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This Old Mac

In case you haven’t noticed, the Mac turned 20 this past week. One of the original developers of the Mac User Interface, Andy Hertzfeld, has a new site up dedicated to the history of the Mac we all love. Folklore is a collection of stories — many first-hand accounts — regarding the Mac in its infant and toddler days.

Our favorite icon goddess, Susan Kare, has several of her own stories on the site. My favorites being a tale of how the typeface named Elefont became Chicago and where the swirly command-key icon came from.

(first spotted on Daring Fireball)

Maintained through our ADV @ UnderConsideration Program
ENTRY DETAILS
ARCHIVE ID 1802 FILED UNDER Hardware/Software
PUBLISHED ON Jan.29.2004 BY darrel
WITH COMMENTS
Comments
Armin’s comment is:

Man, Susan Kare is the undenied queen of pixels. So simple, so easy, so folkloric.

On Jan.29.2004 at 11:45 PM
Steven’s comment is:

Ah yes, I remember with fondness my first Mac Plus, back in '88, I think. It was that weird green-beige color. The screen resolution was CHUNKY. And that stellar performance: Make a square. Select Modify: Rotate 90 degrees (eject program disk)(insert system disk) Chug. Chug. Chug. (eject system disk)(insert program disk) Chug. Chug. Chug. (eject program disk)(insert system disk) Chug. Chug. Chug. Complete.

And as someone with a lot of icon experience (e.g. this and this), I can very much appreciate the subtle complexity and hard, eyeball-grinding work of making them. Susan Kare's work is tight.

On Jan.30.2004 at 02:09 AM
Sam’s comment is:

More lore from from the core:

"8 bytes of RAM on a single PC Card" : selling for $666.66.

And this, so so great: Macs based on Darwinism!! (scroll a bit):

"The real operating system hiding under the newest version of the Macintosh operating system (MacOS X) is called... Darwin! That's right, new Macs are based on Darwinism! While they currently don't advertise this fact to consumers, it is well known among the computer elite, who are mostly Atheists and Pagans. Furthermore, the Darwin OS is released under an "Open Source" license, which is just another name for Communism. They try to hide all of this under a facade of shiny, "lickable" buttons, but the truth has finally come out: Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism."

No, they are not kidding. And if you think they are, you're probably an atheist or a pagan...or at least a Communist.

Orig. spotted on saturation.org

On Feb.03.2004 at 06:45 PM