This is a classic picture of a young Steve Jobs giving the finger to an IBM sign in 1983, it’s been circulating again after all these years thanks to Macintosh co-creator Andy Hertzfeld who posted the high res copy to Google+. Here’s the text that was posted along with the amusing image:

In memoriam for Steve Jobs as 2011 draws to a close, here’s one more rare photo that illustrates his rebellious spirit. In December 1983, a few weeks before the Mac launch, we made a quick trip to New York City to meet with Newsweek, who was considering doing a cover story on the Mac. The photo was taken spontaneously as we walked around Manhattan by Jean Pigozzi, a wild French jet setter who was hanging out with us at the time. Somehow I ended up with a copy of it. My editor begged me to include it in my book, but I was too timid to ask for permission, especially since IBM was still making CPUs for Apple at the time.

The book is his “Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made“, which tells the story of how the original Macintosh was created. That subject was briefly discussed in the recent Steve Jobs biography as well.

The picture demonstrates the competitive nature of Jobs and early Apple, and although the image has been around a while this is the first higher resolution copy to surface. In the early days of Apple, IBM was largely considered the companies biggest competitor and enemy of sorts, as is demonstrated in the Ghostbusters spoof and of course the classic 1984 Superbowl commercial that launched the first Mac.

In 1984, Apple spoofed the classic Ghostbusters song by Ray Parker Jr, and this outrageously cheesy video is the result.

The video apparently played as the introduction to an Apple corporate event held in Hawaii to rally the international sales team. Instead of Ghostbusters, it’s “Blue Busters”, with Blue of course being a reference to Big Blue, or IBM. John Sculley and Steve Wozniak even make appearances in the video, and supposedly Steve Jobs is somewhere in there too as a Ghostbuster along with a few other Apple execs, although I couldn’t identify who was who.

Hilarious find by TheNextWeb, who also found a few more details from a YouTube commenter that happened to be at the event:

I was there in Oct. 1984. This was not an internal ad. I was a 1984 state of the art multimedia slide show with audio by Ray Parker Jr. who sang the original. There were also live dancers on the stage.

This was the opening presentation of the International Sales Meeting that introduced the Lightwriter later renamed Laserwriter.

Apple always used a current movie as a them for the sales meetings. in 1985 it was Back to the Future.

So, anyone found that 1985 video yet?

Apple history at it’s finest, or funniest at least.

Just in time for the holidays, Fireplace is a totally awesome interactive 8-bit fireplace app that fills your Macs screen with a pixelated fireplace. But don’t stop there, you can add logs, roast hotdogs and marshmallows, and even burn papers and photos. Each log ‘burns’ for about 30 minutes of pixel torching glory, and although it won’t heat up the room, it’s another great retro addition to your Mac app list.

• Download Fireplace for free here (Mac OS X & Windows)

The basic commands are: log, match, paper, marshmallow, smore, hotdog, eat, blow, water. You can lower and raise the hotdogs and smores to roast them using the arrow keys, and they actually char and turn black if you keep them too close to the fire. Typing ‘water’ or hitting the Escape key will quit the app.

There’s a Windows version available too, so if you have an ancient 486 laying around you can finally put it to use and toast some pixels.

Cool find by CultofMac

In 1991, astronauts took a Macintosh Portable aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-43, amongst other things, it became the first computer to send an email in space. A slightly less historical aspect is this fairly entertaining video clip from that mission, demonstrating the Macintosh Portable’s disk ejection system, which works perhaps a little too well in zero gravity.

“…We’ve got a phenomena that we’ve noticed since we’ve gotten into orbit here. The automatic disk ejection system that the Mac has, as you can see when we get rid of these disks, we’re going to have to pay attention to where they go.”

Watch the video, it’s well worth the 15 seconds.

Heads up to @AppleSpotlight for the find

Have an old Mac running OS 9 laying around the closet? Dust it off and bring it into the modern age (of the web at least) with Classilla, an open source port of Mozilla, the same underpinnings of Firefox. It’s a work in progress so don’t expect it to be perfect, but alongside iCab it’s probably the best web browser option available for the classic Mac environment.

