and Maurita Plouff. Then I headed to the ballroom for the first event of the conference: the midnight keynote (plus pizza - there's a lot of junky-but-fun eating at this conference).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">This year's speaker was the famous David Pogue, star of books, the New York Times, and many a Macworld back page. The keynote was ostensibly about cool Mac tips and tricks, or something like that, but no MacHack keynote ever stays on track for long. You see, we nerds have no social graces, so as soon as the speaker begins, we start to "interact" with him - not by heckling, exactly, but by adding our own comments, stories, and questions.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">David said he was nervous, because he felt he was less technical than everybody in the audience, which he probably was. He thought he would have nothing to teach us, but he was wrong. Even when he revealed a tip that most members of the group already knew about - in one case, somebody knew about a tip because he was the programmer who had actually written the code for it - David stayed spontaneous and hilarious, and the crowd appreciated it. David dealt superbly with the ADHOC style of interactivity, listening to all comments and responding to them, even when they required him to change the ever-ambling course of his talk.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">At one point in the talk, some of us nerds decided we weren't multitasking enough, so we started interacting with David electronically. A couple of folks used iChat's Rendezvous feature to send notes to David while he was talking. I started fiddling with my Bluetooth-enabled phone and managed to bluejack David during his speech. He took it all in good humor, along with all the other geeky antics.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">David concluded after touring through a bunch of Mac OS X tips, lots of editorial comments, about a million jokes, and even a few of his well-known parody songs, including "Don't Cry For Me, Cupertino" and "The Girl I Met by E-mail". ADHOC keynotes go on for hours, and David finished up at an impressive 3:40 AM. David's presentation was wonderful, and enjoyed by all the geeks in attendance.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;"><a href="http://www.davidpogue.com/songs.html" style="color: #0e639f;">http://www.davidpogue.com/songs.html</a></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">One of ADHOC's oft-repeated mottos is "Sleep is for the weak and sickly", but I prefer a little preventative rest to avoid becoming weak and sickly. So after hanging out post-keynote until about 4:30, I headed off to bed.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><h3><center>Day 2: We Belong To The Night<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></center></h3><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">One of the Holiday Inn Fairlane's finest and most important features is the superthick blackout curtains in the rooms, which prevent any trace of sunlight entering to disturb sleep. Taking advantage of these wonderful curtains, which were probably installed specifically for our little conference, I slept until the still-early time of 10:30, when I had to prepare for the ADHOC session I was presenting on writing books at 11:00. I was told that I would have few attendees at that early hour, but that more folks would trickle in as we approached noon (nobody wants to sleep through a meal). So, in the spirit of the conference, I decided to present the session backwards, beginning with Q & A, then the summary and miscellaneous info, and the important stuff at the end. This worked out OK - everybody understood and appreciated my meager attempt at adding entertainment value.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">After lunch, I started to think about working on my hack project. In previous MacHacks, the soul of the conference was the attendee hack projects. People at the conference were encouraged to cook up some weird and fun programming project while they were there - something they probably wouldn't find time to work on while back at home in the real world. On the third night, attendees would get a chance to show off their work in a marathon hack show, featuring MacHack-style interactivity. The final night featured the awards banquet, at which contest honcho Scott Boyd bestowed weird and appropriate prizes on all participants - last year I got a bag of rocks.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;"><a href="http://www.hax.com/MacHack/HackContest.html" style="color: #0e639f;">http://www.hax.com/MacHack/HackContest.html</a></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">For a variety of reasons, the final hack contest took place in 2003. This year's conference featured a reasonable facsimile called the ADHOC Labs Showcase. Although the name, details, and traditions changed, the important bits - attendees hacking, showing off their work, and receiving awards - were pretty much the same. Everyone at ADHOC is encouraged to create a hack, even the non-programmers. For example, Mac maven Adam Engst hacks the hotel itself by hiding (sometimes in plain sight) a four-foot wooden stake somewhere, which stays in the hotel until he can retrieve it the following year.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">As a professional explainer, I'm not really a programmer, and I had never attempted a hack in my 3 previous MacHacks. This year was going to be different: I wanted to hack the iPod.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">Although some hack purists insist on waiting until Friday afternoon (that is, the last minute) to start working on their hacks, I was much more cautious. I wimpily started on my project with more than a day to spare.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">Every iPod that has the Notes application includes a little-known feature called "museum mode". With judicious use of museum mode, you can actually prevent users from getting to the standard iPod commands, and replace them entirely with your own custom user interface. Of course, there's a catch: your new UI can only take advantage of the iPod's notes features. Even with this limitation, you can do a lot. Notes can display text (of course), link to other notes, and even play music.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">The trick to stealing the iPod's user interface is to create a note with the following text:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><pre width="50"><meta name="NotesOnly" content="true"></pre><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">If you save this file with the name Preferences (or<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="skimlinks-unlinked">Preferences.txt</span>) and put it into the root of the Notes folder on the iPod, then reboot the iPod, it will no longer display the familiar commands of the main menu. Instead, the iPod will only show the names of other files and folders in the Notes folder. Score!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">My plan was to use museum mode to construct a faked-up "Super iPod" with all the features that have been rumored for the iPod over the past few years. Of course, these "commands" would actually be notes. On some of them, I would create dummy interfaces for the "features". What I lacked in technical virtuosity, I would have to make up in comedic value, a standard MacHack technique.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><h3><center>Furthering The Hack</center></h3><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">To make my iPod notes hack, I first created the Preferences file. In addition to the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>tag shown above, I added another tag:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><pre width="50"><title>Super iPod</title></pre><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">This title tag lets you replace the text that normally appears at the top of the screen with whatever you want. Adding this tag to the Preferences note made sure that I would see "Super iPod" at the top of the screen when the iPod started up, which would enhance the illusion.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">Next, I wanted to figure out which fantastic items my main menu screen would contain. After a judicious review of the best iPod rumors, I came up with these choices:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><pre width="50">Music >
Pictures >
Telephone >
Video ></pre><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">To simulate these Super iPod features, I created a folder in the Notes folder with the name of each feature. You'll note a very important hidden feature of these commands: they're listed in alphabetical order. The Notes application always displays files and folders in alphabetical order, a fact I had to keep in mind when I picked the names of my super-features. I had hoped to use another esoteric notes feature, the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="skimlinks-unlinked">main.linx</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>file, to list features in whatever order I wanted. But unfortunately, when I created the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="skimlinks-unlinked">main.linx</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>file, I discovered that Notes didn't display the right-arrow after the names of the folders such as Music and Pictures, which destroyed the illusion that those were iPod commands. So I had to abandon the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="skimlinks-unlinked">main.linx</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>technique and avoid other "features" (such as Backlight or Settings) that would appear out of their natural order.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">Now it was time for the social engineering part of my hack. What should happen when I delved into the Super iPod features? I wanted the Music command to actually play music, because that's what an iPod does (and it's one of the things you can do from Notes). The menu I built inside the Music command looked like this:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><pre width="50">Albums
Artists
Composers
Playlists
Shuffle Songs</pre><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">These weren't in proper iPod order, but I figured it was close enough for their quick appearance during the demo. For the last item, Shuffle Play, I used another Notes trick: the .link file. I created a file called<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="skimlinks-unlinked">shuffle.link</span>, with the following contents:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><pre width="50"><title>Shuffle Songs</title>
<a href="song=Invasion of the Gabber Robots">Shuffle Songs</a></pre><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">The href tag plays the given song. Putting the tag into a file with the .link suffix tells Notes to start playing the song as soon as the user selects the note on the iPod. The title tag hides the file's true name and replaces it with another, in this case "Shuffle Songs", which is how we want it to appear in the Music menu. The effect is that when the user clicks Shuffle Songs, the song will start playing. The other notes (Albums, Artists, Composers, and Playlists) are just dummy files.</p><h3><center>Adding Features That Don't Exist</center></h3><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">Now that I had faked music playing, it was time to work on the Super iPod features. For the Pictures "feature", I decided to simply add a set of folders chosen for their humor value, since I wasn't really going to try to display images on the iPod. Inside the Pictures folder, I added these folders:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><pre width="50">blackmail >
Hawaii >
kitchen remodel >
MacHack 1857 >
not safe for work >
vacation 2003 ></pre><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">Because I wasn't going to open any of the folders, I simply left them empty. The next "feature" I worked on was Video. I added some files and folders to the Video folder:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><pre width="50">Ardussi's greatest hits >
I, Robot
iMovie Store Purchases >
Pootie Tang
Star Wars Episode III
The Incredibles </pre><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">The items with the greater-than sign were folders, and the others were files. As with the Pictures folder, I wasn't going to do anything with these items other than just show and joke about them, with one exception: The Incredibles. All the folders and files were empty except for "The Incredibles". Inside that file, I put the following text:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><pre width="50">The MPAA filterbot has detected the presence of unauthorized content.
Local law enforcement authorities have been informed. Thank you for your cooperation.
Visit Universal Studios!</pre><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">"The Incredibles" is, of course, this fall's new release from Pixar. After I finished setting up the Video folder, I moved on to the Telephone "feature". My idea for Telephone was to fill the folder with names of people, one per note, as if they were contacts. I put files into the Telephone folder like so:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><pre width="50"><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">Adam Engst
Alaska Airlines
Andrea Ammerman
Asa Noriega
David Shayer
Jef Raskin
Marshall Clow
Nevin Liber</p></pre><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">I intentionally listed Adam first because he had been talking earlier in the conference about how he's often listed first in cell phone address books and so gets more than his share of accidental I-forgot-to-lock-the-phone calls. By listing him first, I would help Adam prove his point - and earn another laugh, I hoped.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">All the contacts were simply empty files, except one: Jef Raskin. For some reason, this year's conference included a never-ending series of jokes and comments about Jef, I decided to add Jef to my Super iPod and to actually call him there on stage when I was demonstrating my hack! Well, apparently.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">What I really wanted, of course, was to display Jef's contact info, including phone numbers. Then, I would click a phone number, and the iPod would "dial". At that point, I would say something like "Well, it's late, and we really don't want to bother him right now", and I would press Menu to "hang up" the "phone". To dial convincingly, I wanted the iPod to play a series of DTMF tones. Asking Mr. Google for help, I quickly found a site that would turn any string of digits into the corresponding DTMF tones. I added the tone-song to my iTunes library, then moved it to the iPod. I then created Jef Raskin's contact note, like this:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><pre width="50">Jef Raskin
