The idea of getting Mr Macintosh instead of a menu occasionally would be UX nightmare. But there could be other cute places to include it, like occasionally it's present inside About My Mac or whatever.
Strictly speaking, it was a two-story building behind the Texaco station:
> There was a Texaco gas station at the corner, and a two-story, small, brown, wood paneled office building behind it, the kind that might house some accountants or insurance agents. Apple rented the top floor, which had four little suites split by a corridor, two on a side. Because of the proximity of the gas station and the perch on the second story, as well as the sonic overlap between "Taco" and "Texaco", the building quickly became known as "Texaco Towers".
I also enjoyed the reference to Cicero's Pizza:
> Burell and I [Andy] liked to have lunch at Cicero's Pizza, which was an old Cupertino restaurant that was just across the street. They had a Defender video game, which we'd play while waiting for our order. We'd also go to Cicero's around 4pm almost every day for another round of Defender playing; Burrell was getting so good he would play for the entire time on a single quarter (see Make a Mess, Clean it Up!).
Now I get to admit my age. When I worked at Tymshare in the 1970s, we often went there when it was still named Coppola's Pizza.
It had previously been part of the Pee Wee's Pizza chain founded by Albert "Pee Wee" Proietti and Nunzio "Spike" Spacone. The Cupertino location was sold to Carmen and Palma Coppola, who named it Coppola's. They in turn sold it to their mother and father-in-law, Angelina and Nunzio Cicero. (Yes, another Nunzio.)
Nunzio Cicero kept the Coppola's name out of respect to Angelina's family name, and only after she passed in 1973 he named it after himself.
Cicero's Pizza moved a couple of times after that and is still in business on Bollinger Road in Cupertino.
One fun thing about Coppola's/Cicero's is that they brought out the sliced pizza on a big round tray, but did not give out individual plates. Instead, you put a few napkins on the table and that was your plate!
As you can imagine, the tables got a fine layer of pizza grease over time.
Another Cupertino landmark around the corner from Coppola's/Cicero's was the R. Cali Brothers Mill on Stevens Creek. This was a huge animal feed mill and drive-through store. The front entrance sign said: “R. Cali & Bro. — Cupertino Feed Store, Ranch Spray Service, General Truck Hauling, Wood • Coal, Hay • Grain.”
You could drive your truck through to load it up with farm supplies, or take your car through as I did to get dog food.
I wouldn't have liked this. I don't want any part of my computer to be eerie or mysterious. I also don't want there to be anything romantic or mysterious about my bank account.
If this had been deployed and its existence has been widely publicized and described right after its deployment (which seems likely to me even if Apple tried to suppress it) the only deleterious effect on me would have been my wasting a little time learning about it. If I got glimpses of Mr Macintosh before news about its presence had reached me, the effect on me would have probably been much worse.
I'm a huge fan of the Mac in general and of the research and development which led to it at Doug Engelbart's lab at the Stanford Research Institute, then at Xerox PARC, then at Apple.
This was definitely the "no arrow keys because we have a mouse" era of Apple. Everything we take for granted today was still in flux, and I can certainly imagine that even by the Macintosh 512k, just enough dust had settled that Jobs had reconsidered the idea of intentionally non-deterministic OS behavior.
Sorry for my nonsense...I always get excited when I saw a post about a classic/PowerPC Macintosh (I don't like the colorful ones, though).
I have never owned, used, or seen other people used one in real life. I have only seen them in YouTube videos and in articles such as this one. I don't know why I'm so excited about these cuboid machines.
I need to grab an emulator and install some toolchain to work on it.
Thanks, I used it a few times but not sure how good it persists data -- I guess it's fine since it gives users some extra space. This is a good option for exploration.
I bring this story up all the time. It's tragic that it was never implemented! I know you could read it as a story about CEO capriciousness, but to me it highlights how far Steve was willing to go to make the Mac playful and enjoyable. Back then, even the idea of dragging a file into a little trashcan was delightful.
The idea of getting Mr Macintosh instead of a menu occasionally would be UX nightmare. But there could be other cute places to include it, like occasionally it's present inside About My Mac or whatever.
Also interesting about this story is that maybe this is how Susan Kare started working on the Mac?
> I also asked my high school friend Susan Kare, who hadn't started with Apple yet, to try to draw some Mr. Macintosh animations.
(For those who haven't yet seen it, here's a video of Susan Kare introducing contemporaraneous influencers to the Mac. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmWOtf4Ziso )
Sort of like a reverse Clippy, which you do find easily and wish you wouldn't.
Generally speaking, programs used to have more Easter eggs. I can't recall a single one in the cloud era. The only one remotely whimsical is PostHog.
"I can't recall a single one in the cloud era ..."
Our PCI compliance page is an easter egg:
https://www.rsync.net/resources/regulatory/pci.html
Fail Whale and other 404 messages were decent examples.
