Mac Folklore Radio

By DerekTechnology

Mac Folklore Radio episodes

September 27 The Macintosh Numbers Nobody Knows (1996)
Original text by David Pogue, Macworld July 1996.
Macworld Boston 1997: “Who is the largest education company in the world?” … [dead silence]
Macworld Boston 2004: “Where are the market share numbers coming from? .. 3% market share–the first time Phil Schiller heard [that, it] came from Dell!”
WWDC 2004: “Redmond, start your photocopiers!” banners.
15 min
September 07 What Steve Jobs Thinks of Your Industry (1996)
Original text by Steve Hayman.
Steve Jobs demos WebObjects at Microsoft PDC 1996.
Xserve (with free WebObjects server license) introduction from WWDC 2002.
WebObjects FedEx and Chrysler demo clips from OpenStep Day 1995, parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Avie Tevanian and Jon Rubinstein on Jobs’ discomfort re: talking to enterprise customers.
WebObjects retrofit for the IBM Eclipse IDE: WOLips.
Did you know there’s a WorldWide WebObjects Developers Conference (WOWODC), and that iMessage still uses WebObjects as part of its foundation?
9 min
August 16The Quix Fix (1995)
Original text by Charles Piller, Macworld October 1995.
A lot more about Quix Daydream, the Macintosh environment for NeXT hardware:
YouTube: booting into Daydream

YouTube: a more detailed look at Daydream

a brief NeXTWORLD product review of Daydream

NeXT FAQ section 5.21: “I want to emulate a Macintosh. How?”

kevra.org’s Daydream box shot

John Rubinstein: “There was a kid in Switzerland who … figured out how to build a layer on top of CHRP that would allow you to run Mac OS.”
IBM officially cancelled plans to ship Mac OS on any hardware, and in particular on IBM-branded machines weeks before this story ran.
Jon Rubinstein explains FirePower’s accidental connection with Apple’s turnaround. Also, the stagnating PowerPC G4 is superfast, no, really: The Megahertz Myth. Jon retired in 2006 along with Avie Tevanian, and Apple has never really been the same since. Palm/HP coaxed Jon out of retirement in 2007 to work on the Palm Pre/Plus, putting him in direct competition with the iPhone. “I’m definitely off [Steve’s] Christmas card list,” he said in 2010.
I don’t know about you but I find these Mac OS clone bureaucracy articles really boring and depressing. This is the last one!
23 min
July 21 The Forgotten Mac OS Licensee (1991)
Original text by Dan Littman, Tom Moran, and Charles Piller.
Apologies for my rough voice in this one. It’s been a difficult year.
“Apple and IBM will work together on architecture-independent multimedia products and license them to other vendors.” IBM never so much as bothered to license QuickTime, and allegedly stopped distributing its multimedia tools to discourage people from using AIX for multimedia delivery.
The stupefyingly vague and dull Apple/IBM/Motorola alliance press conference. Warning: do not consume while driving or operating heavy machinery.
Get to know your new IBM RS/6000 system!
David Barnes talking about Taligent and Workplace/OS, because why not transplant your current computing environment on top of an environment that runs all environments that will be shipping Real Soon Now for … reasons?
WWDC 1997 Q&A: What’s holding back CHRP? Is Apple afraid of (gasp) being undercut by Macintosh clone makers?
clabretro: RS/6000 startup sequence and 1990s GeoCities animé fan page font in the System Management Services console. Installing and running CorelDraw, Netscape 1.0, and Quake on an RS/6000.
Remnants of CHRP in the AIX netinstall configuration assistant.
Running Windows NT on a G3? More likely than you think.
Cameron Kaiser’s extremely detailed look at Netware Server on a Power Mac 6100. How about that artwork?
That weird point in time where the highest performance AppleShare solution was a giant Apple box running AIX.
Get a load of the chonky Motorola PowerStack systems.
21 min
June 23 Guy Kawasaki - Who Should Apple's Next CEO Be? (1994)
Original text by Guy Kawasaki, Macworld, November 1994. Who should be the next CEO of Apple? Acquire NeXT and let it be Steve Jobs, obviously. This was intended as satire but became a case of “truth is stranger than fiction” when it actually happened two years later!
Gary Davidian on Michael Spindler’s product visionary status.
Steve Jobs: “Tim [Cook] is not a product person per se” at 2m22s.
Both Canon and Ross Perot were major investors in NeXT.
8 min
May 21Bill Atkinson (1951-2025)
Original text from The Complete HyperCard Handbook (Expanded 2nd Edition with HyperCard 1.2 supplement!!!)
Open HyperCard Stacks with just 512K RAM via HyperDA.
If copying HyperCard was such an obvious idea, where did all the AmigaVision productions go? What happened to all the Asymmetrix Toolbook-ware?
David Greelish “Before Macintosh” interviews with Bill Atkinson: Parts 1, 2, 3
Make beautiful Atkinson-dithered images with HyperDither, GraphicConverter (Effects => Dithering => Atkinson) or in your browser with DitherIt! More than you could ever possibly want to read about dithering and an undergrad lecture on Floyd-Steinberg dithering.
Bill Atkinson’s Rolodex, a.k.a. Casady & Greene QuickDEX (v1.4, II).
Bill Atkinson’s 10 Rules for Making Interfaces More Human
Quotes from:
Bill Atkinson Presents HyperCard at the Apple Corps of Dallas (1987)

