Apple Designs a New Kind of Machine

No, this isn’t another apple-fan boy post waiting for the big announcement on June 9th.

It’s about the Apple Lisa.

I saw this article on Hacker News this morning. It was one of the first reviews of the Apple Lisa from February 1983. This machine at the time cost $9,995 and had 1 meg of RAM and the 68k processor ran at a whopping 5MHZ. There was so much excitement and so much unknown about the future.

Developers and community support was built into the notion of personal computing:

Apple is very conscious of the fact that the success of the Lisa will be heavily influenced by the availability of good 3rd party software. To encourage such software, the company will make available a “programmer’s toolkit"  package of software and documentation sometime this year.

The idea of the desktop metaphor was a breakthrough in those days as a way to make computers less threatening and more familiar to end users.

The “desktop” metaphor: When you turn on the Lisa system, the screen is empty except for the presence of several icons. The Lisa computer depends on the metaphor that the video display is a desktop, while the icons are objects on the desktop.

It’s incredible that we still have that very same metaphor for the OS in our computers today. It’s obvious that it’s time to move on and the next generation browser will take over that function.

And I loved this quote the best:

You’ve got to be able to talk to other computers- other computers like your and some big corporate cmputer that’s halfway across the country. Sure that’s its a lot of stuff, but when you get all that together, then  you’ll see computers really take off

Fantastic article about an important machine at a special moment in time.


http://bijan.tumblr.com/post/36440864/audio_player_iframe/bijan/HFhFVYNbr9jlmjm6K8Bi6lKt?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tumblr.com%2Faudio_file%2Fbijan%2F36440864%2FHFhFVYNbr9jlmjm6K8Bi6lKt

reblogged via rickyv:

Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins- Rise Up With Fists. Anna recently got me into this song.

A few fun facts about Jenny Lewis: She’s a friend of Rjyan’s, the female vocalist for The Postal Service, and played the female lead in The Wizard, which I saw on my 9th birthday with my family and then proceeded to cry after.

Great song. Thanks Ricky.

During our visit we spoke freely, having a very intimate understanding of the developments in each others lives and careers. We talked about our companies, new deals we’re each working on, the woes of being the sole Mac users in our given offices and generally enjoying catching up with each other. The kicker: I hadn’t actually seen Bijan in nearly 9 months. So how did we each know so much about what the other had been up to? We follow each other on Twitter and Tumblr.

Bryce Roberts reblog of my post about my top 5 favorite company workspaces

I felt the exact same way. 

staff:

We’re testing something!  If you leave your Tumblr Dashboard open, it will now notify you when something new has been posted by someone you’re following.  Please let us know what you think!

Another new feature from Tumblr. I love this one. The notification happens in the Dashboard and also the browser tab as well.


http://bijan.tumblr.com/post/36333325/audio_player_iframe/bijan/m9xs08q3H9jjrjko1qPlQ8zg?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tumblr.com%2Faudio_file%2Fbijan%2F36333325%2Fm9xs08q3H9jjrjko1qPlQ8zg

Help, Help – Mates of State

Yes, I know, I know. My second consecutive post by Mates of State. i just can’t get this new record out of my head or out of my playlist. Thanks for your comments about seeing this band live. Clearly I need to do that.


http://bijan.tumblr.com/post/36202665/audio_player_iframe/bijan/m9xs08q3H9i1ncq2AqevE7hd?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tumblr.com%2Faudio_file%2Fbijan%2F36202665%2Fm9xs08q3H9i1ncq2AqevE7hd

Get Better – Mates of State

This band is tearing it up on the Hype Machine right now and I’m so digging it. It’s husband/wife team. Maybe I should convince Lauren that we should hit the studio :)