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Yesterday I was looking for some photos in my archive of backed-up CDs and DVDs, and among other things I found a photoshoot I did after receiving a marvellous gift from my friend Claudio (who sadly passed away last year): an almost-functional Macintosh 128K. I met Claudio in 2002 and it was instant friendship: he ran a small company called Data-Project whose main activity was Mac technical assistance, and we both loved to spend hours chatting about vintage Macs. He was a true master of Mac repairs and there was nothing he couldn’t fix. And I mean it. I enjoyed his company and his stories very much. He was a great, generous guy. I learnt a lot from him and I was immensely saddened by his untimely death.
Over the years he gave me a few of the Macs in my collection, such as the Macintosh SE FDHD and the Apple IIGS. He was my vintage hardware ‘pusher’, and I used to ask him for help when something didn’t work (and I regularly paid for his expertise, although he — being the utterly honest guy he was — never charged me the prices other Apple repair shops used to charge at the time), and every now and then I helped him put order in his crammed, messy (in a beautiful sort of way) laboratory; he called me when he meant to clean it up a bit, and gave me a lot of interesting pieces. When I was looking for a PowerBook 100, he gave me three dismantled units and told me: Here you have all the pieces to build one functional PowerBook 100. When he knew I acquired a Colour Classic, he gave me a motherboard of an LC 580 so I could use it to replace the original Colour Classic motherboard and have a slightly faster computer (the CC had a Motorola 68030 processor at 16 MHz, the LC 580 had a 68LC040 at 33 MHz). When some old SCSI hard drive broke down, he helped me with some spares (he had a whole shelf of hard drives, most of them working pulls or drives he repaired).
Then in January 2003, when I told him I was looking for the original Macintosh, he gave me the unit you see in the pictures. Like the previous PowerBook 100 deal, this Macintosh was dismantled because it needed a new analogue board, but he gave me all the pieces and a spare functional analogue board, and assured me that once I desoldered the old one and soldered the spare board he gave me and put all the pieces together as instructed, I would have had a fully functional Mac 128K (I know that because I tested every part myself. I thoroughly cleaned and greased the 400K floppy drive too! — he said). Too bad I never owned or used a soldering iron. But I still have this Mac and all the necessary pieces to make it work. And now it also has sentimental value. Enjoy the photos.
Close-up of the Apple logo on the front
The Apple logo and Macintosh lettering on the back
The Macintosh 128K on the desk in my old home office. Other notable details: my beloved blueberry iMac G3/350 in the back, a Macintosh Classic slightly visibile on the right, and also (bottom right corner) a PowerBook Duo MiniDock
The 400K Floppy drive and assembly. Surely the heaviest part of the whole unit
Close-up of the Floppy drive
Detail of the motherboard
Another motherboard detail: the old Apple logo. Also note the "©1983"
Detail of the Motorola 68000 processor
In the past days I’ve been tinkering with the beautiful LisaEm, probably the best Apple Lisa emulator around (I’ve already mentioned it in this blog, by the way). After installing the various tools of the Lisa Office System (LisaWrite, LisaDraw, LisaGraph, LisaCalc, LisaList, LisaProject, LisaTerminal), I started exploring them, using the emulated Lisa 2 as if it were a real computer, and taking notes about the interaction with the operating system and the user experience.
I won’t be talking in depth about the history of the Lisa, because it’s not the point of this post. The Macintosh and the Lisa user interfaces had a lot of similarities, but were also quite different, especially regarding the communication with the user. I have used early versions of the Macintosh OS, as early as System 2 if I recall correctly, and I’ve been using regularly every Mac OS version from System 6 to the current OS X Snow Leopard. By using the emulated Lisa for a couple of days, the first thing that struck me has been how thoughtful and literally user-friendly the Lisa Office System interface is. I daresay it’s even more user-friendly than the famous Macintosh GUI.
Let’s take a small visual tour. (Note: the images are a bit shrunk and you’ll have to click on them to see a better reproduction of the screenshots).
