The Original Macintosh: Calculator Construction Set

(folklore.org)

36 points | by fidotron 3 days ago ago

12 comments

  • jFriedensreich 44 minutes ago

    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 13 minutes ago

    There are two equals buttons?

  • leakycap 4 hours ago

    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

  • yjftsjthsd-h 9 hours ago

    ... Is that why it was so flexible in ResEdit?

  • san1927 9 hours ago

    i thought this was actually a well established fact

    • WillAdams 2 minutes ago

      The XKCD on this:

      https://xkcd.com/1053/

    • leakycap 4 hours ago

      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 2 hours ago

        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 2 hours ago

          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.

      • 2 hours ago
        [deleted]