history posts

Civil War: America's Epic Struggle (US$4.99) from MultiEducator Inc. is a full history course in an iPad and iPhone app. It contains at least as much information as most textbooks on the Civil War at a fraction of the cost, while adding elements that no textbook can. There are 24 multimedia presentations, some as long as nine minutes, a nice selection of music popular during the Civil War, and a wonderful navigation system that just makes sense.

When starting the app, information can be sorted 18 ways, from a changing Categories bar including Battles (sorted either chronologically or alphabetically), Multimedia Presentations, Statistics and topics like Navy, Economics, Railroads, Music, etc. Depending upon where you are in the app, tapping on Categories brings up a contextual listing of what you can see. For example, tapping on Major Battles Chronologically changes the bar to a listing of battles grouped by year. Tapping on a battle such as Bull Run, brings choices of a text summary of the battle, a five minute multimedia summary, seven text articles on aspects of the battle, 20 photos or drawings, most of them taken from the Matthew Brady Archives, and full color maps. Depending upon the battle there is more or less information available, but this is done for 26 battles in total; clearly, there's a phenomenal amount of information in the app, plenty for even a Civil War buff to peruse.

MacPaint was one of the first big "wows" of the graphical UI. Before the early days of Mac OS, operating systems were strictly text affairs, and creating graphics was done mostly by writing code. But MacPaint helped to change all of that, putting image creation in a graphical user interface (creating standby design ideas like the "marching ants" selection indicator), and allowing those images to be used in other programs and applications. Now, Apple has donated the MacPaint source code to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

Andy Hertzfeld (who writes about the MacPaint code here) is perhaps the one most responsible for the donation -- he hunted down some original floppy disk copies of the app, and then installed it on a networked Lisa computer to obtain the source code, and then came upon the idea of getting it donated to a museum so everyone could see it. After poking around Apple for a few years, he finally talked to Steve Jobs in January of this year, and Jobs fast-tracked the approval process so the donation could happen today.

Very cool story, and it's excellent to see a little piece of Apple (and computer) history enshrined in a museum. You can get both the MacPaint and QuickDraw source code right off of the museum's website.

[via Clusterflock]

After shelling out top dollar, the customers felt betrayed and angry. The shine on the company's new flagship product was tarnished. The remedy wasn't cheap... and the CEO stepped up and spoke to those irate early adopters. "We want to do the right thing for our valued customers. We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of us," he said, responding quickly after the first complaints came in. Within a few weeks, the PR hiccup was calmed, and the new product went on to glory and success.

No, it's not a crystal ball reading for tomorrow's press conference agenda -- it's history, and relatively recent history at that. In 2007, after the original iPhone pricecut that drove owners batty, Apple jumped all over the situation with an alacrity that's almost stunning to contemplate now. Within hours, the Apple site featured a new Stevenote musing on the pace of innovation and cost savings in the technology sector; even though the $200 price cut was the right thing to do for the company and for the product, Apple was still going to soothe ruffled feathers by offering a $100 store credit to all iPhone owners who paid the original price.

With an estimated 600,000 iPhones sold, the maximum exposure to the company's revenue number would have been $60 million (although not all buyers claimed or used their credit). That's not pocket change, even for Apple; however, when compared with the guesstimated 2x sales increase that the price cut triggered for the iPhone, it was a small price to pay.

Looking back on that experience is illuminating. With the rapid response, the willingness to pay for customer happiness, and the frank handling of the situation, it's a bit surprising to be in the midst of the current stressfest and see how things have deteriorated. Where's the corporate responsibility and the can-do attitude of 2007 when we need it? Let's take a look at how the two scenarios diverge, and why Apple didn't -- or couldn't -- step up to the plate now like it did then.

We've heard about this before, but now that it's up and running, this is probably worth a revisit. Apple's iAds system actually uses lots of your information, including your iTunes purchasing history, location data, and any other download or library information it can suss out about you, to determine what ads you see. So say a few marketing firms working with the large companies now buying and selling iAds.