This is how the Lisa Desktop looks with the seven main applications (called Tools in Lisa’s parlance) of its office suite. Note the Empty Folders folder. In the Lisa operating system, there wasn’t a command to create a new folder: you just double-clicked on the Empty folders folder and a fresh, empty folder (named Empty Folders 11/14 — that is, today’s date is appended to the name) was created. This is not surprising, since the whole Lisa system is document-oriented, not application-oriented like basically every other OS around, then and now.
In Lisa’s specific desktop metaphor you would have a new folder by going where all the empty folders are and picking one, pretty much like a real office environment. The same would happen upon creating a new document using any of the seven aforementioned main applications. To create a new text document you don’t open the application LisaWrite (as you would do in any application-oriented system). If you do, Lisa would react this way:
“LisaWrite stationery?” you might ask. Yes, in every Lisa office Tool folder, along with a subfolder with a sample document and the Tool icon itself, there’s also an icon named [Tool name] Paper, in this case LisaWrite Paper. This is the stationery mentioned by the previous message. It works like the Empty Folders example we saw above. To create a new LisaWrite document, you double-click on the LisaWrite Paper icon and voilà, a blank text document appears in the folder, with the standard name convention LisaWrite Paper [today's date].
Of course you can rename it as you see fit, and double-clicking it you’ll actually open the LisaWrite application. It may seem a little convoluted to our application-oriented habits, but I find its logic compelling and consistent. It’s a behaviour that was perceived as more natural by the people who designed the Lisa UI. In the real world, when you begin a new document, such as a personal letter, you don’t expect the pen or the typewriter to create the writing space, the template, for you. You take a piece of paper (and it might very well be a piece of dedicated stationery: a sheet with the company logo for a work-related document, or special high-quality letter paper for personal correspondence, etc.) and then you use the other tools to actually write that document.
With the Lisa, it’s the same. You want to create a spreadsheet? You tear off the specific template for it, which is a LisaCalc Paper, and you’ll be offered all the necessary tools to create and manage that spreadsheet inside the LisaCalc tool environment. You want to start doodling? Tear off a LisaDraw Paper. And so on.
Back to user communication. In my brief experience with the emulated Lisa, I noticed how the Lisa operating system presented better-worded warnings and error messages which were less obscure and potentially more useful than other systems, Mac OS included. Here’s an example. The LisaWrite application and its files came on two diskettes. To copy the contents of the diskettes in the Lisa’s ProFile hard disk, I inserted the LisaWrite 1 diskette, selected the icons and just dragged them on the empty LisaWrite folder I had prepared before. Coming from a long-time experience with the Macintosh user interface, that seemed the most intuitive thing to do. I didn’t know that on the Lisa you have to duplicate (D) the selected icons and move the blinking duplicates Lisa creates, instead of the original files. I also did not know that the American Dictionary included with LisaWrite was actually split between the two floppies (since it was too big to fit on one), and that I couldn’t just copy the first part along with the other files.
How would the classic Mac OS — or even the modern Mac OS X — deal with such a situation? Probably by displaying something like Error: Cannot copy American Dictionary in (target folder) or American Dictionary could not be copied in (target folder) and offering the [Stop] and [Continue] buttons, without giving much insight to the user regarding what just happened. Often the user would also like to know why a certain attempted operation has failed. Lisa helpfully reacted this way:
That dialog box is surely verbose for today’s standards, but it gives real information, and a useful, direct reference to the user’s manual so that we can understand what happened. You have to consider that such design for dialog boxes and error warnings was conceived in an era when users actually took notice of such warnings. From thence, it’s been a road downhill, also thanks to more brief, confusing and unhelpful error messages. Remember the coded error messages of the classic Mac OS? Sorry, a system error has occurred. (Error -11) Not useful at all. Not trust-inspiring, either.
Back to the American Dictionary impasse, I didn’t have the Lisa Office System manual at hand, but in the Lisa FAQ section of the LisaEm website, I found the answer:
[...] Note that you cannot mix and match normal files with files that are split across several floppies (such as the American Dictionary on the LisaWrite floppy.) Instead, you’ll have to first duplicate the normal files manually, and later transfer the split files. When copying a split file, the Lisa will eject the floppy and ask you for the next floppy to retrieve the next piece of that file. [...]
