Podcast appearances and mentions of Andy Hertzfeld

Original text by Darin Adler. An overview of the Motorola MEK6800D2 single board computer/development kit. Roger Heinen “engineers are a dime a dozen” story from episode 40 of the Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs Podcast. The General Magic documentary is a good hard look at how General Magic fizzled out, though it somehow managed to survive long enough to power the General Motors OnStar service. Darin Adler later joined the Nautilus (a.k.a. the GNOME desktop file manager) development team with Andy Hertzfeld at Eazel. Demonstration. Bryan Cantrill recounts the object-oriented operating system craze of the 1990s and counts the corpses: Spring, Taligent, Copland, and JavaOS. Lisa Melton recounts crisis management at Eazel and the history of the Safari and WebKit project on episode 11 of the Debug podcast. Waldemar Horwat went on to head JavaScript development at Netscape. Like many other eerily smart math and programming language types, he now works at Google.

This week, we're joined by Andy Hertzfeld, a key figure behind the creation of the original Apple Macintosh. He shares fascinating insights into the team dynamics, the impact of Steve Jobs' infamous "reality distortion field," and the story behind Apple's iconic 1984 Super Bowl commercial. We also delve into his post-Apple ventures, including co-founding General Magic, and explore the visionary ideas that were far ahead of their time.  Contents: 00:00 - The Week's Retro News Stories 34:12 - Andy Hertzfeld Interview Please visit our amazing sponsors and help to support the show: Bitmap Books - https://www.bitmapbooks.com Check out PCBWay at https://pcbway.com for all your PCB needs We need your help to ensure the future of the podcast, if you'd like to help us with running costs, equipment and hosting, please consider supporting us on Patreon: https://theretrohour.com/support/ https://www.patreon.com/retrohour Get your Retro Hour merchandise: https://bit.ly/33OWBKd Join our Discord channel: https://discord.gg/GQw8qp8 Website: http://theretrohour.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theretrohour/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/retrohouruk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/retrohouruk/ Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/theretrohour Our Upcoming Events: RetroMessa, Sandefjord, Norway 17-18th August: https://www.retromessa.no/ Passione Amiga Day, Spoleto, Italy: https://passioneamigaday.it/en/home/ Show notes: $40 Mega Drive EverDrive: https://tinyurl.com/yfb9jcxf  Iron Meat: https://youtu.be/bvz2B7B_5wE Play Mega Drive on a VMU: https://tinyurl.com/47xyr6pt Clone of the 1984 Apple Macintosh Plus: https://tinyurl.com/k6pdfvh5 Hayato's Journey: https://tinyurl.com/28b8vtd5

When Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple Macintosh in January of 1984, the visual user interface, all-in-one design, and mouse-controlled navigation were revolutionary. Design team member Andy Hertzfeld and industry observer Steven Levy look back on the early days of personal computing, and talk about how the Macintosh came to be.Transcripts for each segment are available on sciencefriday.com To stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

A spontaneous port of MacPaint to the Apple II. No vertical blanking interrupt? No problem! Original text by Andy Hertzfeld at folklore.org.

Andy Hertzfeld on the joys of micro-optimization in the earliest days of colour graphics on the Macintosh. Original text by Chester Peterson Jr., MacTutor, June 1988. This Adobe Illustrator ‘88 instructional video gives you a sense of how slow 8-bit colour was back then. Illustrator ‘88 shipped in 1987, well before the advent of QuickerDraw, but I wonder whether drawing was intentionally slowed down for this video to create a more aesthetically pleasing result. How about that cold digital Fairlight CMI-heavy soundtrack? Discogs link for when that YouTube link dies. “Heatseeker” is the library music featured twice in the video. Bookbound interview with Andy Hertzfeld from January 2005, just after the MWSF 2005 keynote and the announcement of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, the iPod Shuffle, and the G4 Mac mini.

"A hacker is someone who loves programming, loves problem solving, and especially loves coming up with new tricks they haven't thought of before” explains Andy Hertzfeld, a member of the original Apple Macintosh computer development team. Listen to the full interview at https://soundcloud.com/cybercrimemagazine/history-of-hacking-andy-hertzfeld-original-macintosh-computer-team. Story in Cybercrime Magazine: cybersecurityventures.com/hacker-the-o…-definition/

Revisiting the design decisions and constraints behind the original Macintosh 128. Original text by Andy Hertzfeld at folklore.org. Steven Levy on “unauthorized” modifications to the original Mac: “A Shut and Open Case” (PDF, MP3). Dan Winkler (yes, that Dan Winkler) relaying his experience with a serial port Tecmar MacDrive hard disk in 1984. dogcow: “All About MFS: The Macintosh File System”.

In an interview conducted shortly before the dawn of the Macintosh II, Andy Hertzfeld talks about product design, NeXT, leadership, PostScript, designing products for the broadest possible audience, Windows 1.0, copyrighted code, graphics accelerators, unsung heroes of the Mac team, growing up, and Macintosh Servant. Original text from Macworld, February 1987. Unison World/Print Shop lawsuit (casetext) clip from the 1986 “Second Hand Computers” episode of the Computer Chronicles. Early days of Radius clip from Andy Hertzfeld speaking at the 2004 Mac OS X Conference. Windows 1.0 was allegedly going to do overlapping windows at first. As explained in “Barbarians Led by Bill Gates” (Edstrom and Eller, 1998) the product nearly died in its early years before two guys at a drunken company party unintentionally to transformed it into a 32-bit protected mode OS/2 killer. (The 32-bit part wasn't accidental, just the OS/2 part.)

Os narro la historia increíble de como se hizo el primero Mac, gracias al libro de Andy Hertzfeld “Revolución en Silicon Valley”. Primera parte del especial “Como se hizo el primer Mac”. Espero os guste y tambien espero vuestro feedback. Un saludo Applelianos/as. //Enlaces Musica que he usado en el episodio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4IpMEFCRzc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7EOjkGVmyo //Donde encontrarnos Canal Twitch Oficial https://www.twitch.tv/applelianosdirectos Grupo Del Podcast Telegram Privado https://t.me/+dWwwAUelYx83ODU0 Canal Calidad FLAC https://t.me/ApplelianosFLAC Mi Shop Amazon https://amzn.to/30sYcbB Twitter Oficial https://twitter.com/ApplelianosPod  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/applelianos-podcast/id993909563 Ivoox https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-applelianos-podcast_sq_f1170563_1.html Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2P1alAORWd9CaW7Fws2Fyd?si=6Lj9RFMyTlK8VFwr9LgoOw  Youtube https://www.youtube.com/c/ApplelianosApplelianos/featured

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

Firstly, huge apologies for saying Juicero wrong during this episode - I should have looked up the pronunciation beforehand! I thought the company was called Juiceroo!Right, apology out of the way and back to today's episode. Today, I am answering listeners questions from why I started a podcast, what were the events that shaped me as a child and who my favourite guests were.Trigger warning, in the first answer, I talk about a sad situation which happened when I was young - I do suggest you pause the episode here if you have children around you.I really, really enjoyed doing this AMA and hope to do more in the future so let me know what you think! You can find me @daniellenewnham on Instagram and Twitter. And please don't forget to rate and review the podcast if you enjoyed it - it really does mean the world to me and helps others to find it too.Danielle Twitter / Instagram / Newsletter------------Mentioned in this episode:The story of Nicholas and Daniel Caffell In Search of the Rainbow's End (book written by the boys' father Colin Caffell)Richard Browning episode hereAndy Hertzfeld episode hereJuicero  

It's hard to believe it but has been a year now since I kicked off the show and as I have gained tens of thousands of new listeners since then, I thought it might be nice to head back in time and re-share my very first guest – the one and only - Andy Hertzfeld who also happens to be one of my favourite people in tech.  Andy helped revolutionise the home PC industry as part of the original Macintosh team before founding his own startups including General Magic which imagined the iPhone - seventeen years ahead of time. In this conversation which was recorded on 11th November 2020,  Andy Hertzfeld shares his inspiring story from childhood through to creating the Macintosh and on to General Magic including the highs and lows along the way.We discuss his career and friendship with Steve Jobs and what it takes to hold a seemingly impossible vision, build a pioneering team capable of achieving it and, most importantly, when and how best to execute.There are many great stories in this episode, and anecdotes of a pivotal time in tech history but, best of all, Andy shares the lessons he learned from the successes, and the failures.Enjoy!Andy Twitter / WebsiteDanielle Twitter / Instagram / NewsletterNotesIn this episode, Andy and I discuss:"Marc" which is Marc Porat - the co-founder of General Magic with Andy and Bill Atkinson. In 1990, Marc wrote the following note to John Sculley, imagining a truly smart phone: "A tiny computer, a phone, a very personal object . . . It must be beautiful. It must offer the kind of personal satisfaction that a fine piece of jewellery brings. It will have a perceived value even when it's not being used... Once you use it you won't be able to live without it." NB My interview with Marc can be found here.The General Magic documentary can be found on iTunes here.Andy's book - Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made - can be bought here.Series 1 of this podcast and the original episode with Andy was sponsored by Sensate and edited  by Jolin Cheng.

"A hacker is someone who loves programming, loves problem solving, and especially loves coming up with new tricks they haven't thought of before” explains Andy Hertzfeld, a member of the original Apple Macintosh computer development team. Hertzfeld recalls working on Apple's Phone Hacking Card, an interesting product that never actually made it to market. He also shares his memories of Apple's co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Story in Cybercrime Magazine: https://cybersecurityventures.com/hacker-the-official-definition/

Today's guest is Guy Kawasaki – marketing guru, founder, author of 15 books including The Art of the Start, The Art of Social Media, and his most recent book – Wise Guy: Lessons from a Life. Guy is also an investor, host of Remarkable People podcast, Apple Fellow and Chief Evangelist for Canva, among other positions.Some of you might recognise Guy's name from the work he did at Apple in the 1980s when he was Chief Evangelist in charge of marketing the Macintosh.  He is also well-known for being an expert on social media, something he now says is overrated.In this wide-ranging conversation, Guy discusses what he learned from Steve Jobs, what he thinks the Macintosh got right and wrong, and what work is required once a revolutionary product hits the market. We also touch on social media, the press, the Royals, why I don't watch or read the news, and why he wishes he hadn't quit Apple.Guy is a fantastic storyteller and incredibly warm and giving so I thoroughly enjoyed this interview and look back at tech history, and hope you do too.----------Guy on Twitter / Instagram / Facebook / Remarkable People podcastDanielle on Twitter / Instagram 

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

Ten years ago today, on 5th October 2011, we lost one of the greatest tech innovators of our time – Steve Jobs. It's almost unfathomable how much impact Steve had on the world and how much his work will empower future generations but as he wished, he most definitely put a ding in the universe and left a wide, gaping hole when he passed.To mark Steve's life, it seemed fitting to talk to someone who knew him well – so today's guest is John Couch, who was both Steve's colleague and friend for many decades.Steve personally recruited John to help him build a “revolutionary computer.” It was 1978, just two years after Apple had started, and thus making John Apple's 54th employee. Soon after, John became Apple's first Vice President of Software and then became General Manager, overseeing the Apple Lisa computer division.Prior to joining this new startup called Apple, John was one of UC Berkeley's first fifty computer science graduates and had a well-paying, secure job working at HP, under the tutelage of its iconic founder, and a hero of Steve Jobs, Bill Hewlett. But as he tells me, there was something about Steve's vision that drew him in and made him leave his job at HP for the exciting yet vastly unknown.Six years later, John left Apple to work in education before becoming the CEO of a biotech company called DoubleTwist. He was then recruited again by Steve Jobs again in 2002 and returned to Apple to take on the newly created role of Vice President of Education – a position he remained in until his recent retirement.In 2018, John co-wrote "Rewiring Education and this year, he published his latest book - “My Life at Apple and The Steve I Knew" which is a book we dig deeper into in this episode. As Steve Wozniak says, “John is one of the most interesting, intelligent, and passionate people I've ever met. Both Steve and I viewed him as an essential part of what made Apple the most innovative company in the world, even as he remained one of our best-kept secrets.” You're listening to the Danielle Newnham podcast where I interview tech founders and innovators to learn the inspiring, human, stories behind the game-changing tech we use every day.And this is my interview with John Couch.