Legacy of HyperCard Event (2017)

HyperCard Training Solutions (1987)

Bill Atkinson on PhotoCard and HyperCard at the Eyeo Conference (2013)

Bill and Andy Hertzfeld demonstrating oldmac stuff at the Computer History Museum (2010)

David Pogue hosts “The Macintosh at 20” (2004)

Triangulation Interview with Bill Atkinson, 2016 (part 1, 2)

Triangulation Interview with Atkinson, 2018 (part 1, 2)

CHM - Bill Atkinson on how Apple obviously doesn’t do user testing anymore (2022)

CHM - The Macintosh at 40

Churchill Club - Steve Jobs’ Legacy (2011)

Asymmetrix Toolbook Demo - Computer Chronicles on Windows 3.0 (1990)

Hackers: Wizards of the Electronic Age - “People don’t read encyclopedias cover to cover. It just doesn’t happen! But …”

Designing Interactions interviews: Bill Atkinson

Unused 1984 Macintosh commercials: “I think of myself as a cross between an artist and an inventor”
R.I.P. uliwitness, a.k.a. Uli Kusterer, longtime Macintosh programmer and HyperCard enthusiast. We will miss you too.
Fun fact: I recognized Uli’s name when it popped up in the podcast Discord. Back in the late 1990s a friend and I used “Uli’s Panes” as the playlist interface for a classic MacOS MOD player. Remember Uli, HyperCard and Bill with:
Myst Reverse Engineering

Write Your Own XCMD with CodeWarrior

Other HyperCard streams

hypercard.org

Stacksmith

Classic MacOS programming streams

“Why programming sucks and how to make it better” (SwiftConf 2015) with references to what made HyperCard a uniquely intuitive development environment. Get a load of Uli’s HyperCard stack icon shirt!

Partial HyperCard stack file format documentation
Uli’s Moose, an updated version of The Talking Moose for classic MacOS. Uli told me he tried to submit a new version of Mac OS X to the App Store but it was rejected several times and he eventually gave up. Thanks, Apple!
45 min
March 20 MFR Housekeeping, Spring 2026
Order David Pogue’s “Apple: The First 50 Years”.
Watch the livestreamed Apple 50th event at the Computer History Museum.
3 min
January 14 KON and BAL's Puzzle Page II (1992, 1993)
Original text by Konstantin Othmer and Bruce Leak for Apple’s develop! magazine, December 1992, March 1993, and June 1993.
Apple’s MicroBug documentation: Technote TN1136.
Running MacsBug on an alternate monitor: “Using Touch and Go Breakpoints with Two Monitors”.
Spaceward Ho! for iPad and Classic MacOS. Original product website (broken).
Watch a Let’s Play of Spaceward Ho! by Effing Controller who also has hilarious playthroughs of F/A-18 Hornet and Marathon.
See also: Debugging Macintosh Software with Macsbug by Konstantin Othmer and Jim Straus.
20 min
December 15, 2025 Frank Casanova Interview - Maclopedia (1996)
Original text from Maclopedia.
While I wasn’t looking, Frank Casanova parted ways with Apple in 2024. Whoops.
John Buck’s book on Apple’s Advanced Technology Group, Inventing the Future, is worth your while. John is also on the fediverse. Stick around and you might pick up some extra dirt.
Unedited versions of the Macintosh Quadra 700/900 launch, the Macintosh IIfx launch, and the WWDC 2004 announcement of QuickTime 7’s support for H.264.
16 min
December 08, 2025 Steve Hayman - Great Idea (2025)
Original text by Steve Hayman.
NeXT Mail clips from the NeXT launch event in Tokyo and the NeXTSTEP Release 3.0 demo VHS tape.
7 min