Following the instructions, all went well and the Lisa kept me posted on the current state of operations:
It’s worth noting that the Lisa could automatically split large files and archive them on many 400K diskettes, and reconstruct them later when needed. It didn’t need additional tools or utilities like StuffIt or UnRAR. Thus, backing up the data in the hard disk on a series of floppy diskettes was very easy: you just dragged the hard drive icon on an empty floppy icon and the Desktop Manager would ask you for another disk, and then another, until it reached a full backup.
Another interesting aspect of the Lisa Office System is that it copy-protected applications and documents by giving them unique serial numbers that would tie them to a specific Lisa unit. So, when copying the various Office Tools from the diskettes to the ProFile hard disk, I received this warning:
Again, notice how well-written and informative this warning is. It is very clear about what’s going to happen, so that the user can make an informed decision.
Another example: I was manipulating an example list in the LisaList tool, and made changes in the formatting, order and font used in the list. Suddenly the screen went blank, as if the application had crashed or something. But soon the Lisa informed me about what was happening with another exhaustive dialog box:
I love that expression, “[The tool] is having technical difficulties”: it is clearly an example of an era when the personal computer was starting to spread among regular, non-tech users, and this warning sounds sort of reassuring, as if to say: there is a technical problem, I won’t confuse you with the details right now, but I can attempt to solve it, and here’s a reference in the User Manual that may help you understand what’s going on.
I’ve also encountered a couple of funny warnings. The first one occurred when I attempted to set the date correctly in the Clock desk accessory. The time was displayed OK, but the date was set to November 12, 1987. So I clicked on the date and entered 11/12/09, but alas, I discovered that…
So the Lisa was not Y2K compliant, and the date range limited to 1981-1995 (why not 1999, by the way?).
The second warning that made me smile was when I fired up the Calculator for the first time:
But in the end this is just another example of how the communication with the user was taken very seriously by the people who designed the Lisa GUI. The Calculator could have been launched in the default mode without telling anything to the user, but this warning tries to be informative and friendly anyway. It’s not strictly necessary, but it’s a nice touch.
These are just a few examples and by no means exhaustive, but I think they’re enough to give you an idea. In my interaction with the emulated Lisa I found many other nice touches in the dialog boxes and, generally, in the language used by the Lisa’s interface. (I like, for example, the choice of terms used for certain menus and commands: Housekeeping may make you smile as a name for a menu in the main desktop environment, but it’s more clear and effective than the generic Special menu you’ll find later in the Macintosh Finder. And the command to rearrange icons and snap them to the grid was a more colloquial Straighten up Icons than a neutral Arrange icons). This is an interface which showed, or attempted to show, some true respect for the user dealing with it. Today’s graphical user interfaces might be slicker and more intuitive, but I think they leave a lot to be desired as regards to notifications, warnings, and error messages. Too often the user is left guessing what caused a problem. Moreover, too often the user is left guessing what the warning means in the first place.
The main feature of Issue 69 of MacFormat UK Magazine (November 1998) is a 4-page article about Apple design and contains an interesting interview with Jonathan Ive with the title The man who makes Apple. Although it’s not exactly the usual interview with direct questions and answers, I thought it was well worth reprinting here.
* * * * *
Apple’s latent flair has flourished under Jonathan Ive. Cliff Joseph talks to the industrial design director who has led the work on the new-look Macs, including iMac.
Jonathan Ive is a happy man right now. As head of Apple’s industrial design team, Ive is the man most responsible for the striking design of the new iMac [1]. Ive has worked at Apple since 1991, but it hasn’t always been fun working there. Recent years have been very frustrating for him and his team: industrial design has always been an important part of Apple’s products, but the people who ran Apple for most of the 1990s seemed to forget this.
We went through a period where the company rhetorically acknowledged the importance of design, but made very conservative decisions, Ive confirms. An example of this is the design of the new PowerBook G3s. Their curvy black lines are in marked contrast to the clunky shape of their most recent predecessors, but Ive reveals that this isn’t a new design: it had been floating around within Apple for some time without being used. The problem was that under CEO Gil Amelio, Apple was trying to play safe and to be like all the other PC manufacturers. So anything that looked too different was frowned upon.