A recent series of ads for soap was able to target "married men who are in their late 30s and have children." That's very specific, and when Apple rolls out the full program, it'll even be able to use things like iBooks purchases and iTunes movie and TV downloads to target you with advertising.

Is there anything wrong with that? Not really. Apple isn't running the only targeted advertising network, of course, and the whole problem with analytics firms like Flurry is that they were tracking and sharing this information anyway through third-party apps. Apple also isn't sharing your personal information; it's just connecting you with advertisers who want to speak with you, not actually telling those advertisers who you are. Apple knows what you've purchased in iTunes, but that information isn't necessarily communicated to Nissan or Best Buy.

If you're still worried about iAds, though, Apple does offer a way to opt-out of sharing your location or purchase information; you can go to https://oo.apple.com/ in your iOS 4 device's browser and register to opt-out of that kind of targeting. You will still see iAds, but Apple won't use your personal information to choose them for you.

In honor of the Italian release of the iPad, iPadItalia has created one of the best Apple-oriented videos I've ever seen. In 10 minutes (yes, it's quite long for this type of thing), the video lovingly covers Apple from its origin in 1976 right up to today when those in Italy, and many other countries, can finally get their hands on the magical and revolutionary iPad.

The video is totally professional and really deserves recognition. With frenetic energy, just about every Apple product is displayed. It is a valentine to Steve Jobs, even showing him age from 15 to 55, and ending up with rejoicing over the European introduction of the iPad. This is a video that will warm every fanboy's heart and really captures the excitement that we've felt about Apple over the last 34 years. Enjoy!

Cellular technology has been evolving since its invention. With the first cellular telephone networks, developed by Bell Labs and AT&T, cellular technology began to make leaps forward in ease of use, voice quality, and data communication. The miracle of technology we know today as the cellular phone was made possible by a steady stream of innovation that continues on into the future.

The history of cellular technology starts at Bell Labs in the 1960's and 70's where they began to iron out the details on what a commercial cellular network would be. A cellular network is a network of base stations, or antennas, that form large pockets (cells) of radio signal coverage that overlap. With a technology called "handover," if you made a call using one base station, and you then moved out of that base station's range and into another base station's area, your call could be "handed over" to the base station that was closer to your location. These base stations allowed you to make calls to other cellular phones or to wired landline phones.

Over the years, the evolution of cell phone technology has been broken up into "generations." It started with the first generation (1G), and it continues to the upcoming fourth generation (4G). In the beginning, cell phones weren't much more than huge walkie-talkies. Over time, though, they evolved into the data powerhouses that we carry around in our pockets.

With TUAW's Your First Apple series, we let you get a glimpse of our own histories with the Mac. My own history with Apple's computers has been a bit convoluted. The first Apple computer, in fact the first computer of any kind I remember using, was an Apple II+. I was in kindergarten in Saudi Arabia at the time, so I don't really remember much about those early experiences. Like many people of my generation, when I returned to the US I went to schools that had computer labs crammed full of Apple IIe computers. Of course, the only programs that were ever run on my elementary school's Apples were marginally "educational" games like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Odell Lake, and the massively popular Oregon Trail. Meanwhile, my family had a KayPro PC at home, which meant my dad had to teach an eight-year-old kid how to navigate through the amber-lettered jungles of DOS -- something I'm glad I'll never have to do with my own kids.

The Apple IIe was the only computer I used in school through 1990. I spent most of seventh grade cooking up little text-based adventure games in BASIC, and I even learned some rudimentary drawing and audio programming, all of which I forgot long ago. In mid-1990, the school revamped our computer lab with brand-new Macintosh Classics: the first Mac I ever used, the first machine I used that had a hard drive, and the first time I ever used a GUI to interact with a computer. Oddly enough, despite the huge leap in capabilities the Mac Classic had over the Apple IIe, we spent half of eighth grade using the Mac to learn how to type. I guess I should be thankful I learned to touch-type way back then, but spending several months on typing tutor software was a hard sell after spending the previous year doing actual programming.