Grab Classilla from the development projects homepage

Requirements are basic enough to run Classilla: PPC processor, 64MB of RAM either virtual or physical, 50MB of disk space, and Mac OS 8.6 or later, although Mac OS 9.1 is recommended along with a G3 CPU.

For those PPC Macs running older versions of Mac OS X, don’t miss TenFourFox, a modern FireFox port for older pre-intel Macs running 10.4.

The very first Macs user manual is a fun look at the past, and despite being 27 years old, there are still some undeniably Apple aspects to the manuals imagery and text. The intro paragraph from the first page is classic:

“You’re about to learn a new way to use a computer. If this is your first experience with a computer, you’re starting at a great time. If you’ve used “traditional” computers, you’ll appreciate the Macintosh difference. No more guessing what the computer wants. No more memorizing long commands with names only a programmer could love. With Macintosh, you’re in charge.”

Keep in mind that the original Macintosh was the first mainstream computer to use a mouse and a graphical user interface.

You can see some a few more pictures from the Macintosh User Manual below, but be sure to check out “Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual” for even more.

Thanks for sending this in Terry!

Update: We posted the games link under the assumption that all of the titles were abandonware or freeware, but some commenters are suggesting this may not be the case. We don’t have the resources to independently verify either claim, so we have pulled down the link. That said, you can play many of the definitely abandonware games online in your web browser at Virtual Apple IIgs. Our apologies for any confusion.

Ready to get your retro game on? Don’t miss this massive collection of over 165 classic retro PC games, they’re all free to download and they all run perfectly in Mac OS X in little self-contained DOSBox emulators.

All of your favorite old school games are here, from Alone in the Dark, Castlevania, Civilization, Doom, Duke Nukem, Lemmings, MechWarrior, Mega Man, Mortal Kombat, Oregon Trail, Police Quest, Prince of Persia, Quake, Risk, Sim Ant, Sim City, Space Quest, Ultima, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, Wing Commander, and so much more. Chances are, if you played it in the 80′s or early 90′s, the game is on this list to download.

Get them all from AtomicWindMill: Classic PC Games for Mac OS X

According to the host, the games are all abandonware, as they say “Download, Extract, Run & Enjoy!”, so get them while they’re hot!

Here’s a couple screenshots, but for obvious reasons I won’t be posting them for all 165 games:

Great find via @purplelime

If you grew up in the 80′s and you had an interest in video games plus a computer, you probably played Kings Quest. Now, you can relive the past for free thanks to AGD Interactive, who has remade and redrawn Kings Quest 1: Quest for the Crown, Kings Quest 2: Romancing the Stones, and Kings Quest 3: To Heir is Human, and released the three versions as a free download from their website.

Each KQ game has a great storyline with a ton of game play with those now classic retro pixelated graphics. The series was a big hit for DOS, Apple II, Apple IIGS, Mac, even Amiga, but even if you haven’t played it before and you’re just a fan of retro adventure games, you’ll also get a kick out of the Kings Quest lineup.

Download Kings Quest 1, 2, & 3 for Free

AGD Interactive offers each version as a free download for Mac or Windows:

• Kings Quest 1: Quest for the Crown – Direct Download for Mac or Windows
• Kings Quest 2: Romancing the Stones – Direct Download for Mac or Windows
• Kings Quest 3: To Heir is Human – Direct Download for Mac or Windows

The games run flawlessly and the system requirements are quite low so you should be able to play them on just about any Intel Mac or a Pentium PC if you’d rather play on office time.

Kings Quest is a great blast from the past, highly recommended!

More screen shots below:

Long before the iPhone, there was… an Apple phone? I don’t know if this is real, if it was actually patented by Apple Inc, or if it was ever produced, but it certainly looks like someones brilliant high-tech idea from 1985. Who wouldn’t want to be talking into a flip apple phone?

