Charles Piller: Is Apple Serious About Macintosh Clones? (1995)
Actions speak louder than words: a look at Apple’s extremely quiet Mac OS licensing program.
Original text by Charles Piller.
Macworld Boston 1994, Tim Bajarin: Apple has to either start licensing, or lower their prices. A DTK PowerPC 601 box running Windows NT/PowerPC at PC Expo 1994. TNPC and Mitac showing off PowerPC systems at COMDEX 1994.
Heads of Mac OS licensing: Don Strickland’s website. In memoriam. Larry Lightman’s other business: Waffle-Crete. Do you suppose any Waffle Houses have been constructed with Waffle-Crete?
Jon Rubinstein talks about disbanding NeXT and founding FirePower Systems, only to have IBM pull the rug out from underneath the whole PowerPC personal systems scene. (transcript, pages 53-58)
Phil Schiller used to work for Macromedia?
The Pioneer MPC-GX1 Macintosh clone lands in Mac84tv’s workshop.
Windows NT/PowerPC on Macintosh PowerBook G3/G4 and iMac hardware: source code, video demos.
Gary Davidian, developer of the 68K emulator that underpinned the Power Mac’s success, talks about CHRP and his time at Power Computing. (transcript, pages 33-41)
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Jim Black on John Carmack and Steve Jobs (2018)
Original text by Jim Black.
Previous John Carmack episode: The Steve Jobs Rollercoaster.
Peter Graffagnino’s appearance at NeXTEVNT 2015. Peter is interviewed by fellow Pixar veteran Michael Johnson.
Some of the original Mac team demonstrating Steve Jobs’ favourite hand gesture (scroll down).
John Carmack’s appearance at Macworld San Francisco 1999. “The only thing you want to do with the Mac as a serious gamer is you wanna pull out the silly one button mouse and plug in a three button mouse pretty quick.”
Steve Jobs Deer Hunter quote from Macworld New York 1998.
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The Iconoclast - Send In The Clones (1995)
Apple’s licensing approach (ca. 1994-1997) is a bad idea.
Original text by Steven Levy, Macworld January 1995.
Andy Bechtolscheim quote about SPARC licensing and Macintosh clones: “Sun had a unified business… it wasn’t really selling separate software. … that whole notion of defining success [as] ‘other people adopt your thing’… Apple was criticized for being a closed system, then they licensed SuperMac … to build clones …. and the first thing Steve Jobs did when he came back to Apple was he killed all the clones, right? ‘cause if you cannot build a better system yourself, you don’t need the clones for sure, right?” Transcript.
Guerrino de Luca’s time with Apple goes back to at least 1992 (appearance at 1m52s), included a stint at Claris, and ended shortly after Steve Jobs returned in 1997. Guerrino’s last appearance with Apple. Don’t worry; he did fine for himself–he went to Logitech and was its president and CEO until 2008.
Guerrino bookending Apple’s System 7.5 promo video.
Given Apple’s tendency to undergo frequent reorgs throughout the ’90s, Don Strickland did not last as head of licensing operations. Unfortunately Don passed away in 2022 though his website is still up.
Compaq was a much more creative and technically significant company in its early days before it was forced to produce bargain basement PCs. Rod Canion’s excellent and highly entertaining (for nerds) book “Open” recounts the story.
Power Computing only made it halfway to its goal of selling 100,000 Macs in its first year.
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Wise Guy - 1984 Redux (1994)
How Macintosh could have taken over the world.
Original text by Guy Kawasaki, Macworld February 1994.
Various 1993ish Apple commercials courtesy of RetroByte.
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Steven Levy - One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, ... (1996)
Why does System 7.5 take so long to start up?
Original text by Steven Levy, Macworld April 1996.
Avoid conflating Moore’s Law with Dennard scaling.
65scribe has an easily-digested summary of Dennard scaling in his extensive Power Mac G5 coverage.
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