Filed under: Apple History

Last month, Gizmodo posted an incredible image from NASA: The most accurate, highest-resolution photo of Earth taken to date. It's stunning, in all of its 2048 x 2048 pixel glory. In fact, there are two images: One showing the Americas and one showing Europe. Both make a great desktop image.

They're also oddly familiar, and now Gizmodo confirms what many suspected: It's the same Earth image that's welcomed new users to the iPhone since its launch in 2007.

NASA noted that the image has been public since 2002, and is the results of many months of work. "Using a collection of satellite-based observations," NASA shares on their Flickr page, "scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet."

The image recently started generating a lot of traffic on the web as Apple fanboys realized the connection. Now, the next time you see that image on your iPhone, say thank you to the hard-working NASA employees who put it together.

Conan O'Brien once had a recurring segment on Late Night called "Guests We Won't Have Back," during which he would look back at guests (who were fake) that he regretted having on the show. There was bug expert Sara Wiggins, who ate a live beetle in front of the camera. And there was wine expert Charles Nance who, during his on-air wine tasting session, drank himself into a drunken stupor.

Despite its fairly strong record over the last decade, Apple has not been without its lapses and major changes. And, in the spirit of Conan O'Brien's "Guests We'll Never Have Back," let's take a look at "Some Things We'll Never Have Back" on the Apple front.

When it comes to famous names in the Apple pantheon, Bill Atkinson ranks very high in the list. The brains behind MacPaint, HyperCard, the Mac OS menu bar, and a host of other innovative software applications has been a professional nature photographer since 1996, but now he's melded his development mojo with photography and released his very first iPhone app, Bill Atkinson PhotoCard for iPhone.

At first glance, the US$4.99 app looks like yet another postcard app for the iPhone. But when you actually start looking at the details of PhotoCard, you realize that it's much, much more. To start with, the app comes with 150 of Atkinson's fabulous nature photographs that can be used in the creation of postcards. That takes care of the front of the postcard, but what about the back?

Like many of the apps of this genre, PhotoCard has a space for typing in a message to the recipient. It ups the ante with 150 stamps to add to your card (more on these later). There are also 325 little stickers that can be added to the back of your card. Once the card is ready to send, you have your choice of either sending it to the recipient via email or having the card printed on an HP Indigo digital press and then sent through snail mail.

Steve Jobs is trashing Google internally according to rumors, but Google is having none of it. Company reps told the press at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week that Google considers Apple "a very close and valuable partner," and that they believe that the relationship between the two companies "is stable."

Of course, they were responding to rumors that Microsoft's Bing search engine would replace Google on the iPhone, and common sense will tell you that it'll be a cold day somewhere very warm before Apple chooses to partner with Microsoft over Google. If push came to shove, Steve would probably create his own search engine before partnering up with anyone in Redmond.

But maybe the Google folks are also playing politics a little here -- Steve is not an unreasonable man, and he is known for being direct, especially in personal communication. Jobs can complain all he want in an internal meeting, but in public, it's probably best that Google takes the high road. Apple and Google may eventually have to show down over cell phones, but until they absolutely have to, it's probably better if they both play as nice as possible.

[via Ars]

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.

Earlier this month we took you down memory lane for a 1987 video that Apple produced about a futuristic product called the Knowledge Navigator.

It was a super smart, full featured tablet with internet connectivity, video conferencing, datebook and browser. It also contained a nifty personable digital assistant.

Ten years later, Apple was still selling the idea of an enhanced tablet. One of our readers sent us this YouTube video of a concept that Apple sent around to educators. It had a lot of the same great technology, like video conferencing and browsing, but the video shows a variety of form factors, including a desktop unit, a tablet, and a small hand held device.

It's pretty clear Apple has done a lot of thinking about what a tablet should do. Who knows if any of these concepts will get into tomorrow's announcement, but the technology is pretty much here to make the dreams into some kind of software/hardware reality.

Will an Apple tablet change the world? Stay tuned.

Thanks to Fred for the Apple nostalgia!

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.

Despite all odds, the Mac has survived to its 26th birthday.

On January 24th, 1984, Steve Jobs pulled a 128K Mac out of its case in front of a crowd of reporters, turned it on, and let the computer introduce itself to the world. The rest, as they say, is history.

We've seen our favorite computer go from an awkward infancy, to almost dying in its teens, and now being a profitable prodigy in adulthood.

It has spawned a popular family of siblings, from the iPod series of media players to the iPhone. Somehow, it's fitting that we may see the birth of the newest member of the family later this week.

Watching the "Story of Macintosh" video in the past few weeks has introduced the young minds behind the first Mac to most of the current generation. For those of us who are a bit older, the video served as a reminder of the brash individuals who created a computer that still speaks to those who "Think Different."

Here's hoping that the Mac and all of its family may live a long and fruitful life.

It's hard to believe that Apple's "Get a Mac" ad campaign is already 4 years old. Since its introduction, the campaign has invited both parody and serious responses from competitors. Plus, poor* John Hodgman and Justin Long can't walk out the door without someone calling them either "Mac" or "PC."

Some have been better than others (the Christmas ads are always a highlight), and Apple keeps several of each year's ads on their site. If you'd like to browse the full history of these ads, check out this page assembled by the folks at AdFreak. They've gathered every TV spot and sorted them chronologically. In case you were wondering, there have been 66 in total. The most ads aired in 2006 (19) and the fewest in 2009 (14).

Enjoy the archive and have fun re-watching your favorites.

