Filed under: Apple History
What to do with 4,000 Newton modems
When the cat's away, the mice will play.
The cat being Steve Jobs (absent from Apple in 1996) and the mice a team of Newton developers who found themselves alone with 4,000 modems and a video camera. As you've undoubtedly surmised, they created an impressive domino-type arrangement of the modems in the halls of Apple.
The video is longer than it needs to be, so skip ahead a bit. While you're at it, dig the 90's fashion statements.
[Via Macenstein]

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
π said 5:44PM on 11-27-2007
First post! (I think...) Wouldn't it stink if that broke them all?
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puffin said 5:51PM on 11-27-2007
Flock of Seagulls? Me thinks '96 is a decade too late for that reference. Maybe should have thrown a grunge type band reference out there.
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utterer said 5:52PM on 11-27-2007
Wouldn't Flock of Seagulls make a better reference to something coming from the 80's rather than 90's?
According to Wikipedia in the 80's Flock of Seagulls had 14 singles (with 8 songs that charted on one form of chart or another in the world). In the 90's they only had 3 singles (none of which charted)
Maybe a reference to the grunge era would be in order?
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Tom Boucher said 6:02PM on 11-27-2007
Which newton needed an external modem? I seem to remember my original messagepad had a phone jack in it.
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anima said 7:00PM on 11-27-2007
Would you good folks be able to convert videos also to a iPhone - iPod-touch format too, and then provide an additional download link for that under the main vid', or am i missing something -like an iPhone optimised tuaw url? The Apple developer "Designing Web Content for iPhone" taught me about this in a fine tech tute vid'.
anima
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Frank said 7:01PM on 11-27-2007
ahh, it's always good to see apple employees being so upbeat and eager to play, even in the dark dark 1990s. "the power to take a joke." -- we love ya and miss ya, apple that was. i wish a bit more of that apple existed today, even though i'm very happy with apple overall.
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melchior said 7:24PM on 11-27-2007
a reference to "full house" maybe?
and i'm guessing this is why jobs axed the newton... little piece of gold that they were
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august125 said 8:31PM on 11-27-2007
OoOh, I saw this! I love how Apple was, not sure about is, such a laid back company. I believe that freedom was what lead to such innovation.
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gazerbeam said 2:22AM on 11-28-2007
the video length is perfect as-is. this is genius!
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Simon Arch said 3:34AM on 11-28-2007
Well super. Now I want to listen to A Flock of Seagulls, and I can't find my copy of their first album. Thank you VERY much.
Damn good stuff, too.
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SSteve said 1:15PM on 11-28-2007
Just for the record: I called "Band-in-a-Box" long before I saw the closing credits.
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Lucien said 2:42PM on 11-28-2007
That was a fun day, setting those up and sending them on their way. :)
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