My 2003 Mini Cooper, in “silk green” sports magnetic Apple logos on the doors. This is the vehicle I use for my Mac consulting business.
How fun. I’ve had Apple stickers on my last two vehicles, but this takes the cake.
Hilarious. Someone who saw my 1983 Apple.com mockup made the spoof as an actual, working web site.
As of now, the links all say “Coming Soon!” But man, wouldn’t it be cool to work out all the Apple Lisa or BASIC copy for a functioning (albeit fake) retro Apple.com?
Steve Craft writes in:
I bought an Apple Graphics Tablet in an eBay auction about 3 years ago for use with my Apple IIGS. There is a IIGS CDA (Classic Desk Accessory) and a NDA (New Desk Accessory) that let it be used as a mouse in non-AGT-aware apps. I got it to let my very young child do paint programs and etc on my machine.Unfortunately, the thing did not come with the critical “dongle” that goes between the interface card and the actual device, so I have never used it. I still check eBay every now and then looking for a dongle I can use, but so far have had no luck.
I don’t really “collect” any more as much as I try to find uses for stuff I have. When they lack a use, they go.
Usually.
Steve wrote in to share some of his pictures, which you can see below.
All photos are courtesy of Steve. Thanks again for sharing!
When I bought my first iPod, the first 30 GB video version, podcasts were immediately appealing to me. It was like a talk show I could listen to any time I wanted on any subject I wanted. Over the years, I’ve developed a collection of favorites.
Which is why it’s pretty neat that Newton Poetry reader David Kendal asked me to do a podcast of our own.
So we did one. And it’s out there. We call it The hello Show.
It’s about all the stuff we’re into: Newtons, Macs, the Apple world that we tend to spend an inordinate time thinking about. Probably just like you.
We have a super-simple setup. GarageBand (and, on the other side of the Atlantic, Audacity) plus iChat plus an FTP account – with some of David’s web wizardry – is all we need. So far. We’re definitely learning as we go.
Anyway. Give it a try, if you like. We know there’s plenty out there to listen to, and we’d be honored if you spent an hour or so with us. Shucks, we’d love to have you on The hello Show. If you’d like to be a guest, please contact us and we’ll set something up. It’ll be fun.
Oh. And why “The hello Show?” After a lapse in brainstorming, David sprung the idea of the “hello” text that was featured in the original Macintosh and the iMac advertising. A great idea.
Edible Apple has a great look back at the original Apple-designed tablet device – not a computer, but more of an input mechanism like today’s Wacom tablets.
Released in 1979, during the Apple II era, the $650 Graphics Tablet had issues upon release:
The Graphics Tablet, however, wasn’t exactly a runaway hit as it was subsequently discontinued when the FCC found that it caused radio frequency interference problems.Apple went back to the drawing board, and in 1983, it released a second iteration of the graphics tablet, which was right around the time when the Apple IIe was in production.
Check out the rest of Edible Apple’s post for more great pictures.
[Via Dave Caolo, via Splorp.]
In my original retro Apple.com post, I asked for others to take memorable moments in Apple’s history and mockup a web site.
Matt Pearce did just that, as you can see, making five total Apple.com homepages at different points in history. Particularly notable: an Apple I version with the original Apple Computer logo.
[Via Retro Maccast.]
Here’s the tablet before the tablet.
With all this talk of a tablet-type device set to descend from the foggy Olympus of Cupertino, I thought it might help to look back at Apple’s first flat computing device.
Yes, about 17 years ago Apple Computer released the original Newton MessagePad (OMP, or MessagePad 100). In August 1993, the company introduced a crude version of then-CEO John Sculley’s “Knowledge Navigator” concept. It was arguably the first personal digital assistant.
So I dreamed up what Apple.com might have looked like at the Newton’s launch in 1993, 10 years after my original retro Apple.com site featuring the Lisa in 1983.
This comes at the tail-end of the John Sculley era, right before the Mac PowerPC era, in the murky past when System 7 roamed the landscape and the PowerBook was changing the way we viewed laptop computers.
Behind the scenes, Apple was in full tablet mode. They saw it as a potential post-Mac future.
Back on the ground, Apple was having trouble seeing its dream become a reality. The OMP’s launch was plagued with problems, lowered expectations, and tragedy. But the idea – that you could do your computing and personal data management on the go – became reality, and it required a stylus.