1313 Mockingbird Lane
Palo Alto, CA 94030
home: <a href="song=raskin">650-555-8736</a>
work: <a href="song=raskin">650-555-2947</a>
mobile: <a href="song=raskin">415-555-7799</a>
Notes
Likes fondue, old movies, and formal arguments.</pre><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">As you can see, I wired up all three (fake) phone numbers to the DTMF file. When I selected any of the phone numbers, the tones would play, just as if the iPod were making a phone call. My Super iPod was ready. I was even lucky enough to borrow a brand-new 4G iPod for the demo from David Shayer, who also helped me get the hack up and running.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">With my hack all set to go, I could enjoy the second night's keynote speech by Steve Hayman, an Apple engineer who works in Toronto. Steve's speech was fast-paced and funny, and filled with great hacks. Steve's best trick was using Apple Remote Desktop and a bit of script to make a line of PowerMac G4 Desktops in the next room repeatedly open and close their DVD trays. Steve and his able assistant Daryl Hawes even rigged an iSight camera and iChat to verify the remote tray antics. After Steve's session and the requisite hanging around and munching cold pizza, I turned in about 5:45 AM. Tomorrow was another day - well, actually it was the same day: Friday.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><h3><center>Day 3: What Day Is It? Can You Please Tell Me? What Day Is It? I'm Confused, You See...</center></h3><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">Friday dawned bright and clear, probably. But I wasn't there to see it. I shuffled to my feet just before noon and headed down to, er, lunch. With my hack in the bag, I devoted Friday to socializing, attending sessions, and the inevitable road trip to Zingerman's, the incredible deli in Ann Arbor about 30 miles away. Zingerman's is a MacHack/ADHOC tradition. Long live potato knishes!</p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;"><a href="http://www.zingermans.com/" style="color: #0e639f;">http://www.zingermans.com</a></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">As the hack showcase approached, I mentally went over my presentation. I concocted a story in which I claimed I found a strange iPod in the bushes at Apple after parking my car for a nearby restaurant. I started playing with the strange iPod, and...behold! Super iPod!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">About 5 minutes before the show was supposed to start, I suddenly had an idea for something new to add. I had planned on "dialing" Jef Raskin and then bailing out of the "call". But I had a Belkin Voice Recorder for my iPod. I could use it to record "Jef's" answering machine, then play the recording after the DTMF tones. I ran out of the ballroom and found a quiet corner, where I recorded the message (got it in one take). I had just enough time to change Jef's contact file so that the second phone number was connected to the "answering machine message". All I had to do was select and press the second link - it would happen too fast for anyone to notice.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">I got to demo Super iPod a little while later, and it went pretty well, although projecting the iPod's screen proved to be a challenge. Of course, the highlight was the fake answering machine, which proves an old adage about demos: the best part is the part you added right before the demo.</p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">The show featured lots of great demos, as always, and I got to bed at the unusually early (for ADHOC) hour of 3:15 AM.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><h3><center>Day 4: 'Round Here We Stay Up Very, Very, Very, Very Late</center></h3><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">Saturday is always the last day of the conference. There are fewer sessions to attend, so there's more catching up with old friends and general socializing. The day is capped by the awards banquet, with everyone anticipating both their own prize and the overall winner. I received the "ADHOC Prize in Women's Studies", apparently because in my session on writing books I jokingly claimed that being a technical book writer would help you get a date - be careful what you say at this conference. The actual winner was Jorg Brown for his wonderful Unsummarize, a Mac OS X service that takes a theme sentence or two and expands upon it, exactly the reverse of Summarize, which you'll find in your Services menu right now (it's in the Application menu). In the great spirit of ADHOC, Jorg was inspired by a comment David Pogue made during his keynote, wishing for a program just like Unsummarize, and Jorg put it together in less than 48 hours.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">After the banquet, in another great ADHOC tradition, we all went to a nearby theatre to make fun of a new movie. This year's target was "I, Robot", and it certainly proved worthy. And after the movie, the attendees were treated to a lively movie discussion by Keith Stattenfield, star of "Keith Explains!", this year for the first time participating via iChat video conference. And then it was morning again, and time to go to sleep.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;"><a href="http://www.keithexplains.com/" style="color: #0e639f;">http://www.keithexplains.com</a></p><h3><center>Day 5: Steal My Body Home!</center></h3><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">Sunday morning features bleary-eyed attendees catching cabs and shuttles and returning to their regular lives. As I schlepped my bags to the taxi, I took a last look at the majestic lobby of the Holiday Inn Fairlane. It was another great time at MacHack, even though it's now called ADHOC. I knew I would give (almost) anything to be back next year at this most uniquely geeky conference.</p><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;">Plus, on the way to the airport, I saw the World's Biggest Tire.</p><hr style="border-color: gray; border-image: initial; border-style: solid; height: 1px;" /><p style="list-style: none; padding-left: 10px; width: 564.938px;"><b>Scott Knaster</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>writes books, including the recently published Mac Toys and the brand-new Hacking iPod and iTunes, both from Wiley Publishing. Scott can't read and listen to vocal music at the same time. Scott writes these little bios in the third person. Write to Scott at<a href="mailto:scottk@mactech.com" style="color: #0e639f;">scottk@mactech.com</a>.</p><div><br /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-22187157995700666172022-03-25T13:49:00.002-07:002022-03-25T13:49:55.624-07:00Spelling bee kid<p>One of the highlights of my youth was my Spelling Bee career. When you're a pudgy little nerd, you take your competitive events where you can get them, and I was a great speller. In 8th grade I took the Denver written spelling test and I did well enough to qualify for the state test, also in Denver. That memorable day began with the test in a fancy hotel downtown, followed by a lunch banquet for all us little geeks and our parents. After lunch, the top 20 spellers, based on the state written test, were announced, and I was one of them!</p><p>They piled us into taxis – my first ever, having grown up in suburbs, where everybody has a car – and sent us to the studios of channel 7, a local TV station that broadcast the final rounds live. I survived for an hour or so under the hot studio lights. What pressure! Then, with 5 people remaining, I met my fate: frontispiece, which I misspelled "fronticepiece". Ding! My fifth-place finish earned me a dictionary, which I still have somewhere.</p><p>All my spelling bee memories are happy. There was no cramming, no parental or self-imposed pressure, no worrying. I only wished there had been a professional spelling league in which I could become a star and earn a living. Yes, dreams die hard.</p><p><br /></p><p> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-51691321901037358662022-03-10T14:04:00.003-08:002022-03-10T14:04:47.566-08:00 Why did we travel almost 2000 miles to see a total eclipse?<p> <span style="color: #050505; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why did we travel almost 2000 miles to see a total eclipse?</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-1f0736be-7fff-1b3c-46a7-a27218e34208"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 6pt 0pt 0pt 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #050505; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All my life I've loved science fiction movies with amazing special effects. Yesterday I stood on a field with a few hundred people as it gradually got dark in the middle of the day. I watched through heavy sunglasses as the sun became a crescent and then slipped away completely. The temperature dropped 12 degrees in a few minutes. Then I took off the glasses and stared at a giant black hole in the sky. I felt like I was on another planet. The horizons looked like sunset – in every direction. Then, just when the sun had surrendered, it reannounced itself with an explosive "diamond ring" effect that said "Fun's over, folks. Put your glasses back on or you'll regret it!"</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 6pt 0pt 0pt 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #050505; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Seeing this event with a crowd of people was surreal and awe-inspiring. It made me think about a universe or god that enables an incredible cosmic coincidence where ONLY ON OUR PLANET do the sun and the moon have the same apparent size. The eclipse made me laugh and cry. It was otherworldly and surreal. For 2 minutes I got to be on a different planet! Better than any special effect ever.</span></p><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-71957651353372839092020-07-15T14:50:00.003-07:002020-07-15T14:54:34.095-07:00I have a YouTube channel! Like and Subscribe, as the kids sayHey! Check out my stories told here! <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbHVyamNJexYo1T2HPdybrg">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbHVyamNJexYo1T2HPdybrg</a><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-75290337896360204642019-10-15T18:00:00.002-07:002019-10-15T18:00:14.803-07:00Resources for the MacTech Conference keynote "That’s amazing! Why Storytelling is Crucial to Tech, Business, and the World":<br />
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<a href="https://medium.com/@mathowie/an-introverts-guide-to-better-presentations-be7e772b2cb5">An Introvert's Guide to Better Presentations</a><br />
<a href="https://www.themuse.com/advice/5-sciencebacked-ways-to-give-better-presentations-even-if-you-hate-public-speaking">5 Science-Backed Ways to Give Better Presentations</a><br />
<a href="https://hbr.org/2013/06/how-to-give-a-killer-presentation">How To Give a Killer Presentation</a><br />
<a href="https://themoth.org/">The Moth</a><br />
<a href="https://www.ted.com/">TED Talks</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-6983615596536576122019-08-01T15:25:00.000-07:002019-08-01T15:25:51.216-07:00The first performance of Adjacent to GreatnessI'm feeling lucky!<br />
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I've had an incredibly fortunate career in Silicon Valley. I spent 7 years at Apple in the '80s, a few years at General Magic in the '90s, and more years at Microsoft and Google after that. I'm a writer, not an engineer. I've loved watching, teaching, and describing the incredible work I've been lucky enough to see: Macintosh, HyperCard, Magic Cap, and other marvels.<br />
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Over the years I acquired a long list of stories about the amazing, bizarre, fun, and just goofy things I've seen in my work. A few years ago my boss at Google, the legendary <a href="https://blog.louisgray.com/">Louis Gray</a>, encouraged me to start writing some of these stories in blog posts. That was great! But then, in a shocking development, I discovered stage performance and fell in love with it. And it turns out there's a thing called solo performance, where one person gets on stage and tells stories, creating a narrative, typically for an hour or so.<br />
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Could I do that? It sounded hard and really, really fun. When I told stories to people, they seemed interested. So maybe it could work. I started listing my stories and then rewriting them to be delivered live. I found it very hard to rehearse, because I felt foolish without an audience, with no feedback to guide me. But I also realized I had been "rehearsing" all the time, whenever I told stories to a friend at lunch or a poor cornered family member. Eventually I was comfortable enough to do a test run with invited friends. It was terrible. Really bad! I got great feedback on what I needed to change, and I changed it.<br />
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I spent a lot of time planning, organizing, rewriting, procrastinating, and dreaming, but not performing. Last year I applied to a new works program at <a href="https://themarsh.org/runs/monday-night/">The Marsh</a>, a legendary solo performance venue in San Francisco. They accepted me and I got to perform for 20 minutes several times, and again I learned a lot (and got better). I realized that the only time I really made progress was when I actually performed. So I got over my fears, talked to my friends at <a href="http://playfulpeople.net/">Playful People Productions</a>, and scheduled a date in San Jose at the Historic Hoover Theatre. Then I actually invited people to come.<br />