We had some little design victories, like the eMate or the 20th Anniversary Mac, Ive notes. But they were never mainstream products. It was incredibly frustrating. So frustrating, in fact, that Ive and the rest of his demoralised group were on the verge of splitting up and leaving Apple, until salvation came with the return of Steve Jobs. The Apple co-founder has liberated Ive and his team: Amelio wanted Apple to play safe, but Jobs has returned Apple to the days when it would consciously strive to be different. Steve feels more comfortable about fashion, Ive says.
And that brings us to iMac. Judged just by the hardware inside it, iMac is an impressive computer; but its most striking feature is, of course, its gorgeous cool-blue, translucent case. On the day we met, Ive was wearing a chunky translucent wristwatch, so it seems that he has something of a fetish for the plastic. Part of the attraction, he says, is the simple challenge of working with such an unusual material. It’s difficult to design with translucent plastic, because the inside becomes a part of the outside.
Small details become important. Take the screws that abound in normal PC designs. If you’re working with clear plastic, the screws become visible and look just plain ugly. So Ive and his team designed unobtrusive moulded plastic clips that don’t detract from the smooth curved look of the machine. All sorts of small details, such as the way the colour of the plastic changes with the light at different times of day, were taken into consideration. The plastic panels on the keyboard are ribbed, partly to make them stronger but also, according to Ive, because it just looks more interesting.
Designer attitude
Most PC manufacturers base their designs around a hardware specification. They have a shopping list of components they want to include, and just shove those components into a box. The look of the box is merely an afterthought — if it’s thought of at all.
Ive’s approach is completely different. We design for people, he says. People talk about their Macs the way you’d talk about a small fluffy animal or a member of your family. It’s the Mac’s look and feel that has always given it its distinct personality, and this is especially true of iMac.
iMac was designed for people who care more about its look and feel than about its hardware features. It looks great, but the feel is important as well. To open the panel that covers the machine’s USB and modem ports, you must put your fingers through a small hole in the panel and pull it down. Ive says that this makes the user feel more involved with the machine as you actually have to reach inside it and grip it.
Ive accepts the need to cater for functionality — one of his aims when he created Apple’s tower machines was to give them ‘the best accessibility’ so that you could open them up and upgrade them quickly and easily. But he also believes that worrying about design and satisfying functionality aren’t mutually exclusive.
iMac’s shape and size weren’t just aesthetic decisions: they were also a response to practical issues raised by Apple’s customers. Its all-in-one machines were popular with education users, but combining the monitor and the motherboard in one unit is not without some significant drawbacks. One of the big things we were hearing was that our products were getting bigger. So there were difficult decisions to be made.
One such decision was the omission of PCI expansion slots. iMac’s motherboard was specially designed to be as small as possible, but this meant that there was no room for any PCI expansion slots. The lack of expansion options is one of the few criticisms that has been made of iMac, but including expansion slots would have made the machine bigger and might have deterred some of Apple’s important education customers. We knew that size and weight were really important — so out went those slots.
Ive’s future
iMac is now on sale around the world, but there is still plenty of work for Ive to be going on with. There remains one gaping hole in Apple’s product range: Steve Jobs has stated that Apple wants to produce a portable Mac for the consumer market that will build on the warm response received by the Newton-based eMate.
Unfortunately, Ive isn’t allowed to spill any beans on this next project, but Steve Jobs has also indicated that the new machine will be based on the design of the eMate We may not know entirely what the new portable will look like, but one thing’s for sure — you can bet that we haven’t seen the last appearance of that translucent plastic [2].
* * *
My notes:
1. The article is obviously talking about the first Bondi Blue iMac G3, introduced in May 1998 (and shipped later in August), but this very sentence can of course be applied to the newest iMac line as well.
2. And in fact this portable based on the design of the eMate is indeed the first iBook G3, introduced in July 1999 in Blueberry and Tangerine translucent plastic flavours.