*My sympathy is short lived, however. Consider their paychecks.

Denver-area Mac consultant Mike Kimble is no stranger to Apple; he worked at an Apple reseller prior to the introduction of the Mac in 1984, and he's been involved with Macs and other Apple products ever since. Mike recently found several old Apple tapes that were sent to his business back around the Mac intro, and his description of one of them says it all:

"I found this VHS cassette while cleaning my office this week. This "Found Footage" comes from a video tape I received from Apple back in 1984 when the original 128K Mac was introduced. It was part of the authorized dealer training videos given to each store to help them become familiar with the Macintosh. You will see a very young Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, Phil Gibbons, Mitch Kapor, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. You really get a good feel for how proud and excited these people were for the creation of something special. Little did they know how much they were about to change the world..."

My personal favorite scene is the one where Bill Gates is sitting with a 128K Mac on his desk. The video is divided into two parts; the second can be viewed by clicking the "read more" link below. Enjoy this trip down memory lane!

The face of Steve Jobs is almost as much of an icon as the Apple logo.

Over the years, his photo has appeared on numerous magazine covers. From the 1982 Time cover painting with a "pr0n star" moustache, through the early dalliance with a suit and tie, and to the November, 2009 Fortune magazine CEO of the Decade cover, Jobs has worked his now-grizzled mug onto more magazines than probably any other CEO in history.

Kuo Design's PineApple blog has a collection of many of the Steve Jobs covers on "The Steve Jobs on Magazine Covers page." It's fun to see the changes in Steve over the years, as well as magazines that have since become history. And you can help them put it all together: If you have any old magazines with Steve Jobs on the cover, it appears that Kuo Design is taking contributions to their online repository of Jobsian goodness.

Engadget's Josh Topolsky got to chat with none other than Woz recently, and they've finally shared a great video of their meeting. Woz says a lot of interesting things in the video (he runs six navigation systems at a time in his car just for comparison's sake, and carries two iPhones nowadays, just in case the battery life runs out), but the most intriguing thing about this video is just seeing the great Wozniak thinking machine race along at the speed of Woz.

For example, those two iPhones he carries are the two different colors available. Why? "White and black, black and white. Resistor color codes: zero and nine. Those are the digits they end in!" Gosh, we love Steve Wozniak. You can watch the whole video after clicking the link below.

As we mentioned a few days ago, CNBC will air Welcome to Macintosh tonight at 9:30Pm Eastern/6:30 Pacific time. Welcome to Macintosh is an indie documentary that provides an intimate look at Apple's history. It's been shown at different times and places over the past year, and you can also buy it from iTunes [link], but now you can watch the documentary for free.

Then tomorrow night, Tuesday January 5 at 10PM, CNBC will be airing another Mac documentary, MacHEADS, a film that explores the fanaticism and loyalty of Apple users.

Finally, don't forget to set your DVRs for CNBC's third Mac feature, Planet of the Apps, airing on January 7th at 10PM ET/PT, the only CNBC original of the three where they take a look into the "app-economy."

Is it just me, or does January 2010 seem to be Apple's month?

If you missed Macworld Expo 2009 in San Francisco last January, then you probably missed the premiere showing of Welcome to Macintosh, an indie documentary that provides an intimate look at Apple's history. It's been shown at different times and places over the past year, and you can also buy it from iTunes, but now you can watch the documentary for free.

On Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 9:30 PM ET, CNBC is broadcasting the documentary for the first time on a major network. Welcome to Macintosh features interviews with many of the early forces in Apple history, including Andy Hertzfeld, Guy Kawasaki, and Ron Wayne (often referred to as the "third founder" of Apple and the person who designed the original Apple logo).

CNBC seems to be vying for the title of "The Apple Channel," as we reported yesterday that they're airing a special about the app revolution titled "Planet of the Apps: A Handheld Revolution" on January 7th.

[via Macworld]

With our zippy Intel Macs able to eagerly boot up Windows 7 in Boot Camp, VMWare, Parallels, and VirtualBox, it's difficult to fathom that it was ever a problem to run Microsoft operating systems on our Apple boxes.

The situation wasn't that good just a scant 15 or so years ago. Back in the bleak days before the triumphant return of Steve Jobs to 1 Infinite Loop, Apple had a broad and confusing product line. Since DOS and Windows 3.1 were already entrenched in business worldwide, Apple knew that they had to have a way for Macs to run Microsoft operating systems in order to gain any sort of traction in the corporate world.

Edible Apple ran a wonderful retrospective yesterday that looked at Apple's DOS Compatibility Cards. These were basically PCs on a NuBus or PCI cards that were inserted into a slot in the Mac, using the Mac's power supply, floppy and hard drives, and keyboard and mouse. Sporting such amazing CPUs as the Intel 486SX running at a whopping 25 MHz clock speed, the original cards worked with the Centris 610 and Quadra 610 and were released in 1994. By the next year a second edition was released with an Intel 486DX/66, and was targeted at the PowerMac 6100 and Performa 6100.

Further research shows that there were several subsequent cards that included even faster Pentium and Cyrix 6x86 processors, were called "PC Compatibility Cards," and were designed for use in other PowerMac models. I can recall acquiring one of the Pentium-based cards and using it to try to entice our one DOS holdout department to move to Macs (they didn't).

Today's Windows compatibility is the best it has ever been on the Mac platform, and usually the only "hardware upgrade" required is to add some inexpensive RAM to the host Mac. Things might sometimes change slowly, but at least in the world of technology, the change is usually for the best.