The artist, Folon, also made this gorgeous close-down animation for French TV channel Antenne 2: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzy9GGbcvSI&pp=0gcJCRsBo7VqN5t...
Wikipedia bio: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Michel_Folon
And here is Mr. Macintosh, himself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Michel_Folon#/media/File:...
Texaco Towers was an Apple office above a Texaco gas station: https://www.folklore.org/Texaco_Towers.html
Strictly speaking, it was a two-story building behind the Texaco station:
> There was a Texaco gas station at the corner, and a two-story, small, brown, wood paneled office building behind it, the kind that might house some accountants or insurance agents. Apple rented the top floor, which had four little suites split by a corridor, two on a side. Because of the proximity of the gas station and the perch on the second story, as well as the sonic overlap between "Taco" and "Texaco", the building quickly became known as "Texaco Towers".
I also enjoyed the reference to Cicero's Pizza:
> Burell and I [Andy] liked to have lunch at Cicero's Pizza, which was an old Cupertino restaurant that was just across the street. They had a Defender video game, which we'd play while waiting for our order. We'd also go to Cicero's around 4pm almost every day for another round of Defender playing; Burrell was getting so good he would play for the entire time on a single quarter (see Make a Mess, Clean it Up!).
Now I get to admit my age. When I worked at Tymshare in the 1970s, we often went there when it was still named Coppola's Pizza.
It had previously been part of the Pee Wee's Pizza chain founded by Albert "Pee Wee" Proietti and Nunzio "Spike" Spacone. The Cupertino location was sold to Carmen and Palma Coppola, who named it Coppola's. They in turn sold it to their mother and father-in-law, Angelina and Nunzio Cicero. (Yes, another Nunzio.)
Nunzio Cicero kept the Coppola's name out of respect to Angelina's family name, and only after she passed in 1973 he named it after himself.
Cicero's Pizza moved a couple of times after that and is still in business on Bollinger Road in Cupertino.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SanJoseHistory/posts/3134634...
One fun thing about Coppola's/Cicero's is that they brought out the sliced pizza on a big round tray, but did not give out individual plates. Instead, you put a few napkins on the table and that was your plate!
As you can imagine, the tables got a fine layer of pizza grease over time.
Another Cupertino landmark around the corner from Coppola's/Cicero's was the R. Cali Brothers Mill on Stevens Creek. This was a huge animal feed mill and drive-through store. The front entrance sign said: “R. Cali & Bro. — Cupertino Feed Store, Ranch Spray Service, General Truck Hauling, Wood • Coal, Hay • Grain.”
You could drive your truck through to load it up with farm supplies, or take your car through as I did to get dog food.
I remember reading this years ago and hoped a retro programmer would create a rom patch to implement this functionality. Maybe someday.
Toasty! -- Dan Forden
I think Mr. Macintosh should have vaguely resembled Jef Raskin...
I wouldn't have liked this. I don't want any part of my computer to be eerie or mysterious. I also don't want there to be anything romantic or mysterious about my bank account.
If this had been deployed and its existence has been widely publicized and described right after its deployment (which seems likely to me even if Apple tried to suppress it) the only deleterious effect on me would have been my wasting a little time learning about it. If I got glimpses of Mr Macintosh before news about its presence had reached me, the effect on me would have probably been much worse.
I'm a huge fan of the Mac in general and of the research and development which led to it at Doug Engelbart's lab at the Stanford Research Institute, then at Xerox PARC, then at Apple.
definitely seems like some people would have perceived it as a virus having infected their computer, although 1984 was pretty early for virii
This was definitely the "no arrow keys because we have a mouse" era of Apple. Everything we take for granted today was still in flux, and I can certainly imagine that even by the Macintosh 512k, just enough dust had settled that Jobs had reconsidered the idea of intentionally non-deterministic OS behavior.
If you wanted safe and predictable you could buy an IBM PC. Apple was trying to be something different.
Sorry for my nonsense...I always get excited when I saw a post about a classic/PowerPC Macintosh (I don't like the colorful ones, though).
I have never owned, used, or seen other people used one in real life. I have only seen them in YouTube videos and in articles such as this one. I don't know why I'm so excited about these cuboid machines.
I need to grab an emulator and install some toolchain to work on it.
Just visit Infinite Mac and use them in your browser:
https://infinitemac.org/
Thanks, I used it a few times but not sure how good it persists data -- I guess it's fine since it gives users some extra space. This is a good option for exploration.
I bring this story up all the time. It's tragic that it was never implemented! I know you could read it as a story about CEO capriciousness, but to me it highlights how far Steve was willing to go to make the Mac playful and enjoyable. Back then, even the idea of dragging a file into a little trashcan was delightful.
they could’ve implemented it in the 128k rom but I think jobs was gone by then