I’ve just discovered a nice little project, Grackle68k, which is a very basic Twitter client that works under System 6 to Mac OS 9. ‘Very basic’ means you can send tweets in a text field after authenticating and that’s it. On powerful vintage Macs — those who can handle Web browsing in a decent way, I mean — the best experience is probably using the Twitter Web interface. But for those who managed to connect their Mac Plus, SE, SE/30 etc. to the Internet, Grackle68k should do the job.
For the record, I attempted to use it in an emulated Mac OS 9.0.4 session under SheepShaver, but when sending the test tweets I got a “400 Bad Request” error. I guess it’s better to try it on a real vintage Mac. Too bad none of my compact Macs has a network card. I’ll try it on my PowerBook 5300 with Mac OS 8.1.
Podcast – Tech Talk – NYTimes.com: The developer Eckhart Köppen speaks with Betinna Edelstein about his efforts to keep developing software for Apple’s defunct Newton Message Pad and Alan Yacavone of the News Technology Office at The Times drops by to discuss the state of iPhone security.
A great contribution by a great developer. I think the Newton community has found its ambassador. Way to go, Eckhart!
Or, Flying toasters are a go
I can finally add a Mac SE/30 to my vintage collection.
A few weeks ago, I received a nice and unexpected email from Roberto, a reader of my blogs, where he said he would like to donate me a Macintosh SE/30 since it was on my vintage Mac wishlist. I have already twenty Macs or so, but what could I say? I couldn’t let one of the prettiest compact Macs go to the recycler, so I gladly accepted the offer. It certainly soothes the pain I was feeling after having never received a PowerBook 170 that was promised to me and supposedly got lost.
And it certainly puts an end to my very personal saga with this Mac model. The Quest for the Holy SE/30 officially started back in 2002, although I had fallen in love with it a decade before, when I met the SE/30 in a graphic studio of a friend who asked for my assistance to finish a DTP project. I spent a whole week on that SE/30 running Aldus PageMaker and driving an Apple LaserWriter, and it was a hell of a time. So when my vintage collecting fever kicked in later, the SE/30 was one of my first targets.
First I was contacted by an acquaintance working in London. He said it had one soon to be decommissioned (yes, amazingly it was still used in an office environment as of late 2001), and we exchanged some emails to arrange shipping and everything. In his last email he wrote “Tomorrow morning I’m off to the post office to ask about shipping costs to Italy [where I was still living at the time]“. I never heard from him again. Every email I wrote him went henceforth unanswered.
Then another acquaintance, working in a large graphic & media company, told me they were throwing a bunch of ‘old Mac stuff’ away, and yes, there was a SE/30 among that stuff. So he said. We arranged a meeting (thankfully this time I could actually go where the ’stuff’ was) and went to the Room Of The Discarded. He made his way through a pile of assorted computer parts and peripherals, and finally came up with… a Macintosh SE. Well… I already had one, and, and it was not a SE/30 but tempting anyway… But strange burn marks on the back weren’t a good sign. We tried to power it up, but the analogue bord was shot, as I imagined.
And these are just the first two episodes that come to mind. In these last seven years I frequently went this close to getting the beloved SE/30, but it never worked out, in a way or another. And no, I hadn’t even considered eBay. Shipping costs (especially from the United States) for a well packaged SE/30 are prohibitive and much higher than what the Mac itself is worth today.
The SE/30 arrived last Monday, with two issues. The first is that the Mac is mute. It boots fine, it works fine, but no sound at all. I cranked up the volume via the Sound control panel, but nothing happens. I played a brickout-like game and, pressing my ear against the Mac, I could hear something, but very faintly. I’ll work on this when I have more time, after the summer holidays. The other issue was that the hard drive was not recognised at boot (the SE/30 gave me the floppy icon with the blinking question mark), but after opening the Mac, I quickly found out that the drive’s power cable was not connected to the analogue board. It was a quick fix. After closing the Mac and turning it on, the drive was instantly recognised and mounted.
And I stumbled on to another nice discovery: After Dark 2.0 is installed. Flying toasters!