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Last Friday night was my first full-length performance. So many dreams came true that night! I told my stories on stage in a theatre, for an hour, in front of a good crowd of people, with sound, lights, projected images, props - a real show. And it felt fantastic! And thanks to my great friend <a href="https://johnwantsanswers.com/">John A. Vink</a>, it was recorded, so you can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzBZT-Hx0Ko">watch if you want</a>. And if you want to see this or future shows live some day, you can <a href="https://forms.gle/vudszKNWR5nejfUt7">sign up to get on my email list here</a>.<br />
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Now I just have to figure out when I'm going to do it again!<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-44868855724925947992018-06-02T11:37:00.000-07:002018-06-02T11:38:40.184-07:00Technology, storytelling, Apple, and meThere's a long tradition of storytelling and theater in technology companies. You might be surprised to hear this, because a lot of people think of tech as mostly nerds and bros doing nerdy bro things. But tech companies aren't shy about talking of changing the world, making a difference, and so on, in addition to selling widgets or serving up websites. If you think your work is important - and it might well be - then you spend time in your companies telling stories to each other and to the world.<br />
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And if you doubt the importance of storytelling by companies to their customers, may I refer you to the <a href="https://www.apple.com/apple-events/june-2018/">latest Apple keynote</a>. This keynote hasn't actually happened yet, but I know it'll be superb theater - sure, they'll be talking about world-class innovative engineering and design, but it's presented on a stage in a master storytelling fashion, complete with drama, humor, pathos, and tension. It's no accident that Apple spent <a href="https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/what-it-takes-to-build-apple-park#Theater">$179 million dollars</a> on its new theater, and then named it after Steve Jobs, the greatest storyteller in tech history.<br />
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There are many ways to tell stories: in writing, in small groups, from a stage. These ways further subdivide: you tell a story differently in a blog post than you do in a tweetstorm. There are different techniques for a solo stage show than for telling a story to your friend over coffee. I've become acutely aware of these differences lately. I'm blessed and cursed with a compulsion to tell stories, as my long-suffering friends are all too aware. It's not enough for me to experience something interesting, unusual, or funny - I have to tell other people about it or it feels incomplete.<br />
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I'm a writer, so I usually share things by writing them down in my blog, or on Facebook or Twitter. But recently I thought it might be interesting to tell my stories from a stage as a solo show. I've been working on this for awhile, and very soon I'm going to get up onstage at <a href="https://themarsh.org/runs/monday-night/">The Marsh</a> in San Francisco and try it out. From a stage, I have to be bigger and bolder than when I'm just "performing" for a few friends. I have to add characters, really live scenes instead of just describing them. Because I've mainly been a writer, this is new for me. It feels uncomfortable and I'm sure I'm doing a million things wrong. But I'm compelled to get up there and tell stories this way. I hope eventually it's entertaining - even if it never changes the world.<br />
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<i><a href="https://themarsh.org/runs/monday-night/">Come see me at Monday Night Marsh in San Francisco on June 11th and 25th</a>. </i><br />
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<i>Thanks to Keith Rollin and Dave Mark for photo search support.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-2660587139830921532015-10-15T06:54:00.001-07:002015-10-15T06:54:27.116-07:00On the “Steve Jobs” set, where 2015 was like 1984A few weeks after <a href="http://scottknaster.blogspot.com/2015/10/when-steve-jobs-movie-came-calling.html">visiting the "Steve Jobs" production office</a>, I got to watch some actual filming. The Mac was introduced at Flint Center in Cupertino in 1984. In the movie, Flint Center got to play itself. The place was nicely dressed up for the occasion.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lots of people were taking pictures of the 1984 banners with their iPhones</td></tr>
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The crew needed 2500 people to come sit in the auditorium for hours, and they weren't sure how many would show up. But it turned out that thousands of people stood in long lines to get in, and some had to be turned away because there was no room, just like at <a href="http://scottknaster.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-lost-mac-intro-video-was-found-and.html">the original event</a>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thousands of extras were recruited to be the audience in Flint Center</td></tr>
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There were actual non-actor security guards at the doors, but they let me in without an argument - much different security than an actual Apple event would have. There were actors dressed in '80s clothes and wearing fake old-fashioned Apple employee badges. I met the guy playing Mac software engineer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Capps">Steve Capps</a>, who wasn't wearing what <a href="http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Steve_Capps_Day.txt">Capps would wear</a>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nerd on left, actor on right.</td></tr>
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This movie had a <a href="http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt">code name</a>.<br />
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I ran into Danny Boyle, the director, who I talked to on my first visit. He was very busy, but took a few minutes to chat. He remembered my story about <a href="http://scottknaster.blogspot.com/2013/08/this-is-my-steve-jobs-story-about.html">how I was recruited by Steve at NeXT</a>. He said he told <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1055413/">Michael Fassbender</a> that story as an example of how Steve never gave up and ended up getting something from me anyway.<br />
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An actor I saw backstage asked me if I was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Hertzfeld">Andy Hertzfeld</a>.<br />
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As filming began, they shot this scene from act 1 many times, with the actors trying different things each time. I was watching on a giant monitor with some of the crew.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This didn't exactly happen in real life</td></tr>
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This was weird. It felt like I was watching actors play people I know in real life - which is exactly what was happening.<br />
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Here's a super-blurry photo taken while filming an outdoor scene of Jobs and Woz as they walked and talked, Sorkin style, outside Flint Center under the giant trees.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jobs and Woz (Fassbender and Rogen)</td></tr>
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Master Mac historian <a href="https://twitter.com/tomfrikker">Tom Frikker</a> got this wonderful souvenir.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir1ON5jsLaY7cxTJ2ROJ3iJOrJ1tVCLG0KMaYuthA-YIBmsi-eaX6hikpY-teV_S34tWuVof1195gHLHWAt2iWPhUErSX_4yCmN7UyKTB7oBP6gfS4iLXjB2TjPSXxhN4N5-CIMnygs4k/s1600/IMG_4329.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir1ON5jsLaY7cxTJ2ROJ3iJOrJ1tVCLG0KMaYuthA-YIBmsi-eaX6hikpY-teV_S34tWuVof1195gHLHWAt2iWPhUErSX_4yCmN7UyKTB7oBP6gfS4iLXjB2TjPSXxhN4N5-CIMnygs4k/s320/IMG_4329.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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And when I left for the day, I got this parking ticket. Which made me think: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/license-plate-spotted-just-outside-apple-hq-wwsjd-2009-10">WWSJD</a>?<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEindcnRs9dDdNicli0aHOEn7taifhiP5OTgbmZUqLW1Uorlq7U69MJW0GwU_SAHd3fc7M71tAmuCXROckpIoBBdI6nC8U9IpPgRSdRIBAwt9DgxXDghwt1eEUvWlh9lpyvvhErw0ABpABo/s1600/IMG_4336.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEindcnRs9dDdNicli0aHOEn7taifhiP5OTgbmZUqLW1Uorlq7U69MJW0GwU_SAHd3fc7M71tAmuCXROckpIoBBdI6nC8U9IpPgRSdRIBAwt9DgxXDghwt1eEUvWlh9lpyvvhErw0ABpABo/s320/IMG_4336.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I guess Steve would have ignored it</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-71871204660591009402015-10-06T06:15:00.001-07:002015-10-11T03:10:50.720-07:00When the Steve Jobs movie came callingLast January the Steve Jobs movie came to town and called me up.<br />
<br />
I was leaving work one day when I got a phone call from a guy named <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0548977">Todd Marks</a>. He said he was on the crew of a new movie about Steve Jobs. He said they're filming a scene that’s the public intro of the Mac in 1984. They heard I was <a href="http://scottknaster.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-lost-mac-intro-video-was-found-and.html">there at the original event</a>, and they wanted to talk to me about what was going on that day. Cool! I said sure, I’d come by.<br />
<br />
Actually, I knew about this movie already. Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay. Danny Boyle was directing it. So it sounded like a big-time movie.<br />
<br />
I went to the address they gave me in San Francisco. It was some crappy two-story building way out near pier 80.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_MP_AuDJ15xtv0upXABTuwqZ8TZCA_-jqCNsjcIBNsboy0Te2WXiMEu8w95-LWeV339fov7u7seHW9HY0r9Rrj90Nc1lZ5VeidqdIowNaczhbXoWbxPk9Y2Ze10yrF5jEGA-7bhyphenhyphenANCw/s1600/building.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_MP_AuDJ15xtv0upXABTuwqZ8TZCA_-jqCNsjcIBNsboy0Te2WXiMEu8w95-LWeV339fov7u7seHW9HY0r9Rrj90Nc1lZ5VeidqdIowNaczhbXoWbxPk9Y2Ze10yrF5jEGA-7bhyphenhyphenANCw/s1600/building.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's bigger on the inside</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Let’s just say it didn’t look like the office of a big-time Hollywood movie. But I went to the door and there was Todd. Inside, suddenly, it was movie world. Lots of LA-looking people running around. I felt like I found a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. base. Every office in the building was for a different department in the movie. Set design, wardrobe, props, visual effects, art, and more.<br />
<br />
Todd was incredibly nice as he showed me around from office to office. It was like a maze. Every room had things taped up on the walls. Giant blown up pictures of the different events they were going to re-create. One entire wall was nothing but <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=old+mac+bomb+boxes&safe=off&espv=2&biw=1139&bih=986&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAmoVChMI_Ia0q76ryAIVxn2ICh2mqgvl#safe=off&tbm=isch&q=old+mac+bomb+errors">ancient Mac error messages</a>. Another was photos of buildings where different Apple events happened. One wall had pictures from the Internet of random Apple employees from the '80s. I saw one picture that looked familiar, walked up to it, pointed at it and said "That's my wife".<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIvcpkURkM7G2zPdKLil0caPWkRqYVRl7R0wHTeoUiIMTJXLG1MET5TCfWbfofbz3eBgvuhrcV_AGTrBDyDns_3T7eDPXdrSleInXeArWO1YjgE_7xWfGt_XEaCusjEVhKJm79rb2iVKI/s1600/badges.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIvcpkURkM7G2zPdKLil0caPWkRqYVRl7R0wHTeoUiIMTJXLG1MET5TCfWbfofbz3eBgvuhrcV_AGTrBDyDns_3T7eDPXdrSleInXeArWO1YjgE_7xWfGt_XEaCusjEVhKJm79rb2iVKI/s1600/badges.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Andy Hertzfeld, Burrell Smith, John Sculley, Barbara Knaster (arrow)</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
In Wardrobe, they showed me a couple of Apple shirts and asked me to “clear” them for use in the 1984 scene. There was a polo shirt with the Apple logo that I said looked right, and another shirt with “Macintosh: the power to crush the other kids” (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ0LHzFQ7Yw">too soon</a> for that one, I said).<br />
<br />
In every department they asked me questions about the original Mac intro event. Were people dressed up, or casual? How old were they? Did they bring briefcases? Did they drive, walk, bike to the event? How did the Apple employees wear their badges? What did it look like backstage? Which computers did they use to run the event? Were there tickets? Just everything. Everybody was friendly. They treated me like a VIP. I told old stories and they actually seemed interested!<br />
<br />
As I toured around I noticed everybody had a copy of the script on their desks. Every copy had the name of the person it belonged to printed on the front. They told me it was top secret and I couldn’t look at it, so of course I really wanted to look at it. When I saw an open script I tried to read something from it (upside down), but all I could see was something about Dan Rather. I don’t know if that made it into the movie.<br />
<br />
They wanted to re-create the original Mac intro event in great detail. But they also said "it's not a documentary". Not everything in the movie would be true to the way it really happened. They have a story to tell. But they were going to be accurate wherever possible about the visuals and the technology. That’s why they called people like me.<br />
<br />
Pretty much everybody working on the Steve Jobs movie had iPhones and Macs.<br />
<br />
After talking to all the different departments, Todd said the director wanted to meet me. Cool! That would be Danny Boyle, who has a pretty great resumé including a Best Director Oscar for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1010048/">Slumdog Millionaire</a>. So Danny Boyle came by. I figured he’d say hi and bye. But we talked for half an hour, and he was wonderfully friendly. He enthusiastically sold me on the movie. He said it’s not a blockbuster special effects movie. It’s about the mind of Steve Jobs, and there’s redemption in the end. About how Mac was the start of computers being friendly enough for regular people. It has a great Aaron Sorkin script. The studio wanted to film in Georgia because it’s cheaper, but he fought to make it in the Bay Area where it happened. He invited me to come to the shoot in Cupertino that was happening a few weeks after. He was incredibly polite and gracious.<br />
