This amazing documentary was broadcast on NHK, Japan’s public broadcasting service. No spoilers, but it is a gorgeous take on Steve Jobs’ passionate connection to Japan.
Typically, I’d embed the video, but NHK has specifically prevented that, so follow the headline link to watch it on YouTube.
[H/T @rwintheiser]
Jean-Louis Gassée:
Today, an unstructured, sentimental reminiscence and acknowledgment of my debt to Apple. A company that, warts and all, was gratifying to have worked for and continues to be enjoyable to watch.
This is an interesting read, a look back by someone who was in the room when it happened, both when Steve Jobs was kicked to the curb, and as the founder of a competitor to NeXT when Steve made his triumphant return.
Warring thoughts here. On one side, there’s the collector, owning a snippet of Steve Jobs, a bit of history. Sports cards have been doing this for a long time, offering cards, with a bit of a players’ uniform, a sliver of bat, an original signature, all designed to pump up the rarity, increase the card’s value.
But on the other side, there’s the complete lack of a resale market, and the certainty of the phone losing its value as a phone over time.
Want to save a bit of money? Consider the Steve Jobs New Balance sneakers with the Think Different laces, at about 1/5 the price.
[VIDEO] This is from back in 2004, came across this on Reddit this morning. I love that this is pitched as a “revolutionary new product”.
Can’t help but wonder if Steve did this one under protest. This feels so unlike him, to pitch such whimsy. But fun to watch. Starts at about 4:27 in. Video embedded in main Loop post.
[VIDEO] This is crazy old school. But it’s legit. Harkening back to the days of backing up computers on cassette tapes.
Follow the headline link for the details, but here’s a video (embedded in main Loop post) of this in action. Might want to lower the volume, since the record itself is like listening to some old modem screeching.
First things first, this from CNN on the sale of a treasure trove of Bob Dylan memorabilia:
A collection of Bob Dylan memorabilia including letters, unpublished lyrics and handwritten lyrics to “Blowin’ in the wind” have sold for nearly half a million dollars, auctioneers say.
The items belonged to the estate of Dylan’s friend and fellow musician Tony Glover, who died last year. They were put up for sale in a week-long auction run by RR Auction Company.
Glover’s collection of Dylan memorabilia included personal letters and the transcripts from an interview carried out by Glover and hand-annotated by Dylan.
The collection sold for $495,000 to an unnamed seller.
Steve Jobs was, famously, a big Dylan fan. Woz weighed in with this thought on the auction and purchase:
In my opinion, someone got a bargain. These are the sort of rambling words that filled the Dylan liner notes and lyrics and brought me heavily into his world. The day I met Steve Jobs I brought him down to my house to see all the Dylan albums with strange liner notes and lyrics, since Jobs didn’t have albums. Thus Dylan became an important part of our friendship. We pursued Dylan memorabilia and trivia and concerts back then. I kept wondering how such words could come into any mortal mind.
A nice, if tiny, little look back at a friendship that launched Apple.
[VIDEO] This is silly, fun to watch, and just a bit jarring. The jarring part, for me, was watching the team in charge of Apple during this major technical transition. No familiar faces, no Steve Jobs. Video embedded in main Loop post.
Jesper:
I recently have been in a mode of deep (Windows-based) user interface focus at work, and was describing Panic to someone recently when something came over me. I love these guys. I love the attention to detail of every large, small and medium thing, the time put into making an application that feels right and flows right, that’s easy to use, that has just enough user interface that you can get done what you need to get done, that has style, function and whimsy.
And:
The Mac gets a lot of flack from people who are nose deep in technical specifications and price matchups. What they don’t see — or aren’t interested in — is the intangible: the culture that people with big dreams and small means have made the unconventional available, the complex seemingly simple and the advanced accessible. This culture doesn’t live or die by Apple in particular, although the original Macintosh being a product of a similar mindset helped set the tone. This culture produces things that are hard to find elsewhere, not because it’s technically impossible to do, but because the values that drive those other platforms produce different outcomes.
This entire post is a love letter and perfectly captures how I feel about the Mac and Apple in general, warts and all. I love the culture, love the attention to detail, in spite of the flaws. In spite of the App Store madness, Sherlocking, Steve Jobs horror stories, broken keyboards, etc. That love is just deeply, deeply ingrained.
Lovely bit of writing, this. Well done.
[Via Michael Tsai]
[VIDEO] Apple Fellow Guy Kawasaki interviewing Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer. This is full of hot takes and just plain fun to watch. Video embedded in main Loop post.
