[HN Gopher] The Original Macintosh: Calculator Construction Set
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The Original Macintosh: Calculator Construction Set
Author : fidotron
Score : 43 points
Date : 2025-06-25 19:21 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.folklore.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.folklore.org)
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| ... Is _that_ why it was so flexible in ResEdit?
| johnplatte wrote:
| And why NeXT's Cocoa had Interface Builder?
| WillAdams wrote:
| That was mostly the work (at least initially) of Jean-Marie
| Hullot
|
| https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/06/21/jean-marie-hullot-rip/
|
| Which makes me wish for a site like to folklore.org for NeXT.
| rjsw wrote:
| ... and had several Lisp versions before the one at NeXT.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Yeah, I really wish that someone would recreate the Lisp
| versions for a currently available version of Lisp.
|
| I'm about to break down and begin learning Swift and
| trying to use SwiftUI --- we'll have to see how it goes.
| rjsw wrote:
| The Lisp versions had the advantage that they were all
| written for the same GUI - Macintosh. I copied ideas from
| the LeLisp paper for my Franz Lisp & GEM environment back
| then.
|
| There are too many holes in current GUI support.
|
| The Lisp that traditionally had the best bindings on the
| Macintosh, CCL, doesn't run natively on current models.
|
| McCLIM needs backends for Windows and OSX to be
| considered portable.
| san1927 wrote:
| i thought this was actually a well established fact
| leakycap wrote:
| It may be a well established fact among people who know the
| Pantone number and official name of the beige Macs.
|
| A lot of people are getting exposed to these stories for the
| first time. New developers and tech enthusiasts are born every
| day, you know!
| san1927 wrote:
| i guess that makes sense
|
| we need an environment where new people can get these stories
| faster
|
| i mean a place where stories are repeated and a different
| place where new stories are put up
|
| that makes things interesting as well i guess
| danielhlockard wrote:
| Sure, but why not HN of all places? Things get re-posted
| here all the time when they are relevant again. I'm not new
| by any means but I didn't know this.
| leakycap wrote:
| If I've seen it already and don't want to discuss it more,
| I just don't click or comment on it.
|
| Sometimes I want to click something I've already read and
| see what other interesting comments are posted.
| WillAdams wrote:
| The XKCD on this:
|
| https://xkcd.com/1053/
| leakycap wrote:
| It annoyed me to no end that the calculator button placement like
| "=" didn't line up with the order on their own keyboard.
|
| But then knowing it was set in stone before Apple made a full
| keyboard for the Mac made it make sense.
|
| Remember P-Cal? Its still around
| msgilligan wrote:
| See my comment under the "There are two equals buttons?"
| parent.
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| Happy to learn about this! Though i read random articles on
| folklore.org this has escaped me. This story is also really
| relevant today as design is at a turning point where either
| things go towards a more traditional ai enhanced pipeline with
| changes happening in something generic like figma, or moving
| towards directly generating parametrised live UI with custom
| specialised sliders and other settings for everything. I had my
| first experience with this reality trying to vibe code a webgl
| shader and giving up trying to fine tune with prompts. Things
| were just so much more productive after generating the ui for all
| interesting shader parameters. My bet is that this will replace
| 50% of figma usecases.
| HFguy wrote:
| There are two equals buttons?
| msgilligan wrote:
| The key layout on the calculator (DA or desk accessory) exactly
| matches the numeric keypad of the Lisa keyboard, but the big
| '=' key is labelled 'Enter' on the physical keypad. You could
| use the keypad to use the calculator, which I remember doing on
| a "Macintosh XL" (a Lisa running Mac OS) Having the big key be
| '=' was a nice usability feature since 'Enter' didn't make much
| sense in the calculator DA.
|
| If you search for pictures of "Original Lisa Keyboard" you can
| see that the layout is the same. However, in the pictures I
| found the key that corresponds to the small '=' in the
| screenshot in the article is labelled '-' and there appear to
| be some other differences. I don't remember these differences
| or any rationale for them.
|
| Update: They screenshot in the article _exactly_ matches the
| Macintosh Plus keyboard -- which is a keyboard I actually
| owned. Although I used Mac XL before getting my Plus, it 's
| probably this keyboard that I'm remembering:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_keyboards#Macintosh_Plus...
| atommclain wrote:
| It's odd because the original Macintosh had a smaller
| keyboard without a numpad, however one was offered
| separately. It's interesting because this "original" keypad
| has different placement or operator keys than the Plus
| keyboard.
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