[HN Gopher] An Apple district manager's Macintosh Portable in 19...
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An Apple district manager's Macintosh Portable in 1989-91
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 124 points
Date : 2024-03-03 02:37 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (oldvcr.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (oldvcr.blogspot.com)
| chickenchicken wrote:
| Michael Crichton used the Button matrix of the screen Map as
| inspiration for the ui of the computer systems in Jurassic Park
| while writing the book on a Mac.
| dhosek wrote:
| Of course, in the movie it was "Unix! I know this!"
| chess_buster wrote:
| true - and also Macs, specifically Macintosh Quadra 700.
|
| This movie brought me to Linux ("The Free Unix") and Mac.
| Reason077 wrote:
| It's not a Mac (in the "I know this!" scene), it's a
| Silicon Graphics workstation.
|
| Although a Quadra running A/UX would have been a legitimate
| Unix at the time, too.
| chess_buster wrote:
| Correct, it's a SG Crimson (there's also an Indigo
| somewhere). But the other computers are Macintosh Quadra
| 700 - and 8 Connection Machines (CM5, so no XMP Cray as
| in the book) in the background providing the
| blinkenlights.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Heh. I worked on GEIS AppleLink. It was my first Mac job.
| classichasclass wrote:
| (author) Front end or back end? Anything interesting about its
| operation or the protocols?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Front end. I was a Mac programmer.
|
| It was basically AOL. I am pretty sure that AppleLink became
| the basis for the first AOL clients (or vice-versa). We had
| the exact same "You've Got Mail!" sound, and a lot of the
| same graphic assets.
|
| My claim to fame, was disassembling Finder, to nail a mistake
| in Apple documentation.
|
| Back then, processes could communicate directly with each
| other. Security folks would absolutely defecate masonry, if
| they saw what it was like.
|
| The issue was that we used Pascal strings, and one of the
| structures that was used to share information between
| processes, had a Pascal string (one-byte length, followed by
| up to 255 bytes of ASCII string).
|
| Their docs said it was optimized (no padding beyond word), so
| a 2-character string would take 4 bytes (1 length, 2 string,
| 1 pad).
|
| In fact, they always reserved the entire 256 bytes, and
| ignored the bytes beyond the end of the string.
|
| I had to actually disassemble Finder, to figure that out.
|
| This is neither here, nor there, but GEIS was the most
| dysfunctional organization I ever worked for. In the 18
| months I worked for them, they had 3 reorgs.
| icedchai wrote:
| Was this using GEnie as the back end? When I first got my
| modem, I was on both CompuServe and GEnie before moving on to
| local BBSes.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Possibly. That sounds familiar. Most of the backend folks
| actually worked on EDI stuff. Lot of money movement, so we
| weren't involved that much.
| classichasclass wrote:
| (author) Both GEnie and AppleLink used the same backend,
| which GE called the Mark III network, so there were some
| operational similarities.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Use the rolling ball from mac portable since 1990s d never looked
| back. Mouse on its back I call.
| Solvency wrote:
| Seeing Apple indulge in furry photography halfway down the page
| is something to behold.
| kanapala wrote:
| It's GE ad
| FredPret wrote:
| > $16,150 ... in 2024 dollars
|
| The self-reinforcing improvement loop that is technology is
| absolutely magical. So many things get better and cheaper, faster
| and faster.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| It's true but a lot of the reduction in price is having a
| mature manufacturing industry that the components can be
| sourced from.
| FredPret wrote:
| Maturing industry is a form of technological development.
| Better tech = better manufacturing techniques, from resource
| gathering up to the retailing system. Mining and
| manufacturing are more and more mechanized and automated, and
| lots of the retail end is online, complete with automated
| logistics.
|
| To say nothing of the fundamentally better chip designs we
| have.
|
| We're making better things, in a better way, faster and
| cheaper; and each improvement reverberates through the system
| making everything else cheaper, better, and faster.
| qgin wrote:
| Snow White Apple was the best Apple
| nar001 wrote:
| Will you image the drive anywhere? It sounds like a ticking time
| bomb, and it's so interesting it'd be cool to be able to look
| through it/through the beta System 6.0.6 software
| hilti wrote:
| I am always amazed how much usability fit into these low
| resolution screens. Today's software designer really struggle in
| usability although they have enough space.
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