After that first year with the Mac, my experiences with Apple's computers went through some rollercoaster-like ups and downs. Click "read more" to find out why.

We visited a lot of parties last night (and the TUAW bloggers are nursing hangovers because of it), but the best was undoubtedly the Electronics Frontier Foundation's 20th anniversary bash at the DNA Lounge. It wasn't strictly Mac-related, but Mythbuster Adam Savage was in the house, and he led a hilarious re-enactment of some of the major moments in the EFF's history, assisted by various objects and people "found around the club". Of course, since there were quite a few luminaries in the house (including the founders of the EFF, the crew from Steve Jackson Games, and other tech who's whos), the re-enactment actually ended up being re-enacted by most of the actual participants. We captured video of the event, and it's both informational and hilarious -- you can catch it in two segments after the break below.

Stay tuned for more from Macworld 2010 all this week -- the floor opens today, and we'll have live streaming video right here on the site, as well as hands-on, interviews, and news from the show in San Francisco all week long.

For the iPhone-friendly YouTube video, click here.

This week, while a good part of the TUAW team is at Macworld, it's worth considering for a moment how we all came to start using Apple products. The "Switcher" campaign morphed into the "I'm a Mac" campaign, but really the idea is the same: rarely do you see people switching *back* to Windows after using a Mac. Then there's the halo effect from the iPod/iTunes ecosystem, the iPhone, and before all of that there was Apple's dominance in the educational markets and later in the design, publishing and other creative fields. But we all came to Apple in a different way. On the following pages we've published some stories from our Seed contributors on how they came to start using Apple products.

For me it began in the late 70's when my dad bought an Apple II in a bike store. There were no computer stores at the time, so this bike shop had a computer hobbyist corner, complete with Altairs and other blinking-light computer systems. He was intrigued by the keyboard, the cassette system and the color TV output. I wrote a review of the Apple II "red" manual last year. In fact, I still have that Apple in my office, complete with paddles, tape deck and a bunch of cassettes. One gem: AppleSoft BASIC by a little company called Microsoft! What's amazing is that the thing still boots up, although I had to dig up an ancient analog TV to hook up to the thing. Now I'm hoping the Disk II drive will still read my copy of In Search of the Most Amazing Thing.

We'd love to hear your first Apple story, so leave it in the comments. Over the next few weeks we'll also bring you the stories of TUAW bloggers and how they began as lifelong Apple customers.

• My First Apple, and Why It Rocks
• The story of a happy Apple Macintosh convert
• My First Apple Computer: The Start of A Love Affair

One of my all-time favorite movies is Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. At several points during the film, we see ill-fated astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole using a flat, iPad-like device. In one of the posters for the movie, astronauts at a base on the Moon are seen using this device (see image at right).

Those who read Arthur C. Clarke's novelization of the movie will remember that he described this device as the "Newspad," something that was used by people of the future (as envisioned in 1968) to watch TV and read newspapers. You can read the full description of the device after the break -- it's described as a newsreader, with two-digit codes for each article online, and a constant stream of information from the hourly updates on "electronic papers."

Of course, we don't have two-digit references to articles; we simply need to tap on them to bring them up. We do need to know the "codes" for the world's major electronic papers; we refer to them as URLs or specific apps. But like many things Clarke foresaw in his lifetime of writing science fiction, the Newspad has finally become reality in the form of Apple's iPad.

I think Arthur would be proud.