Andy Hertzfeld's first task as an employee of Apple Computer. Original text from folklore.org.

Today's guest is David Byttow – a self-described engineer by trade and, very much an artist at heart. David is most famous for his role as co-founder of mobile app Secret which allowed people to share messages anonymously.Whilst there was a lot of hype around Secret when it officially launched in 2014 - lauded by the press and tech industry, and with the company raising millions of dollars within just a few months – the company abruptly closed down a little over a year later. Some of the very public criticism David faced at the time was around the three million dollars that he and his co-founder each took off the table as part of their Series B deal. And, of course, there was the red Ferrari that David bought and which got a lot of column inches when things didn't work out.In this episode, we dig deep into the rise and fall of Secret and some of what David went through during that time from the exciting high - post launch - to the crushing low he felt in having to close the company down. We also discuss how he dealt with the backlash that came with Secret's closure and how his pre and post Secret career has seen him work at many of the top tech companies from Google to Medium, Square and Snap.I really appreciate David's candour in this interview, he opens up about a lot of things which many founders would prefer to keep out of public conversation. And, in doing so, I believe David will enable others to do the same – to talk about the hard times which come with entrepreneurship. It also gives an insight into David – who he is as a person, not just a founder, and that's exactly why I do these interviews. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.-----Mentioned in this Interview:David talks about Andy Hertzfeld who appears in Series 1 - listen here.David's ABC: Always be Coding article can be found here. Jim McKelvey interview can be found here.Tweet about creator economy can be found here.Philip Rosedale interview can be found here.-----Let us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.------Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnhamDavid on Twitter @davaidbyttow / YouTube  David Byttow-----This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng.       

In this episode, Andy Hertzfeld shares his inspiring story from childhood through to creating the Macintosh and on to General Magic including the highs and lows along the way.We discuss his career and friendship with Steve Jobs and what it takes to hold a seemingly impossible vision, build a pioneering team capable of achieving it and, most importantly, when and how best to execute.There are many great stories in this episode, and anecdotes of a pivotal time in tech history but, best of all, Andy shares the lessons he learned from the successes, and the failures.------This episode was hosted by me, Danielle Newnham - a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years, and produced by Jolin Cheng. https://twitter.com/daniellenewnhamAndy Hertzfeld https://twitter.com/andyhertzfeld------NotesIn this episode, Andy and I discuss:"Marc" which is Marc Porat - the co-founder of General Magic with Andy and Bill Atkinson. In 1990, Marc wrote the following note to John Sculley, imagining a truly smart phone: "A tiny computer, a phone, a very personal object . . . It must be beautiful. It must offer the kind of personal satisfaction that a fine piece of jewellery brings. It will have a perceived value even when it's not being used... Once you use it you won't be able to live without it." NB Interview with Marc coming soon!The General Magic documentary which can be found on iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/general-magic/id1458835312Andy's book - Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made - can be bought here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Revolution-Valley-Paperback-Insanely-Great/dp/1449316247Series 1 of this podcast is sponsored by Sensate.

There was a nexus of Digital Research and Xerox PARC, along with Stanford and Berkeley in the Bay Area. The rise of the hobbyists and the success of Apple attracted some of the best minds in computing to Apple. This confluence was about to change the world. One of those brilliant minds that landed at Apple started out as a technical writer.  Apple hired Jef Raskin as their 31st employee, to write the Apple II manual. He quickly started harping on people to build a computer that was easy to use. Mike Markkula wanted to release a gaming console or a cheap computer that could compete with the Commodore and Atari machines at the time. He called the project “Annie.” The project began with Raskin, but he had a very different idea than Markkula's. He summed it up in an article called “Computers by the Millions” that wouldn't see publication until 1982. His vision was closer to his PhD dissertation, bringing computing to the masses. For this, he envisioned a menu driven operating system that was easy to use and inexpensive. Not yet a GUI in the sense of a windowing operating system and so could run on chips that were rapidly dropping in price. He planned to use the 6809 chip for the machine and give it a five inch display.  He didn't tell anyone that he had a PhD when he was hired, as the team at Apple was skeptical of academia. Jobs provided input, but was off working on the Lisa project, which used the 68000 chip. So they had free reign over what they were doing.  Raskin quickly added Joanna Hoffman for marketing. She was on leave from getting a PhD in archaeology at the University of Chicago and was the marketing team for the Mac for over a year. They also added Burrell Smith, employee #282 from the hardware technician team, to do hardware. He'd run with the Homebrew Computer Club crowd since 1975 and had just strolled into Apple one day and asked for a job.  Raskin also brought in one of his students from the University of California San Diego who was taking a break from working on his PhD in neurochemistry. Bill Atkinson became employee 51 at Apple and joined the project. They pulled in Andy Hertzfeld, who Steve Jobs hired when Apple bought one of his programs as he was wrapping up his degree at Berkeley and who'd been sitting on the Apple services team and doing Apple III demos. They added Larry Kenyon, who'd worked at Amdahl and then on the Apple III team. Susan Kare came in to add art and design. They, along with Chris Espinosa - who'd been in the garage with Jobs and Wozniak working on the Apple I, ended up comprising the core team. Over time, the team grew. Bud Tribble joined as the manager for software development. Jerrold Manock, who'd designed the case of the Apple II, came in to design the now-iconic Macintosh case. The team would eventually expand to include Bob Belleville, Steve Capps, George Crow, Donn Denman, Bruce Horn, and Caroline Rose as well. It was still a small team. And they needed a better code name. But chronologically let's step back to the early project.  Raskin chose his favorite Apple, the Macintosh, as the codename for the project. As far as codenames go it was a pretty good one. So their mission would be to ship a machine that was easy to use, would appeal to the masses, and be at a price point the masses could afford. They were looking at 64k of memory, a Motorola 6809 chip, and a 256 bitmap display. Small, light, and inexpensive. Jobs' relationship with the Lisa team was strained and he was taken off of that and he started moving in on the Macintosh team. It was quickly the Steve Jobs show.  Having seen what could be done with the Motorola 68000 chip on the Lisa team, Jobs had them redesign the board to work with that. After visiting Xerox PARC at Raskin's insistence, Jobs finally got the desktop metaphor and true graphical interface design.  Xerox had not been quiet about the work at PARC. Going back to 1972 there were even television commercials. And Raskin had done time at PARC while on sabbatical from Stanford. Information about Smalltalk had been published and people like Bill Atkinson were reading about it in college. People had been exposed to the mouse all around the Bay Area in the 60s and 70s or read Engelbart's scholarly works on it. Many of the people that worked on these projects had doctorates and were academics. They shared their research as freely as love was shared during that counter-culture time. Just as it had passed from MIT to Dartmouth and then in the back of Bob Albrecht's VW had spread around the country in the 60s. That spirit of innovation and the constant evolutions over the past 25 years found their way to Steve Jobs.  He saw the desktop metaphor and mouse and fell in love with it, knowing they could build one for less than the $400 unit Xerox had. He saw how an object-oriented programming language like Smalltalk made all that possible. The team was already on their way to the same types of things and so Jobs told the people at PARC about the Lisa project, but not yet about the Mac. In fact, he was as transparent as anyone could be. He made sure they knew how much he loved their work and disclosed more than I think the team planned on him disclosing about Apple.  This is the point where Larry Tesler and others realized that the group of rag-tag garage-building Homebrew hackers had actually built a company that had real computer scientists and was on track to changing the world. Tesler and some others would end up at Apple later - to see some of their innovations go to a mass market. Steve Jobs at this point totally bought into Raskin's vision. Yet he still felt they needed to make compromises with the price and better hardware to make it all happen.  Raskin couldn't make the kinds of compromises Jobs wanted. He also had an immunity to the now-infamous Steve Jobs reality distortion field and they clashed constantly. So eventually Raskin the project just when it was starting to take off. Raskin would go on to work with Canon to build his vision, which became the Canon CAT.  With Raskin gone, and armed with a dream team of mad scientists, they got to work, tirelessly pushing towards shipping a computer they all believed would change the world. Jobs brought in Fernandez to help with projects like the macOS and later HyperCard. Wozniak had a pretty big influence over Raskin in the early days of the Mac project and helped here and there withe the project, like with the bit-serial peripheral bus on the Mac.  Steve Jobs wanted an inexpensive mouse that could be manufactured en masse. Jim Yurchenco from Hovey-Kelley, later called Ideo, got the task - given that trusted engineers at Apple had full dance cards. He looked at the Xerox mouse and other devices around - including trackballs in Atari arcade machines. Those used optics instead of mechanical switches. As the ball under the mouse rolled beams of light would be interrupted and the cost of those components had come down faster than the technology in the Xerox mouse.  He used a ball from a roll-on deodorant stick and got to work. The rest of the team designed the injection molded case for the mouse. That work began with the Lisa and by the time they were done, the price was low enough that every Mac could get one.  Armed with a mouse, they figured out how to move windows over the top of one another, Susan Kare designed iconography that is a bit less 8-bit but often every bit as true to form today. Learning how they wanted to access various components of the desktop, or find things, they developed the Finder. Atkinson gave us marching ants, the concept of double-clicking, the lasso for selecting content, the menu bar, MacPaint, and later, HyperCard.  It was a small team, working long hours. Driven by a Jobs for perfection. Jobs made the Lisa team the enemy. Everything not the Mac just sucked. He took the team to art exhibits. He had the team sign the inside of the case to infuse them with the pride of an artist. He killed the idea of long product specifications before writing code and they just jumped in, building and refining and rebuilding and rapid prototyping. The team responded well to the enthusiasm and need for perfectionism.  The Mac team was like a rebel squadron. They were like a start-up, operating inside Apple. They were pirates. They got fast and sometimes harsh feedback. And nearly all of them still look back on that time as the best thing they've done in their careers.  As IBM and many learned the hard way before them, they learned a small, inspired team, can get a lot done. With such a small team and the ability to parlay work done for the Lisa, the R&D costs were minuscule until they were ready to release the computer. And yet, one can't change the world over night. 1981 turned into 1982 turned into 1983.  More and more people came in to fill gaps. Collette Askeland came in to design the printed circuit board. Mike Boich went to companies to get them to write software for the Macintosh. Berry Cash helped prepare sellers to move the product. Matt Carter got the factory ready to mass produce the machine. Donn Denman wrote MacBASIC (because every machine needed a BASIC back then). Martin Haeberli helped write MacTerminal and Memory Manager. Bill Bull got rid of the fan. Patti King helped manage the software library. Dan Kottke helped troubleshoot issues with mother boards. Brian Robertson helped with purchasing. Ed Riddle designed the keyboard. Linda Wilkin took on documentation for the engineering team. It was a growing team. Pamela Wyman and Angeline Lo came in as programmers. Hap Horn and Steve Balog as engineers.  Jobs had agreed to bring in adults to run the company. So they recruited 44 years old hotshot CEO John Sculley to change the world as their CEO rather than selling sugar water at Pepsi. Scully and Jobs had a tumultuous relationship over time. While Jobs had made tradeoffs on cost versus performance for the Mac, Sculley ended up raising the price for business reasons. Regis McKenna came in to help with the market campaign. He would win over so much trust that he would later get called out of retirement to do damage control when Apple had an antenna problem on the iPhone. We'll cover Antenna-gate at some point. They spearheaded the production of the now-iconic 1984 Super Bowl XVIII ad, which shows woman running from conformity and depicted IBM as the Big Brother from George Orwell's book, 1984.  Two days after the ad, the Macintosh 128k shipped for $2,495. The price had jumped because Scully wanted enough money to fund a marketing campaign. It shipped late, and the 128k of memory was a bit underpowered, but it was a success. Many of the concepts such as a System and Finder, persist to this day. It came with MacWrite and MacPaint and some of the other Lisa products were soon to follow, now as MacProject and MacTerminal. But the first killer app for the Mac was Microsoft Word, which was the first version of Word ever shipped.  Every machine came with a mouse. The machines came with a cassette that featured a guided tour of the new computer. You could write programs in MacBASIC and my second language, MacPascal.  They hit the initial sales numbers despite the higher price. But over time that bit them on sluggish sales. Despite the early success, the sales were declining. Yet the team forged on. They introduced the Apple LaserWriter at a whopping $7,000. This was a laser printer that was based on the Canon 300 dpi engine. Burrell Smith designed a board and newcomer Adobe knew laser printers, given that the founders were Xerox alumni. They added postscript, which had initially been thought up while working with Ivan Sutherland and then implemented at PARC, to make for perfect printing at the time. The sluggish sales caused internal issues. There's a hangover  when we do something great. First there were the famous episodes between Jobs, Scully, and the board of directors at Apple. Scully seems to have been portrayed by many to be either a villain or a court jester of sorts in the story of Steve Jobs. Across my research, which began with books and notes and expanded to include a number of interviews, I've found Scully to have been admirable in the face of what many might consider a petulant child. But they all knew a brilliant one.  But amidst Apple's first quarterly loss, Scully and Jobs had a falling out. Jobs tried to lead an insurrection and ultimately resigned. Wozniak had left Apple already, pointing out that the Apple II was still 70% of the revenues of the company. But the Mac was clearly the future.  They had reached a turning point in the history of computers. The first mass marketed computer featuring a GUI and a mouse came and went. And so many others were in development that a red ocean was forming. Microsoft released Windows 1.0 in 1985. Acorn, Amiga, IBM, and others were in rapid development as well.  I can still remember the first time I sat down at a Mac. I'd used the Apple IIs in school and we got a lab of Macs. It was amazing. I could open a file, change the font size and print a big poster. I could type up my dad's lyrics and print them. I could play SimCity. It was a work of art. And so it was signed by the artists that brought it to us: Peggy Alexio, Colette Askeland, Bill Atkinson, Steve Balog, Bob Belleville, Mike Boich, Bill Bull, Matt Carter, Berry Cash, Debi Coleman, George Crow, Donn Denman, Christopher Espinosa, Bill Fernandez, Martin Haeberli, Andy Hertzfeld, Joanna Hoffman, Rod Holt, Bruce Horn, Hap Horn, Brian Howard, Steve Jobs, Larry Kenyon, Patti King, Daniel Kottke, Angeline Lo, Ivan Mach, Jerrold Manock, Mary Ellen McCammon, Vicki Milledge, Mike Murray, Ron Nicholson Jr., Terry Oyama, Benjamin Pang, Jef Raskin, Ed Riddle, Brian Robertson, Dave Roots, Patricia Sharp, Burrell Smith, Bryan Stearns, Lynn Takahashi, Guy "Bud" Tribble, Randy Wigginton, Linda Wilkin, Steve Wozniak, Pamela Wyman and Laszlo Zidek. Steve Jobs left to found NeXT. Some, like George Crow, Joanna Hoffman, and Susan Care, went with him. Bud Tribble would become a co-founder of NeXT and then the Vice President of Software Technology after Apple purchased NeXT. Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld would go on to co-found General Magic and usher in the era of mobility. One of the best teams ever assembled slowly dwindled away. And the oncoming dominance of Windows in the market took its toll. It seems like every company has a “lost decade.” Some like Digital Equipment don't recover from it. Others, like Microsoft and IBM (who has arguably had a few), emerge as different companies altogether. Apple seemed to go dormant after Steve Jobs left. They had changed the world with the Mac. They put swagger and an eye for design into computing. But in the next episode we'll look at that long hangover, where they were left by the end of it, and how they emerged to become to change the world yet again.  In the meantime, Walter Isaacson weaves together this story about as well as anyone in his book Jobs. Steven Levy brilliantly tells it in his book Insanely Great. Andy Hertzfeld gives some of his stories at folklore.org. And countless other books, documentaries, podcasts, blog posts, and articles cover various aspects as well. The reason it's gotten so much attention is that where the Apple II was the watershed moment to introduce the personal computer to the mass market, the Macintosh was that moment for the graphical user interface.

