Comfort food for Macintosh users of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.
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August 16, 202622 min
The Quix Fix (1995)
Original text by Charles Piller, Macworld October 1995 . A lot more about Quix Daydream, the Macintosh environment for NeXT hardware: YouTube: booting into Daydream YouTube: a more detailed look at Daydream a brief NeXTWORLD product review of Daydream NeXT FAQ section 5.21: “ I want to emulate a Macintosh. How? ” kevra.org’s Daydream box shot John Rubinstein: “There was a kid in Switzerland who … figured out how to build a layer on top of CHRP that would allow you to run Mac OS.” IBM officially cancelled plans to ship Mac OS on any hardware, and in particular on IBM-branded machines weeks before this story ran . Jon Rubinstein explains FirePower’s accidental connection with Apple’s turnaround . Also, the stagnating PowerPC G4 is superfast, no, really: The Megahertz Myth . Jon retired in 2006 along with Avie Tevanian, and Apple has never really been the same since. Palm/HP coaxed Jon out of retirement in 2007 to work on the Palm Pre/Plus, putting him in direct competition with the iPhone. “I’m definitely off [Steve’s] Christmas card list,” he said in 2010. I don’t know about you but I find these Mac OS clone bureaucracy articles really boring and depressing. This is the last one!
July 21, 202620 min
The Forgotten Mac OS Licensee (1991)
Original text by Dan Littman, Tom Moran , and Charles Piller . Apologies for my rough voice in this one. It’s been a difficult year. “ Apple and IBM will work together on architecture-independent multimedia products and license them to other vendors.” IBM never so much as bothered to license QuickTime, and allegedly stopped distributing its multimedia tools to discourage people from using AIX for multimedia delivery . The stupefyingly vague and dull Apple/IBM/Motorola alliance press conference . Warning : do not consume while driving or operating heavy machinery. Get to know your new IBM RS/6000 system! David Barnes talking about Taligent and Workplace/OS , because why not transplant your current computing environment on top of an environment that runs all environments that will be shipping Real Soon Now for … reasons? WWDC 1997 Q&A: What’s holding back CHRP? Is Apple afraid of (gasp) being undercut by Macintosh clone makers? clabretro: RS/6000 startup sequence and 1990s GeoCities animé fan page font in the System Management Services console . Installing and running CorelDraw, Netscape 1.0, and Quake on an RS/6000 . Remnants of CHRP in the AIX netinstall configuration assistant . Running Windows NT on a G3 ? More likely than you think . Cameron Kaiser’s extremely detailed look at Netware Server on a Power Mac 6100 . How about that artwork? That weird point in time where the highest performance AppleShare solution was a giant Apple box running AIX . Get a load of the chonky Motorola PowerStack systems .
June 23, 20267 min
Guy Kawasaki - Who Should Apple's Next CEO Be? (1994)
Original text by Guy Kawasaki, Macworld, November 1994 . Who should be the next CEO of Apple? Acquire NeXT and let it be Steve Jobs, obviously. This was intended as satire but became a case of “truth is stranger than fiction” when it actually happened two years later! Gary Davidian on Michael Spindler’s product visionary status . Steve Jobs: “Tim [Cook] is not a product person per se” at 2m22s . Both Canon and Ross Perot were major investors in NeXT.
May 21, 202644 min
Bill Atkinson (1951-2025)
Original text from The Complete HyperCard Handbook (Expanded 2nd Edition with HyperCard 1.2 supplement!!!) Open HyperCard Stacks with just 512K RAM via HyperDA . If copying HyperCard was such an obvious idea, where did all the AmigaVision productions go? What happened to all the Asymmetrix Toolbook-ware? David Greelish “ Before Macintosh ” interviews with Bill Atkinson: Parts 1 , 2 , 3 Make beautiful Atkinson-dithered images with HyperDither , GraphicConverter (Effects => Dithering => Atkinson) or in your browser with DitherIt ! More than you could ever possibly want to read about dithering and an undergrad lecture on Floyd-Steinberg dithering . Bill Atkinson’s Rolodex, a.k.a. Casady & Greene QuickDEX ( v1.4 , II ). Bill Atkinson’s 10 Rules for Making Interfaces More Human Quotes from: Bill Atkinson Presents HyperCard at the Apple Corps of Dallas (1987) Legacy of HyperCard Event (2017) HyperCard Training Solutions (1987) Bill Atkinson on PhotoCard and HyperCard at the Eyeo Conference (2013) Bill and Andy Hertzfeld demonstrating oldmac stuff at the Computer History Museum (2010) David Pogue hosts “ The Macintosh at 20 ” (2004) Triangulation Interview with Bill Atkinson, 2016 (part 1 , 2 ) Triangulation