Filed under: Apple History

Earlier this month we took you down memory lane for a 1987 video that Apple produced about a futuristic product called the Knowledge Navigator.

It was a super smart, full featured tablet with internet connectivity, video conferencing, datebook and browser. It also contained a nifty personable digital assistant.

Ten years later, Apple was still selling the idea of an enhanced tablet. One of our readers sent us this YouTube video of a concept that Apple sent around to educators. It had a lot of the same great technology, like video conferencing and browsing, but the video shows a variety of form factors, including a desktop unit, a tablet, and a small hand held device.

It's pretty clear Apple has done a lot of thinking about what a tablet should do. Who knows if any of these concepts will get into tomorrow's announcement, but the technology is pretty much here to make the dreams into some kind of software/hardware reality.

Will an Apple tablet change the world? Stay tuned.

Thanks to Fred for the Apple nostalgia!

It's this week! It's almost a sure bet that we'll finally, after all of these years, see the Apple tablet unveiled this week, and to celebrate, Frog Design (the company responsible for many of Apple's designs back in the day) has given Wired some old shots of prototype tablets from the Cupertino company ... from 1983. Of course, Apple has released tablet-like devices before, and they've been thinking about this type of computer for a long time. But back in 1983, they apparently commissioned some concepts for an unreleased tablet called "Bashful" (so called because it was designed to work with the Snow White "industrial design language" that Apple used back then in the //c and other releases.

As you can see above, the tablet isn't exactly "elegant" by today's standards, but it is interesting how similar it actually is to many of today's smartphones and handhelds, considering that we're talking about almost 30 years ago now. One model had a floppy drive attached (which was gigantic), and apparently they even considered a version with a phone on it as well. We still don't know for sure what Apple's release this week will look like, but it's fascinating to think just how far back the planning for this week's unveiling actually went.

Despite all odds, the Mac has survived to its 26th birthday.

On January 24th, 1984, Steve Jobs pulled a 128K Mac out of its case in front of a crowd of reporters, turned it on, and let the computer introduce itself to the world. The rest, as they say, is history.

We've seen our favorite computer go from an awkward infancy, to almost dying in its teens, and now being a profitable prodigy in adulthood.

It has spawned a popular family of siblings, from the iPod series of media players to the iPhone. Somehow, it's fitting that we may see the birth of the newest member of the family later this week.

Watching the "Story of Macintosh" video in the past few weeks has introduced the young minds behind the first Mac to most of the current generation. For those of us who are a bit older, the video served as a reminder of the brash individuals who created a computer that still speaks to those who "Think Different."

Here's hoping that the Mac and all of its family may live a long and fruitful life.

It's hard to believe that Apple's "Get a Mac" ad campaign is already 4 years old. Since its introduction, the campaign has invited both parody and serious responses from competitors. Plus, poor* John Hodgman and Justin Long can't walk out the door without someone calling them either "Mac" or "PC."

Some have been better than others (the Christmas ads are always a highlight), and Apple keeps several of each year's ads on their site. If you'd like to browse the full history of these ads, check out this page assembled by the folks at AdFreak. They've gathered every TV spot and sorted them chronologically. In case you were wondering, there have been 66 in total. The most ads aired in 2006 (19) and the fewest in 2009 (14).

Enjoy the archive and have fun re-watching your favorites.

*My sympathy is short lived, however. Consider their paychecks.

Denver-area Mac consultant Mike Kimble is no stranger to Apple; he worked at an Apple reseller prior to the introduction of the Mac in 1984, and he's been involved with Macs and other Apple products ever since. Mike recently found several old Apple tapes that were sent to his business back around the Mac intro, and his description of one of them says it all:

"I found this VHS cassette while cleaning my office this week. This "Found Footage" comes from a video tape I received from Apple back in 1984 when the original 128K Mac was introduced. It was part of the authorized dealer training videos given to each store to help them become familiar with the Macintosh. You will see a very young Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, Phil Gibbons, Mitch Kapor, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. You really get a good feel for how proud and excited these people were for the creation of something special. Little did they know how much they were about to change the world..."

My personal favorite scene is the one where Bill Gates is sitting with a 128K Mac on his desk. The video is divided into two parts; the second can be viewed by clicking the "read more" link below. Enjoy this trip down memory lane!

The face of Steve Jobs is almost as much of an icon as the Apple logo.