[VIDEO] Andy Miller, founder of Quattro Wireless, a mobile ad company that Apple acquired in 2010, describes his meeting with Steve Jobs to get Steve’s blessing on the acquisition.
This is just great. Video embedded in main Loop post.
[VIDEO] Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:
Nine years ago today, Steve Jobs passed away from pancreatic cancer at the age of 56, one day after Apple executives introduced the iPhone 4s at a media event on the company’s Infinite Loop headquarters campus.
You can send an email to [email protected] to express your appreciation for Steve. The remembrances scroll on Apple’s official Steve Jobs appreciation page.
Here’s a video, embedded in the main Loop post, with lots of Steve. Brings tears to my eyes to think of what we’ve lost.
Harry Mccracken, FastCompany:
A tech CEO is onstage helpfully explaining that the Mac’s expiration date is imminent. More important, he’s about to introduce us to a new computer designed for the next decade. I am in a distant seat among his audience of more than 2,000 at Boston’s Symphony Hall, where the anticipation in the air is thick enough to induce a contact high.
After all, we are among the lucky few who will hear about the NeXT computer directly from Steve Jobs himself.
The article is a great read, lots of embedded audio and video nuggets from the past. Terrific collection.
[VIDEO] Worth your time. Some fascinating insights, especially if you think about the evolution in remote work we’re seeing right now. Video embedded in main Loop post.
[VIDEO] This is one of my all-time favorite Apple anecdotes. It’s a long listen (video embedded in main Loop post, the audio is the important part), but so worth your time. I’d suggest saving the link, then pop in your AirPods and listen to the whole thing (it’s a bit less than an hour) the next time you exercise or cook or do chores. And you’ve got a weekend coming up.
My favorite part is the bit about the badges. You’ll know it when you get there. Enjoy!
[VIDEO] MTV used to be a really big deal. When it first started, it was a real game changer. And here’s the very beginning (video embedded in main Loop post), with that historic countdown and segue into “Video Killed the Radio Star”.
Just like the original Macintosh was a pirate movement against the establishment, this earliest MTV flew its own pirate flag. This first two hours started on August 1, 1981.
Enjoy.
Fun read and great work by Michael Steeber, my go-to expert on Apple Stores. Don’t miss the before-and-after slideovers in the middle of each picture.
[VIDEO] This Apple IIe product video is a real slice of history. The whole thing is worth watching, but the highlight is at 3:23, Steve Jobs as you’ve likely never seen him before.
Nice find from Justin Miller. Video embedded in main Loop post.
[VIDEO] As I mentioned yesterday, today is Woz’s 70th birthday. Follow the headline link for the details on tonight’s live event.
In the meantime, check out this official birthday song (video embedded in main Loop post) written by “song a day” songwriter extraordinaire Jonathan Mann. Excellent video.
Happy Birthday, Woz!
[VIDEO] There was a discussion flying around Twitter yesterday about the term Jiggle Mode and when it was introduced. Someone on Reddit showed up with this video (embedded in main Loop post), where Steve Jobs is introducing the concept of folders in iOS 4.2.
Jump to about 18:32 for the Jiggle Mode mention.
Interesting also is the introduction of the ill-fated Ping. And the unusual “One More Thing…” at about 50:23.
UPDATE: Steve does introduce jiggling in this keynote (about 16:35 in), though he doesn’t (as far as I can tell) use the term Jiggle Mode.
Read the thread (and the replies). Solid take on the force of character that helped make Steve Jobs who he was.
https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1282098099997954048
[VIDEO] This is a fun, ongoing project. 50 songs from every year, mashed up into a single song/video (video embedded in main Loop post).
I keep waiting to see when the aspect ratio will change from old-school 4:3 to a more modern 16:9 or the like.
Enjoy.
Over the weekend, Daniel Eran Dilger, writing for AppleInsider, shared a post titled, Apple’s shift to ARM Mac from Intel at WWDC will define a decade of computing.
The whole thing is worth reading, but this bit captured a historic sequence, one that I’m sure Intel regrets:
The first was the iPhone, which Apple initially wanted to power with an Intel-built XScale chip. Intel’s chief executive at the time, Paul Otellini, initially said no to Apple, fearing that its phone project wouldn’t be successful enough to justify Intel’s investment.
That turned out to be wildly mistaken. Within just a couple of years, Apple’s success with the iPhone was so obvious that Intel itself desperately wanted to work with Apple on future mobile products, particularly its upcoming tablet. Intel expected Apple to select its upcoming x86 Silverthorne mobile chip, later renamed as Atom.