<br />
I expected to spend 20 minutes or so talking to the movie people. I ended up spending 2 hours. It was surreal. Think about it: I was summoned to a secret headquarters disguised as an ordinary building. Pictures from my past were printed out and blown up on walls, including a <i>photo of my wife</i>. People asked me about old events in great detail, and were very interested in the answers. And then at the end, I met the mastermind, and he turned out to be a nice guy.<br />
<br />
Then I left movie world and returned to ordinary San Francisco 2015.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-13930258825078346442014-02-13T06:22:00.000-08:002018-11-17T02:07:09.633-08:00How you sign your work in Silicon Valley: About Boxes, Easter eggs, and computer casesSometimes in Silicon Valley we make stuff. Like any makers, or really anyone who wants a bit of fame and immortality, we like to sign our stuff. There are many ways to do this.<br />
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Even in ancient, pre-Mac times, software usually had credits buried in it somewhere. With the advent of graphical user interfaces in the mid-1980s, the About Box became the standard place for credits. The About Box was easily accessible to users and was always found in the same place. This box was in the original Finder and was one of the first About Boxes many Mac users ever saw:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiydK6ecUUQ4ZGgX3ZHOG7ZLayFf-bkYpQwOEXJyRvz9aw8di-kx0EFVf3MJpZtFmXZ1zajoS5xrvriVw1rwPl8JdF_PE9TopvFeXFcuU9SoT7GADeaHfR5AlTa5K9v0bsfVpSXAprL574/s1600/aboutfinder.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiydK6ecUUQ4ZGgX3ZHOG7ZLayFf-bkYpQwOEXJyRvz9aw8di-kx0EFVf3MJpZtFmXZ1zajoS5xrvriVw1rwPl8JdF_PE9TopvFeXFcuU9SoT7GADeaHfR5AlTa5K9v0bsfVpSXAprL574/s1600/aboutfinder.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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Through the 1980s, most companies were OK with this practice. Apple was schizophrenic, keeping some teams from announcing themselves while encouraging others to sign their work. The original Mac team literally <a href="http://www.cultofmac.com/122408/signed-by-steve-jobs-co-signatures-inside-the-original-macintosh-case/">signed the case mold</a>, ensuring their names would appear on the inside of every Mac produced.<br />
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<a href="http://www.cultofmac.com/122408/signed-by-steve-jobs-co-signatures-inside-the-original-macintosh-case/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTlm5m-XtRjlR2jaqGlG2uAj4sBqVNOBmwi4WGoNO45HvWSxEvGYanBBBDAw_sBm6R3FLLoCormYX93vl6GqRZJ6bULWRnGbeLDe6RjNGZBtD79NQq71_LdKg8Sdi8vPmj_sLqPrA7tnw/s1600/mac-128k-signatures.jpg" width="296" /></a></div>
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As technology progressed, About Boxes got fancier. One version of MultiFinder for Mac got out the door with this epic About Box:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsMeFBX3a9rdT86xyuR9_wiKuMdb5Enq-XhABde8I8tL4v6rM7C_mD9zgqS0iL-5HH5Zydukw4KDFsllbDHYNIxhQVWRrZ_fDT3xgxB2nLMiJEf9ISAWn9VhEfUw144x-HDhp-3h36WU0/s1600/IMG_2319.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsMeFBX3a9rdT86xyuR9_wiKuMdb5Enq-XhABde8I8tL4v6rM7C_mD9zgqS0iL-5HH5Zydukw4KDFsllbDHYNIxhQVWRrZ_fDT3xgxB2nLMiJEf9ISAWn9VhEfUw144x-HDhp-3h36WU0/s1600/IMG_2319.JPG" width="240" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq5JhQmqtSlRCkbdoOG1Fh0Be4ZGv8nChMYlxic7ZqW39dL6ZBK894H0_1InEal6aLw3vvifFtg-jh-MaDcODHWEB_crnKeX4pYsqG2Ay15-GectWmDPETpmGorO_VHHHj3OXH-hZVYII/s1600/IMG_2318.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq5JhQmqtSlRCkbdoOG1Fh0Be4ZGv8nChMYlxic7ZqW39dL6ZBK894H0_1InEal6aLw3vvifFtg-jh-MaDcODHWEB_crnKeX4pYsqG2Ay15-GectWmDPETpmGorO_VHHHj3OXH-hZVYII/s1600/IMG_2318.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwLLQ6Bo55j5AEkkBLqdZawgPKUp2fNEXrgk0J6FtY6kR9kfV-cDthT3nC12PI2i2AcfBSW8cFeGRf9YlMDqlJ_arEhxhEq_NSAobFAe74_rwfYLJBnoXGUNi4nAuZXGLHvfp4oj_6GiM/s1600/IMG_2320.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwLLQ6Bo55j5AEkkBLqdZawgPKUp2fNEXrgk0J6FtY6kR9kfV-cDthT3nC12PI2i2AcfBSW8cFeGRf9YlMDqlJ_arEhxhEq_NSAobFAe74_rwfYLJBnoXGUNi4nAuZXGLHvfp4oj_6GiM/s1600/IMG_2320.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><b>Click the images for big-enough-to-read versions</b></i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I was Apple's Developer Support Manager when this About Box shipped, and I got an email complaining about it. Specifically, the writer didn't like that the About Box included a reference to <i>Jim "The" Lord</i> (Jim Lord was a real person on the team) and also objected to the line <i>Thanks to Satan for C Language brace style</i>. You can't please everyone.<br />
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The folks who made the Macintosh SE managed to <a href="http://www.nycresistor.com/2012/08/21/ghosts-in-the-rom/">hide photos of themselves in ROM</a>.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.nycresistor.com/2012/08/21/ghosts-in-the-rom/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnjYX3psoXrqWYmubcSO1EPjk62qB8yXiPineIBV7TXS7Tmtas21qhpD1ApeHKBk8ziU2dy77rvsNu0hWUZHSV7VKe9Y9chS_YdcxkQ-BdAxF31CdY3dBMftifUgDA-yIjHW3VKehNgCo/s320/7828783992_d55893a8a2_o.png" /></a></div>
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Soon the Secret About Box (which is a particular form of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_egg_(media)">Easter egg</a>) was well-established. The Secret About Box technique was useful for 2 reasons:<br />
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1. It lent an air of mystery to About Boxes because you had to know how to invoke them.<br />
2. Teams could semi-plausibly hide About Boxes from management because they weren't obviously visible.<br />
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One of the best-known Secret About Boxes shipped with System 7.5.3. After following the secret instructions, which involved typing the phrase Secret About Box and dropping it in a certain place, you got a cool picture of a fake flag waving over Apple's real campus.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIc_v5n0W3fA_DEZJSYeBB7Th3UfMQBfJuoM7gH1LMnyTu1uJYLbqM2qY6emrgITkQovYLnyWzILpNVypXF5B2ugWkNpARZEfegETnf-GAiG5-SX-AVLCkeYHEYhL2YR39bCdkW5YzgqQ/s1600/iguana.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIc_v5n0W3fA_DEZJSYeBB7Th3UfMQBfJuoM7gH1LMnyTu1uJYLbqM2qY6emrgITkQovYLnyWzILpNVypXF5B2ugWkNpARZEfegETnf-GAiG5-SX-AVLCkeYHEYhL2YR39bCdkW5YzgqQ/s1600/iguana.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Windows XP had a credits screen that was Internet-based. (I forget exactly how it worked and can't Bing the answer. Maybe one of my old Microsoft pals remembers?) Because many Windows customers, especially governments, don't like hidden surprises in their software, Microsoft fully disclosed how to find this About Box and what it contained. Not much adventure in that approach.<br />
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Some software, like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard">Hypercard 2.0</a> and <a href="http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/">BBEdit</a>, puts the user's own name into their About Boxes. That's very nice of them. <br />
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About Boxes and the inside of a computer case are not the only places to sign your work. Sometimes companies publish books about how awesome they are, like <a href="http://www.amazon.com/So-Far-Computer-Anniversary-Publication/dp/1556939744">Apple</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Out-Microsoft-In-Our-Words/dp/0446527394">Microsoft</a> have done. In those books they sometimes like to do crazy things like list every employee they ever had, in teeny tiny type (much enlarged here):<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9AFLsbspCQ8KvxzdYInJpgcNpZrrjXooVNa6-6OLzVr4xB3lFrr0nfqPKiaBdOHEwIwfX8ambZwaikrR4WOGCilA2aTlNkJj6oy2x0azU1LEh3bm2YnPy44HQHRBb78HzgNIZ4gldDVw/s1600/IMG_2297.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9AFLsbspCQ8KvxzdYInJpgcNpZrrjXooVNa6-6OLzVr4xB3lFrr0nfqPKiaBdOHEwIwfX8ambZwaikrR4WOGCilA2aTlNkJj6oy2x0azU1LEh3bm2YnPy44HQHRBb78HzgNIZ4gldDVw/s1600/IMG_2297.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Out-Microsoft-In-Our-Words/dp/0446527394">Inside Out: Microsoft In Our Own Words</a></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjumnNZ73jT8Z6ss8IE9oUEKWYoEop4HcHVNDxLe2rnq2eCmg0olDjbkt08E3YHiP4z5T5eymh0HLRV9Mc32h1av4cgH-I0hNs2gkndmw9SW0p_PSuWgGhUOq_5N9z3IX3dXUBcqC-4B-c/s1600/IMG_2295.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjumnNZ73jT8Z6ss8IE9oUEKWYoEop4HcHVNDxLe2rnq2eCmg0olDjbkt08E3YHiP4z5T5eymh0HLRV9Mc32h1av4cgH-I0hNs2gkndmw9SW0p_PSuWgGhUOq_5N9z3IX3dXUBcqC-4B-c/s1600/IMG_2295.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/So-Far-Computer-Anniversary-Publication/dp/1556939744">So Far: The First 10 Years of a Vision</a> (Apple)</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This is how a guy who mainly wrote documentation and helped developers got some fun credit. And yes, this is reminiscent of Apple listing employee names on <a href="http://scottknaster.blogspot.com/2014/01/apple-put-up-posters-with-name-of-every.html">posters for the Mac's 30th anniversary</a>.<br />
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There are zillions of examples of great About Boxes. If you have any favorites, please bring them up in the comments.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4Cupertino, CA, USA37.3229978 -122.0321822999999937.2219618 -122.19354379999999 37.424033800000004 -121.87082079999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-15419068630293851052014-01-28T16:35:00.000-08:002014-01-31T06:25:22.769-08:00Apple put up posters with the name of every employee everIf you were online in tech circles last week, you couldn't miss the fact that last Friday was the 30th anniversary of the Mac. News sites and bloggers posted zillions of stories about the anniversary, and there was a <a href="http://www.mac30th.com/">big event</a> at Flint Center, the site of the original announcement.<br />
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More surprising was that Apple itself celebrated the birthday. Apple is not noted for looking back. But this time, there was an <a href="http://www.apple.com/mac/">extensive public website</a>. And on campus, Apple had a <a href="http://www.cultofmac.com/263930/check-photos-apples-hq-preparation-party/">party for employees</a>, complete with t-shirts for all.<br />
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But it wasn't just a party. Apple created a set of 10 large posters containing the names of <i>every employee who has ever worked for the company</i>. On really really tall posters. With really really tiny names - something like 16,000 names per poster. The posters look like this:<br />
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The text under the 30 reads:<br />
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<i>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 posters recognizes all those who have helped turn that promise into reality. In other words, every single person who has ever worked at Apple.</i><br />
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The names are in order of employee number. Combining that with the tiny type and the gray-on-white text, it's really hard to find a particular name. But Apple employees are smart and have come up with some clever hacks to narrow down where to look.<br />
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The first poster is the most interesting to me because it covers the time I worked there. Actually, because it contains 16,000 names, it probably covers the first 15 years or so of Apple. There are 10 posters total, which suggests how fast Apple has grown since then.<br />
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The posters are not in a public place, which means you can't see them unless you know someone who works there and you pay them a visit. I did that and spent some time staring at poster #1. After a while I found my name.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpLw40Nz_j2PPwKShiKBEAGTJzid0XOenB4QdV9tsisoGA0uLyaP7wQ5HCi72jLVHdbnVRcn277Qy1L3BKdlvB86SeHzrK4mAcY0kU-EqBv3Drowt2GDLjCEv_vBCZcqhJ1vfQjwN7HHo/s1600/scottk+pointing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpLw40Nz_j2PPwKShiKBEAGTJzid0XOenB4QdV9tsisoGA0uLyaP7wQ5HCi72jLVHdbnVRcn277Qy1L3BKdlvB86SeHzrK4mAcY0kU-EqBv3Drowt2GDLjCEv_vBCZcqhJ1vfQjwN7HHo/s1600/scottk+pointing.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc2dIo1duYH3QtDTiOzFCCAGNM_kib4GzdjaQNwlqCv5-FjKLMhnW7Fo_Riq80DF39gNNnDWmeWq5kbnWGnP3THXlwzOW3yWmfoh1vlgCNg3yHQC4cCya8zor8eBOXMaCBhZinHrtzNqc/s1600/scottk+apple.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc2dIo1duYH3QtDTiOzFCCAGNM_kib4GzdjaQNwlqCv5-FjKLMhnW7Fo_Riq80DF39gNNnDWmeWq5kbnWGnP3THXlwzOW3yWmfoh1vlgCNg3yHQC4cCya8zor8eBOXMaCBhZinHrtzNqc/s1600/scottk+apple.jpeg" height="246" width="320" /></a></div>
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There you go.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Cupertino, CA, USA37.3229978 -122.0321822999999937.2219618 -122.19354379999999 37.424033800000004 -121.87082079999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-26407617126416336792014-01-23T21:11:00.000-08:002014-01-26T07:08:32.717-08:00How the “lost” Mac intro video was found (and got my name stuck to it)<b id="docs-internal-guid-5f29137b-c1cb-16a8-e1a8-39079bcb92e4" style="font-weight: normal;">In 2004 <a href="http://google.com/+AndyHertzfeld">Andy Hertzfeld</a> was building <a href="http://folklore.org/">Folklore.org</a>, his amazing now-famous website devoted to first-person stories of the earliest days of the Mac. Andy was writing one of the key stories of the saga, the one about the day of the Mac's public unveiling. I mentioned to Andy that I had a video of the intro, and he was welcome to watch it to spur his memory of the great day. So Andy came over, we watched the video, he took notes, and wrote <a href="http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_Times_They_Are_A-Changin.txt">his story</a>. In the comments Andy was kind enough to thank me for showing him the video.<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><br />