So, thank you very much Roberto, for your kindness and generosity.
Well, it’s new but has a long history behind. Tomorrow, July 1, 2009, Classilla will be released. Classilla is a modern browser that should run on Mac OS 8.6-9.2.2. A brief FAQ is available here.
For more information, I decided to go to the source and write to Cameron Kaiser, the mind behind the project. He graciously replied and provided some clarifications:
Essentially, Classilla is an update to Mac WaMCom (but you can’t download it from there anymore — see the googlecode site to get it if you want to play with it). It updates the layout engine and fixes several core bugs, and for the next version it will have JavaScript updates as well (right now the JS is at best basic, though much quicker than InScript in iCab).
Mac WaMCom was based on Mozilla 1.3.1, after which OS 9 support ended. Because Classilla no longer corresponds to a particular Mozilla release despite being based almost completely on Mozilla code, it uses its own layout track named Clecko (instead of Gecko). If you forced me to say, I would call Classilla 9.0 roughly equivalent to Mozilla 1.6 (Firefox 1.0), but there are some bugs in Classilla that Firefox 1 does not have, and conversely some patches from as late as Moz 1.8 (FF 1.5) are also landed, so it is really a distinct engine despite its origins.
This version is deliberately unfinished because there is no source for WaMCom anymore, so I assigned an arbitrary deadline of July 1st to myself to get an update out. It should be considered in that light. I think people will find the improvements noticeable, but no miracles should be expected from Classilla for awhile, and it still has a number of bugs.
The version numbers, by the way, are based on OS 9 releases. So the next one will be 9.0.4, and then 9.1, etc.
I’m looking forward to try Classilla on my original blueberry iBook G3 clamshell (with Mac OS 9.2.2) and PowerMac 9500 (with Mac OS 9.1). If I’m not completely drowned by work, expect a brief review in the following days. I’m really glad something is still moving in pre-Mac OS X land.
One of the few Newton developers still active, Eckhart Köppen, has taken the initiative to find a solution to fix this nasty bug that threatens to seriously undermine the health of our ‘evergreen’ Newton from next January 1, 2010.
After publishing a diagnostic software (Y2010 Diagnostic) a couple of months ago, on May 24 Eckhart announced in the NewtonTalk mailing list that he had prepared a proper system patch, called Patch 71J059, which should resolve the issue. (At the moment the patch only works with US-language MessagePad 2100s.)
Needless to say I’m amazed by Eckhart’s technical skills — he has practically done everything by himself. Several members of the NewtonTalk list have already installed the patch successfully, and for now there appears to be no problem whatsoever. Someone has even managed to install it on a MessagePad 2000. My MessagePad 2100 patch version is 710031, so I will have to downgrade first, but the process is extremely simple. Now 2010 is a little less scary for those who still own, use and love this historical PDA which doesn’t want to retire. As I often say, the Newton community is truly extraordinary and resourceful — even now, more than 11 years after the Newton has been officially discontinued. And I am really happy to be a part of it.
The August 1998 issue of MacFormat UK has a nice table with a timeline detailing the circa four-year interval when Mac OS was actually licensed to third-party manufacturers. I’m posting this as a sort of personal digital backup, more than anything. Anyway, I didn’t remember the clone period to have lasted so long. That’s why history is useful.
December 1994
Apple announces first Mac OS licence, awarded to Power Computing.
January 1995
Radius shows VideoVision Workstation prototype in public. DayStar Digital to make multi-processing Genesis MP.
February 1995
Pioneer announces desktop Macs for Japan.
April 1995
Power Computing is the first firm to offer clones for sale in US.
August 1995
Radius is first to offer clones for sale in UK.
September 1995
Parts shortages said to be restricting further licensees from signing up.
November 1995
Umax announces desktop Macs. CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform) officially launched; firms planning machines include Apple, IBM, Motorola, Power Computing and Umax.
February 1996
Motorola acquires sub-licensing rights and announces desktop Macs. Gil Amelio becomes Apple’s CEO. Research indicates that clones account for 10% of US Mac sales.