Over the years, his photo has appeared on numerous magazine covers. From the 1982 Time cover painting with a "pr0n star" moustache, through the early dalliance with a suit and tie, and to the November, 2009 Fortune magazine CEO of the Decade cover, Jobs has worked his now-grizzled mug onto more magazines than probably any other CEO in history.

Kuo Design's PineApple blog has a collection of many of the Steve Jobs covers on "The Steve Jobs on Magazine Covers page." It's fun to see the changes in Steve over the years, as well as magazines that have since become history. And you can help them put it all together: If you have any old magazines with Steve Jobs on the cover, it appears that Kuo Design is taking contributions to their online repository of Jobsian goodness.

Engadget's Josh Topolsky got to chat with none other than Woz recently, and they've finally shared a great video of their meeting. Woz says a lot of interesting things in the video (he runs six navigation systems at a time in his car just for comparison's sake, and carries two iPhones nowadays, just in case the battery life runs out), but the most intriguing thing about this video is just seeing the great Wozniak thinking machine race along at the speed of Woz.

For example, those two iPhones he carries are the two different colors available. Why? "White and black, black and white. Resistor color codes: zero and nine. Those are the digits they end in!" Gosh, we love Steve Wozniak. You can watch the whole video after clicking the link below.

As we mentioned a few days ago, CNBC will air Welcome to Macintosh tonight at 9:30Pm Eastern/6:30 Pacific time. Welcome to Macintosh is an indie documentary that provides an intimate look at Apple's history. It's been shown at different times and places over the past year, and you can also buy it from iTunes [link], but now you can watch the documentary for free.

Then tomorrow night, Tuesday January 5 at 10PM, CNBC will be airing another Mac documentary, MacHEADS, a film that explores the fanaticism and loyalty of Apple users.

Finally, don't forget to set your DVRs for CNBC's third Mac feature, Planet of the Apps, airing on January 7th at 10PM ET/PT, the only CNBC original of the three where they take a look into the "app-economy."

Is it just me, or does January 2010 seem to be Apple's month?

If you missed Macworld Expo 2009 in San Francisco last January, then you probably missed the premiere showing of Welcome to Macintosh, an indie documentary that provides an intimate look at Apple's history. It's been shown at different times and places over the past year, and you can also buy it from iTunes, but now you can watch the documentary for free.

On Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 9:30 PM ET, CNBC is broadcasting the documentary for the first time on a major network. Welcome to Macintosh features interviews with many of the early forces in Apple history, including Andy Hertzfeld, Guy Kawasaki, and Ron Wayne (often referred to as the "third founder" of Apple and the person who designed the original Apple logo).

CNBC seems to be vying for the title of "The Apple Channel," as we reported yesterday that they're airing a special about the app revolution titled "Planet of the Apps: A Handheld Revolution" on January 7th.

[via Macworld]

With our zippy Intel Macs able to eagerly boot up Windows 7 in Boot Camp, VMWare, Parallels, and VirtualBox, it's difficult to fathom that it was ever a problem to run Microsoft operating systems on our Apple boxes.

The situation wasn't that good just a scant 15 or so years ago. Back in the bleak days before the triumphant return of Steve Jobs to 1 Infinite Loop, Apple had a broad and confusing product line. Since DOS and Windows 3.1 were already entrenched in business worldwide, Apple knew that they had to have a way for Macs to run Microsoft operating systems in order to gain any sort of traction in the corporate world.

Edible Apple ran a wonderful retrospective yesterday that looked at Apple's DOS Compatibility Cards. These were basically PCs on a NuBus or PCI cards that were inserted into a slot in the Mac, using the Mac's power supply, floppy and hard drives, and keyboard and mouse. Sporting such amazing CPUs as the Intel 486SX running at a whopping 25 MHz clock speed, the original cards worked with the Centris 610 and Quadra 610 and were released in 1994. By the next year a second edition was released with an Intel 486DX/66, and was targeted at the PowerMac 6100 and Performa 6100.

Further research shows that there were several subsequent cards that included even faster Pentium and Cyrix 6x86 processors, were called "PC Compatibility Cards," and were designed for use in other PowerMac models. I can recall acquiring one of the Pentium-based cards and using it to try to entice our one DOS holdout department to move to Macs (they didn't).

Today's Windows compatibility is the best it has ever been on the Mac platform, and usually the only "hardware upgrade" required is to add some inexpensive RAM to the host Mac. Things might sometimes change slowly, but at least in the world of technology, the change is usually for the best.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996, the public's perception of the company was grim. To make a long story short, Steve's plans for resurrection included changing that, and the "Think Different" campaign was among the first steps. There were television ads, print ads and slogans printed on Apple packaging.