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Andy's <a href="http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_Times_They_Are_A-Changin.txt">telling of one of the most important moments in computing history</a> was riveting. Right away, people were interested in seeing the video. I recorded the video over the air in 1984 from a public TV station that rebroadcast the event. Then it sat on a shelf for awhile - OK, for 20 years - until it apparently became something rare.<br />
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When people asked to get the video online, I explained the problem in the comments:<br />
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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 <i>majo</i>. 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 5000 miles away, I decided to trust him. I put the precious videotape in a mailer and shipped it off to majo in Germany.<br />
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majo struggled with the terrible quality of the video. Not only was it 20 years old, it was a low-quality home format, and the original show had not been properly lit for video recording. Still, he did a fine job and extracted the most important segment: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B-XwPjn9YY">Steve Jobs revealing the Mac</a>.<br />
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On January 24, 2005, Majo posted the video on his site for the Mac's 21st birthday. The traffic was overwhelming. To watch, you had to download the 20MB file, and majo's site soon crashed. We were <a href="http://apple.slashdot.org/story/05/01/24/1945223/the-lost-1984-mac-video">SlashDotted</a>, <a href="http://www.kottke.org/05/01/jobs-macintosh-video">kottke.orged</a>, and etc. He begged for mirror sites, and a bunch of other people helped out. I wrote a <a href="http://foodisworse.typepad.com/this/2005/01/happy_birthday_.html">blog post</a> about the video. I watched the comments come in from around the world as people woke up and discovered the "lost" video (that I didn't realize had been lost). The comments show how excited people were to discover the video, and how eager they were to help by mirroring it. It was a pretty cool day.<br />
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By the end of the day I finally had time to watch majo's edit of the video. To my surprise, he had added my name near the end with this generous but hilariously pompous credit:<br />
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A more accurate credit would have been "Recorded in January 1984 and kept on a shelf in the family room by Scott Knaster". But this was OK too.<br />
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Three weeks later, as if on cue, YouTube was founded.<br />
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Soon copies of the video started making their way to YouTube. Most of them included the part with my name. After awhile there were hundreds of different copies on YouTube. Some of them have <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B-XwPjn9YY">millions of views</a>. Why are there so many copies? I don't know. Because YouTube, I guess. I gained an odd sort of fame. Many people assumed I was operating the camera that filmed the event. (I was there as an Apple employee, but in the audience.)<br />
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In the months following, majo extracted and digitized other clips from the Mac intro. I assume those have made their way to YouTube also. The <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onj8Mbc_-NA">full video</a> is available, and you can watch if you have 1.5 hours.<br />
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As the Mac's 30th anniversary approached, I started to wonder whatever happened to majo, and whether he had digitized any more clips. I went to <a href="http://www.industrial-technology-and-witchcraft.de/">his old site</a>, but it seemed long-dormant. After some further digging I found sad news: <a href="http://www.archiv-mac-essentials.de/index.php/mac/comments/pause_zu_ende/">majo died in 2010</a>. I never did meet him, but he's the one who really got this video out into the world. All I did was neglect to get rid of an old videotape.<br />
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Thanks, majo. And <a href="http://www.mac30th.com/">happy 30th birthday</a>, Macintosh!<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1Cupertino, CA, USA37.3229978 -122.0321822999999937.2219618 -122.19354379999999 37.424033800000004 -121.87082079999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-24822867852088384812014-01-14T16:25:00.001-08:002014-01-14T16:55:19.891-08:00Before the Mac was the Lisa, Apple's first graphical user interface computerThis is probably familiar to you.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2OyPN3HHAlsOHNe0R04PefA32x5iEMXJDmcc4qnzb3-_0uCgb3hadotcUM1yzWrpLiATQk_c8mzkSQru53WF9aiHbitJWbdfo2H_nQh76bhVqxMasvYMZrNGdqB5rIPa52LM5hIX0RSQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-14+at+3.48.55+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2OyPN3HHAlsOHNe0R04PefA32x5iEMXJDmcc4qnzb3-_0uCgb3hadotcUM1yzWrpLiATQk_c8mzkSQru53WF9aiHbitJWbdfo2H_nQh76bhVqxMasvYMZrNGdqB5rIPa52LM5hIX0RSQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-14+at+3.48.55+PM.png" height="232" width="320" /></a></div>
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Yeah, everybody knows that. But did you know that just one year earlier, on January 19th, 1983, Apple introduced the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa">Lisa</a>? You might know that Lisa was Apple's first computer with a graphical user interface. It was pretty cool but cost $10,000 and was a little ahead of its time.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX6VVawHlu-aVS0kuieciSLW099lUB03MeqMNXyURqyAILSwW0aezv_DCe7KWd_L-Jp4zwZG0uRxFrrp5qiWUiwQ70X74VBEc8xOLeTovPozlaeGNsu2h65Te2danff0wxGPGb1y7e7UY/s1600/apple_lisa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX6VVawHlu-aVS0kuieciSLW099lUB03MeqMNXyURqyAILSwW0aezv_DCe7KWd_L-Jp4zwZG0uRxFrrp5qiWUiwQ70X74VBEc8xOLeTovPozlaeGNsu2h65Te2danff0wxGPGb1y7e7UY/s1600/apple_lisa.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></a></div>
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Steve Jobs code-named Lisa for his daughter, but nobody acknowledged that at the time. Instead, Apple told people it was an acronym for "Local Integrated System Architecture". Folks who know better decided it really meant "Let's invent some acronym".<br />
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My first-ever job at Apple was Lisa telephone tech support. It was a great job: there were so few customers, and the applications were so easy to use, that I soon learned pretty much everything there was to know about the software and had spare time to learn about how you programmed it. I could even take the computer apart and put it back together (no tools!). The highlight of this job was the day <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbie_Hancock">Herbie Hancock</a> called for support. Wow!<br />
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When I worked on the Lisa hotline, I got this cool lapel pin (shown larger than life):<br />
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For awhile I worked the 3 am to 10 am shift. I was 23 years old and this sounded great! My plan was to get up at 2, go to work, then go home and stay up until I got tired, then go to sleep. After 3 days of this I was running a major sleep deficit. On the 4th day, I went home and fell asleep about noon. A few hours later, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Coalinga_earthquake">6.5 magnitude earthquake</a> woke me up. Panicked, I jumped out of bed and twisted my ankle, thus becoming an earthquake casualty. My sleep was wrecked for the rest of the week and I soon gave up the graveyard shift.<br />
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Everything about the Lisa was new and different: bitmapped display, mouse, and graphical applications. These pictures are from Lisa data sheets of a few of the applications:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsCqOlPc9WPq0bdHwX5RPoQQnKGP_E9oE1QAV56lDyzq_1eJMY27wXj9mPwzrHoa1a8-zI2SVa4zB72x3dg2aLxSjPfUPtydOjui3ydkAUoPq0Y23DRA8SSskXlyobGiqJ1ERvEsu-3XE/s1600/IMG_20140114_152440035.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsCqOlPc9WPq0bdHwX5RPoQQnKGP_E9oE1QAV56lDyzq_1eJMY27wXj9mPwzrHoa1a8-zI2SVa4zB72x3dg2aLxSjPfUPtydOjui3ydkAUoPq0Y23DRA8SSskXlyobGiqJ1ERvEsu-3XE/s1600/IMG_20140114_152440035.jpg" height="320" width="253" /></a></div>
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LisaCalc was a spreadsheet (data sheet from the collection of my garage)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsDvg1tLkw72cbYKck9BGB_fLOmPGS4Ufozt56LaFziN7Xufwf6ksUOvcOKgi4RgzKDZ8RZXmYR-JCs2RVDkSPESxXSvhhS0Ft_aZN-PYhtjMbPJEevPITir4sNx1bdN0a6vRd35PbxM4/s1600/IMG_20140114_152459736_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsDvg1tLkw72cbYKck9BGB_fLOmPGS4Ufozt56LaFziN7Xufwf6ksUOvcOKgi4RgzKDZ8RZXmYR-JCs2RVDkSPESxXSvhhS0Ft_aZN-PYhtjMbPJEevPITir4sNx1bdN0a6vRd35PbxM4/s1600/IMG_20140114_152459736_HDR.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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Lots more detail about how LisaCalc worked</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF2rX1yx_xA9Do63_LkbWZVIAOZOmzGRTF31wvO01gWL8hOfbIYIJcadYlmwYS1l6C1sOZBD880lpRiCCyyUwpRwL_f0TXbDwliYtkv4V6W8WaX1yRYhCmi-PBHL_FO3PZqVSRXr837zc/s1600/IMG_20140114_152512599_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF2rX1yx_xA9Do63_LkbWZVIAOZOmzGRTF31wvO01gWL8hOfbIYIJcadYlmwYS1l6C1sOZBD880lpRiCCyyUwpRwL_f0TXbDwliYtkv4V6W8WaX1yRYhCmi-PBHL_FO3PZqVSRXr837zc/s1600/IMG_20140114_152512599_HDR.jpg" height="320" width="244" /></a></div>
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LisaCalc specs. Note the first feature: "Basic learning time, less than 30 minutes"</div>
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LisaGraph was pretty cool for visualizing your data (although nobody used that term then)</div>
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LisaWrite was my favorite. It went a long way toward WYSIWYG.</div>
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Even the floppy disks (the <i>what?</i>) were unusual. They were Apple's proprietary <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_FileWare">Twiggy</a> disks, with 800K capacity:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRoN0m0PHZ5vCS0C9epO9xMdswfgtv4FW8TIvgSg62zf2MEq5Ke1Uqq4u9B8jAegsv6sXzidTnTDvITFV1-zJFpjIVMqFgcoxjNoHkZ136iSR0AOhjSMjeA8B7QGXqnyg-5XpvTIY1tbo/s1600/IMG_20140114_152404327_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRoN0m0PHZ5vCS0C9epO9xMdswfgtv4FW8TIvgSg62zf2MEq5Ke1Uqq4u9B8jAegsv6sXzidTnTDvITFV1-zJFpjIVMqFgcoxjNoHkZ136iSR0AOhjSMjeA8B7QGXqnyg-5XpvTIY1tbo/s1600/IMG_20140114_152404327_HDR.jpg" height="318" width="320" /></a></div>
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Those were the days.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Campbell, CA, USA37.2871651 -121.949956837.236627600000006 -122.0306378 37.3377026 -121.8692758tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-6723661300773517932014-01-07T14:26:00.001-08:002014-01-07T14:26:53.388-08:00Demoing new products at a rave is more fun than it soundsIn the 1990s I worked at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic">General Magic</a>, an extremely ambitious startup that began as a project inside Apple and then became its own company. The people at General Magic wanted to make portable touch-screen personal communicators that could send and receive beautiful notes called telecards, provide access to online shopping, and make phone calls. It was sort of like trying to make an iPhone in 1993.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwwTnmsPJ12OdMrKtSqjKZGSl9NakR_I-qhYraOCgWPWa_WXwegPPURgKjKAYuRGW-ZuvXXRFnkO4TZfSKpGBSkT6N9PGIsQPKSpGgZOeMYGNi2iNNzXktS3SLhNX7WWEoXfr-4AzUhvk/s1600/IMG_20140107_133705601.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwwTnmsPJ12OdMrKtSqjKZGSl9NakR_I-qhYraOCgWPWa_WXwegPPURgKjKAYuRGW-ZuvXXRFnkO4TZfSKpGBSkT6N9PGIsQPKSpGgZOeMYGNi2iNNzXktS3SLhNX7WWEoXfr-4AzUhvk/s1600/IMG_20140107_133705601.jpg" height="320" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My badge from Digital Be-In 7</td></tr>
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After a few years of work it was time to show off our prototype software (called Magic Cap) and hardware. We had a super funky venue: the <a href="http://www.be-in.com/history/history/bein7-map.html">Digital Be-In</a>, a psychedelic San Francisco tradition that was a cross between a rave and a trade show. We set up our booth next to a few others, right beside the massive light show and huge stage, and the party started.<br />
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People were surprisingly cool about seeing neat tech that bumped up against the dance floor. The drugs probably helped. Small devices were pretty novel back then. One of our best tricks involved faxing, a very old technology with a new twist. We asked people for their fax numbers, then had them send a fax to themselves from our small devices. This wasn't wireless yet - each device was connected to a landline - but it was still cool and helped people feel connected to what was possible. Of course, we could also send email, but not everybody had an email address, especially in this crowd. We also showed an early version of a map program. We asked people their addresses, then called up a map and asked "Is this your neighborhood?" like a card trick. They loved it. I got to demo that one for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Leary">Timothy Leary</a>, which was one of the highlights of the night for me.<br />
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Then after a few hours of this, a funny thing happened: the power in the venue went out. The music and lights stopped, and most of the other booths were dead. But we had battery-operated devices. So we could still give demos, plus show how great it was to not depend on AC power. Of course, it wasn't <i>that</i> great - our displays had no backlights, so you could barely see the screen. Oh well.<br />
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Eventually the power came back on and the music resumed. Finally the party ended. I suddenly realized I had been showing off our stuff for 7 hours without a break. There was so much in the software, and it had mostly been a secret for so long, that I was thrilled to share it with people.<br />
