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krpalmerNews David Pogue was writing a history of “the first 50 years” of Apple reached me well before the volume itself. Remembering his columns in Macworld, I took a note of when the book would arrive. While waiting, though, I was conscious there might not have been a great amount of enthusiasm for the anniversary out there. Beyond all the problems of entanglement with current politics for the sake of something between self-centred success and out-and-out survival, which ties into general hostility towards “big tech companies,” which might be the latest outcropping of suspicion of “big business” and a convenient system to blame for dissatisfaction perhaps springing from the human condition itself, recent changes to the look of Apple’s operating systems had become another sign for some of impending collapse from within.
Another side of Apple’s business just might have begun to push back a bit not that long before the austere-covered book showed up, however. The lower-cost MacBook Neo, which didn’t cut every possible corner, provoked a certain amount of amused discussion. Then, while I was reading the weighty and pricy volume, Apple announced a change in CEO, with at least some comments that John Ternus having been “a hardware guy” might hold out some hope for the future.
Reading the book amid that, I did find the history interesting in general. Before its “what’s happened lately” aspect there were anecdotes I hadn’t been quite familiar with and a certain consolidation of bits and pieces I had sort of half-known. If it’s always easier to nitpick than articulate positive impressions, though, then temptations towards that did strike early on when Pogue explained how Steve Wozniak had got colour high-resolution graphics out of the Apple II only to leave me wondering if he’d simplified that explanation too far and a comment about the First West Coast Computer Faire (with a photo recognizable as coming from its eighth occurrence) introducing the Commodore PET, Apple II, and Radio Shack TRS-80; I’ve seen earlier records of Radio Shack’s computer not being announced until August 1977, several months after the Faire.
This might have led into a certain sense of the book retelling Apple’s first decade with more attention to the various efforts to succeed the Apple II (with a one-page sidebar on Jef Raskin’s own ideas for “an easy-to-use computer” reaching brief fruition as the Canon Cat; Raskin also managed to show up later with his own prescription of how to “save Apple” in the second half of the 1990s) than to how that computer had kept going. Pogue did eventually get to the Apple IIc being perceived as “too compact” and the Apple IIgs as having to compete with the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga (not getting into how both of those computers had been perceived in certain magazines as Macintosh-squashers). At a certain point, I suppose I might have been wanting more “analysis” than this history offers; however, I can imagine analysis that wouldn’t agree with my own thoughts. Coming to the end of the book I did check its index, and saw John Ternus referred to (and quoted) on one page.
Another side of Apple’s business just might have begun to push back a bit not that long before the austere-covered book showed up, however. The lower-cost MacBook Neo, which didn’t cut every possible corner, provoked a certain amount of amused discussion. Then, while I was reading the weighty and pricy volume, Apple announced a change in CEO, with at least some comments that John Ternus having been “a hardware guy” might hold out some hope for the future.
Reading the book amid that, I did find the history interesting in general. Before its “what’s happened lately” aspect there were anecdotes I hadn’t been quite familiar with and a certain consolidation of bits and pieces I had sort of half-known. If it’s always easier to nitpick than articulate positive impressions, though, then temptations towards that did strike early on when Pogue explained how Steve Wozniak had got colour high-resolution graphics out of the Apple II only to leave me wondering if he’d simplified that explanation too far and a comment about the First West Coast Computer Faire (with a photo recognizable as coming from its eighth occurrence) introducing the Commodore PET, Apple II, and Radio Shack TRS-80; I’ve seen earlier records of Radio Shack’s computer not being announced until August 1977, several months after the Faire.
This might have led into a certain sense of the book retelling Apple’s first decade with more attention to the various efforts to succeed the Apple II (with a one-page sidebar on Jef Raskin’s own ideas for “an easy-to-use computer” reaching brief fruition as the Canon Cat; Raskin also managed to show up later with his own prescription of how to “save Apple” in the second half of the 1990s) than to how that computer had kept going. Pogue did eventually get to the Apple IIc being perceived as “too compact” and the Apple IIgs as having to compete with the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga (not getting into how both of those computers had been perceived in certain magazines as Macintosh-squashers). At a certain point, I suppose I might have been wanting more “analysis” than this history offers; however, I can imagine analysis that wouldn’t agree with my own thoughts. Coming to the end of the book I did check its index, and saw John Ternus referred to (and quoted) on one page.