Andy Hertzfeld, APPLE + General Magic.

“Los seres humanos somos tan complejos y tan contradictorios que valoramos la salud cuando enfrentamos una enfermedad.” – Juan Ramírez (

Happy Birthday, Macintosh! Andy Hertzfeld and company rush to complete the first release of the Macintosh system software, then cobble together a demo before launch day. Original text at folklore.org: Real Artists Ship, It Sure Is Great To Get Out of That Bag, and The Times They Are A-Changin’ Make your own four-voice 256-byte wavetable music, sine wavey or otherwise, with ConcertWare or MusicWorks. Andy Hertzfeld “six person hours of testing” quote from his 2005 NerdTV interview. (video, transcript) The entire January 24th, 1984 Apple Shareholders Meeting on YouTube. Try Software Automatic Mouth in your browser or Macintalk in Mini vMac. A Macintalk mini-documentary.

Text LEARNERS to 44222 Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12 Notes: Sustaining Excellence = The pursuit of WOW... "It's not just meeting spec." Leading is voluntary "Playing covers of yourself is not leadership." Leadership vs. Management? Management is about power and a title Leadership is about stepping up. NASCAR... Starbucks closed for a day to train everyone. Why does Seth teach people how to juggle? "It's about the throw, not the catch." If you want to change your story, change your actions first. We become what we do. Lost in all the noise around us is the proven truth that creativity is the result of desire. A Desire to solve an old problem, a desire to serve someone else. It’s not a bolt of lightning from somewhere else... The difference between talent and skill: Talent is something we’re born with: it’s in our DNA, a magical alignment of gifts. Skill is earned. It’s learned and practiced and hard-won. It’s insulting to call a professional talented. She’s skill, first and foremost. In the words of Steve Martin, “I had no talent. None.” Sculptor Elizabeth King said it beautifully, “process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.” Surprising truths that have been hidden by our desire for those perfect outcomes: Hubris is the opposite of trust Professionals produce with intent Creativity is an act of leadership We become creative when we ship the work Passion is a choice Practical Empathy -- “We have to be able to say, ‘it’s not for you’ and mean it. The work exists to serve someone, to change someone, to make something better. We live in an outcome focused culture. The plumber doesn’t get credit for effort, he gets credit if the faucet stops leaking. Lost in this obsession with outcome is the truth that outcomes are the results of process. Focusing solely on outcomes forces us to make choices that are banal, short term or selfish. It takes our focus away from the journey and encourages us to give up too early. The story of Drew Dernavich — he shared a picture of his “no” pile and of his “yes” pile. He’s a cartoonist. “Drew’s not a genius, he just has more paper than we do.” Embrace your own temporary discomfort: Art doesn’t seek to create comfort. It creates change. And change requires tension. The same is true for learning. True learning (as opposed to education) is a voluntary experience that requires tension and discomfort (the persistent feeling of incompetence as we get better at a skill). Generosity is the most direct way to find the practice. It subverts resistance by focusing the work on someone else. Generosity means that we don’t have to seek reassurance for the self, but can instead concentrate on serving others. Selling is Difficult - Amateurs often feel like they’re taking something from the prospect - their time, their attention, ultimately their money. But what if you recast your profession as a chance to actually solve someone’s problem? “Selling is simply a dance with possibility and empathy. It requires you to see the audience you’ve chosen to serve, then to bring them what they need.” Sales is about intentionally creating tension: the tension of “maybe,” the tension of “this might not work,” the tension of “what will I tell my boss…” That’s precisely the tension that we dance with as creators. The story of General Magic - Megan Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, Marc Porat inventing virtually every element of the modern smartphone. And their first model sold 3,000 units. There were 10 years ahead of their time. The business failed, but the project didn’t. Seth’s initial denial to be on my show… “Keep going and write back to me after you’ve recorded 75 episodes and have a big show.” Episode #75 came out November 26, 2015, I emailed you that day and said, “I’m at #75, are you ready to go?” And he was a man of your word. He was episode #86. His speaking style is built through visuals. He finds the visuals first and then creates the story and application second. Why does Seth fly fish without a hook? "To disconnect with the outcome." The story of Thornton May -- He had no sales quota. He went city to city and invited everyone from a specific industry to a meal. Competitors would join and Thornton would be the person to bring everyone together. He became the person they called.

A shakeup in Apple II engineering frees up Andy Hertzfeld to work on the Macintosh. Original text from folklore.org. Jef Raskin and Andy Hertzfeld audio excerpts from “The Macintosh at 20” panel hosted at Macworld Boston 2004. Highly recommended!

Se desatan las guerras de los sistemas operativos. La década de los ochenta es un período de creciente tensión. Los imperios de Bill Gates y Steve Jobs se lanzan a una batalla inevitable por el software propietario, y solo uno de ellos puede emerger como el distribuidor de un sistema operativo estándar para millones de usuarios. Mientras tanto, en tierras lejanas, los rebeldes del open source comienzan a reunirse sin que los emperadores lo sepan.Distintos veteranos de la historia de las computadoras, tales como Andy Hertzfeld, miembro del equipo original de Macintosh, y Steven Levy, reconocido periodista tecnológico, relatan los momentos de genialidad (y las fallas trágicas) que moldearon la tecnología en las décadas siguientes.

The very first image displayed on the very first prototype Macintosh, an Apple II expansion card with a Motorola 6809E. Original text at folklore.org. Audio excerpts from Andy Hertzfeld’s keynote speech at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) 2000. Listen to the full keynote, preserved in 2004 by yours truly from a long-gone RealAudio streaming server.