April 1996
Apple announces biggest-ever quarterly loss of $740 million.
May 1996
IBM acquires sub-licensing rights.
September 1996
Akia announces desktop and portable Macs in Japan.
November 1996
Spring launches announced for CHRP machines from Motorola and Umax.
December 1996
Apple’s purchase of NeXT Software returns Steve Jobs to Apple.
March 1997
Computer Warehouse launches desktop Mac range in UK. Vertegri Research announces portable Macs for US.
April 1997
Apple announces quarterly loss of $708 million. MacFormat 50’s round-up shows that 50 Mac models are on sale in UK.
June 1997
Research indicates that clones account for 25% of US Mac sales. CHRP machines now due for autumn; Motorola’s StarMax Pro 6000 announced. Motorola claims licence extensions agreed in principle.
July 1997
Gil Amelio… er, resigns; Steve Jobs adopts more prominent role.
August 1997
Apple buys back Power Computing’s Mac licence. Motorola postpones StarMax 6000 launch as licence discussions heat up.
October 1997
Licence talks fall apart; Motorola withdraws from Mac market and ends sub-licensing. IBM ends sub-licensing. Umax granted six-month extension.
December 1997
Motorola, Power Computing licences expire; all machines are sold out.
June 1998
Umax licence expires; other firms’ stocks dwindling.
Notes:
Other licensees included Gravis and US dealers APS Technologies, MacTell and PowerTools.
The Macs we never saw: firms which announced licenses but never produced machines include Acorn, Datatech, Everex, Redbox, Sonnet, Soyo and Tatung.
With regard to creative writing, I can say that Internet has ruined my life. Up to 1999-2000, my production (poems, short stories, two novels — a short one and a longer, more complex one) had been quite prolific and without serious writer’s blocks. Then the Web, electronic mail, newsgroups, etc., began a slow but inexorable erosion process: of my time, my energies, my ability to concentrate on a story and forget about the world outside. The time devoted to writing has grown thinner and thinner and today it’s almost nonexistent. The cruel irony is that because of what I do for a living and also thanks to my many technology-related interests, I find myself reading and writing on my Mac(s) all day, something that frustrates a lot of my creative side.
I soon came to the conclusion that it is not possible — for me at least — to creatively write sitting at the same desk, in front of the same setup where I work, read news, manage email, navigate the Web. When your main system is capable of keeping multiple applications open, it’s easy to be distracted by incoming emails and updated RSS feeds. Not to mention the temptation to search the Web by following the spur of the moment — when that happens, the best case scenario is that I find myself two hours later digesting a lot of information I found following link after link, yet without doing anything really productive.
The solution is to configure a setup without an Internet connection. No browsers, no emails, no distractions: just me, my ideas, and the word processor. Now that I’ve acquired the Apple IIGS ADB keyboard you see in the picture, which is the most compact (and robust) of the smaller line of ADB keyboards manufactured by Apple, I connected it to my Macintosh Colour Classic, and I’m using this beautiful compact Mac as a creative writing setup. Its portable counterpart is the eMate 300, which can be easily connected to the Colour Classic for text file transfers. Another mobile solution I’m working on is the clamshell iBook purchased on eBay a while ago, which I’d like to keep as a OS 9-only machine, to act as an efficient bridge between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ world.
Since I started using this setup on a fairly regular basis, the creative drought seems over, thankfully. The effect of returning to a Mac with a 10-inch screen and System 7.1 is certainly interesting. There’s calm and much less chaos in the old System 7; that, and having a single application in the foreground is almost enough to inspire the creative process. I have yet to decide which writing tool to use; Word 5.1, WordPerfect, an old version of Nisus Writer or WriteNow? They are all excellent candidates, each with its pros and cons, although I tend to prefer WordPerfect and WriteNow. For the moment, I’m taking notes with the good old SimpleText and familiarising with all of these word processors. I’ll probably stick with WriteNow — it has a negligible impact on the mere 6 MB RAM installed, and has a simple yet powerful interface.
Furthermore, I must admit that using a Mac that boots in 40 seconds is amazingly refreshing!