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That was fun.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Mountain View, CA, USA37.3860517 -122.083851137.2851427 -122.2452126 37.486960700000004 -121.9224896tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-9654973315881324462013-12-10T14:35:00.000-08:002013-12-10T14:35:04.612-08:00Walking into a tree, mutilating a muffin, and other Danger funIn 2003 I left the comfort of Microsoft's employ and struck out into the cold Silicon Valley recession looking for work. I soon connected with Andy Rubin, my co-worker from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic">General Magic</a> days, and got a job at his new company, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_(company)">Danger Inc.</a> Danger created the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Hiptop">Hiptop</a>, a revolutionary mobile device for phone and other kinds of communications. You could use the Hiptop for email, AIM (AOL Instant Messenger, kids), web browsing, SMS, and other apps. The Hiptop had lots of great features, but the real jawdropper was the way you could <a href="http://youtu.be/fwMlPhIpWxI?t=1m40s">flick the screen up with your thumb to reveal a keyboard underneath</a>, as animated in this really cool holographic postcard.<br />
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The Hiptop was a developer platform, and Danger hired me to write developer docs. Danger was an awesome and weird company, filled with brilliant fun people. The offices were a strange complex on University Avenue in Palo Alto. Supposedly, the the place used to be dental office, and there were odd things around, like sliding doors and ambient noise devices. Every so often you would hear a pssst sound like escaping air, but nobody knew where it came from. The building was so close to the Caltrain station that when it was time to go home I could wait at my desk until I heard the train arriving, then grab my stuff and get to the station in time to board. The adopted company restaurant was <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/darbar-indian-cuisine-palo-alto">Darbar</a>, which was both loved and hated. Well, it was both enjoyed and ridiculed.<br />
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The Hiptop (in product form as the TMobile Sidekick) was my first indication that people would soon be getting lost in their phones. One day I was walking around downtown Palo Alto while AIMing with a friend when, yes, I walked into a tree. From then on I tried to avoid AIMing while walking (or driving).<br />
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I was only at Danger for a few months. In that time I faced just one deadline crunch. I was working in the early evening feeling the pressure and I was frustrated about something. I got up from my desk and wandered to the kitchen. There was a big pink bakery box with the bare remnants of that morning's breakfast pastries. With malice I grabbed a white plastic knife and proceeded to viciously attack a defenseless muffin. In seconds I had hacked it to bits. This all happened while one of my co-workers watched. After a few seconds of stunned silence, he said simply "Knaster has gone off the edge". And I had. But I got better.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Mountain View, CA, USA37.3860517 -122.083851137.2851427 -122.2452126 37.486960700000004 -121.9224896tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-5666496306476264832013-11-05T14:35:00.002-08:002013-11-05T14:35:28.314-08:00Microsoft steals bread meant for the homeless, and other food tales of the road<div>
When Microsoft shipped Office 98, the Redmond marketing team set up a roadshow to demo the new software at Apple offices (yes, Apple offices) around the country. I was pretty good at giving demos, so somehow I wound up getting asked to give the Office 98 demo on this tour. This was a 50-minute demo, part of a half-day program. The plan was for morning and afternoon demos in 5 cities in 5 days, which sounded pretty fun to me.</div>
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The tour schedule looked like this: Monday in Dallas, Tuesday in Atlanta, Wednesday in D.C., Thursday in New York, and Friday in Boston. There were only four of us on the tour. We would start the first demo at 9 am, finish up by 1 pm, take an hour for lunch, do another show in the afternoon with a new audience, then pack up and race to the airport to fly to the next city.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZmEduwzZvuMU08FwOJg8wkHPah0Jwze2HJF8KKgArG4KXtHjdvItaNGM_ZaB-X_zyKfock5O1jUelh1VfA_IYqEM06QmCJ2EPsqkBoSQtaTQJRko8n27E49rRDHejuGHbn2M5HSAAxsQ/s1600/Microsoft_Office_98_Macintosh_Edition.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZmEduwzZvuMU08FwOJg8wkHPah0Jwze2HJF8KKgArG4KXtHjdvItaNGM_ZaB-X_zyKfock5O1jUelh1VfA_IYqEM06QmCJ2EPsqkBoSQtaTQJRko8n27E49rRDHejuGHbn2M5HSAAxsQ/s320/Microsoft_Office_98_Macintosh_Edition.PNG" width="261" /></a></div>
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The pace was pretty intense for that week. There wasn't any time to go out for lunch, so we had to rely on whatever was brought in to the Apple offices, which varied widely. Dinner was worse: we never had time for it, because we had to rush to the airport. If we were lucky, there were still places to get something to eat at the airport. Otherwise it was vending machines and leftovers.</div>
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On Tuesday, we stayed a Doubletree Hotel in Atlanta. We got there around midnight and had Doubletree chocolate chip cookies for dinner. That was pretty good!</div>
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By Wednesday in Washington I figured out that we were never getting a decent dinner. Plus, the Apple office that day provided tasty sub sandwiches at lunch. Clever guy that I was, I stuffed an extra sandwich in my bag for dinner. I was set. When we got to the airport, late as usual, I looked in my bag to find the delicious sandwich had leaked Italian dressing on everything. That bag smelled like a deli for years afterward.</div>
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That night we flew to New York, my first time there. For some reason, Microsoft's travel department had booked us at the Waldorf-Astoria. I figured I'd never be back there again on my own dime, which so far has been true. Although we checked in very late, room service was still available. Since it was my first trip to New York, I ordered a New York steak and New York cheesecake. I probably thought that was really clever. Since I wasn't paying, I also took a $29 jar of peanuts in a Waldorf-Astoria logo jar. I still have the jar.</div>
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On Thursday, traffic and weather conspired to get us to JFK airport very late. No shops or food counters were open in our remote terminal, including a Panera bread cart that had just closed. We hadn't eaten all day and begged to buy some bread, but the Panera dude said no. I watched as he put all the leftover bread into a large plastic bag. "Can we buy that bread?" I asked. No, he said. It was going to the homeless shelter. </div>
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He finished bagging the bread, put the bag on the cart, and left. The four of us debated what to do. We were hungry, and all the shops were closed. Once we were sure the guy was out of sight, we carefully opened the bag and grabbed eight rolls and four pastries. We closed the bag up again and left a $20 bill tucked under it. As we ate the meager dinner, I wondered what it would be like to get fired for embarrassing Microsoft by stealing bread from homeless people.</div>
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On the last leg of the trip, we arrived in Boston after midnight and got to the hotel at about 1 am. When I checked in, the desk clerk produced a box that had been shipped to me. This was the first night of Passover, and my amazing wife had packed and sent a box of Passover food goodies for me to enjoy. Needless to say, that was the best meal of the whole trip.</div>
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And on Saturday we went home.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Mountain View, CA, USA37.3860517 -122.083851137.2851427 -122.2452126 37.486960700000004 -121.9224896tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-1111229254207225902013-10-29T14:42:00.000-07:002014-09-10T10:41:29.679-07:00Inside the first issue of MacworldHaving a whole new magazine devoted to the Mac was pretty cool back in 1984. You've seen the cover of the first issue, right?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8rNjSjzNj4DNBMYVlJRZlVb28nREkw5GSz10gJP4pvTFmTKXwRx-htF991qNeGMrIrNl0Vfa12Z2ET2FC5N1xN8WhUQL2OpUrQYjgDDL2AFbZL5Q-nMjw1ozoewBPHxQuR0oZ4UPoKcY/s1600/IMG_1926.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8rNjSjzNj4DNBMYVlJRZlVb28nREkw5GSz10gJP4pvTFmTKXwRx-htF991qNeGMrIrNl0Vfa12Z2ET2FC5N1xN8WhUQL2OpUrQYjgDDL2AFbZL5Q-nMjw1ozoewBPHxQuR0oZ4UPoKcY/s400/IMG_1926.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
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The first issue of Macworld appeared on the same day as the Mac's introduction, which meant a few interesting points:<br />
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<li>Lots of things were very new that day and worthy of coverage, including the Mac itself and all its software, graphical user interfaces, and even the mouse.</li>
<li>Although there was plenty of Apple news to cover, there wasn't much from third parties. The most prominent support came from Microsoft, as you can see in this ad.</li>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ1sFQayxUD03QGLuS0WHzdmbyiW_jINghZuAa3tcPtG4UOLGwGoEjkqK_98HBUiguK7oyOpLgc4dqyphbzsZX8uSfwTwJeDTwqeRKEc0IKJCQ6cQdPk_1YegHyy5cLDmlnO8a6gYr9WI/s1600/IMG_1927.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ1sFQayxUD03QGLuS0WHzdmbyiW_jINghZuAa3tcPtG4UOLGwGoEjkqK_98HBUiguK7oyOpLgc4dqyphbzsZX8uSfwTwJeDTwqeRKEc0IKJCQ6cQdPk_1YegHyy5cLDmlnO8a6gYr9WI/s640/IMG_1927.JPG" height="640" width="480" /></a></div>
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<li>To get this issue out at the same time as the Mac, Apple obviously cooperated with the publisher and gave them plenty of access while the Mac was still secret. Needless to say, that doesn't happen anymore.</li>
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So what's inside? Here's the table of contents:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRUnp7ADBQUhNNksY0XdTdV00z1k8YCwx4FeOfw5Gs1k3pIPPorN0N8C2zqvUyLdSz_UfRxhovNSWjlKQuD074CfQYS_xZV7ZvDoaJ27_pmq9NLnTZvRm9gBmJnjGBN6yHxGJlQIgT6c4/s1600/IMG_1940.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRUnp7ADBQUhNNksY0XdTdV00z1k8YCwx4FeOfw5Gs1k3pIPPorN0N8C2zqvUyLdSz_UfRxhovNSWjlKQuD074CfQYS_xZV7ZvDoaJ27_pmq9NLnTZvRm9gBmJnjGBN6yHxGJlQIgT6c4/s640/IMG_1940.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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It's a pretty good assortment of articles about using the Mac, a nice set of brief interviews with team members, a long conversation with Bill Gates, and lots of great images that showed off the Mac's graphical powers. There are even a couple of pieces about programming. Here's a sample of some of the articles:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDSe3kRiW8TVhVLz38AldRFFY1Kv32LvOp4RybRnBzUsE-eGw33-58btqxQbJq3bgRcu0qtKPYDXd5zI6FwSAh_5bUvAkZHLJj6WFhCKfe3nLyxyaRMsex7DxS8qcfc9WuJw_cVQBM8kQ/s1600/IMG_1929.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDSe3kRiW8TVhVLz38AldRFFY1Kv32LvOp4RybRnBzUsE-eGw33-58btqxQbJq3bgRcu0qtKPYDXd5zI6FwSAh_5bUvAkZHLJj6WFhCKfe3nLyxyaRMsex7DxS8qcfc9WuJw_cVQBM8kQ/s640/IMG_1929.JPG" height="640" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Remember, everything was new, so people had to be shown around the desktop.</span></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih6R0vQ1x835PTJ32nVyFx4xDa1EqDONmMKrB_EyU_LiSJCp_AiUgyoamfHcHSWmu7MbEg3AdWAjaJ0pxQO45vzTAzBWUfsz6xAtdpnFAizEKhkR16ab9OuAqFZwzT0NclJo_hJKKzRbE/s1600/IMG_1930.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih6R0vQ1x835PTJ32nVyFx4xDa1EqDONmMKrB_EyU_LiSJCp_AiUgyoamfHcHSWmu7MbEg3AdWAjaJ0pxQO45vzTAzBWUfsz6xAtdpnFAizEKhkR16ab9OuAqFZwzT0NclJo_hJKKzRbE/s640/IMG_1930.JPG" height="640" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Who remembers <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desk_accessory">Desk Accessories</a>? (Kids, ask your parents.)</span></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqN6iIevWNu9F5TYBMJNOzAqSyTgb98QQYa2yxkMKv_1YzgfD_9UrTlHvxuIkxYnsq2v7wuSics_foiyqHeyyQTdvHDBf3PcFV2n87TsjOaVKFlgpjS2u_UgvKw7kBmaJQ2Q55YV6pQeE/s1600/IMG_1933.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqN6iIevWNu9F5TYBMJNOzAqSyTgb98QQYa2yxkMKv_1YzgfD_9UrTlHvxuIkxYnsq2v7wuSics_foiyqHeyyQTdvHDBf3PcFV2n87TsjOaVKFlgpjS2u_UgvKw7kBmaJQ2Q55YV6pQeE/s640/IMG_1933.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Possibly the most soulful photo of Bill Gates ever (shot by the great Ed Kashi).</span></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyslfw9IOPd5a5Hb8JvcfkWZrRhL-ssYhgUxOY0k7Nw7hpSaW91wcemC434qkrjCEf75LefxlleSqsDwqPnsPGFND0lA0SD_WDVLaoobDcw8kKo3z00M52DYv9lobk6-8q9MMXlmLcQyE/s1600/IMG_1931.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyslfw9IOPd5a5Hb8JvcfkWZrRhL-ssYhgUxOY0k7Nw7hpSaW91wcemC434qkrjCEf75LefxlleSqsDwqPnsPGFND0lA0SD_WDVLaoobDcw8kKo3z00M52DYv9lobk6-8q9MMXlmLcQyE/s640/IMG_1931.JPG" height="640" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">This article introduced users to the mouse and taught them good mouse hygiene (picture at lower right).</span></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPy5WV28L9dJKvknjutdsqBXqVcWPucyQtq7xjFXkbuwTyQMqmfFdANSIwXk45rqBDY9B1DyiLVcog_18TytWYZfGYl56u3xPp6DiVS8MwwpkK08GrKVEzpIe_RAcVNAdpKSETeucCbP8/s1600/IMG_1932.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPy5WV28L9dJKvknjutdsqBXqVcWPucyQtq7xjFXkbuwTyQMqmfFdANSIwXk45rqBDY9B1DyiLVcog_18TytWYZfGYl56u3xPp6DiVS8MwwpkK08GrKVEzpIe_RAcVNAdpKSETeucCbP8/s640/IMG_1932.JPG" height="640" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Here's an ad for Dave Winer's ThinkTank, which came out early in the Mac's life.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_MjlVnA8_kTt8taNavQaGnLMLNTvx9pOKY3neZsR304Mo8HrVXLu1HsDETo-vExV4nFAfl64XdkVwpueHGp6eprWO3YLBY-sQQK9A4heSVzq-YL8jnejXTKrzN-VDIqrvsV0xV5kN9hc/s1600/IMG_1934.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_MjlVnA8_kTt8taNavQaGnLMLNTvx9pOKY3neZsR304Mo8HrVXLu1HsDETo-vExV4nFAfl64XdkVwpueHGp6eprWO3YLBY-sQQK9A4heSVzq-YL8jnejXTKrzN-VDIqrvsV0xV5kN9hc/s640/IMG_1934.JPG" height="640" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Examples of illustrations created with MacPaint, comparing screen vs. printer pixels.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTCPzSCVooiIK3Qwles9bzb-RBO_K4rNW5nkPnnTOKK9A5ytE330fkcta01DR37PPd4Xk6QBR0FlZpD-XpBxAW3ZLbbCZBRcJfT5qACshUDc_GWohX3Y97d9T9-_K7eXtUOwWsNkPq1-E/s1600/IMG_1939.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTCPzSCVooiIK3Qwles9bzb-RBO_K4rNW5nkPnnTOKK9A5ytE330fkcta01DR37PPd4Xk6QBR0FlZpD-XpBxAW3ZLbbCZBRcJfT5qACshUDc_GWohX3Y97d9T9-_K7eXtUOwWsNkPq1-E/s640/IMG_1939.JPG" height="640" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Susan Kare's famous illustration.</span></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Ae5d9UGghL9Fm6bZfREd053wLIGVFnQxaCbY8NbLWYwputnsCR85EedQhcWvlVswlJMe2lPPUiJmhblLVPNvAomlqNH5eTaNLlW3yesBX4JYClciwsznRgd7mGJEUk2qxdKZtjIEG7w/s1600/IMG_1928.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Ae5d9UGghL9Fm6bZfREd053wLIGVFnQxaCbY8NbLWYwputnsCR85EedQhcWvlVswlJMe2lPPUiJmhblLVPNvAomlqNH5eTaNLlW3yesBX4JYClciwsznRgd7mGJEUk2qxdKZtjIEG7w/s640/IMG_1928.JPG" height="640" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">These products are not pictured because they didn't exist. How many of them ever shipped I can't say. Apple Fritter Modem???</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Maybe the most amazing fact of all is that Macworld is still <a href="http://www.macworld.com/">alive and well</a> after nearly 30 years.<br />