A look at the use of skunkworks projects to circumvent bureaucratic hurdles. Full transcript of the episode with links to additional sources follows. === It was 1943. The world was at war. German engineering was producing an array of terrifying weapons, and even before the war, had already demonstrated working jet aircraft.  German jet fighters and bombers could potentially leave the Allies nearly helpless to defend against this technological threat with their own outmoded fleet of propeller-driven craft.  In this ecosystem of urgency, the US government approached airplane manufacturer Lockheed Martin with an incredible challenge. They wanted an American jet fighter to be developed. It would need to fly 600 MPH, maneuver and perform in intense aerial combat, and as if that weren't absurd enough, it needed to be ready to demonstrate in 180 days. Further constraints existed. Lockheed Martin was already using all of its floorspace for the war effort. How would it come up with a way to execute on this incredible directive? The answer came in the form of Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs (ADP), now commonly known as "Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works." The ADP is now the most famous example of the rapid solution approach now generically referred to as a "skunkworks project." In the earliest part of the 1980s the personal computer market was dominated by Apple and Commodore, but IBM - who dominated the server-rooms of the IT departments at the time - had taken notice. IBM wanted to get a piece of the home user and desktop computer market, but - as dramatically stated in the PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds, IBM's own estimate is that due to bureaucracy and internal controls, it would take nine months just to ship an empty box.  The solution around this was a skunkworks project.  IBM had been experimenting with "Independent Business Units" that could shrug off the limitations of normal IBM procedures and act swiftly to get things done. The skunkworks project it undertook became the IBM PC and the project's design choices became the new paradigm for business computing. The name "Skunk Works" has an interesting origin. Because the group tasked with this 180 day miracle had no floorspace, they had to set up shop under a circus tent by a plastics factory in Burbank, California.  The fumes from the factory reminded workers of a recurring feature of the popular Lil' Abner comic strip, a smelly factory outside the fictional town of Dogpatch, Kentucky known as the "Skonk Works." This became the name of the group until the copyright owners of the Lil' Abner comic strip complained in the early 1960s and Lockheed Martin formally changed it to "Skunk Works" to appease the lawyers.  The name stuck and has become synonymous with this kind of project. Another famous skunkworks project was the Apple Macintosh.  The history of that project has become quasi-mythical because of books like Insanely Great, by Steven Levy and Revolution in the Valley by pioneering Mac programmer Andy Hertzfeld.  This story was also heavily featured in PBS' Triumph of the Nerds. In 1981, Apple was primarily funded by sales of the Apple II, but it was desperately trying to create the next revolutionary personal computer. After some internal struggles, Steve Jobs took over a project that had originally been envisioned by Jef Raskin as a friendly and inexpensive home computer. Jobs changed the focus to make a revolutionary graphical user interface based machine. He embraced the "rebel" mentality for his team, famously telling them "It's better to be a pirate than join the Navy." The team took this mentality seriously enough to hoist a Jolly Roger flag over the remote office complex where the Mac team worked. While it was not an instant success financially, the Macintosh project would also change the world. You can purchase a hand-painted Mac Jolly Roger flag from original artist Susan Kare (but they are pricey!) Apple itself (and Microsoft, for that matter) took its transformative windows and desktop metaphor from an even earlier and more innovative skunkworks project - one run by XEROX. The big copier company had setup its legendary Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) facility and by the time Apple's Mac team got to visit, they had the Xerox Alto, a personal computer decades ahead of its time. Ethernet, the Graphical User Interface (GUI), the computer mouse, object-oriented programming (OOP), email, laser printers and a full concept of what is now the "modern office" all existed almost two decades before they would become ubiquitous parts of modern business.  1979 Xerox Alto commercial There's a lesson to be learned from the Xerox Alto, but we'll get back to that. Most skunkworks projects fail. We remember the successes but can't recall the failures because they never make it across the finish line into our consciousness.  Researchers call this "Survivorship Bias" and it's important to keep in mind, but it also suggests a key concept to potential success:  a successful skunkworks project keeps trying until it finds something that works.  In Silicon Valley, where tech startups rise and fall like sparks above a campfire, the innovations and lessons learned have been distilled down into the pithy phrase "fail fast, fail often."  As with any catchphrase, it is frequently misapplied, misunderstood, and misattributed - but the core lesson is to try things, see if they work, change if they don't, and keep trying until you find the formulation that succeeds.  Of course, it helps to have a genius team. The original Lockheed Martin Skunk Works project was run by legendary engineer Clarence Leonard "Kelly" Johnson. His team consisted of 23 designers and 30 mechanics. Under a circus tent in the smelly shadow of the plastics factory, Johnson and his team put together a prototype in less than 150 days. That jet became the P-80 Shooting Star, America's first operational jet fighter. The same "skunkworks'' approach would be used to create the U2 Spy Plane, the SR71 Blackbird and the stealth fighter. Different leaders, different engineers and mechanics, but the same "outsiders on the inside'' method would drive their success. The P-80 Shooting Star (wikimedia) Apple's Macintosh team was full of superb engineers and programmers and their work continues to influence and inspire modern computing. Having Steve Jobs at the helm of the project, while certainly interpersonally challenging for the team, was also undeniably inspiring as well. The Mac team would dissolve shortly after the initial product release despite its accomplishments. Future successful Apple products like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad have not become synonymous with the skunkworks approach. The original Apple Macintosh (wikimedia) Most skunkworks projects are conducted by large businesses and should be funded accordingly, but sometimes these projects are done through stealth by rogue leadership. Often these are computer-related projects and have become known as Stealth IT or Rogue IT. As we'll discuss in a moment, the rise of such projects signals that your company has serious challenges that need to be identified. Such projects can be the result of interpersonal differences between the IT management and the business divisions, an IT delivery ability insufficiently fast at delivery, departmental functional needs not being addressed, or a variety of other causes. The emergence of such rogue efforts can also indicate that your knowledge workers have innovative ideas and are yearning to see them made real. Stealth IT is a bigger topic than we can address here, but it will be a future episode. These aren't technically skunkworks projects and therefore have to overcome not just the limits of doing the work without the blessing and funding of management but also with the risk of possible rejection of their output because of the manner in which it was created. Skunkworks projects have historically been behind amazing innovation, but they are not a magic potion for success. There are specific places where they've been most helpful.  Because of the wildly different backgrounds that have driven the use of skunkworks projects, some of the things one can infer from looking at the examples may seem conflicted, but here are a few observations: Skunkworks projects are often used to break through corporate bureaucracy to allow quick innovation. Before throwing together a skunkworks project, you need to make sure that the obstacles faced are the kind that can be worked around.  For instance, if the obstacles are statutory or regulatory, then a skunkworks project might not only be ineffective, but illegal. Kelly Johnson came up with a set of 14 rules for running a skunkworks project.  I will put a link to those in the show notes. His rules are written specifically for a government contract aeronautics industry, but some key points are still applicable.  I'm going to distill a few of these: A skunkworks project's leadership should effectively have total control of the project, reporting only to a limited and clearly identified executive management structure.  The project should have designated office space away from the regular workers. Isolation and exceptionalism are vital to making a skunkworks effective. Restrict access to the team. Use a small team. Use an exceptional team. Minimize the number of reports required. Let the team focus on accomplishment, not documentation - but appropriate documentation must be part of the effort. Fund the project adequately. Reward your team because you'll be asking it to do the extraordinary. A skunkworks project calls for exceptional workers.  It will be an extraordinary challenge to manage a team that will likely contain the arrogant and potentially iconoclastic. The lead will manage not just the technical challenges but also the interpersonal ones.  Skunkworks teams are a means for building entrepreneurial spirit in a mature - perhaps even stagnant - corporate environment. They are not typically suitable for start-ups themselves. Finally, a skunkworks project must deliver! To quote Steve Jobs, "real artists ship." Skunkworks projects fit nicely into the human need for myth. The narrative of a rogue band of genius workers saving the company or even the world from some disastrous situation is literally the formula for thousands of movies, books and TV shows. But is that really the way business should get done?   As much as I understand the visceral appeal of such narratives, it is possible that a successful company that is not using skunkworks is actually a sign of health. There are other ways to achieve innovation. Google famously has its 80/20 rule. Since the mid-2000s, it has encouraged its workforce to spend 80% of their time on primary work tasks, but 20% on innovative side projects. But even with all that, the company set up its X-project division, which is a skunkworks-style incubator.  There is another way, a second route to achieving innovation, and that is adopting an internal policy of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). In software, CI/CD means instead of producing single massive product rollouts, the engineers continuously provide updates and improvements with additional features and fixes. This becomes a reliable and continuous stream of innovation that never lets the project grow stale. This kind of corporate culture can avoid the need for a skunkworks approach because it is literally fed on the input and feedback from the users and that is a major pipeline for innovation and improvement.  The bigger a company gets, the more mired in complex organizational structures, the slower it tends to move. The corporation becomes a victim of inertia, slow to turn or maneuver. A corporation is like a cargo ship maneuvering through an icy ocean. Icebergs are a threat that requires maneuverability, but bureaucracy can also be an ice-flow that stifles movement. We could think of our skunkworks projects as a kind of icebreaker, a ship that specializes in plowing through such ice and making safe passage for the bigger cargo ships. The CI/CD in this metaphor would be a large, maneuverable ship that avoids the ice entirely.  I wondered, "Could the need for a skunkworks project counterintuitively be a canary-in-the-coalmine that a corporation is in danger of getting stuck in the ice?" But then the mixed-metaphor police gave me a warning ticket, so I decided to check and see what companies are still using this approach. Samsung, Google, Ford, Staples, IBM, and many massive corporations still use the skunkworks approach to foster innovation outside of bureaucratic constraints. I suspect there is some risk that business journalists have, to some degree, confused the skunkworks approach with the kind of "pure research" labs of the type that AT&T famously ran.  Which brings us back to Xerox.   In his book, The Master Switch, Tim Wu describes multiple examples of how massive corporations use their resources to find innovative solutions to problems, but then discover that their findings are so disruptive they threaten the structure currently funding their existence. Rather than monetize the new products at the risk of disrupting their own status quo, they succumb to the temptation to patent and bury the technologies.  Again and again, this approach gives years to decades of protection to the old ways, but inevitably some outsider will find an unpatented approach to these institutionally suppressed innovations. It is shameful, but understandable, that innovations are often stifled because it is easier in the short term to maintain the status quo. It takes extraordinary leadership and vision to risk disruption in order to overcome the inertia of the mentality of "if it ain't broke don't fix it."  Such corporate pivots are more often the result of desperation than insight.  Which brings us back to Xerox.  The PARC team handed Xerox the future of business, but Xerox leadership didn't know what to do with it.  Unexploited by Xerox, the various innovations of PARC crept out into the world either directly at the hands of individual creators, or through the emulation of their innovations by competitors like Apple. Innovations are going to happen - but who will control them? Suppression of innovation is a dead end, it just sometimes takes a decade or more to prove it. So what is the right answer to your innovation needs? Do you need a skunkworks project? Do you need to adopt CI/CD in your organization? Will your stifling of discovery make your smartest and boldest workers break off and become entrepreneurs?  There's lots to consider here. As always, Apex Process Consultants are here to help you figure this out with our team of expert consultants and software tools designed to foster innovation and help you accelerate YOUR business transformation. Check our show notes for links about the companies and people in this episode.

