The Man Who Killed Google Search
Edward Zitron (Hacker News): In emails released as part of the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google, Dischler laid out several contributing factors — search query growth was...
View ArticleThe End of ICQ
ICQ (via Hacker News): ICQ will stop working from June 26 You can chat with friends in VK Messenger, and with colleagues in VK WorkSpace Wes Davis: ICQ was started in 1996 by Israeli company Mirabilis,...
View ArticleHalf-Life’s Canceled Mac Port
Greg Gant: It was natural for the game to be ported to Mac OS and OS X, as other high-profile first-person shooters from the era, like the Doom series, Hexen series, Quake series, Dark Forces, Deus Ex,...
View ArticleOn the Origins of .DS_Store
Arno Gourdol (2006, via Lobsters): However, we soon started realizing that the Finder backend would be useful outside of the Finder. Therefore, a plan was hatched to someday make it available as a...
View ArticleThe Unofficial Apple AI Weblog
TUAW: The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has been a cornerstone of Apple-related journalism since its establishment on December 5, 2004. Acquired by Web Orange Limited from Yahoo IP Holdings LLC in...
View ArticleAn Ode to the Volume Swipe
M.G. Siegler: I found myself thinking about the AirPods… Specifically, how truly great the volume swiping mechanism is on the AirPods Pro. This must be my most-used gesture in life beyond perhaps...
View ArticleSteve Jobs: Objects of Our Life
Jony Ive (Hacker News): Steve rarely attended design conferences. This was 1983, before the launch of the Mac, and still relatively early days of Apple. I find it breathtaking how profound his...
View ArticleThe Switch From File Paths to URLs
Quinn: I don’t think we ever documented this officially, but to understand this choice you have to look at the history of macOS. Traditional Mac OS did not use paths a lot. Rather, files were...
View ArticleSusan Wojcicki, RIP
Juliana Kim: Susan Wojcicki, a Silicon Valley visionary who helped shape Google and YouTube, died Friday after a two-year battle with non-small cell lung cancer, according to her husband. She was...
View ArticleThe Insane Engineering of the Game Boy
Real Engineering (via John Gruber): The original Gameboy was launched in 1989 and was received with mixed reviews. While its success is ingrained in our cultural memory now, when it was launched it was...
View ArticleThe NeXT IPO That Never Happened
Hansen Hsu (2017, via David Kopec): Had Steve Jobs’ first company not bought his second, history likely would have been very different. Apple might not exist today. No iPhone. But what could have...
View ArticleMarathon Games on Steam
Malcolm Owen: Bungie has finally brought all of the “Marathon” trilogy of games to Steam, with “Marathon Infinity” now playable for free on modern Macs.[…]Classic Marathon Infinity is a free game on...
View ArticleThe Apple IIGS Megahertz Myth
Dan Vincent (via Hacker News): The Apple II and Commodore 64 with their 6502 and 6510 CPUs clocked at 1 MHz could trade blows with Z80 powered computers running at three times the clock speed. And the...
View ArticleThe End of Finale
Greg Dell’Era (via Ric Ford): 35 years ago, Coda Music Technologies, now MakeMusic, released the first version of Finale, a groundbreaking and user-centered approach to notation software. For over four...
View ArticleSnow Leopard at 15
Joe Rossignol: Today marks the 15th anniversary of Apple releasing Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which became available to purchase for $29 on August 28, 2009.After advertising Mac OS X Leopard as having...
View ArticleAn Abridged History of Safari Showstoppers
Roderick E.J.H. Gadellaa (Hacker News): As noted elsewhere, a developer-lamented but regulator-overlooked aspect of Apple’s monopoly on iOS browser engines has been the prevalence of show-stopping...
View ArticleScripting News at 30
Dave Winer: Today is the 30th anniversary of this blog.I did a roundup of thoughts when this blog turned 25. I stand by what I wrote then, but I’d add this. My blog started because I needed content to...
View ArticleA Brief History of Defragging
Howard Oakley: All storage media, including memory, SSDs and rotating hard disks, can develop fragmentation, but most serious attention has been paid to the problem on hard disks. This is because of...
View ArticleNetscape at 30
Jamie Zawinski: According to my notes, it went live shortly after midnight on Oct 13, 1994. We sat in the conference room in the dark and listened to different sound effects fired for each different...
View ArticleJohn Geleynse Retires From Apple
John Geleynse: Being a part of Apple for 25 years has been the privilege and experience of a lifetime. […] We released the platforms and tools that helped bring incredible products to life. We inspired...
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