Updating “Basic Computer Games”
Jeff Atwood: From here, if you were lucky, you might have a cassette tape drive. If you knew the right commands, you could type them in to load programs from cassette tape. But that was an expensive...
View ArticleMaking Mac OS X Unix Compliant Certified
Terry Lambert (via Gus Mueller, Hacker News): I was the tech lead at Apple for making Mac OS X pass UNIX certification, and it was done to get Apple out of a $200M lawsuit filed by The Open Group, for...
View ArticleXcode Through the Years
Cory Bohon (tweet, Hacker News): As we begin 2022, it has been almost 20 years since Apple released Xcode to developers as the predominant way to create Mac apps. […] This was a revolutionary idea, and...
View ArticleImproving macOS Widgets
Stephen Hackett: Apple killed off Dashboard at exactly the wrong time. Just one year after Catalina killed Dashboard, Apple started allowing developers to bring their iOS widgets over to the Mac in...
View ArticleRandy Wigginton Answers Questions on Quora
Randy Wigginton (via Dave Mark): I started attending Homebrew Computer Club meetings. Since I was unable to drive, I asked if anyone lived near me that could give me a lift to the meetings. A really...
View ArticleObjective-C Messages to nil
psu: In the more modern versions of the runtime, the area that the runtime uses to write the result of the method call is zero’d out no matter what the type of the return value will be. In older...
View ArticleDavid Boggs, RIP
Cade Metz: After saving up for a radio operator’s license, David began building ham radios, spending his nights chatting with other operators across the country. His brother remembered the two of them...
View ArticleEmulating 1998-Vintage Mac Compilers
Ninji (tweet): All of the tools I needed could be accessed via MPW. Could I get these to run externally somehow? […] The obvious choice to start with here is Unicorn Engine, which is essentially the...
View ArticleOn the Origin of the iPhone
John Gruber: Fadell’s story adds up; Businessweek’s description of the embedded Linux project being led by Fadell does not. (Businessweek’s description of Forstall and Fadell as political rivals...
View ArticleHistory of Instapaper
Craig Grannell: Read-later services have come and gone since Instapaper’s debut, but the original survives. The app and service both remain free, although you can opt for a ‘premium’ subscription,...
View ArticleCharging More for Black Products
Stephen Hackett: The black MacBook was sold alongside the more popular — and less expensive — white MacBook. […] The two machines always shared the same specs when it came to the CPU, RAM and optical...
View ArticleJohn Roach, RIP
Sam Roberts (via Hacker News): John Roach, a marketing visionary who helped make the home computer ubiquitous in the late 1970s by introducing the fully assembled Tandy TRS-80 for $599.95 or less...
View ArticleStephen Wilhite, RIP
Mitchell Clark (tweet, Hacker News): Stephen Wilhite worked on GIF, or Graphics Interchange Format, which is now used for reactions, messages, and jokes, while employed at CompuServe in the 1980s. […]...
View ArticleA Tour of Apple’s External LCD Displays
Stephen Hackett: In April 1984, Apple introduced a 1-bit, 7-inch LCD for use with the somewhat-portable Apple IIc[…] […] In July of 2000, to coincide with the launch of the Power Mac G4 Cube,1 the...
View ArticleA Cautionary Tale From the Decline of SourceForge
Greg Wilson (Hacker News): There are thousands of books in print today about starting a business, but only a handful about ending one and moving on. [Tamburri2020] is a deep dive into one particular...
View ArticleThe Story of iBeer
Quinn Myers (via Nick Heer): In the year leading up to the App Store’s debut, Apple sought out developers to create software that put the iPhone’s prowess on display. One of those developers was...
View ArticleInfinite Mac
Mihai Parparita (tweet, Hacker News): I’ve extended James Friend’s in-browser Basilisk II port to create a full-featured classic 68K Mac in your browser. You can see it in action at system7.app or...
View ArticleAutocorrect Explained: Why Your iPhone Adds Annoying Typos While Fixing Others
Ben Lovejoy: But yeah, people do complain, and even the guy who created the feature – Ken Kocienda – admits that sometimes it can be more of a hinderance than a help. Indeed, if you think that it’s...
View ArticleCanon Camera Museum
Dave Mark: Ever own a Canon camera? Below is a link to the Canon museum, which has details on every camera and lens they ever made. The pic shows one of their earliest models, the J II. Apple is, I...
View ArticleSuccess and Failure at Pebble
Eric Migicovsky (via Hacker News): I started Pebble with some friends from the University of Waterloo in 2008. We were the first company to work on smartwatches. Pebble defined what a smartwatch was...
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