Why did the original Macintosh team disband immediately after 1984–and where were they five years later? Checking in on Steve Jobs, Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, Randy Wigginton, Steve Capps, and Bill Atkinson. From Macworld February 1989. Text available in HTML and ePub. Andy Hertzfeld’s Frox Demo (1990) Bill Atkinson talking about PhotoCard Buy gorgeous nature photography work by Bill Atkinson Atkinson Interview - Triangulation 244, 247 Don Melton Safari stories: text, podcast Andy Hertzfeld demonstrating Eazel’s file manager for Linux The Machine that Changed the World - The Paperback Computer General Magic Documentary Love Notes to Newton

General Magic Welcome to the History of Computing Podcast, where we explore the history of information technology. Because understanding the past prepares us to innovate (and sometimes cope with) the future! Today's episode is on a little-known company called General Magic who certainly had a substantial impact on the modern, mobile age of computing. Imagine if you had some of the best and brightest people in the world. And imagine if they were inspired by a revolutionary idea. The Mac changed the way people thought about computers when it was released in 1984. And very quickly thereafter they had left Apple. What happened to them? They got depressed and many moved on. The Personal Computer Revolution was upon us. And people who have changed the world can be hard to inspire. Especially at A big company like what Apple was becoming, where they can easily lose the ability to innovate. Mark Pratt had an idea. The mobile device was going to be the next big thing. The next wave. I mean, Steve Jobs has talked about mobile computing all the way back in 83. And it had been researched at PARC before that and philosophically the computer science research community had actually conceptualized ubiquitous computing. But Pratt knew they couldn't build something at Apple. So in 1990 John Sculley, then CEO at Apple, worked with Pratt and they got The Apple board of directors to invest in the idea, which they built a company for, called General Magic. He kept his ideas in a book called Pocket Crystal. Two of the most important members of the original Mac team, Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld were inspired by the vision and joined on as well. Now legends, everyone wanted to work with them. It was an immediate draw for the best and brightest in the world. Megan Smith, Dan Winkler, amy Lindbergh, Joanna Hoffman, Scott Canaster, Darin Adler, Kevin Lynch, big names in software. They were ready to change the world. Again. They would build a small computer into a phone. A computer... in your pocket. It would be described as a telephone, a fax, and a computer. They went to Fry's. A lot. USB didn't exist yet. So they made it. ARPANET was a known quantity but The Internet hadn't been born yet. Still, a pocket computer with the notes from your refrigerator, files from your computer, contacts , schedules, calculators. They had a vision. They wanted expressive icons, so they invented emoticons. And animated them. There was no data network to connect computers on phones with. So they reached out to AT&T and Go figure, they signed on. Sony, Phillips, Motorola, Mitsubishi gave them 6 million each. And they created an alliance of partners. Frank Canova built a device he showed off as “Angler” at COMDEX in 1992. Mobile devices were on the way. By 1993, the Apple Board of Directors was pressuring Sculley for the next Mac-type of visionary idea. So the Newton was announced in 1994, with the General Magic team feeling betrayed by Sculley. And General Magic got shoved out of the nest of stealth mode. After a great announcement they got a lot of press. They went public without having a product. The devices were trying to do a lot. Maybe too much. The devices were slow. Some aspects of the devices worked, for other aspects, They faked demos. The web showed up and They didn't embrace it. In fact, Dean Omijar with Auctionweb was on the team. He thought the web was way cooler than the mobile device but the name needed work so it became eBay. The team didn't embrace management or working together. They weren't finishing projects. They were scope creeping the projects. The delays started. Some of the team had missed delays for the Mac and that worked. But other devices shipped. After 4 years, they shipped the Sony Magic Link in 1994. The devices were $800. People weren't ready to be connected all the time. The network was buggy. They sold less than 3k. The stock tumbled and by 95 the Internet miss was huge. They were right. The future was in mobile computing. They needed the markets to be patient. They weren't. They had inspired a revolution in computing and it slipped through their fingers. AT&T killed the devices, Marc was ousted as CEO, and after massive losses, they laid off nearly a quarter of the team and ultimately filed chapter 11. They weren't the only ones. Sculley has invested so much into the Newton that he got sacked from Apple. But the vision and the press. They inspired a wave of technology. Rising like a Phoenix from the postPC, ubiquitous ashes CDMA would slowly come down in cost over the next decade and evolve connectivity through 3g and the upcoming 5g revolution. And out of their innovations came the Simon Personal Communicator by BellSouth and manufactured as the IBM Simon by Mitsubishi. The Palm, Symbian, and Pocket PC, or Windows CE would come out shortly thereafter and rise in popularity over the next few years. Tony Farrell repeated the excersize when helping invent the iPod as well and Steve Jobs even mentioned he had considered some of the tech from Magic Hat. He would later found Nest. And Andy Rubin, one of the creators of Android, also come from General Magic. Next time you read about the fact that Samsung and Apple combined control 98% of the mobile market or that Android overtook Windows for market share by double digits you can thank General Magic for at least part of the education that shaped those. The alumni include the head of speech recognition from Google, VPs from Google, Samsung, Apple, Blacberry, ebay, the CTOs of Twitter, LinkedIn, Adobe, and the United States. Alumni also include the lead engineers of the Safari browser and AI at Apple, cofounders of webtv, leaders from Pinterest, creator of dreamweaver. And now there's a documentary about their journey called appropriately, General Magic. Their work and vision inspired the mobility industry. They touch nearly every aspect of mobile devices today and we owe them for bringing us forward into one of the most transparent and connected eras of humanity. Next time you see a racist slur recorded from a cell phone, next time a political gaffe goes viral, next time the black community finally shows proof of the police shootings they've complained about for decades, next time political dissenters show proof of mass killings, next time abuse at the hands of sports coaches is caught and next time all the other horrible injustices of humanity are forced upon us, thank them. Just as I owe you my thanks. I am sooooo lucky you chose to listen to this episode of the history of computing podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. Have a great day!

Welcome to the History of Computing Podcast, where we explore the history of information technology. Because understanding the past prepares us to innovate the future! Today we're going to look at one of the more underwhelming operating systems released: Windows 1.0. Doug Englebart released the NLS, or oN-Line System in 1968. It was expensive to build, practically impossible to replicate, and was only made possible by NASA and ARPA grants. But it introduced the world to the computer science research community to what would be modern video monitors, windowing systems, hypertext, and the mouse. Modern iterations of these are still with us today, as is a much more matured desktop metaphor. Some of his research team ended up at Xerox PARC and the Xerox Alto was released in 1973, building on many of the concepts and continuing to improve upon them. They sold about 2,000 Altos for around $32,000. As the components came down in price, Xerox tried to go a bit more mass market with the Xerox Star in 1981. They sold about 25,000 for about half the price. The windowing graphics got better, the number of users were growing, the number of developers were growing, and new options for components were showing up all over the place. Given that Xerox was a printing company, the desktop metaphor continued to evolve. Apple released the Lisa in 1983. They sold 10,000 for about $10,000. Again, the windowing system and desktop metaphor continued on and Apple quickly released the iconic Mac shortly thereafter, introducing much better windowing and a fully matured desktop metaphor, becoming the first computer considered mass market that was shipped with a graphical user interface. It was revolutionary and they sold 280,000 in the first year. The proliferation of computers in our daily lives and the impact on the economy was ready for the j-curve. And while IBM had shown up to compete in the PC market, they had just been leapfrogged by Apple. Jobs would be forced out of Apple the following year, though. By 1985, Microsoft had been making software for a long time. They had started out with BASIC for the Altair and had diversified, bringing BASIC to the Mac and releasing a DOS that could run on a number of platforms. And like many of those early software companies, it could have ended there. In a masterful stroke of business, Bill Gates ended up with their software on the IBM PCs that Apple had just basically made antiques - and they'd made plenty of cash off of doing so. But then Gates sees Visi On at COMDEX and it's not surprise that the Microsoft version of a graphical user interface would look a bit like Visi, a bit like what Microsoft had seen from Xerox PARC on a visit in 1983, and of course, with elements that were brought in from the excellent work the original Mac team had made. And of course, not to take anything away from early Microsoft developers, they added many of their own innovations as well. Ultimately though, it was a 16-bit shell that allowed for multi-tasking and sat on top of the Microsoft DOS. Something that would continue on until the NT lineage of operating systems fully supplanted the original Windows line, which ended with Millineum Edition. Windows 1.0 was definitely a first try. IBM TopView had shipped that year as well. I've always considered it more of a windowing system, but it allowed multitasking and was object-oriented. It really looked more like a DOS menu system. But the Graphics Environment Manager or GEM had direct connections to Xerox PARC through Lee Lorenzen. It's hard to imagine but at the time CP/M had been the dominant operating system and so GEM could sit on top of it or MS-DOS and was mostly found on Atari computers. That first public release was actually 1.01 and 1.02 would come 6 months later, adding internationalization with 1.03 continuing that trend. 1.04 would come in 1987 adding support for Via graphics and a PS/2 mouse. Windows 1 came with many of the same programs other vendors supplied, including a calculator, a clipboard viewer, a calendar, a pad for writing that still exists called Notepad, a painting tool, and a game that went by its original name of Reversi, but which we now call Othello. One important concept is that Windows was object-oriented. As with any large software project, it wouldn't have been able to last as long as it did if it hadn't of been. One simplistic explanation for this paradigm is that it had an API and there was a front-end that talked to the kernel through those APIs. Microsoft hadn't been first to the party and when they got to the party they certainly weren't the prettiest. But because the Mac OS wasn't just a front-end that made calls to the back-end, Apple would be slow to add multi-tasking support, which came in their OS 5, in 1987. And they would be slow to adopt new technology thereafter, having to bring Steve Jobs back to Apple because they had no operating system of the future, after failed projects to build one. Windows 1.0 had executable files (or exe files) that could only be run in the Windowing system. It had virtual memory. It had device drivers so developers could write and compile binary programs that could communicate with the OS APIs, including with device drivers. One big difference - Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld spent a lot of time on frame buffers and moving pixels so they could have overlapping windows. The way Windows handled how a window appeared were in .ini (pronounced like any) files and that kind of thing couldn't be done in a window manager without clipping, or leaving artifacts behind. And so it was that, by the time I was in college, I was taught by a professor that Microsoft had stolen the GUI concept from Apple. But it was an evolution. Sure, Apple took it to the masses but before that, Xerox had borrowed parts from NLS and NLS had borrowed pointing devices from Whirlwind. And between Xerox and Microsoft, there had been IBM and GEM. Each evolved and added their own innovations. In fact, many of the actual developers hopped from company to company, spreading ideas and philosophies as they went. But Windows had shipped. And when Jobs called Bill Gates down to Cupertino, shouting that Gates had ripped off Apple, Gates responded with one of my favorite quotes in the history of computing: "I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it." The thing I've always thought was missing from that Bill Gates quote is that Xerox had a rich neighbor they stole the TV from first, called ARPA. And the US Government was cool with it - one of the main drivers of decades of crazy levels of prosperity filling their coffers with tax revenues. And so, the next version of Windows, Windows 2.0 would come in 1987. But Windows 1.0 would be supported by Microsoft for 16 years. No other operating system has been officially supported for so long. And by 1988 it was clear that Microsoft was going to win this fight. Apple filed a lawsuit claiming that Microsoft had borrowed a bit too much of their GUI. Apple had licensed some of the GUI elements to Microsoft and Apple identified over 200 things, some big, like title bars, that made up a copyrightable work. That desktop metaphor that Susan Kare and others on the original Mac team had painstakingly developed. Well, turns out that they live on in every OS because Judge Vaughn Walker on the Ninth Circuit threw out the lawsuit. And Microsoft would end up releasing Windows 3 in 1990, shipping on practically every PC built since. And so I'll leave this story here. But we'll do a dedicated episode for Windows 3 because it was that important. Thank you to all of the innovators who brought these tools to market and ultimately made our lives better. Each left their mark with increasingly small and useful enhancements to the original. We owe them so much no matter the platform we prefer. And thank you, listeners, for tuning in for this episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We are so lucky to have you.