But this time Apple said “no” to Intel, and instead initiated the development of a project to build a new customized ARM “System on a Chip” that could power both its upcoming iPad and subsequently iPhone 4. The project was delivered in 2010 as A4.
This definitely goes down in my book as one of the biggest missed bets in tech history.
A bold experiment, bringing what was formerly a twice a day (typically) short form presentation of news to a 24/7 fire hose, CNN definitely changed journalism, tilted the world a bit.
[VIDEO] Scott Forstall, via Zoom, tells audience at Code Break about meeting Steve Jobs for the first time. The video is embedded in the main Loop post. Very entertaining. His part of the interview starts at about 31:51. Scott starts by talking about a formative childhood experience. The Steve Jobs bit starts at about 35:54.
Forstall is best known as the software lead for both iPhone and iPad. Here’s a link to his Wikipedia page, which is an interesting read on its own.
The Statesider:
Before 1984, I had never encountered the word “font.” Then a Macintosh computer showed up in my house.
A beige block with a too-small black and white screen and a thingy called a “mouse,” the first thing I saw when I turned it on was “Welcome to Macintosh” in what I would soon learn was a font called Chicago.
The linked map is interesting. Had no idea there were so many US-city-named fonts. Obviously, a world map would have a ton more.
But the mention of the original Macintosh fonts brought me down a bit of a rabbit hole. Can you name the original Mac fonts? Here’s a link to a Wikipedia page that has the answer.
[VIDEO] I love this series. It started with 1979 and there’s one for every year between 1979 and 1985. Every one of them worth watching.
Video embedded in main Loop post. Enjoy.
Charlie Harrington:
Not one block away from our house did I spot something: a yellowed plastic box amid a pile of trash. No. It couldn’t be. I stopped, and went back to the trash.
It was an Apple IIe. With its CRT monitor. And a dual floppy drive.
Just. SITTING. THERE.
This is a pretty fun read. I have to say, if I came across an Apple II, just sitting in someone’s trash, I would definitely grab it, if only for nostalgia’s sake.
How about you?
This is a great read for a number of reasons. There’s the whole “birth of shareware” aspect, which was a fantastic slice of history.
But beyond that, there’s the amazing picture of Microsoft, circa 1978, all 9 principals, with a very young Bill Gates in the lower left.
And then there’s this:
The PC World issue with the landmark review of PC-File was still on newsstands when Andrew Fluegelman had his next life-changing encounter with a computer: he was one of a select few invited to Apple for an early unveiling of the new Macintosh. He was so smitten by this whole new way of operating a computer that he immediately began lobbying for a companion magazine to PC World, to be named, naturally enough, Macworld. Its first issue appeared in time to greet the first Macintosh buyers early in 1984.
And:
People [say the Macintosh is] more of a right-brain machine and all that. I think there is some truth to that. I think there is something to dealing with a graphical interface and a more kinetic interface; you’re really moving information around, you’re seeing it move as though it had substance. And you don’t see that on [an IBM] PC. The PC is very much a conceptual machine; you move information around the way you move formulas, elements on either side of an equation. I think there’s a difference.
Wonderful read.
[By way of this Six Colors post]
Motherboard:
Giulio Zompetti, a 27-year-old from Northern Italy, told Motherboard that he purchased half a dozen early prototypes of Apple Watch recently, and is planning to fix them and sell them for thousands of dollars. Zompetti declined to say where exactly he purchased the devices from, but said they come from e-waste facilities. The prototypes he obtained are all broken, but key components are still intact, making it possible to repair them, he said.
Lots of pictures in the linked article.
CNN:
It started its life as “Neue Haas Grotesk,” a boringly descriptive moniker which included the name of its maker (the Haas foundry), its design type (neo-grotesque or realist) and the fact that is was new (or “neue” in German).
“The original name sucked,” said Shaw. The name Helvetica, which means “Swiss” in Latin as a homage to its country of origin, was adopted in 1960 to make it easier to sell it abroad.
And:
But it didn’t take long before it became the standard for advertising and corporate branding in the US: “In 1967 it creeps into the design for the Yankee Stadium,” said Shaw, “And by 1968 it’s everywhere in America — it is the typeface.”
And:
In 1984, Steve Jobs puts it in the Macintosh: “This was a key move. If Apple didn’t use it, Helvetica would have remained a designer’s preference, same as Times New Roman. Instead, it becomes the default sans serif when sans serif fonts are becoming popular among the populous and not just avant-garde designers,”
Another key adoption was the New York Subway signage and system map. Interesting bit of history.