History

Apple’s view of the future from 1995. Here’s what they got right

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[VIDEO] Interesting find.

In 1995, Apple was looking at the world ahead and released a promotional video to educators laying out its vision for how students would be learning one day. It’s been 19 years since this video was produced and some of its predictions have become everyday realities. Here’s what Apple got right about the future, even if they weren’t the company to bring the changes about in some cases.

Watch the video, then read the article.

25 iconic historical documents for sale

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There are documents from Gandhi, Darwin, George Washington, Napoleon, Einstein, Churchill, and many more. Click on a document and you can zoom in, get a really high resolution look at some amazing bits of history.

Steve Jobs monument in Chinese ghost city

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Embedded in the long linked blog post about Kangbashi, China’s so-called Ghost City that was built for a population of one million people but is largely uninhabited, is a monument to Steve Jobs.

The sculpture, a hexagon containing the outline of an apple and Jobs’ face, is not that strange in itself. What’s strange is that it is located behind an apparently unused school, in the middle of hundreds of thousands of vacant apartments in the Kangbashi New Area of Ordos, a shining metropolis built by China in Inner Mongolia that has been called the world’s biggest ghost city.

Hometown hero Tim Cook profiled in his local paper

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There’s much to enjoy in this profile from Robersdale, Alabama’s Baldwin Register. I think what I liked the most was the sense of incredible pride that clearly came across, pride in their hometown hero. Don’t miss the slide show at the top with pics of Tim Cook in high school.

Harold Ramis, dead at 69

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This is crushing news.

Ramis, a longtime North Shore resident, was surrounded by family when he died at 12:53 a.m. from complications of autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis, a rare disease that involves swelling of the blood vessels, his wife Erica Mann Ramis said. He was 69.

Plan to divide California into 6 states advances

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When I heard this, I filed it under “impossibly dumb rumor”. But no, the plan to split California into 6 more easily governable regions might actually come before the voters this year. I just can’t see it.

Allman Brothers live at the Fillmore East – Smoking guitar work

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[VIDEO] When people list their favorite guitarists, an often overlooked name is Duane Allman. Allman was a brilliant blues guitarist, as evidenced by the video below. He died just a few months after this concert, killed in a motorcycle accident at the age of 24.

A little known fact is that Duane Allman played half of the guitar parts on Eric Clapton’s Layla. Clapton played all the Fender parts, Allman played all the Gibson parts.

Footage from 1932 Olympics

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[VIDEO] Some excellent footage from the 1932 Winter Olympics. Check out the ski jump. Most of the time, they fall to a stop. But jump to 1:40 to see the person who skis to the end of the run. No more snow. Appears like they made it all. Fascinating.

[Via Kottke]

About boxes and Easter eggs

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Scott Knaster takes us on a tour of some of his favorite Easter eggs from the Mac’s early days. This list is hardly complete, but it is a fun bit of nostalgia.

Remember the notorious naked Zebra Lady hidden in a version of MacPaint? Oh, I do. Have any Easter egg favorites of your own?

The making of Apple’s 1.24.14 film

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This is a behind the scenes video that tells the story of the making of Apple’s beautiful film, a film celebrating 30 years of Macintosh and 30 years of people doing amazing things with Apple technology.

Just unearthed: Steve Jobs’ first public demo of Mac

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This is not the video we published this past Friday. That one was about five minutes long. This one is Steve Jobs presenting to a much more technical audience, the Boston Computer Society.

The video is about an hour and thirty six minutes long. It includes Steve talking about the Mac technology, then doing his “pull the Mac out of the bag” demo. But there’s so much more. There’s the 1984 commercial, along with a series of other commercials that ran at the time. There’s a slide show showing the Mac culture and marketing plans. There’s Steve pitching low cost networking, printing, compatibility with mainframes, file servers, and even Unix compatibility. Fascinating.