The Myth and Reality of Mac OS X Snow Leopard
Jeff Johnson (Mastodon): This famous keynote slide was, to put it euphemistically, a bit of product marketing. Non-euphemistically, it was a big lie. Snow Leopard had quite a few new features,...
View ArticleA Short History of Recovery in macOS
Howard Oakley: For the first ten years of Mac OS X, its closest substitute was Single User Mode, or SUM, entered by starting the Mac up with the Command and S keys held down. OS X then booted into the...
View ArticleDave Cutler Interview
Dave Plummer (via Hacker News): Dave Cutler is a seminal figure in computer science, renowned for his contributions to operating systems. Born in 1942, he played pivotal roles in the development of...
View ArticleThe Original iPhone Demo
Fred Vogelstein (2013, via Hacker News): The software in the iPhone’s Wi-Fi radio was so unstable that Grignon and his team had to extend the phones’ antennas by connecting them to wires running...
View ArticleTaligent’s Guide to Designing Programs
David Goldsmith (1994, PDF, via Hacker News): If you browse the computer section of any technical bookstore, you’ll find many good books offering advice on how to do object-oriented design—books...
View ArticleDavid Feldman, RIP
Legacy: He earned a BS in Computer Science from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. In 2023, he served as Distinguished Visiting Technologist at the MIT Center for Art, Science...
View ArticleDoom at 30
Wouter Groeneveld: On 10 December 1993, John Carmack, John Romero, Sandy Petersen, and the rest of the id Software crew completely changed the world by releasing the most violent and satisfying DOS...
View ArticleNiklaus Wirth, RIP
Bertrand Meyer (Hacker News, Slashdot, Reddit): We lost a titan of programming languages, programming methodology, software engineering and hardware design. Niklaus Wirth passed away on the first of...
View ArticleThe Mac at 40
Malcolm Owen (MacRumors): January 24 will be the Macintosh’s 40th birthday, marking four decades since Steve Jobs showed off what he believed to be the future of computing. Dan Moren: In that time,...
View ArticleThe Origin of Comic Sans
Thomas Steeles (via Jason Kottke): [Most] people know of the font. By that notion, Vincent Connare, the creator of Comic Sans, has exclaimed that “I made the best font in the world.” Whether you...
View ArticleTom Dowdy and SimpleText
Mike Piontek: I was looking at this [SimpleText document] icon for inspiration and now I’m wondering what the name of the newspaper is meant to be. pnop? 🤔 I like that the front page photo is a...
View ArticleFlickr and Facebook at 20
Flickr: To celebrate this huge milestone, we’re taking a trip down memory lane to explore all of the technological and structural moments that have shaped Flickr into what it is now. Mark Zuckerberg:...
View ArticleHow AirPort Changed Everything
The Serial Port (via David Kopec): “No wires.” This simple phrase from Steve Jobs during Apple Airport’s debut in 1999 contained more than a decade of history behind it. Follow along as we chart the...
View ArticleFeatures Lost Across Versions of macOS
Michael Schmitt: Article Do You Use It? How TidBITS Readers Install macOS Updates - TidBITS says that “Some people even wait until Apple announces or even releases the next macOS version, under the...
View ArticleSeven Years of APFS
Howard Oakley: Although APFS has certainly had its moments over the last seven years, Apple’s gambles have paid off, and proved key to the success of Apple silicon Macs. Had there been no APFS, many of...
View ArticleDaniel C. Lynch, RIP
Katie Hafner (via Hacker News): In 1986, Mr. Lynch decided to hold a workshop to train vendors and developers to configure equipment for routing traffic through the internet. The point was to make...
View ArticleThe Apple Jonathan
Stephen Hackett (Hacker News): Those four machines are well known, but there was a fifth possibility in the mix, named the Jonathan. In his book Inventing the Future, John Buck writes about the...
View ArticleOnline Messaging Systems of Yesteryear
Jeremy Reimer (via Adam Engst): PLATO was an educational system that began in 1960 and was nearing its fourth iteration. It was responsible for many computer firsts, such as the first flat-screen...
View ArticleDelta’s 10-Year Journey to the Top of the App Store
David Pierce: On this episode of The Vergecast, Testut joins the show to tell us the full Delta story. He describes his early attempts at building emulators, the first time he almost made it onto the...
View ArticleEmoji History: The Missing Years
Matt Sephton (tweet): During my research into vintage Japanese drawing software, I came across some devices that had built in sketch or handwritten memo functions. I bought a couple of them to see if...
View Article