Dave’s Personal Blog

Andy was one of the main authors of the system software of the original Macintosh, including the User Interface Toolbox. After three years at Apple, Anmdy went on to co-found Radius, General Magic, and Eazel.

This book was different than any I’ve read before. It was different than any other history of Apple, Mac or other technical thing (e.g “Soul of a New Machine”, “Fire in the Valley”, “The Journey is the Reward”, etc.). One of the biggest differences was how it was organized: as a series of short (2-3 pages) stories or anecdotes. This made the book highly entertaining, enjoyable, and easy to read.

There were loads of photos, including a chronological photo tour of the evolution of the Lisa’s windowing system. Lots of pics of the mac team, prototype boards, screen shots, even an appearance by Bill Gates. One really cool thing was various scans of Andy’s notes. In all it was an incredible look into what went on in those magical few years.

I have been a fan of Apple since about 1980 when I learned basic on an Apple ][. I fell in love with Macintosh when the earliest information on it was made public. After being introduced to Smalltalk by the Aug ‘81 issue of Byte.. here was a computer that made it all real. I had a couple Macs over the years, and used an early model Newton for several years at one point. I’ve finally (Feb 14, 2005) “switched”.. making a well loaded iBook my core machine. Even so, this book is loaded with details that I hadn’t read before.

It’s interesting to think about.. I’m writing a review of a book about the original Mac… 21 years after the Mac’s introduction, on one of it’s recent descendants… one with several orders of magnitude more power (10240 times as much memory, for example). Woz was right, though… the original Mac changed how people view/use computers.

If you are a Mac fan, or a computer history junkie (I’m both BTW) then get this book. It’s full of trivia, and it’s a fun read. Well done, Andy.

Dropped into Border’s on the way back to the hotel tonight (on site somewhere near Detroit) and cruised the Mac section. Lots of books on the previous versions of things.. and Panther.. I already have a good Panther book (O’Reilly’s “OS X Missing Manual, Panther Edition.. if you run Panther you should have it)… and Tiger is out soon.

I did find something interesting, though. “Revolution in the Valley”… Andy Hertzfeld’s story of the creation of the macintosh. I read a very favourable review in one of the Mac mags I pick up occasionally, so I grabbed it… I’m just through the intro, but it looks great. It will be interesting to compare it with other tellings of that tale (Steven Levy’s “Insanely Great”, and Steve Jobs’ biography “The Journey is the Reward”). I’ll write a review when I’m finished with it.

The iBook is turning out to be a nice gaming system.. I’ve begun playing WarCraft III on it this week. Very nice. Now if more game companies would put their games on Mac! Like Dawn of War or Battle for Middle Earth!!!

Sure.. I know the arguments about market share & all. Hopefully the MacMini will boost Apple’s marketshare to the point where it becomes a significant player in the gaming market.

On a related note.. DOOM 3 for Mac will be available in stores shortly.. but with massive hardware requirements.

Well, I keep getting deeper and deeper into that which is Macintosh. My latest discovers (thanks to Steve) is a blogging app called MarsEdit.. by the same folks that wrote NetNewsWire. I use NNW for blog reading… and I think I’ll be using MarsEdit for posting from now on as well.

This is mostly for people who know me but might be behind on what’s been going on.

To start with, my marriage (of 14 years) finally fell apart in summer 2003, in the midst of my sojourn working in Northern Virginia.

Fast forward to March 2004. I decide to leave Adaption Software (which I started with Pat Welsh) and join ThoughtWorks. I finished with Adaption in early July, and started at ThoughtWorks in late July.

July was an interesting month, I bought a house in semi-rural Nova Scotia (about 15 minutes down the highway from where I was before), bought a nice, new Nissan Pathfinder, and met & fell in love with a fabulous woman (Nancy Blenkhorn. Nancy is simply amazing. Anyone else have a girlfriend with her own server farm? Or who can set up their wifi for them? And of course, she’s beautiful, sexy, and fun too.

The house took a while to get furnished and “homey”, but it’s comfortable now, and very cozy.

Fast forward to the present. DiamlerChrysler made it worth my while to leave ThoughtWorks to stay when our involvement ended. So I’m contracting relatively drectly to DiamlerChrysler now, onsite in Detroit every other week. Part of the deal was being able to work from home part of the time.

So I’ve set up shop at home, and replaced my ThoughtWorks issued WinDoze laptop with a shiney white 14″ iBook G4, as per my last posting.