Filed under: Cult of Mac, Odds and ends
Visua Mobile's old Apples collection
A couple of months ago I wound up in Paris and received a surprising direct message via Twitter from a young employee at Visua Mobile. Having nothing better to do in the City of Light, I wound up at their offices. I'm often suspect when a "mobile" development company rings me about their iPhone stable. Just like my tea, I prefer my developers steeped in Apple. Well, Visua Mobile is certainly made up of Apple fans. Just check out the gallery of their offices to see what I mean. Visua's raison d'etre would be iPhone apps. To my astonishment, none have been runaway hits. They are beautifully designed and generally work well (some 3.0 bugs crept up). Visua gained some noteriety around their app, Fracture, that would make the iPhone screen appear broken when pressed. But they make a host of already-approved apps, including Celebrity, which features a special magazine cover just for TUAW fans.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
oboewan said 5:19PM on 7-14-2009
Reminds me of one of the math teachers at my school. He used to teach computer class, back when the class was basically "IIGS Programming 101." Then, when the school switched over to IBMs, he grabbed all the computers they were going to throw away. He still has about 20 of them in a corner of his classroom, complete with their original drives, monitors, keyboards and mice, as well as a few ImageWriters and a bunch of software. He also has about five IIcs with monitors, which he's repurposed - with software he wrote - as special clocks specifically for when we host quiz bowl meets (he's our quiz bowl coach).
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Johnny said 6:40PM on 7-14-2009
Pull out your violin and a hankie folks, this is a sad one:
In 1996, I was working for this local computer company in Houston, TX. I was put in charge of going to schools and removing their Macs, some of which were only a year old, and replacing them with the lowest-end Compaq they could buy running Windows 3.1! Can you believe that? Window 3.1 in 1996! I only did it for a week or two before quitting. I think they were about to fire me anyway, because I told all the teachers how much better their Macs were and most of them agreed. I think I started a teacher protest at one of the schools. It was just WRONG for that company to have even sold them that crap, but my boss said the State of Texas had created some software that was soon to be mandatory in all Texas schools which would only run in DOS(!!!) and had not been tested or updated to work with Windows 95 yet. Even in 1996, they had VirtualPC or Soft Windows or something that could have run it as well as those horrible, ugly Compaqs with that disgusting obstrocity that was Windows 3.1.
Anyway, I was getting to how I would load up the van I drove with the old Macs and bring them back to the shop where they stayed in this one giant room. I'm not sure what they did with them after that because I quit before they went anywhere and I don't really think they knew what they were going to do with them yet. I asked, but my boss wouldn't let me take any of them home. What a dick.
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David S. said 8:21PM on 7-14-2009
This is too sad. You're in *Paris* and can find nothing better to do than go look at a software developer's offices and their collection of musty old Macs? Oh man, do you need to get out more!
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Victor Agreda, Jr. said 9:46PM on 7-14-2009
Well, it was a Sunday. Not exactly the best day to be in Paris. Besides, I spent most of my day in the wine museum. It's a miracle I got anything done at all!
Doctor said 8:46PM on 7-14-2009
I couldn't find that Fracture app at the iTunes store. Could that be part of the reason why their apps haven't caught on?
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Victor Agreda, Jr. said 9:46PM on 7-14-2009
The story I link to about Fracture is from Crunchgear, but I asked them about it in Paris. The app isn't in the store. Apple won't approve apps that appear to "break" the iPhone.