It's this week! It's almost a sure bet that we'll finally, after all of these years, see the Apple tablet unveiled this week, and to celebrate, Frog Design (the company responsible for many of Apple's designs back in the day) has given Wired some old shots of prototype tablets from the Cupertino company ... from 1983. Of course, Apple has released tablet-like devices before, and they've been thinking about this type of computer for a long time. But back in 1983, they apparently commissioned some concepts for an unreleased tablet called "Bashful" (so called because it was designed to work with the Snow White "industrial design language" that Apple used back then in the //c and other releases.

As you can see above, the tablet isn't exactly "elegant" by today's standards, but it is interesting how similar it actually is to many of today's smartphones and handhelds, considering that we're talking about almost 30 years ago now. One model had a floppy drive attached (which was gigantic), and apparently they even considered a version with a phone on it as well. We still don't know for sure what Apple's release this week will look like, but it's fascinating to think just how far back the planning for this week's unveiling actually went.

Happy New Year, everybody! It's 2010, and that means we're all riding around in flying cars, shooting laser guns at each other, and we all have robot servants to do all of our work for us. Oh wait, that didn't work out as planned, did it? At least we've got this awesome lamp, which was made from the old iMac G4 (which was actually nicknamed the "iLamp") that had the monitor moving around on a swivel. The bottom base case has been turned into the shade, but the arm is still there, ready to position the light wherever you want it to go.

Pretty sweet. Unfortunately, if you want one of your own, you'll have to hurry: as of this writing, there's only one left for sale on this Etsy page, and that one will set you back $75. But if you've got an old iMac sitting around and a little electric know-how, it shouldn't be too hard to rig one together yourself. Or you could just get your robot servant to do it for you!

Wired has an interesting look at the early days of the iPod, and what's most fascinating is just how fully formed the idea of the iPod and iTunes was. The idea itself originates from a company called PortalPlayer, where hardware designer Tony Fadell had the idea to create a player that could eventually be paired with "a Napster music sale service to complement it."

That's it -- even that early, the iPod + iTunes idea that would eventually revolutionize Apple was that complete. Of course, that was before Apple even got invested in the project -- once they did, Steve Jobs put "100 percent" of his time into the project, and they ended with the iconic design and the feel and experience that pushed it beyond any other MP3 player at the time.

That's not to say that development was smooth sailing after that -- apparently there was a major battery issue that kept battery life at a super low three hours until Apple and PortalPlayer got it fixed up. Always fun to hear the backstory on the stuff that would eventually make this company what it is today.

In 1979, the Apple II Plus was a badass piece of hardware, and the Apple Graphics Tablet was a flashy accessory. At $650US, it let users sketch with a wired stylus. Measuring 3/4 in x 15 1/2 in x 15 3/4 in, the Graphics Tablet was eventually discontinued when the FCC discovered that it caused radio frequency interference problems.

Sure, the wired stylus is a kludge, as is the general design (don't look at the back), but remember that 1979 was 5 years before the first Macintosh was released and computer mice became ubiquitous.

Edible Apple has some additional photos and an old ad promoting the tablet and Utopia software. Go and check out an interesting piece of Apple history -- complete with vintage scotch tape!

TechCrunch has posted pictures of what they're calling an "unlaunched Apple tablet." In 1990, as the story goes, Apple was supposedly working on a pen-based touchscreen tablet called the Pen Mac that was actually extremely small for the time -- just about an inch thick, with a screen the same size as a Mac Portable. They were bringing a few different companies in on the deal, and apparently it worked well -- ran a full Mac OS, used a pen to control or let you plug in a mouse and keyboard, and there was even a smaller version called the PenLite (bulky by today's standards, but remember that this is 20 years ago now).

So why weren't we all using tablet computers 20 years ago? TechCrunch blames John Sculley, who apparently thought the tablet idea was out, and the PDA idea was in, and we ended up with the Newton instead. I won't second guess him -- while it's easy to think that anything could have beaten the Newton, would the current Apple touchscreen tablet craze even be here if it weren't for the iPhone? And isn't Apple's smartphone just a hop, skip and a jump from their original PDA?