Susan Kare Welcome to the History of Computing Podcast, where we explore the history of information technology. Because by understanding the past, we're able to be prepared for the innovations of the future! Today we'll talk about a great innovator, Susan Kare. Can you imagine life without a Trash Can icon? What about the Mac if there had never been a happy Mac icon. What would writing documents be like if you always used Courier and didn't have all those fonts named after cities? They didn't just show up out of nowhere. And the originals were 8 bit. But they were were painstakingly designed, reviewed, reviewed again, argued over, obsessed over. Can you imagine arguing with Steve Jobs? He's famous for being a hard person to deal with. But one person brought us all of these things. One pioneer. One wizard. She cast her spell over the world. And that spell was to bring to an arcane concept called the desktop metaphor into everyday computers. Primitive versions had shipped in Douglas Engelbart's NLS, in Alan Kay's Smalltalk. In Magic Desk on the Commodore 64. But her class was not an illusionist as those who came before her were, but a mage, putting hexadecimal text derived from graph paper so the bits would render on the screen the same, for decades to come. And we still use her visionary symbols, burned into the spell books of all visual designers from then to today. She was a true innovator. She sat in a room full of computer wizards that were the original Mac team, none was more important than Susan Kare. Born in 1954 in Ithaca, New York this wizard got her training in the form of a PhD from New York University and then moved off to San Francisco in the late 1970s, feeling the draw of a generation's finest to spend her mage apprenticeship as a curator at a Fine Arts Museum. But like Gandalph, Raistlin, Dumbledoor, Merlin, Glinda the good witch and many others, she had a destiny to put a dent in the universe. To wield the spells of the infant user interface design art to reshape the universe, 8-bits at a time. She'd gone to high school with a different kind of wizard. His name was Andy Hertzfeld and he was working at a great temple called Apple Computer. And his new team team would build a new kind of computer called the Macintosh. They needed some graphics and fonts help. Susan had used an Apple II but had never done computer graphics. She had never even dabbled in typography. But then, Dr Strange took the mantle with no experience. She ended up taking the job and joining Apple as employee badge number 3978. She was one of two women on the original Macintosh team. She had done sculpture and some freelance work as a designer. But not this weird new art form. Almost no one had. Like any young magician, she bought some books and studied up on design, equating bitmap graphics to needlepoint. She would design the iconic fonts, the graphics for many of the applications, and the icons that went into the first Mac. She would conjure up the hex (that's hexadecimal) for graphics and fonts. She would then manually type them in to design icons and fonts. Going through every letter of every font manually. Experimenting. Testing. At the time, fonts were reserved for high end marketing and industrial designers. Apple considered licensing existing fonts but decided to go their own route. She painstakingly created new fonts and gave them the names of towns along train stops around Philadelphia where she grew up. Steve Jobs went for the city approach but insisted they be cool cities. And so the Chicago, Monaco, New York, Cairo, Toronto, Venice, Geneva, and Los Angeles fonts were born - with her personally developing Geneva, Chicago, and Cairo. And she did it in 9 x 7. I can still remember the magic of sitting down at a computer with a graphical interface for the first time. I remember opening MacPaint and changing between the fonts, marveling at the typefaces. I'd certainly seen different fonts in books. But never had I made a document and been able to set my own typeface! Not only that they could be in italics, outline, and bold. Those were all her. And she painstakingly created them out of pixels. The love and care and detail in 8-bit had never been seen before. And she did it with a world class wizard: someone with a renowned attention to detail and design sense like Steve Jobs looking over her shoulder and pressuring her to keep making it better. They brought the desktop metaphor into the office. Some of it pre-existed her involvement. The trash can had been a part of the Lisa graphics already. She made it better. The documents icon pre-dated her. She added a hand holding a pencil to liven it up, making it clear which files were applications and which were documents. She made the painting brush icon for MacPaint that, while modernized, is still in use in practically every drawing app today. In fact when Bill Atkinson was writing MacSketch and saw her icon, the name was quickly changed to MacPaint. She also made the little tool that you use to draw shapes and remove them called the lasso, with Bill Atkinson. Before her, there were elevators to scroll around in a window. After her, they were called scroll bars. After her, the places you dropped your images was called the Scrapbook. After her the icon of a floppy disk meant save. She gave us the dreaded bomb. The stop watch. The hand you drag to move objects. The image of a speaker making sound. The command key, still on the keyboard of every Mac made. You can see that symbol on Nordic maps and it denotes an “area of interest” or more poignant for the need: “Interesting Feature”. To be clear, I never stole one of those signs while trampsing around Europe. But that symbol is a great example of what a scholarly mage can pull out of ancient tomes, as it is called a Gorgon knot or Saint John Arm's and dates back over fifteen hundred years - and you can see that in other hieroglyphs she borrowed from obscure historical references. And almost as though those images are burned into our DNA, we identified with them. She worked with the traditionally acclaimed wizards of the Macintosh: Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, Bruce Horn, Bud Tribble, Donn Denman, Jerome Coonen, Larry Kenos, and Steve Capps. She helped Chris Espinosa, Clement Mok, Ellen Romana, and Tom Hughes out with graphics for manuals, and often on how to talk about a feature. But there was always Steve Jobs. Some icons took hours; others took days. And Jobs would stroll in and have her recast her spell if it wasn't just right. Never acknowledging the effort. If it wasn't right, it wasn't right. The further the team pushed on the constantly delayed release of the Mac the more frantic the wizards worked. The less they slept. But somehow they knew. It wasn't just Jobs' reality distortion field as Steven Levy famously phrased it. They knew that what they were building would put a dent in the Universe. And when they all look back, her designs on “Clarus the Dogcow” were just the beginning of her amazing contributions. The Mac launched. And it did not turn out to be a commercial success, leading to the ouster of Steve Jobs - Sauron's eye was firmly upon him. Kare left with Jobs to become the tenth employee at NeXT computer. But she introduced Jobs to Paul Rand, who had helped design the IBM logo, to design their logo. When IBM, the Voldemort of the time, was designing OS/2, she helped with their graphics. When Bill Gates, the Jafar of the computer industry called, she designed the now classic solitaire for Windows. And she gave them Notepad and Control Panels. And her contributions have continued. When Facebook needed images for the virtual gifts feature. They called Kare. You know that spinning button when you refresh Pinterest. That's Kare. And she still does work all the time. The Museum of Modern Art showed her original Sketches in a 2015 Exhibit called “This is for everyone.” She brought us every day metaphors to usher in the and ease the transition into a world of graphical user interfaces. Not a line of the original code remains. But it's amazing how surrounded by all the young wizards, one that got very little attention in all the books and articles about the Mac was the biggest wizard of them all. Without her iconic designs, the other wizards would likely be forgotten. She is still building one of the best legacies in all of the technology industry. By simply putting users into user interface. When I transitioned from the Apple II to the Mac, she made it easy for me with those spot-on visual cues. And she did it in only 8 bits. She gave the Mac style and personality. She made it fun, but not so much fun that it would be perceived as a toy. She made the Mac smile. Who knew that computers could smile?!?! The Mac Finder still smiles at me every day. Truly Magical. Thanks for that, Susan Kare. And thanks to you inquisitive and amazing listeners. For my next trick. I'll disappear. But thank you for tuning in to yet another episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We're so lucky to have you. Have a great day!

Don Melton is probably best known as the person who started the Safari and WebKit projects at Apple and his rise to Apple Engineering Director of Internet Technologies. These days he’s an aspiring writer, podcaster and recovering programmer. Don walks us through his early career starting with his aspiration to become a comic strip or comic book artist. His artistic talent led to a newspaper job which led to information graphics which led to work with Macs. His tinkering with the Mac revealed that he had a special talent for programming, and that ultimately led to his job at Netscape developing the Navigator browser. Later, a relationship with Andy Hertzfeld and Bud Tribble led to his job at Apple in 2001, chartered by Scott Forstall, to write a web browser. Don tells a fascinating story about the development of Safari for Mac OS X and the race to replace Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Welcome to the History of Computing Podcast, where we explore the history of information technology. Because understanding the past prepares us for the innovations of the future! Today we're going to cover the first real object-oriented programming language, Smalltalk. Many people outside of the IT industry would probably know the terms Java, Ruby, or Swift. But I don't think I've encountered anyone outside of IT that has heard of Smalltalk in a long time. And yet… Smalltalk influenced most languages in use today and even a lot of the base technologies people would readily identify with. As with PASCAL from Episode 3 of the podcast, Smalltalk was designed and created in part for educational use, but more so for constructionist learning for kids. Smalltalk was first designed at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, Adele Goldberg, Ted Kaehler, Scott Wallace, and others during the 1970s. Alan Kay had coined the term object-oriented programming was coined by Alan Kay in the late 60s. Kay took the lead on a project which developed an early mobile device called the Dynabook at Xerox PARC, as well as the Smalltalk object-oriented programming language. The first release was called Smalltalk-72 and was really the first real implementation of this weird new programming philosophy Kay had called object-oriented programming. Although… Smalltalk was inspired by Simula 67, from Norwegian developers Kirsten Nygaard and Ole-johan Dahl. Even before that Stewart Nelson and others from MIT had been using a somewhat object oriented model when working on Lisp and other programs. Kay had heard of Simula and how it handled passing messages and wrote the initial Smalltalk in a few mornings. He'd go on work with Dan Ingalls to help with implementation and Adele Goldberg to write documentation. This was Smalltalk 71. Object oriented program is a programming language model where programs are organized around data, also called objects. This is a contrast to programs being structured around functions and logic. Those objects could be data fields, attributes, behaviors, etc. For example, a product you're selling can have a sku, a price, dimensions, quantities, etc. This means you figure out what objects need to be manipulated and how those objects interact with one another. Objects are generalized as a class of objects. These classes define the kind of data and the logic used when manipulating data. Within those classes, there are methods, which define the logic and interfaces for object communication, known as messages. As programs grow and people collaborate on them together, an object-oriented approach allows projects to more easily be divided up into various team members to work on different parts. Parts of the code are more reusable. The way programs are played out is more efficient. And in turn, the code is more scalable. Object-oriented programming is based on a few basic principals. These days those are interpreted as encapsulation, abstraction, inheritance, and polymorphism. Although to Kay encapsulation and messaging are the most important aspects and all the classing and subclassing isn't nearly as necessary. Most modern languages that matter are based on these same philosophies, such as java, javascript, Python, C++, .Net, Ruby. Go, Swift, etc. Although Go is arguably not really object-oriented because there's no type hierarchy and some other differences, but when I look at the code it looks object-oriented! So there was this new programming paradigm emerging and Alan Kay really let it shine in Smalltalk. At the time, Xerox PARC was in the midst of revolutionizing technology. The MIT hacker ethic had seeped out to the west coast with Marvin Minsky's AI lab SAIL at Stanford and got all mixed into the fabric of chip makers in the area, such as Fairchild. That Stanford connection is important. The Augmentation Research Center is where Engelbart introduced the NLS computer and invented the Mouse there. And that work resulted in advances like hypertext links. In the 60s. Many of those Stanford Research Institute people left for Xerox PARC. Ivan Sutherland's work on Sketchpad was known to the group, as was the mouse from NLS, and because the computing community that was into research was still somewhat small, most were also aware of the graphic input language, or GRAIL, that had come out of Rand. Sketchpad's had handled each drawing elements as an object, making it a predecessor to object-oriented programming. GRAIL ran on the Rand Tablet and could recognize letters, boxes, and lines as objects. Smalltalk was meant to show a dynamic book. Kinda' like the epub format that iBooks uses today. The use of similar objects to those used in Sketchpad and GRAIL just made sense. One evolution led to another and another, from Lisp and the batch methods that came before it through to modern models. But the Smalltalk stop on that model railroad was important. Kay and the team gave us some critical ideas. Things like overlapping windows. These were made possibly by the inheritance model of executions, a standard class library, and a code browser and editor. This was one of the first development environments that looked like a modern version of something we might use today, like an IntelliJ or an Eclipse for Java developers. Smalltalk was the first implementation of the Model View Controller in 1979, a pattern that is now standard for designing graphical software interfaces. MVC divides program logic into the Model, the View, and the Controller in order to separate internal how data is represented from how it is presented as decouples the model from the view and the controller allow for much better reuse of libraries of code as well as much more collaborative development. Another important thing happened at Xerox in 1979, as they were preparing to give Smalltalk to the masses. There are a number of different interpretations to stories about Steve Jobs and Xerox PARC. But in 1979, Jobs was looking at how Apple would evolve. Andy Hertzfeld and the original Mac team were mostly there at Apple already but Jobs wanted fresh ideas and traded a million bucks in Apple stock options to Xerox for a tour of PARC. The Lisa team came with him and got to see the Alto. The Alto prototype was part of the inspiration for a GUI-based Lisa and Mac, which of course inspired Windows and many advances since. Smalltalk was finally released to other vendors and institutions in 1980, including DEC, HP, Apple, and Berkely. From there a lot of variants have shown up. Instantiations partnered with IBM and in 1984 had the first commercial version at Tektronix. A few companies tried to take SmallTalk to the masses but by the late 80s SQL connectivity was starting to add SQL support. The Smalltalk companies often had names with object or visual in the name. This is a great leading indicator of what Smalltalk is all about. It's visual and it's object oriented. Those companies slowly merged into one another and went out of business through the 90s. Instantiations was acquired by Digitalk. ParcPlace owed it's name to where the language was created. The biggest survivor was ObjectShare, who was traded on NASDAQ, peaking at $24 a share until 1999. In a LA Times article: “ObjectShare Inc. said its stock has been delisted from the Nasdaq national market for failing to meet listing requirements. In a press release Thursday, the company said it is appealing the decision.” And while the language is still maintained by companies like Instantiations, in the heyday, there was even a version from IBM called IBM VisualAge Smalltalk. And of course there were combo-language abominations, like a smalltalk java add on. Just trying to breathe some life in. This was the era where Filemaker, Foxpro, and Microsoft Access were giving developers the ability to quickly build graphical tools for managing data that were the next generation past what Smalltalk provided. And on the larger side products like JDS, Oracle, Peoplesoft, really jumped to prominence. And on the education side, the industry segmented into learning management systems and various application vendors. Until iOS and Google when apps for those platforms became all the rage. Smalltalk does live on in other forms though. As with many dying technologies, an open source version of Smalltalk came along in 1996. Squeak was written by Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, Ted Kaehler, Scott Wallace, John Maloney, Andreas Raab, Mike Rueger and continues today. I've tinkerated with Squeak here and there and I have to say that my favorite part is just getting to see how people who actually truly care about teaching languages to kids. And how some have been doing that for 40 years. A great quote from Alan Kay, discussing a parallel between Vannevar Bush's “As We May Think” and the advances they made to build the Dynabook: If somebody just sat down and implemented what Bush had wanted in 1945, and didn't try and add any extra features, we would like it today. I think the same thing is true about what we wanted for the Dynabook. There's a direct path with some of the developers of Smalltalk to deploying MacBooks and Chromebooks in classrooms. And the influences these more mass marketed devices have will be felt for generations to come. Even as we devolve to new models from object-oriented programming, and new languages. The research that went into these early advances and the continued adoption and research have created a new world of teaching. At first we just wanted to teach logic and fundamental building blocks. Now kids are writing code. This might be writing java programs in robotics classes, html in Google Classrooms, or beginning iOS apps in Swift Playgrounds. So until the next episode, think about this: Vannevar Bush pushed for computers to help us think, and we have all of the worlds data at our fingertips. With all of the people coming out of school that know how to write code today, with the accelerometers, with the robotics skills, what is the next stage of synthesizing all human knowledge and truly making computers help with As we may think. So thank you so very much for tuning into another episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We're lucky to have you. Have a great day!