The phrase was replaced with the "Switch" and "Get A Mac" campaigns, but didn't disappear for good. A portion of the poem from the TV ad can be found on the high-res version of the TextEdit icon in Leopard and Snow Leopard. Earlier this year, "Think Different" began appearing on 21.5" and 27" iMac boxes.

This week, Patently Apple reports that the US Patent & Trademark Office has published Apple's new trademark application for Think Different (it's application 77882684 if you were wondering). It could mean a revitalization of the campaign, but it's more likely that Apple just wants to keep it in their stable. Many consumers still think of Apple when hearing "think different."

Like most iconic aspects of pop culture, there have been many parodies. Here's my favorite.

[Via MacNN]

Wired has an interesting look at the early days of the iPod, and what's most fascinating is just how fully formed the idea of the iPod and iTunes was. The idea itself originates from a company called PortalPlayer, where hardware designer Tony Fadell had the idea to create a player that could eventually be paired with "a Napster music sale service to complement it."

That's it -- even that early, the iPod + iTunes idea that would eventually revolutionize Apple was that complete. Of course, that was before Apple even got invested in the project -- once they did, Steve Jobs put "100 percent" of his time into the project, and they ended with the iconic design and the feel and experience that pushed it beyond any other MP3 player at the time.

That's not to say that development was smooth sailing after that -- apparently there was a major battery issue that kept battery life at a super low three hours until Apple and PortalPlayer got it fixed up. Always fun to hear the backstory on the stuff that would eventually make this company what it is today.

In 1979, the Apple II Plus was a badass piece of hardware, and the Apple Graphics Tablet was a flashy accessory. At $650US, it let users sketch with a wired stylus. Measuring 3/4 in x 15 1/2 in x 15 3/4 in, the Graphics Tablet was eventually discontinued when the FCC discovered that it caused radio frequency interference problems.

Sure, the wired stylus is a kludge, as is the general design (don't look at the back), but remember that 1979 was 5 years before the first Macintosh was released and computer mice became ubiquitous.

Edible Apple has some additional photos and an old ad promoting the tablet and Utopia software. Go and check out an interesting piece of Apple history -- complete with vintage scotch tape!

Here's a great video assembled by applemctom that presents the history of Apple (more or less) in two minutes. There are some huge leaps in time and some obvious errors (Apple Mac II? MacIntosh?), but that's OK. It isn't easy to cram decades of history into 120 seconds.

There's much nostalgia for old-timers like me, as the Pippin and Newton make an appearance. Though I still use my Newt, I've never had the pleasure of a face-to-face meeting with a Pippin. The dark days described in the video (the early 90's after Steve left) is exactly when I started using Macs in earnest. It's amazing that I stayed a customer after bloodying my hands on a 7100's beastly innards.

The video ends with the introduction of the iPhone, so don't expect to see anything beyond that. Still, it's a bit of fun. Check it out.

A few months ago, we provided details of an auction that featured a Mac that had been given to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry by Apple. If you missed your chance to pick up that prime item, now you have an opportunity to own an Apple that is even more rare: an Apple-1 (also known as the Apple I) that's currently on auction on eBay.

The starting bid for the Apple-1 is US$50,000. What do you get with your winning bid? A non-working Apple 1 motherboard, the original shipping box (with the return address being the home of Steve Jobs' parents), and the original manual, complete with schematics on how to take the motherboard and build a workable computer out of it.

There's also a tape interface card, used to load or save software from cassette tapes. The card comes with a manual and a cassette with a typed label that says "BASIC" on it.

If you're a fan of Steve Jobs, you'll want two of the items that are included. The first is a letter signed by Steve Jobs that explains how to connect a keyboard and monitor to the computer, and telling the buyer (someone who wanted to be a dealer) when dealer applications would be available. The second is a hand-typed invoice for the computer, showing "Steven" as the salesman for the machine.

The original full-page advertisement for Apple was included with each Apple-1. This features the original Apple "Isaac Newton" logo that was designed by the third founder of Apple, Ronald Wayne. Wayne also wrote the Apple-1 manual. Finally, you'll get a photograph of every other owner of this computer. The existing owner has a picture of himself, the computer, and Steve Wozniak that he's including.

If you're the successful bidder, you are asked to travel to Roseville, California to pick it up due to the irreplaceable nature of the Apple-1. A gallery of the photos included in the auction can be viewed below. And remember, this could be the perfect holiday gift for that special someone...