Mac Folklore Radio

Deborah Branscum’s Conspicuous Consumer column puts Apple’s active matrix LCD defect apathy under the microscope. At 77dpi in pure black and white–no greyscale, and no RGB subpixels–you definitely noticed dead pixels!

Original text from Macworld, July 1992.

Dead pixels are nothing new today, but they presented a novel public relations problem in 1991 as active matrix LCDs began to appear in top-of-the-line mass market laptops. Apple, of course, chose to keep completely silent unless asked.

This is yet another aspect of ancient computing that goes completely unnoticed by the likes of Wikipedia and thus younger “YouTubers”. Passive matrix LCDs didn’t have this issue, but then again, they didn’t have the fast response time, high contrast, or wide viewing angles of an active matrix LCD either.

Macworld January 1993 contains a diagram showing the difference in construction between passive and active matrix LCDs.

If Apple considering dead pixels “bad” and voided pixels “acceptable” seems totally arbitrary, that’s because it probably was. It may just have been Apple’s way of quietly cutting the number of complaints it had to act on by 50%. :-) Just my two cents.

Deborah Branscum interview clips from the Digital Riptide technology journalism history project.

True story: through my dad’s job, we knew a guy who ran an Apple dealership in the early 1990s. When I was 10 years old, I was at a conference with my dad and while he and the dealer chatted, I got a chance to play with the dealer’s personal PowerBook 170 for a few minutes. I confirmed his 170’s display was completely free of dead pixels. I didn’t have the guts to ask, but I always wondered how many 170s he had to open before finding a perfect one–or did he get lucky on his first try? Barry Underwood of BMH Computer Solutions, are you still out there somewhere? :-)

Hello listeners who found me via Michael Tsai!

David Pogue reviews a smoking hot new video output product for the PowerBook 100/140/170. And you thought your laptop-and-projector troubles were bad…

Original text from Macworld, September 1992.

Very dark photo of an Envisio Notebook Display Adapter in the wild.

Macworld reviews the state of LCD projection pads in 1993, from the days before integrated LCD projectors existed.

Apple’s apology for the gigantic expensive Macintosh Portable. Original text from Macworld, December 1991.

Audio clips courtesy of The Unofficial Apple VHS Archive’s collection of Apple User Group Connection tapes, which covered Apple’s PowerBook 1xx launch event for employees in 1991. Got all that?

Television commercials: it attracts mates somehow, it runs everything in 4MB of RAM somehow, and the predecessor to the Yao Ming/Verne Troyer 12-inch PowerBook G4 ad.

Apple telling you how great the design is.

Apple telling you how great the product is.

John Sculley telling you how great he is. Useful if you’re having trouble falling asleep.

Apple demonstrating the Microsoft Jump Rope and the Microsoft Wart.

John Medica: R.I.P., press release and tribute by Wake Forest University, also on YouTube.

Computer History Museum - Apple Industrial Design Event (2007) featuring Robert Brunner, Manager of Industrial Design during the PowerBook 1xx era, and Jerry Manock, industrial designer on the Apple II through the Mac 128.

Original text from Macworld, February 1991, page 73.

Macworld published a correction confirming the Outbound 2000 series was indeed FCC-certified for home use.

If you’re just gagging to experience the IsoPoint/TrackBar, you can buy one today from Contour Design! HCI guru Bill Buxton on the IsoPoint. Contour Design on YouTube is all RollerMouse, all the time.

Ad for the Outbound 2000-series notebooks, and another where they push the Outbound’s upgradability advantage to PowerBook shoppers.

Outbound 2000-series notebook reviews: [Dec 1991, Sep 1992]. MacUser only did capsule reviews of the 2000 series. :-(

March 1993 obituary for Outbound. September 1993: PerFit service and upgrades available.

Enjoy some gorgeous photos of the original Outbound Laptop System and 2000s from applerooter.net.

From the days before the hot-selling PowerBook 100 series, David Pogue reviews a sleeker, less expensive alternative to Apple’s 1989 Macintosh Portable.

Original text from Macworld, September 1990.

Enjoy some gorgeous photos of the original Outbound Laptop System from applerooter.net.

NuTek’s years of labour finally bear fruit–kind of. The trail of NuTek coverage stops cold after early 1994. We don’t know exactly what happened but this review provides some strong hints.

Original text from Macworld, February 1994.

The review states you can toggle between the Duet’s Mac and PC modes from the front panel. Nothing is labelled “Mac/PC” in the advertisements. Did they change the silkscreen for production models? Wouldn’t it be funny if they just wired up the turbo button or the keyboard lock switch and left the labels as is to cut costs?

Benjamin Chou is still around, helping startups.

NuTek’s plan for Macintosh World Domination: a clean room implementation of the ROMs and System 6, cheap hardware, and enough investor money to survive the inevitable legal assault from Apple.

Macworld speculated a Macintosh clone with a 68030 CPU, colour monitor and hard disk could cost just $600USD at a time when lowly Macintosh LC systems sold for $2700USD. The faster 32-bit data path IIsi sold for $3700 in complete configurations, and the more expandable IIci, $6,000USD and up.

Original text from Macworld, April 1991.

Advertisements for the NuTek One and Duet.

Why use custom chips instead of off-the-shelf parts?

IBM PC clone production went into high gear thanks to PC-compatible BIOS vendors like Phoenix and chipset manufacturers like Chips and Technologies. Did you know C&T founder Gordon Campbell went on to co-found 3dfx, the Voodoo company?

Savour the varying quality of different IBM PC compatible chipsets.

John Warnock gave Apple a good needling in this article, likely because of the ongoing Font Wars. See Chuck Geschke and John Warnock retelling the story.

ARDI Executor was open sourced in 2008.

Lee Lorenzen speaking about Apple’s lawsuit against Digital Research, and Bill Gates admitting he intended this to serve as a distraction while work progressed on Windows. Lee’s “sick cow” story.

Steve Jobs WWDC 1997 Q&A: “I was hoping that you would venture an opinion this morning on how you see the future evolution of the Macintosh compatible market.”

InfoWorld (13-May-1985) profiles Andy Hertzfeld one year after his departure from Apple. Original text by Kevin Strehlo.

Steve Jobs says of the Mac’s logic board “The lines are too close together!” while Burrell Smith surreptitiously adds some means of expansion.

Original text from folklore.org: PC Board Aesthetics, Diagnostic Port.

Jef Raskin: Design Considerations for an Anthropophilic Computer

Jerry Manock/Jef Raskin/Bill Atkinson “convection enhancement device” quote from “The Macintosh at 20” panel hosted at Macworld Boston 2004.

Fiennes on management’s tentative request for iPhone motherboard layout refinement.

Pixar on attention to detail: “We sand the undersides of the drawers.”

Adrian Black showing the 512k expansion decoder circuit to the left of the 68000.

MacGUI’s detailed history of Mac 128K memory upgrades: the Dr. Dobbs article, the early 128k adopter outrage, the high list prices for the Apple 512k upgrade kit.

MacGUI’s collection of original Macintosh memory upgrade boards.

Steve from Mac84TV tries out a 3DFX Voodoo2 card for the Rev A iMac’s Mezzanine slot.

Burn a NeXT Cube, they said. It’ll be easy, they said.

Original text from Simson Garfinkel. Simson maintains a complete NeXTWorld archive on his website.

Photos from the actual burning.

Rich Page quote from Part 1 of his CHM Oral History.

CHM interview with Dan Ruby, NeXTWORLD Magazine’s driving force and editor-in-chief.