Like the iPhone lacking its App Store, the Newton wasn’t fully operational at its August 1993 launch. Handwriting recognition was still iffy, and NewtonMail wasn’t operational yet. Some would argue that the Newton platform didn’t reach its true potential until the Newton OS 2.0 was released and the MessagePad 2×00 series came around. By then, however, the Newton brand had been stained, and the PDA line was finally killed by Steve Jobs in 1997.
For this retro Apple.com, I bowed to popular demand and used Apple’s skinny version of Garamond. I much prefer the new Myriad variation Apple uses, but some said the Garamond would look more authentic. So here it is.
The site also shows what was happening in the Apple ecosystem in 1993: the Mac TV would be released later in the year, the Power CD (both a music CD player and a CD-ROM for Macs) was the newest gadget, and capable Macs like the affordable LC III ruled the Macintosh world.
With all the talk of a rumored tablet, let’s not forget that, once upon a time, Apple had a tablet-style computer that ran apps, held ebooks, let you check e-mail, and managed your personal information. Now we use smartphones, but at the time the PDA was the closest thing to a tablet we could get.
Also remember: while the Apple press and public are busy waiting for some rumored tablet, there’s a big group of people out there using the original Apple tablet.
Yes, we know – everyone hated the iMac puck mouse/Newton/Mac TV/Pippin. There’s no more need to include it in a “Top # Apple Mistakes” list anymore.
For the past few years, for as long as I’ve been writing Newton Poetry, these “worst of” lists have cropped up from time to time. Most of them mention a similar combination of the above Apple “mistake” products. Chances are, each list will feature the same disliked Apple products as every other what-were-they-thinking list.
It’s a sham, and it’s annoying.
First, the whole “top 10″ list is simply an easy way to be Dugg and Stumbled Upon. I should know – I’m guilty of it myself. The difference is that I didn’t have to browse through other sites, copy their content, and paste it into the site. Every blog and site these days has to have their own iteration of the “worst of” list. Sure, each post probably generates a bit of traffic and tons of comments. The result, however, is that the site ends up looking desperate and silly.
Second, these posts are unoriginal in the extreme. In fact, it’s easy to predict what products will be featured in any given list. Here’s a quick rundown of Apple products you should have never purchased, just off the top of my head:
Funny that no one mentions the Apple Hi Fi or, as of yet, the Apple TV. Perhaps in a few years those products will be included, too.
Here’s the point: it’s as if, when tech blogs are pressed for fresh content, they generate some unoriginal, macabre list of Apple failures and run it as a “top 10″ post. Voila – instant page views.
Us Apple fans, and especially us Newton fans, deserve better in-depth analysis than what we all ready know to be true. I hope that Apple fans see past such drivel, and skip the link on Macsurfer.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” our collective wisdom should tell these sites. “Get a goddamn life.”
No, Apple’s not perfect, and yes, we remember the devil-spawned puck mouse. Can we move on?
There for a while, I was reporting on every damned list that included the Newton. My knee-jerk reaction was outrage, of course, but after a while that outrage turned into a passive frustration. Now, it’s just annoying.
Because it keeps happening. Like clockwork.
Sure, we can argue all day about whether the Newton platform was a failure. And we could have some yucks over how clunky (yet beautiful) the Cube really was.
But we only need to have those conversations once or twice. Not every week.
Shame on the blogs that run these “worst of” posts, and shame, especially, to those high-traffic sites that have the resources and talent to generate perfectly good and suitably worthwhile content.
Don’t resort to everyone’s-doing-it posts like these. You ought to know better.
Interesting: Michael Tchao, a member of the ol’ Apple Newton MessagePad team, is coming back to Apple.
Tchao was responsible for selling the crazy idea of a handheld computing device to then-Apple president John Sculley.
Says The Unofficial Apple Weblog:
If you wanted to start doing a bit of speculating, it’s interesting to note that Tchao was part of the team that was responsible for Apple’s first tablet computer.
Funny how a Newton no longer qualifies as a PDA. With all the rumors, everyone wants to call it a “tablet.”
Browsing through eMate battery and recharging articles, I came across Apple’s Power On Procedure After Extended Storage support post. It goes on to describe how to reset your eMate 300 if the battery fails to show a correct charge, and quotes from the eMate 300 User’s Manual.
It’s amazing to me that Apple still hosts these how-tos from, what, 12 years ago? I’ve found a few Newton-related articles this way, and all of them have been helpful.
None of the articles are updated by Apple anymore, of course. But the fact that Apple still hosts them is a benefit to the Newton community – especially new MessagePad and eMate users who are trying to get the basics down.
Maybe a full linked list, with all the support posts, would be helpful.