In this bonus episode of the Alta podcast, recorded on March 21, 2019 at Books Inc’s Opera Plaza location, we discuss the many complicated legacies of the late Steve Jobs with three Silicon Valley mainstays who worked with and knew him well. Our panelists include Andy Hertzfeld, who was a member of the original Apple Macintosh development team in the 1980s, Tom Zito, who penned the recent Alta article on Steve Jobs that inspired this event, and who first met Jobs in 1977 while working for the Washington Post, and Al Alcorn, who among other things created the Pong video game, and first hired an 18-year-old Steve Jobs at Atari. Along with moderator Blaise Zerega, Alta’s Managing Editor, the panel recollects their time with Jobs and debates the many legacies of this man who changed the way we communicate

The story of the Macintosh’s very first multitasking environment as told by the programmer himself, Andy Hertzfeld, at folklore.org. Audio excerpt from the “Macintosh at 20” panel hosted at Macworld Boston 2004. Highly recommended! Text available in HTML, ePub, and at folklore.org.

This week: Apple axes another 190 employees from their self-driving car division—is the Apple car dead? Plus: sleep tracking is coming to the Apple Watch; Apple is “rethinking” their high prices; and we wrap with the story of Apple's first legendary CEO, and you won’t believe who it was... This episode supported by Burrow sofas are designed for comfort, with supportive proprietary foam and a built-in USB charger so you never have to get up. Plus they're hand-crafted in North Carolina, and surprisingly affordable. Get $75 on your next sofa at burrow.com/cultcast. Whether you are looking for investors, a co-founder, a new job opportunity, or just inspiring conversations, Shapr can connect you to professionals who truly want to share tips and help. Learn more and download the app at Shapr.co. CultCloth will keep your iPhone X, Apple Watch, Mac and iPad sparkling clean, and for a limited time use code CULTCAST at checkout to score a free CleanCloth with any order at CultCloth.co. On the show this week @erfon / @lewiswallace / @lkahney 16-inch MacBook Pro - 8 things Apple BETTER get right! Apple axes 190 employees from self-driving car division Apple’s self-driving car project may be nearing the end of the road. Project Titan was reportedly greenlit toward the end of 2014. Apple hired hundreds of engineers setting out to design and build its own self-driving car. Numerous roadblocks hit the struggling project and the company reportedly changed the focus toward just making the underlying autonomous driving technology instead of a complete car. After rumors surfaced last month that the company slashed its workforce for Project Titan, Apple confirmed today that 190 employees in Santa Clara and Sunnyvale have been released from the self-driving car project. Details of Apple’s self-driving car project were just posted by the company last week. Apple’s cars needed a driver to take over about once every 1.1 miles. By comparison, Google’s Waymo division only had a disengagement every 11,017 miles. It’s unclear what the future holds for Apple’s automotive ambitions from here. Tim Cook has said self-driving cars is the mother of all AI problems. With iPhone sales dropping though, the company appears to be tightening its focus by jettisoning projects that aren’t as promising. Apple developing its own sleep-tracking tech for Apple Watch Apple Watch could soon add sleep-tracking tech that makes it an even more capable health monitor. Apple has been testing the new sleep-tracking technology at secret sites around Cupertino, a new report claims. And if it lives up to its promise, it could ship as part of the Apple Watch by 2020. The Health app for iOS has included sleep-tracking since 2014. However, it simply pulls in information from the Clock app’s alarm function, although third-party devices and apps can bolster the data. Apple acquired Finnish company Beddit, which makes a sleep-tracking sensor strip, in May 2017. At the end of last year, a new Beddit sleep monitor launched. This was the first version since Apple acquired the company. Apple ‘very aware’ of concerns over iPhone’s high prices “It’s something we’re very aware of,” Williams said during a question and answer session at Elon University on February 22. “We do not want to be an elitist company … We want to be an egalitarian company, and we’ve got a lot of work going on in developing markets.” Apple COO Jeff Williams says the company is “very aware” of concerns over the rising cost of the iPhone and Mac computers. Apple CEO Tim Cook has already admitted that the company will “rethink” its prices, particularly those for the iPhone Williams goes on to say: “The stories that come out about the cost of our products [have been] the bane of my existence from the beginning of time, including our early days,” he said. “Analysts don’t really understand the cost of what we do and how much care we put into making our products.” Williams described how Apple has built its very own physiology lab, with 40 licensed nurses, and enlisted over 10,000 study participants to develop some of Apple Watch’s most important features. Today in Apple history: Massive layoffs clear out Apple’s ‘bozo explosion’ February 25, 1981: Apple CEO Michael Scott oversees a mass firing of employees, then holds a massive party. At the time, Apple was growing incredibly quickly. With almost 2,000 people on the payroll, Scott thought the company had simply grown too big, too fast. The expansion led to what he called a “bozo explosion,” with Apple employing people he did not consider A-players. The event went on to be know as Black Wedneday. Former Apple programmer Andy Hertzfeld remembers it as bizarre event: “Black Wednesday was one of a number of shakeups which took place at Apple when things were going great. Sales were doubling almost every month, so that was a little unusual I would say.” “I used to say that when being CEO at Apple wasn’t fun anymore, I’d quit,” he tells a crowd of Apple staffers. “But now I’ve changed my mind — when being CEO isn’t fun anymore, I’ll just fire people until it is fun again.” For many people at Apple, the day is the worst in company history — and an early sign that the fun startup culture of the early days are gone forever.  

Andy Hertzfeld is one of the minds behind the Apple Macintosh. He talks about the early days at Apple. Hosts: Leo Laporte and Adam Fisher Guest: Andy Hertzfeld Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/valley-of-genius. Get a copy of Adam Fisher's Valley of Genius book at a bookstore near you.

Welcome to the first episode of Tools & Craft! We spoke with Andy Hertzfeld, a member of the team that built the original Macintosh. We’ve all seen the legendary Apple keynotes and how personal computing has transformed the way we live and work, but what I was really interested to learn from Andy was what it was like to shape that vision from scratch. --- You can find the full video interview, photos, transcripts, and more info about Tools & Crafts here: notion.so/tools-and-craft Notion: https://twitter.com/NotionHQ Andy: https://twitter.com/AndyHertzfeld Devon: https://twitter.com/DevonZuegel

The O.S. Wars. The 1980s is a period of mounting tensions. The empires of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs careen toward an inevitable battle over proprietary software—only one empire can emerge as the purveyor of a standard operating system for millions of users. Gates has formed a powerful alliance with IBM while Jobs tries to maintain the purity of his brand. Their struggle for dominance threatens to engulf the galaxy. Meanwhile, in distant lands, and unbeknownst to the Emperors, open source rebels have begun to gather… Veterans from computer history, including Andy Hertzfeld, from the original Macintosh team, and acclaimed tech journalist Steven Levy, recount the moments of genius, and tragic flaws, that shaped our technology for decades to come. Please let us know what you think of the show by providing a rating or review in Apple Podcasts. Drop us a line at redhat.com/commandlineheroes, we're listening...