For more retro Apple fun, check out the hilarious Apple Corporate video from 1984. Be sure to have your audio on for that one, because there’s even a theme song.

image via @AppleSpotlight

Long before the days of iPhones and App Stores, Apple software came on 5.25″ floppies and… cassette tapes. Here is an example of such a relic, a super retro tape of Lemonade Stand, an extremely simple Apple II game that taught kids the business basics of running a lemonade stand.

This is from before my time but it’s fun to see anyway. You can actually play a port of Lemonade Stand in Mac OS X and Windows XP, although you’ll need Rosetta installed to get it to work in Mac OS X, meaning Lion users are out of luck.

If you’ve been a Mac user for a while, you’ll remember the Apple Extended Keyboards. They were very responsive and made a wonderfully crisp clicking sound as you typed. If you’re still in love with the old ADB powered Apple Extended Keyboard I don’t blame you, and you can reignite that old flame by using that very keyboard on an iPad or iPad 2. Here’s what you’ll need to do this:

• Apple Extended Keyboard II
• ADB cable
• Griffin iMate ADB to USB Adapter (or similar)
• Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit (for the USB connectivity)
• Apple iPad Dock

As you might have guessed, you just fit all the pieces together and plug it into your iPad or iPad 2, you’ll get a notification telling you about an unsupported USB device, but you can ignore that and start typing anyway.

This should really work with just about any old Apple ADB keyboard, so go ahead and dig in your closet to find the most retro Apple keyboard you can find, your iPad is going to love it. Sure, you could just get the iPad keyboard dock too, but what’s the fun in that?

I came across this fantastically geeky idea about a week ago on 52tiger.net and forgot about it until I discovered the long-lost browser tab again. You can check out the video below from there, it walks through the setup and you see the whole thing in action. The above picture of iPad and ADB keyboard is from JohnHendron.net.

It’s not quite a wooden Apple I, but it’s still pretty great!

This is an Apple corporate video from 1984 that was apparently used during the original Macintosh launch. It’s complete with a super cheesy “We are Apple, leading the way” theme song, so make sure you have sound on for this one, it’s absolutely hysterical and very 80′s.

Retro Apple at it’s most ridiculous.

Update: A couple of our readers point out that the song sounds a lot like “What a Feeling” from Flashdance. For some added fun, contrast this 1984 video with the recent iPad 2 promo videos, Apple has come a long way huh?

You’ve probably noticed we’re fans of some retro tech stuff around here, whether it’s flip clock screensavers, retro Cathode terminals, or the ridiculous 80′s block iPhone case, there’s just something fun about bringing back the old to interact with the new.

Apparently popular iOS Developer Neven Morgan of The Incident fame agrees. So enthralled with the world of 8-bit, he has decided to make a hack that renders Safari in 8-bit.

Dubbed Pixelfari (you can download it for free), the app turns the web into a hyper-pixelated beast right out of a Nintendor emulator.

PixelSafari is amusingly useless, quite buggy, but entertaining nonetheless. Hat tip to Macstories for digging up this one.

Looking around for a clock screensaver I stumbled across Fliqlo, which is a simple and free flip clock screensaver that mimics the appearance of those retro flip clocks that existed in the time of dinosaurs.

As you might expect from a clock screensaver, settings are limited, you can adjust the size of the flip clock and set to 12 or 24 hour time, that’s about it.

A quick caveat, Fliqlo is actually a Flash file, which makes it cross platform compatible with Mac OS X and Windows. Of course the other side to this being Flash is that if you have a Mac with Flash Player uninstalled, then you won’t be able to run it. It’s lightweight enough that it’s not going to turn your Mac fans into a jet engine, but just be aware that it does require Flash Player to be installed.

If you want a retro clock screensaver, check out Fliqlo, you can get it here for Mac and Windows.

This is starting to look like flashback week, first with the flickering retro Terminal app Cathode and now this absolutely ridiculous iPhone case that is made to resemble the giant block cellphones from the 80′s.

Is this thing hilarious or what? It’s not just photoshop either, here it is next to an Android:

Would anyone actually use this on their iPhone?

Unfortunately the case is not available to order yet, and the creators of the product don’t even have a website for it, but according to Gizmodo it will cost $20 when it does arrive sometime in the near future.