<br />
UPDATE 9/10/14: Or not. :(</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Mountain View, CA, USA37.3860517 -122.083851137.2851427 -122.2452126 37.486960700000004 -121.9224896tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-3895040905536598622013-10-22T14:37:00.000-07:002013-10-22T14:37:11.473-07:00How Microsoft got back to making great Mac softwareI've blogged <a href="http://scottknaster.blogspot.com/2013/09/working-for-microsoft-at-macworld-expo.html">previously</a> about working in the Mac group at Microsoft and how much fun that wasn't during Macworld Expo. In those strange days, Microsoft was doing tremendous work supporting the Mac, which resulted in really nice apps. These apps happened for 3 basic reasons:<br />
<br />
First, Microsoft created Word 6 as a cross-platform product designed to look and feel the same on Windows and Mac. This was exactly what Mac users <i>didn't</i> want. And because it was tuned for Windows, the Mac version was impossibly slow and ponderous. While Windows users loved Word 6, Mac users absolutely loathed it, and people in Redmond noticed. This caused them to *ahem* Think Different about how they should create Mac software.<br />
<br />
Second, the Internet happened. This created a brand new, very important kind of app, and Microsoft could use it to experiment with new ways to develop Mac software while also thinking about fixing the Word 6 problem.<br />
<br />
Third, Microsoft got hold of not one, but an entire group of really good Mac developers and product folks. This team (Don Bradford, Shayne Bradley, Bowen Simmons, Terry Worley, Steven Lovett, and others) had recently left Apple and were now ensconced in a tiny office in Santa Clara as a remote Silicon Valley outpost of Microsoft, trying to do some good at the Evil Empire. The group called their office <i>MS-Bay</i>. They even had their own logo stuff like t-shirts and keychains, created by artist <a href="http://sonyapaz.com/">Sonya Paz</a>, who doubled as our office manager.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_DdnmRMdv1puXaQP3JyYtopjQsUdiLjbA9xsDQRYGOHcEasdC01IN_C0YzKnIrppuBiwAwL3grVPZUJBxftUbrX69Df6R3BKWSfAC4zcXQpQPGldh0bB2Sz7ym__G9UIKvgvnqh6LLJY/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_DdnmRMdv1puXaQP3JyYtopjQsUdiLjbA9xsDQRYGOHcEasdC01IN_C0YzKnIrppuBiwAwL3grVPZUJBxftUbrX69Df6R3BKWSfAC4zcXQpQPGldh0bB2Sz7ym__G9UIKvgvnqh6LLJY/s1600/images.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<b>Thanks for not hanging up on me</b><br />
<br />
I joined the team in 1995 after a recruiter called me and said she was looking for Mac folks to work at Microsoft. I told her I was interested, and she thanked me for not hanging up on her, which she said most people did in response to that offer. On my first day on the job I got an email summoning me to Redmond for orientation. I mentioned that to Sonya, who casually said "Oh, don't worry, we'll take care of that for you". I soon learned that our office was succeeding at staying Mac-focused by keeping as far away from Redmond as possible.<br />
<br />
This group created <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_Mac">Internet Explorer for Mac</a>, and they had free reign to make it (to use the vernacular of the time) <i>Mac-like</i>. Of course, there was a Windows version of IE, and the Mac one had to be similar in some respects, plus support some Microsoft technologies. But it was a native Mac app, supporting most every Mac OS technology Apple had at the time. This really helped when comparing it to Netscape, which was unashamedly cross-platform and apparently not Mac native.<br />
<br />
<b>The Bill Gates crisis</b><br />
<br />
One particular crisis occurred when an edict came down from Bill Gates himself. The new version of IE for Windows included an animated Windows logo in the upper-right corner (remember when browsers had those?). We were told the Mac version had to have the same thing. A Windows logo. In a Mac browser. I think we actually shipped a version like that before convincing those who needed convincing what an Insanely Bad Idea it was, and we changed it a more sensible animated letter E.<br />
<br />
The team worked hard to make Internet Explorer into really great Mac software, and eventually in those pre-Safari days it became the default browser on the Mac as part of the historic <a href="http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-202143.html">Apple - Microsoft deal of 1997</a>. MS-Bay continued for awhile more until it merged with the Mac Office team in Redmond that was creating Office 98. Little did anyone know that before too much longer, office software would become a lot less important.<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Mountain View, CA, USA37.3860517 -122.083851137.2851427 -122.2452126 37.486960700000004 -121.9224896tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-6810029945071472652013-10-08T14:21:00.000-07:002013-10-09T08:20:46.162-07:00MAC: The Macintosh Calendar 1985 (complete)Last week I <a href="http://scottknaster.blogspot.com/2013/10/when-macintosh-had-pinup-calendar.html">posted</a> about <b>MAC: The Macintosh Calendar 1985</b> and included a couple of images from the calendar. Lots of folks asked to see more, so today I photographed the entire calendar and <a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/+ScottKnaster/albums/5932491564521976385">posted it</a>. I apologize in advance to anyone depicted in this calendar who would rather not see these images again. It's all done in the name of history.<br />
<br />
As I said last week, can you imagine Apple allowing this sort of thing to happen now? No, you cannot.<br />
<span id="goog_1095174252"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/+ScottKnaster/albums/5932491564521976385"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu15evMZJZspU_O6PNlDoBb0S-n-afzX_zI6ZajHzc6dsH68dMjoYi377t1Tq5PdPKRV4RdNL48Bqgluv2Z0-kPjJIaOzjcBZGTdRaCowwiFETTHPXdArNuJYmdApixJ8uilRAcoCE0K0/s400/IMG_1809.JPG" width="500" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Click this image to see the whole calendar</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span id="goog_1095174253"></span><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Mountain View, CA, USA37.3860517 -122.083851137.2851427 -122.2452126 37.486960700000004 -121.9224896tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-47602916558942375212013-10-07T21:47:00.000-07:002013-10-07T21:47:16.934-07:00The truth and falsehoods of Jobs (the movie)My buddy John Vink saw <a href="http://jobsthefilm.com/">Jobs</a> and wondered just how accurate it was. But unlike most of us, John (a) knows several of the folks depicted in the movie and (b) has a TV show. So he sat down with Steve Wozniak, Daniel Kottke, and Andy Hertzfeld and went through the movie scene by scene to discuss what really happened and how they felt about it. It's a very cool piece of video.<br />
<br />
<iframe width="580" height="435" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/gICwMQQ48Dk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Mountain View, CA, USA37.3860517 -122.083851137.2851427 -122.2452126 37.486960700000004 -121.9224896tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-55139644013417474792013-10-01T14:40:00.000-07:002013-10-01T14:40:02.123-07:00When the Macintosh had a pinup calendarIf you think Apple has its fanatic fans today, check this out: in 1985 when the Mac was one year old, Banbury Books produced a wall calendar showing pictures not of Mac products, but members of the Mac team at Apple. <b>MAC: The Macintosh Calendar 1985</b> featured photographs by D.W. Mellor. As far as I know, a product like this for the Mac never happened again. Each month had a photo depicting one or more members of the Mac team. Under each picture was a peppy caption describing the scene.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLMWFroJOgdKKXc0bebmRpIKSrUHm0Yc6iNY1Hw9BvlO1HABlt2Kkb26vVUE2p8QLhs6y6WN-34i5iAf0lB0i8Z41UeGUJ0p7LDjPz8W8LYd1Gid5KzddOWkll-a9gBAP7J4SbcgYATHE/s1600/IMG_1769.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLMWFroJOgdKKXc0bebmRpIKSrUHm0Yc6iNY1Hw9BvlO1HABlt2Kkb26vVUE2p8QLhs6y6WN-34i5iAf0lB0i8Z41UeGUJ0p7LDjPz8W8LYd1Gid5KzddOWkll-a9gBAP7J4SbcgYATHE/s320/IMG_1769.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
Here's Mr. January, <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/114737753930890120187" target="_blank">+Chris Espinosa</a>:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM51Ft5dxdKY0bF11ihgqFaAxYfovmSD8-ZFAuMgHo3Vd3HLOIx9gkQadUQHjwRW5QRt9q9hcFY0mkKDvX979hMcukqgZIGKLAX_t1E7vNpw74KknoTOeZlwx82be6gi8NKreDfVtlUHE/s1600/IMG_1772.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM51Ft5dxdKY0bF11ihgqFaAxYfovmSD8-ZFAuMgHo3Vd3HLOIx9gkQadUQHjwRW5QRt9q9hcFY0mkKDvX979hMcukqgZIGKLAX_t1E7vNpw74KknoTOeZlwx82be6gi8NKreDfVtlUHE/s400/IMG_1772.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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The calendar's month pages included holidays, as most calendars do, but also notations for important dates in Apple history. March 10 was "Design of the Apple I completed (1976)", December 15 was "First Apple shareholders meeting (1981)", and so on. The calendar also included birthdays of key Mac team members, in case you wanted to birthday-stalk any of these folks in the pre-Facebook era.<br />
<br />
In addition to the big month pages, each month had a small day-sized photo of some component or accessory, such as a 3.5 inch floppy, a bunch of Macs being tested at the factory, and even an Apple-logoed delivery van.<br />
<br />
The calendar-makers were inclusive in choosing their subjects. They depicted not only Apple's Mac celebrities of the day, but also people from the factory who were not well known. On the other hand, some folks who certainly deserved a whole page can only be found in group shots, and others are missing entirely.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYtUAGhrjEmAPgjp_VwhRPhpYxC7bADouNUB4Vmig0kQYq4Zd-jRCk1KU4JwGZjkUmcOleY3P8L2vUWC7kLj6_V6pK4CLbv-cko8lNzEdotWNiZFTpfLHjiQMdH7p8LbXsB3B1qjpTgt0/s1600/IMG_1777.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYtUAGhrjEmAPgjp_VwhRPhpYxC7bADouNUB4Vmig0kQYq4Zd-jRCk1KU4JwGZjkUmcOleY3P8L2vUWC7kLj6_V6pK4CLbv-cko8lNzEdotWNiZFTpfLHjiQMdH7p8LbXsB3B1qjpTgt0/s400/IMG_1777.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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I worked in Developer Technical Support, which was officially part of the marketing team, so I'm on the page for October with many other members of that team, including <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/112374836634096795698" target="_blank">+Guy Kawasaki</a>. I'm the only person on the page who's partially hidden by a Mac. This is the only time I have appeared in a pinup calendar so far.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnFkJd3eBLtQJxeJPeXta5mEsRV4P4FCcbV1bmVS-bXp_UBXF05vE2zK1xeS8eoSHVt915pR1SLPpAuHhCFxAbeQwukYNBua5v7Gb2lraTnqlyWOhOYDErcqK3fIonH8e7LzL_PeWL038/s1600/IMG_1774.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnFkJd3eBLtQJxeJPeXta5mEsRV4P4FCcbV1bmVS-bXp_UBXF05vE2zK1xeS8eoSHVt915pR1SLPpAuHhCFxAbeQwukYNBua5v7Gb2lraTnqlyWOhOYDErcqK3fIonH8e7LzL_PeWL038/s400/IMG_1774.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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Can you imagine Apple allowing this kind of thing to be published today? No, you cannot.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Mountain View, CA, USA37.3860517 -122.083851137.2851427 -122.2452126 37.486960700000004 -121.9224896tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-33802959307410419882013-09-24T14:23:00.000-07:002013-09-24T14:23:01.051-07:00Steve Jobs demonstrates a superpower at a partyIn 1997, Apple was <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=%22beleaguered+apple%22&oq=%22beleaguered+apple%22&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l2.10982j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">beleaguered</a> and struggling. But Steve Jobs was back, and there was hope that things might change. Part of that hope came from arch-rival Microsoft, which had shockingly <a href="http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-202143.html">invested in Apple</a> and was working on a sparkling new version of Microsoft Office that would give the Mac an instant shot of renewed credibility. I was working on the team that built Internet Explorer for Mac, which was closely related to the Mac Office team, and I knew that our new Mac software was pretty cool.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLt7jIuMm81DF84ctTEJazmNUExYrbCPhUQbZKZCJxOw1UBBg7hnKOy3HDd-cQe98OwJzrdgK_H_-dhSKg_jQIoMOvzBCk_8SqagCRVEEALlD_wn2SvEdS75-NlfomVhS8hkecE4CMY5o/s1600/Microsoft_Office_98_Macintosh_Edition.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLt7jIuMm81DF84ctTEJazmNUExYrbCPhUQbZKZCJxOw1UBBg7hnKOy3HDd-cQe98OwJzrdgK_H_-dhSKg_jQIoMOvzBCk_8SqagCRVEEALlD_wn2SvEdS75-NlfomVhS8hkecE4CMY5o/s320/Microsoft_Office_98_Macintosh_Edition.PNG" width="261" /></a></div>