Interview with Atkinson, 2018 (part 1 , 2 ) CHM - Bill Atkinson on how Apple obviously doesn’t do user testing anymore (2022) CHM - The Macintosh at 40 Churchill Club - Steve Jobs’ Legacy (2011) Asymmetrix Toolbook Demo - Computer Chronicles on Windows 3.0 (1990) Hackers: Wizards of the Electronic Age - “People don’t read encyclopedias cover to cover. It just doesn’t happen! But …” Designing Interactions interviews: Bill Atkinson Unused 1984 Macintosh commercials : “I think of myself as a cross between an artist and an inventor” R.I.P. uliwitness , a.k.a. Uli Kusterer, longtime Macintosh programmer and HyperCard enthusiast. We will miss you too. Fun fact: I recognized Uli’s name when it popped up in the podcast Discord. Back in the late 1990s a friend and I used “Uli’s Panes” as the playlist interface for a classic MacOS MOD player. Remember Uli, HyperCard and Bill with: Myst Reverse Engineering Write Your Own XCMD with CodeWarrior Other HyperCard streams hypercard.org Stacksmith Classic MacOS programming streams “ Why programming sucks and how to make it better ” (SwiftConf 2015) with references to what made HyperCard a uniquely intuitive development environment. Get a load of Uli’s HyperCard stack icon shirt! Partial HyperCard stack file format documentation Uli’s Moose , an updated version of The Talking Moose for classic MacOS. Uli told me he tried to submit a new version of Mac OS X to the App Store but it was rejected several times and he eventually gave up. Thanks, Apple!
March 20, 20262 min
MFR Housekeeping, Spring 2026
Order David Pogue’s “ Apple: The First 50 Years ”. Watch the livestreamed Apple 50th event at the Computer History Museum .
January 14, 202619 min
KON and BAL's Puzzle Page II (1992, 1993)
Original text by Konstantin Othmer and Bruce Leak for Apple’s develop! magazine, December 1992 , March 1993 , and June 1993 . Apple’s MicroBug documentation: Technote TN1136 . Running MacsBug on an alternate monitor: “ Using Touch and Go Breakpoints with Two Monitors ”. Spaceward Ho! for iPad and Classic MacOS . Original product website (broken). Watch a Let’s Play of Spaceward Ho! by Effing Controller who also has hilarious playthroughs of F/A-18 Hornet and Marathon. See also: Debugging Macintosh Software with Macsbug by Konstantin Othmer and Jim Straus.
December 15, 202515 min
Frank Casanova Interview - Maclopedia (1996)
Original text from Maclopedia . While I wasn’t looking, Frank Casanova parted ways with Apple in 2024 . Whoops. John Buck’s book on Apple’s Advanced Technology Group, Inventing the Future , is worth your while. John is also on the fediverse . Stick around and you might pick up some extra dirt. Unedited versions of the Macintosh Quadra 700/900 launch , the Macintosh IIfx launch , and the WWDC 2004 announcement of QuickTime 7’s support for H.264 .
December 8, 20256 min
Steve Hayman - Great Idea (2025)
Original text by Steve Hayman . NeXT Mail clips from the NeXT launch event in Tokyo and the NeXTSTEP Release 3.0 demo VHS tape .
November 20, 202518 min
Jecel on the Unitron 512 Macintosh Clone (1998)
Original text by Jecel Mattos de Assumpçao Jr, 1998 . Rainer Brockerhoff, who also participated in the Unitron 512 project, provides additional background at Low End Mac . More about Brazil’s reserved market policy, a.k.a. the National Policy of Informatics . More about Jecel’s projects in this 2019 presentation about SmallTalk-oriented hardware and the Merlintec website . Our Friend The Computer discusses the political and financial circumstances surrounding the Unitron 512. As so often happens in weird corners of the Internet, people have somehow obtained copies of Unitron’s ROMs and put them under the microscope .
October 21, 202518 min
Power 100 Review and Mac OS Clone Commentary (1995)
Original text by Tim Warner, Macworld, August 1995 . Additional clone cancellation fallout information from Macworld, October 1997 . Original Power Computing magazine ad . Clearly the Mac OS clone program failed due to the absence of discount furniture warehouse-style radio advertising. Gary Davidian: “As far as I know, nobody ever made a CHRP machine .” “Mr. OS/2” David Barnes talking about IBM’s intention to support Mac applications running on top of Workplace OS . IBM’s repeated attempts to run all existing OSes on top of one OS and one hardware architecture lead to the incorrect assumption that PowerPC Macintoshes would run DOS and Windows right out of the box. Insignia Solutions’ SoftWindows marketing department did what came naturally . The Motorola StarMax 4000-series motherboard, designed and manufactured entirely by Apple . Jean-Louis Gassee: “ We used PReP as the basis for the design of the BeBox …”
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