While the only Time Machine we know of is the easy to use and fantastic backup tool for Mac users, some of us have geeky dreams of digital time machines, where we can get lost in flashbacks to retro computing, like the early Macintosh days of Classic MacOS System 7. While there are ways to … Read More
If you have an old PowerPC Mac laying around collecting dust in a closet somewhere, you might be able to get some use out of it today by installing a functional modern web browser, like Aquafox. Since so much of what many of us do on computers is done in a web browser, you might … Read More
The classic science fiction FPS (First Person Shooter) game “Marathon Infinity” is now available to play for free from Steam, for Mac and Windows. Marathon Infinity, originally released in 1996, is the third game in the Marathon series, and continues the theme of battling hostile aliens in unusual settings. Marathon Infinity introduced some intriguing and … Read More
An ex-Apple employee put together a rather incredible way to create 1-bit pixel art on a modern iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil by using a Macintosh emulator, and the results are very impressive! This super creative approach is the work of Matt Sephton (the same guy who re-made the nifty Stapler app!), who used … Read More
The Steve Jobs Archive, which was launched by Laurene Powell Jobs, Tim Cook, and Jony Ive, has shared an hour-long video of a then 28 year old Steve Jobs speaking in Aspen at the 1983 International Design Conference, as well as some thoughts from Jony Ive, and a nice collection of old photographs and Apple … Read More
There are no shortage of interesting projects and things to do with Rasbperry Pi devices, but this one will be particularly intriguing to fans of retro Macintosh and emulation; you can emulate a Macintosh 128k complete with VGA video and keyboard/mouse input, using nothing but a Pico Microcontroller!
Apple Music may be a modern offering from Apple, but a super fun project from developer Mario Guzman offers a very nostalgic interface to Apple Music, giving it a QuickTime lookalike appearance from 2005. Aptly named QuickTune, you’ll find QuickTune has a super simple and fun retro brushed metal interface to interact with Apple Music … Read More
The Marathon series of video games are classic first-person shooters set in a sci-fi world, and longtime Mac users may have fond memories of playing Marathon, Marathon 2, or Marathon Infinitiy as single-player or multiplayer over a LAN in the mid 1990s. But you don’t need a time machine or to run Mac OS Classic … Read More
“It’s better to be a pirate than join the navy.” – Steve Jobs Have you ever seen the Apple Pirate Flag, sometimes called the Apple Jolly Roger, and wondered what the story was around that? I did too, so I dug into a bit to uncover a fun little part of Apple history.
If you’re a fan of Apple history and retro Apple stuff, you’ll probably appreciate this little blast from the past. Sometime in 1993, a small team of young developers at Apple built the Macintosh Quadra 840AV and Centris 660AV, and upon completion of their project, filmed a little celebration video, where they toast to their … Read More
Would you believe that one of the original promotional videos for the Macintosh featured none other than Microsoft’s Bill Gates?! In this fun video from 1984 you’ll see a young Bill Gates from Microsoft expressing his enthusiasm and extolling the virtues of the Macintosh computer. The famous rivalry between Apple and Microsoft hadn’t quite heated … Read More
The Mac turned 40 this week, and if you’re still on an Apple history kick, there’s a fun website that’s worth exploring called Mac40th. Mac40th.com showcases every desktop and portable Mac ever made by Apple in a continuous stream of Macs, displayed in random order. But it’s not just Macs, interspersed with tons of photos, … Read More
The Macintosh computer, which has played a pivotal role in shaping personal computing and design principles throughout the entire tech industry, has turned 40 years old.
40 years ago on January 22, 1984, Apple ran the famous “1984” advertisement for the Macintosh during the Super Bowl. The commercial features an unidentified heroine wearing a Macintosh tank top who runs into a gathering of enthralled sycophants staring up at a screen of a droning Big Brother, wherein the protagonist tosses an anvil … Read More
Do you remember the Apple Newton commercials from the mid 1990s? The Apple Newton, which was Apple’s Personal Digital Assistant and first tablet experiment, used a stylus for input, had internet connectivity, and some really cool features that only recently came to the iPad – like Scribble. A YouTuber has put together a collection of … Read More
The 1999 movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley” offers a fun dramatization of the rivalry between Apple and Microsoft, from their origin stories at the beginning of the Personal Computing era, through their different philosophies and products. And the best part is, even though it’s Hollywood, it’s actually reasonably accurate! Pirates of Silicon Valley is loosely … Read More
Ever thought about converting that dusty old original Macintosh in your garage into a modern Mac? Probably not, but this person did, and they have documented the entire project of converting an original 1984 Macintosh into a modern Mac capable of running a much more modern operating system of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Of … Read More
If you’re a longtime Apple fan, you may recall the Apple Newton, the Apple PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) that debuted in 1993. It had a pen-input based screen, handwriting to text capabilities, a whimsical and fun user interface (sigh), and many features that we all take for granted and use regularly today on iPhones, iPads, … Read More
