Special

Special(daringfireball.net)

52 points by raganesh 12 years ago

enneff 12 years ago |

> The second aspect of the original Mac that stands out today as Apple-like is putting just enough whimsy into the experience. Most famously, the smiling Mac you saw as the system booted. Had anyone prior even considered a smiling computer?

Come on, man. Computing has been full of whimsy from the beginning. To imply that Apple has some kind of monopoly on cute jokes is absurd.

mikeash 12 years ago | |

The typical Apple fan's deep knowledge of Apple history tends to be accompanied by a generally superficial knowledge of the rest of the industry.

fostermatt 12 years ago | |

Give an example. I remember going in to my mom's dorm room and playing on her Mac when she was at USC in the early 90s. It was like nothing I'd used before.

Enlighten me to this whimsy you speak of.

eps 12 years ago |

  Ah. Oh. Apple. 
  Oh. Oh. Ah.
  Love you, sweetheart.

  Forever yours,
  John

  PS. Still crazy for your elegant beige on the outside. Wow, just wow!

melloclello 12 years ago | |

  Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow

amagumori 12 years ago |

someone should write a markov chain daringfireball bot. just need a whole bunch of positive adjectives and a list of apple products.

evadne 12 years ago | |

http://trollemipsum.appspot.com/?type=gruber&length=screed

cubicle67 12 years ago | | |

cool! Love the Blackberry user generated text (try it)

grumblestumble 12 years ago |

oh, good grief. has this guy really been getting away with this for what, well over a decade now?

GuiA 12 years ago |

The Xerox Star did that before Apple. Interestingly enough, it had hardware keys for it [0] - no mnemonics required.

Raskin (Macintosh team) ended up really liking dedicated keys (cf. the Canon Cat and his book) after all.

I would have agreed a few months ago; but as someone who is slowly forcing himself to become a touch typist because I was getting irritated at how much my hands moved over the keyboard when there was no need for them to, I prefer chording keystrokes :)

[0]: http://www.digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/keyboard/keyboar...

acqq 12 years ago | |

> The Xerox Star did that before Apple. .. it had hardware keys for it

So Xerox did not do that what Mac did (Command-X keys).

Edit: Answer to your " xerox with dedicated keys ... was the first to have to solve that problem though" in the reply to this post:

Xerox was not the first to have the dedicated keys for common operations:

e.g. cca 1965:

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/big/17234/IBM-1052-Printe...

Whereas Xerox PARC was founded in 1970:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)

And we should rewatch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

Done in 1968, I wouldn't be surprised there's more to find! Engelbart was the real pioneer for different concepts "natural" to us today.

GuiA 12 years ago | | |

They solved the same problem (associating menu items with keyboard actions) in 2 different ways - xerox with dedicated keys, Apple with keyboard shortcuts. Xerox was the first to have to solve that problem though.

pbreit 12 years ago |

Why are HNers so dismissive of sharp, good writers like Gruber and very well thought out designs like the ones covered in this article?

melloclello 12 years ago | |

Because Gruber is a shameless Apple sycophant

mikeash 12 years ago | |

I would not call Gruber particularly sharp or good. He's not bad by any means, but his writing is subject to a massive pro-Apple bias and his writing tends to be high on emotion and low on information.

I read Daring Fireball because it often has interesting links, but I wish I could easily filter out the non-link bits like this one, because I just don't learn anything from them, and they sometimes (not in this case, but in others) angry up the blood.

fostermatt 12 years ago | | |

The whole purpose of this article was Gruber sharing his experience with his audience. All you were supposed to "learn" was how Apple changed the way he looked at computing.