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Microsoft called the new version Office 97, because there was already a Windows version by that name. But then Steve Jobs convinced Microsoft to change the Mac version name to Office 98 so it could be shinier and newer than what Windows had.<br />
<br />
Microsoft rolled out Office 98 at Macworld Expo in January 1998. To celebrate, we held a massive party at the <a href="http://www.sfgcjm.com/">San Francisco Gift Center</a>. The place was overflowing with people. Food and drinks were being served. There was loud music. And up on a balcony that overhung the party, people from Microsoft were trying to talk to the crowd about Office 98. Nobody was listening. The music stopped, but people kept partying, because it was a party. The speakers tried desperately to get everyone to quiet down and listen to them, but it wasn't working.<br />
<br />
And then, suddenly, Steve Jobs arrived at the party with a small entourage. Steve walked out on the balcony to join the Microsoft folks who were running the show. Party-goers seemed to notice Steve's arrival, but it was a small distraction at best. The noise continued. Then something remarkable happened. Steve faced the crowd and held up his index fingers to his mouth. He said "shh". Turning his head side to side to reach the whole crowd, he said "shh" again. That was it. The room fell silent. <i>Steve Jobs had turned off a party</i>.<br />
<br />
Steve spoke for a few minutes about how awesome Office 98 was and how it could only be done on the Mac. And then he was gone, and the party started up again.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-50393858881275205022013-09-19T15:04:00.001-07:002013-09-19T15:04:24.181-07:00MacHack was the strangest and best conference everOnce upon a time, every year from 1986 to 2004, there was an amazing annual programming conference called MacHack. <br />
<br />
Some of the key features of MacHack were:<br />
<ul>
<li>It took place at a crappy Holiday Inn in Dearborn, Michigan. There was little to do but hack.</li>
<li>The conference started at midnight with a keynote, and the keynote always lasted several hours. I was part of one that ended at 6:50 AM.</li>
<li>Every attendee, technical or not, was encouraged to create a hack. All hacks were presented at a hack show on the third night of the conference.<br />
</li>
<li>Hacks didn't have to involve technology. One recurring hack (executed by <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/106741850554591477322" target="_blank">+Adam Engst</a>) was to hide a wooden stake in the hotel so well that it would still be in the same place the following year.<br />
</li>
<li>Hacks were supposed to be cool but impractical. When someone presented a practical hack, the audience derisively shouted "Useful!" .</li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPq988Y6wmu3mUBXDQ5lb_eciMzyapibAdGxf5QU5sJKBX8K7FQskoAlb02xeqiyDiClP5EwoyQkw9zpRa2jvyaEJQzhz7NV17lUkU5Pr2lPCc-O215Grc60EJ7pLR6JwCA_Q1tJ6JXyk/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPq988Y6wmu3mUBXDQ5lb_eciMzyapibAdGxf5QU5sJKBX8K7FQskoAlb02xeqiyDiClP5EwoyQkw9zpRa2jvyaEJQzhz7NV17lUkU5Pr2lPCc-O215Grc60EJ7pLR6JwCA_Q1tJ6JXyk/s320/photo.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Conference program from guess which year</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
One of my favorite MacHack moments took place in 2003. I was in the conference lounge around 3:00 am, eating dinner and trading instant messages with <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/100346965843536809009" target="_blank">+Chris Page</a>. Chris was at home in Silicon Valley, and I was giving him a hard time because he didn't come to the conference. I went to sleep for a few hours (even though MacHack's motto was "Sleep is for the weak and sickly").<br />
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I woke up around 8:00 am and headed to the lounge for breakfast. As I sat eating my sugary cereal, I glanced to my left and was astonished to see <i>Chris Page himself</i> ambling into the room. Somehow he had traveled 2300 miles in a few hours in the middle of the night. I tried to say something, but all I could do was laugh. Chris smiled and started laughing too. He had just pulled it off: he hacked <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacHack">MacHack</a>.<br />
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If you want to know more about MacHack, you can <a href="http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.20/20.11/ADHOC/index.html">read this article I wrote</a> about the 2004 conference.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Mountain View, CA, USA37.3860517 -122.083851137.2851427 -122.2452126 37.486960700000004 -121.9224896tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-10178026164494608942013-09-05T11:59:00.000-07:002013-09-05T11:59:27.292-07:00The first Apple II adA couple of weeks ago <a href="http://scottknaster.blogspot.com/2013/08/witness-to-history.html">I mentioned</a> the classic issue of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljP96dJ9rHY">Scientific American</a> on "<a href="http://www.experimentaltvcenter.org/scientific-american-microelectronics-september-1977-volume-237-number-3">microelectronics</a>" that included the first ad for the Apple II. Because I never throw anything (interesting) away, I found my copy of that four-page color brochure at home. Here's the cover:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6jEEXbZzFry6BV4j8kco-vSrWmnhO04Wu9RAZ60aFYC0E-GXqE5e1rEW8T3ioLQH4nRJ64k-d9mbzzN34V2_jVE6fE3IzIMBeO6Lw2w1S3BwR-V6aKaUymXNfKci2PBz5nYWdUj0vxdk/s1600/pg.+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6jEEXbZzFry6BV4j8kco-vSrWmnhO04Wu9RAZ60aFYC0E-GXqE5e1rEW8T3ioLQH4nRJ64k-d9mbzzN34V2_jVE6fE3IzIMBeO6Lw2w1S3BwR-V6aKaUymXNfKci2PBz5nYWdUj0vxdk/s400/pg.+1.png" width="306" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Brochure courtesy of ComputerLand of Denver (defunct)</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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36 years later, Apple still worries a lot about simplicity. That's pretty cool. The inside looks like this:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLKYaKQndrphlmiuPqCyi9yUiVBrNO5RFbEXL2IE3fzXluZ0DgQj97Frv2mByb7kCVnnR5desuqgfVGK1F7Zq2gq5vEp0GzcbK4TOOa4aQh5jvRa4n23nMYV76b4oi3Prql3jCrIbYP6g/s1600/pg.+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLKYaKQndrphlmiuPqCyi9yUiVBrNO5RFbEXL2IE3fzXluZ0DgQj97Frv2mByb7kCVnnR5desuqgfVGK1F7Zq2gq5vEp0GzcbK4TOOa4aQh5jvRa4n23nMYV76b4oi3Prql3jCrIbYP6g/s640/pg.+2.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A completely typical Apple II setup.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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The copy is kind of crude compared to today's Apple, but you can see the germ of the Apple style being developed. Most of it is pretty geeky by modern standards, but this was<b> </b><i>absolutely mainstream</i> next to pretty much every other hobby computer being sold at the time. I mean, come on! Those are actual real normal non-nerds discussing game controllers over a cup of tea and a sliced apple on tasteful dinnerware. Throughout all the ad copy, only one application is mentioned and depicted: STARTREK. The rest is all about things like writing your own programs in BASIC, using a cassette recorder for storage, and all the great peripherals that will be coming out.<br />
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Finally, here's the back of the brochure:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib_guOhoOHSwAYijmb3I4ZKQLeBmv74IdhUkxp1Wo1Ma3ok57F-hP1oDpZxDoskrBzzJrpLjvt-j-ubelf_u5jFoN3oShlvCTxHVVY4QwnhTmn1KVdVVMfYTEu75gtHsK6LCOuYZozk_M/s1600/pg.+3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib_guOhoOHSwAYijmb3I4ZKQLeBmv74IdhUkxp1Wo1Ma3ok57F-hP1oDpZxDoskrBzzJrpLjvt-j-ubelf_u5jFoN3oShlvCTxHVVY4QwnhTmn1KVdVVMfYTEu75gtHsK6LCOuYZozk_M/s640/pg.+3.png" width="492" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Moore's law at work.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Posting detailed specs on the back was pretty standard for the time. The Apple II included a 280x192 high resolution graphics mode, a 1 MHz CPU (that's <i>megahertz</i> with an "M"), a maximum of 48K RAM (but who could afford that?), and a <a href="ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/documentation/misc/Apple%20II%20Original%20ROM%20Info.pdf">pretty nifty ROM</a> filled with <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/102797953003564182378" target="_blank">+Steve Wozniak</a> magic that included a monitor (command shell), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_BASIC">Integer BASIC</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWEET16">SWEET 16</a> virtual machine, a <a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/ta40023">mini-assembler</a> that was the first assembler I ever used, and more goodies.<br />
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The Apple II was an amazing machine, and this brochure was my first hint that something special was going on. But I almost didn't buy one because it was too expensive. Almost didn't, glad I did.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Mountain View, CA, USA37.3860517 -122.083851137.2851427 -122.2452126 37.486960700000004 -121.9224896tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028150748680050461.post-20971888539652881402013-09-04T12:01:00.001-07:002013-09-04T12:01:15.735-07:00Working for Microsoft at Macworld Expo was no picnicBelieve it or not, there was a time when Microsoft dominated and everybody else hated them (only half of which is true now). The Internet in its role as Great Disruptor helped turn that all around, starting in the late 1990s. As Netscape, Apple, and other companies were using the Internet to move forward, Microsoft was working on how it could own the Internet like it owned personal computing.<br />
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In the middle of all that, I ended up working on Mac stuff at Microsoft with a <a href="https://www.salon.com/1997/09/25/apple_3/">ragtag band of Apple refugees</a> deep in the heart of Silicon Valley. These folks built Internet Explorer for Macintosh. It was hand-crafted for Mac OS, by experienced Mac developers, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_Mac#Internet_Explorer_2.0_for_Macintosh">supported virtually every important native Mac technology</a>, unlike Netscape, which looked and worked a lot like its Windows version and was (I assume) the product of a cross-platform development strategy. Oh, the irony.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5_pLg1tJvHkJvwQm1lqFgY91YYszm8z8zx8F9f5rSPr7RhjK97xPAfTvWBpL0j4jpfHaAmnZVenfnzKRSd_P1FAURpCkw39ooaQmYR35-YHOeRvKMWp_szBltOkDrQYKbsSDFuj2cQrA/s1600/IMG_20130904_114614.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5_pLg1tJvHkJvwQm1lqFgY91YYszm8z8zx8F9f5rSPr7RhjK97xPAfTvWBpL0j4jpfHaAmnZVenfnzKRSd_P1FAURpCkw39ooaQmYR35-YHOeRvKMWp_szBltOkDrQYKbsSDFuj2cQrA/s400/IMG_20130904_114614.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>What amazing packaging we had back then. <br />N.B. "Designed for </i><b>the</b><i> Mac".</i><br /><i>(Photo courtesy of </i><a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/100535338638690515335" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">+Louis Gray</a><i>)</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My job was to write docs and do technical evangelism. In 1996, the Macworld Expo keynote consisted of Apple über-Evangelist <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/112374836634096795698" target="_blank">+Guy Kawasaki</a> showcasing some great Mac apps. Guy loved Internet Explorer because it was a wonderful Mac app, which really twisted his brain in knots, but he gave us a slot in the keynote. So I got to do a five-minute demo of Mac IE in front of thousands of Mac fans. Although I tried to be ingratiating and self-deprecating, and I worked hard to establish that I was a Mac nerd just like them, nobody was buying what I was selling. After Guy introduced me and the boos died down, I did my little demo, then finished up with the pièce de résistance: a t-shirt with the IE logo and the words<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Internet Explorer for Macintosh</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Guy says it's OK to try it</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Guy laughed. Nobody else did. The keynote moved along.</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
Although I'd been to almost every Macworld Expo, I never really noticed the Microsoft presence before. Now I was about to find out what that was like (spoiler alert: it's not awesome). Our booth was essentially empty all the time. People used it as a shortcut to avoid the busy aisles around the jam-packed Apple and Adobe booths. As they walked through they sometimes muttered darkly about Microsoft, or chuckled at how empty the booth was. One guy who actually stopped in the booth looked at the stack of IE CDs (yes, as depicted above, companies really used to give out software on CD, even web browsers; downloads at 56K took a long time) and started picking up a few copies. I walked over and said he must have tried and liked IE, because he was taking copies for his friends. He grinned and replied no, he would never use our goddamn software, but he liked to put the CDs in his microwave and watch them crackle. I just nodded and backed away.</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
On the last day of the expo, I did an interview with KCBS radio in San Francisco. They asked the important question: what in the world was Microsoft doing at Macworld? As I explained that we were a Mac-loving bunch who had created and were giving away a really good web browser for free, I heard laughter behind me and the reporter cryptically said that the Apple – Microsoft "rivalry" appeared to still be going strong. It turns out that during the interview, people behind me were making all sorts of fun gestures including rabbit ears, throat-slits, and middle fingers. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Those were the days. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Mountain View, CA, USA37.3860517 -122.083851137.2851427 -122.2452126 37.486960700000004 -121.9224896