清風明月逍遥客 2017-05-23 17:20了不起的比尔·盖茨（Bill Gates）。从哈佛的辍学生，到微软的亿万富翁，再到全世界最慷慨的慈善家，在比尔·盖茨的发家过程中，他的身上被打上了各种标签，比如一个严肃的管理者，一个杰出的思想者，以及一个单纯的爱洗盘子的家伙。高中时，少年盖茨被教务处指派了一个任务，用学校的电脑系统创建一个课程表。借此机会，盖茨就把他感兴趣的所有女生都编排进了“他的课程表”里。在哈佛，比尔·盖茨从来没有出席过任何他注册过的课，反而在其它一些他极为感兴趣的课程上经常露面。不过感谢填鸭式的教育“魔法”，盖茨总还是能在最后的期末考试中拿到“A”的优秀成绩。20岁的比尔·盖茨解决了一道困扰学界30年的数学难题——“煎饼问题”（pancake sorting）。当时这个“煎饼”难题已经“卡在”数学界30年了，一直无人能解开，直 到比尔·盖茨提出了一个令人惊叹的解题方法。那时，一位哈佛教授打电话给盖茨告诉他，他的解题方法未来将会在某个学术期刊上发表时，比尔·盖茨对此毫不关心，此时的他已经辍学去创建微软了。前哈佛教授克里斯托斯•潘帕莱米托（Christos Papadimitriou）回忆称：“两年以后，我打电话告诉他，我们的学术论文已经被一家很棒的数学期刊接受了，但盖茨表示完全不感兴趣。我当时的想法是‘这么聪明的学生，真是浪费了'。”比尔·盖茨经常开着他的保时捷911从阿尔伯克基办公室回他在西雅图的新家，他先后三次收到过超速罚单，其中两次还是来自同一个警察。过去，盖茨经常在阿尔伯克基沙漠边上，也就是微软的第一个办公室附近疯狂飙车，有一次他从朋友那借了一辆保时捷928超级跑车，最后那辆“可怜”的车几近报废，连汽车底盘都脱落了，花了一年才被修好。比尔·盖茨曾经能记住所有微软员工的车牌号码，并以此跟踪他们上下班考勤的状态。在接受采访时，盖茨曾说道，“我不得不谨慎地劝诫自己，不要用自己的标准去衡量他们有多努力工作”。“你知道吗？我清楚每个人的车牌号码，所以如果我去留心观察停车场的状况的话，我就能知道大家什么时候来的公司，又是什么时候离开公司的。直到后来公司逐渐成长到足够大的规模，我才逐渐松懈下了这个习惯。”为了保持高效工作，比尔·盖茨不得不从他的电脑中卸载掉扫雷游戏。盖茨曾一度非常痴迷于经典的Windows“扫雷游戏”，以至于后来他不得不从自己的办公电脑上卸载了它，以保证自己能高效地进行工作。当时有一名微软员工编写了一个计算机脚本，并用它超越了比尔·盖茨在扫雷游戏中所创下的记录，比尔·盖茨于是发了一封邮件，在邮件中他写道：“当机器做事比人更快时，我们要如何挽回我们作为人类的自尊？”比尔·盖茨一直到上世纪90年代还乘坐经济舱出差，和所有的微软员工一样执行公司规定的标准。到1990年时，微软公司已经蒸蒸日上了，但公司有政策规定员工出差旅行须乘坐经济舱，比尔·盖茨也不例外，他长期以来也一直在乘坐经济舱。“1990年时，我刚加入微软没多久，盖茨、几名Windows小组的员工和我一同从西雅图飞往纽约去参加几个客户的会议。那时Window 3.0系统刚推出没多久，虽然至今已时隔25年，但那时的微软已经是一个小有名气、欣欣向荣的公司了。但根据公司规定的政策，每名员工都须乘坐经济舱。所以，我就曾亲眼目睹盖茨出现在经济舱的中间位置。但他丝毫不在意这些，在整个飞行过程中，他一直在读书。那时，他还没像如今这样有名，所以乘坐经济舱对他来说也不算是什么麻烦事儿。看着盖茨先生亲自以身作则，给我这个当时的微软新人留下了很深刻的印象。”只需统计比尔·盖茨说脏话的次数，就可以掂量出他对一个新提案的看法。Stack Overflow的创始人乔尔·斯波尔斯基（Joel Spolsky）曾是微软早期时的一名员工。他曾在博客帖子中讲了一个段子：“那时候，我们常要做一件事叫‘盖茨复审'。基本上，每项重要的功能都需要经过盖茨的复审。在我的‘盖茨复审'会议上，我的小组中会专门安排一名员工，他在整个会议中的全部工作就是要准确地记录比尔·盖茨说脏话的次数。次数越少，就意味着这个提案越棒。‘4次'，脏话记录员有一次这样宣布道，然后大家一起感叹道：‘哇，这是我印象中的最低数字了。看来盖茨先生年龄大了，人也变得成熟温和了'。”当时，比尔·盖茨36岁。比尔·盖茨喜欢拷问员工。比尔·盖茨并不是真得想检查你的编程能力，他只是想确定你处在他的控制下。他的标准模式是问越来越难的问题，直到你承认你不知道，然后他就可以大声指责你没做好准备。没人知道如果你回答上来他所提出的最难问题之后会发生什么，因为那种事之前从没发生过……这才是重点。比尔·盖茨技术能力惊人，如果他信任某个人，他就不会在软件研发的事上插手。但你不能对他有一点胡扯，因为他是学编程出身的，是一个有真材实料的程序员。他编码了一款名叫DONKEY.BAS（《驴.BAS》）的小游戏。当微软首次向IBM公司授权DOS操作系统时，IBM公司要求盖茨和微软公司提供几款自带的小游戏。盖茨就和同事Neil Konzen加班到凌晨4时，终于编写出一款名叫DONKEY.BAS的简单小游戏，这款游戏需要你在驾驶时，躲避路上蹿出来的驴子。苹果公司的Mac小组在初次体验IBM笔记本电脑时，他们对DONKEY.BAS感到尴尬极了，他们很难相信比尔·盖茨会愿意在这种程序上留下他的名字。苹果早期的员工安迪·赫兹菲尔德（Andy Hertzfeld）曾经写道：“我们当时非常惊讶这么糟糕透顶的游戏竟然是由微软公司创始人与别人合伙编写的，而且他还想得到别人的好评。”比尔·盖茨喜欢自己来洗晚餐的盘子，并且他几乎天天乐此不疲。对此，盖茨自己解释称：“虽然有人愿意帮我洗，但是我很享受自己洗盘子的过程。”在采访中，比尔·盖茨曾迫使一名记者向他道歉。盖茨曾在一次采访中把自己反锁在卫生间里，并表示除非这名记者就刚才刁难他行为致歉，否则他拒绝出去。很久以前在This Week In Tech节目上，记者玛丽·乔·弗利（Mary Jo Foley）讲述了这段插曲：“这是个很有趣的事儿。当时，我正在世界计算机博览会上采访他，随行的还有其他几名记者，其中也包括约翰·道奇（John Dodge），道奇的一贯风格就是让别人出丑。当时，道奇为了使盖茨难堪，问了他一些愚蠢的问题，比如市场的定义。比尔·盖茨变得越来越生气，最后他站起身来走进了卫生间，并表示不愿再出来。盖茨说‘我不会出去，除非道奇道歉'。最后，道奇走到门前对他说了声对不起。然后，盖茨就出来了……过去的盖茨完全是另一个人，他做了父亲之后真的变了很多。过去，盖茨完全是个典型的无所畏惧的科技狂。后来他变得更像普通人了。所以，当我给别人讲盖茨过去的轶事时，人们总会问：‘比尔·盖茨？真的吗？'”

Kevin Groves talks about the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley and the history of personal computing. Note: this is an extra large episode of Cross Cutting Concerns. This is a very broad, historical topic, so it could have easily gone a lot longer! Show Notes: Pirates of Silicon Valley is available on Amazon The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. We couldn't find the issue rummaging through the basement: it may have been destroyed by flooding a few years ago Xerox PARC's Alto To drive home the point about GUI software, check out this video on the history of widgets from 1990. Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs at Macworld 1999 Obligatory Steve Ballmer clip Story from 1982 by Andy Hertzfeld about the interview with Steve Jobs depicted in the movie Steve Wozniak on the accuracy of Pirates of Silicon Valley Footage of Macworld 1997 in Boston, where Bill Gates appears on screen I could add a million more links, but instead why don't you leave a comment with your favorite quote, clip, or story about the events that transpired in the movie? Want to be on the next episode? You can! All you need is the willingness to talk about something technical. Theme music is "Crosscutting Concerns" by The Dirty Truckers, check out their music on Amazon or iTunes.

We talk about the movie Jobs, the biopic about Steve Jobs, with some of the real-life characters who were in the movie. Guests Steve Wozniak, Daniel Kottke, and Andy Hertzfeld.

We talk about the movie Jobs, the biopic about Steve Jobs, with some of the real-life characters who were in the movie. Guests Steve Wozniak, Daniel Kottke, and Andy Hertzfeld.

Karen and Bradley discuss recent coverage of GNOME by the technology press, and more generally issues and concerns with the technology press. Show Notes: Segment 0 (00:44) Bradley couldn't find support for his claim about in the can, and Karen may be right.(01:15) Bradley mentioned that the GNOME Foundation negative press recently is akin to what Harry Reid did by stating rumors regarding Romney's taxes. (05:03) Karen mentioned the Debunking Handbook that Germán Póo-Caamaño mentioned to her. (06:30) Bradley mentioned the quote I do not think [that word] means what you think it means from The Princess Bride. (13:30) Karen mentioned the GNOME 15 year Anniversary Site. (17:22) Bradley mentioned Dave Neary's GNOME census, and quoted numbers from the census. (21:30) Bradley discussed Eazel, a company co-founded by Andy Hertzfeld. (23:03) Karen mentioned GNOME's Outreach Program for Women, in which Conservancy participates. (25:34) Karen mentioned an article that came out on the same day as this audcast. (30:30) Bradley mentioned that some research by evolutionary biologists suggests language may have developed for gossip (38:48). Bradley couldn't find evidence easily online for the 80% is gossip claim on the audcase, but did find an article talking about 65% of human communication is gossip. Bradley mentioned the television series, The Human Animal. (39:17) Bradley mentioned a thread he recently posted in on the BusyBox mailing list. (50:32) Bradley mentioned that there are many cognitive psychological biases. (51:11) Send feedback and comments on the cast to . You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on identi.ca and and Twitter. Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums. The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Karen and Bradley discuss recent coverage of GNOME by the technology press, and more generally issues and concerns with the technology press. Show Notes: Segment 0 (00:44) Bradley couldn't find support for his claim about in the can, and Karen may be right.(01:15) Bradley mentioned that the GNOME Foundation negative press recently is akin to what Harry Reid did by stating rumors regarding Romney's taxes. (05:03) Karen mentioned the Debunking Handbook that Germán Póo-Caamaño mentioned to her. (06:30) Bradley mentioned the quote I do not think [that word] means what you think it means from The Princess Bride. (13:30) Karen mentioned the GNOME 15 year Anniversary Site. (17:22) Bradley mentioned Dave Neary's GNOME census, and quoted numbers from the census. (21:30) Bradley discussed Eazel, a company co-founded by Andy Hertzfeld. (23:03) Karen mentioned GNOME's Outreach Program for Women, in which Conservancy participates. (25:34) Karen mentioned an article that came out on the same day as this audcast. (30:30) Bradley mentioned that some research by evolutionary biologists suggests language may have developed for gossip (38:48). Bradley couldn't find evidence easily online for the 80% is gossip claim on the audcase, but did find an article talking about 65% of human communication is gossip. Bradley mentioned the television series, The Human Animal. (39:17) Bradley mentioned a thread he recently posted in on the BusyBox mailing list. (50:32) Bradley mentioned that there are many cognitive psychological biases. (51:11) Send feedback and comments on the cast to . You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter. Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums. The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The personal computing revolution is a relatively recent historical event, but one that is already open to historical interpretation. On this program, Andy Hertzfeld discussed his insider look at the creation of the Macintosh, as portrayed in his book, Revolution in the Valley.