linkmachinego.com

19 April 2024
[mac] Fixing Macs Door to Door … Confessions of an AppleCare Contractor in the 2000s, navigating around Chicago to repair Macs at customers’ homes. ‘Often I’d show up only to tell them their hard drive was dead and everything was gone. This was just how things worked before iCloud Photos, nobody kept backups and everything was constantly lost forever. Here they would often threaten or plead with me, sometimes insinuating they “knew people” at Apple or could get me fired. Jokes on you people, I don’t even know people at Apple was often what ran through my head. Threats quickly lost their power when you realized nobody at any point had asked your name or any information about yourself. It’s hard to threaten an anonymous person.’
26 December 2023
[mac] After Dark Screensavers in CSS … Run the classic Macintosh screensaver Flying Toasters within your browser.
21 June 2023
[excel] Microsoft Excel v1.00 (san inc crack) … Use the first version of Excel in your browser. Click below but it needs a fast link to download quickly.

16 May 2023
[mac] Infinite Mac … Fascintating website that lets you run every version of the classic Macintosh operating system within a browser. ‘Pick any version of System Software/Mac OS from the 1980s or 1990s and run it (and major software of that era) within a virtual machine. Files can be imported and exported using drag and drop, and System 7 and onward have more advanced integrations as well – refer to the welcome screen in each machine for more details.’
13 March 2023
[mac] Moof-A-Day: Early Macintosh Software … A fantastic, playable collection of early-era Macintosh software added to daily and cracked by 4am, a modern day software cracker of 1980s-era Apple software. ‘In late 2013, I acquired a real Apple //e and bought a few lots of original disks on eBay, mostly arcade games that I had acquired illicitly in my youth: Sneakers, Repton, Dino Eggs. To my surprise, the originals had more content than I remembered! Sneakers has an animated boot sequence. Repton has a multi-page introduction that explains the “back story” of the game. So I set out to create “complete” cracks that faithfully reproduced the original experience. I decided to document my methods because I enjoy technical writing and because I had admired the classic crackers who had done so. I decided to leave out the crack screens, although a handful of my early cracks do have Easter eggs where you can see “4am” if you know how to trigger it.’
8 October 2019
[mac] Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual … I never realised that the target market for the original Macintosh was Patrick Bateman. ‘Perhaps the strangest sentence: “The Finder is like a central hallway in the Macintosh house.”And the disk is a… guest? Someone looking for the bathroom?’

Pages from the Original Mac User Manual

2 April 2015
[mac] Plugging a 1986 Mac Plus into the modern Web … It’s surprisingly difficult to plug a vintage computer into the modern web … ‘So, with the Raspberry Pi, MacTCP, and MacWeb all in place, it was time to surf the Web! Right? Right?! No. No surfing yet. The MacWeb developers apparently took a look at the HTTP 1.0 spec, decided, “Who would ever need name-based virtual hosting?” and left out the feature that 99 percent of the sites on the modern Web relied on. No support for virtual hostnames meant you got whatever you saw when you used the server’s IP address alone in the HTTP request, and for most sites, that was jack squat. Oh, and HTTPS, cookies, and CSS hadn’t been invented yet. AAARGH!!!’
10 February 2014
[mac] Unboxing a 30-year-old Macintosh 128K‘On eBay, gdavis6610 has been selling classic Apple equipment for a few years. In 2012, he sold a Macintosh 128K for $3519.84, over $1000 more than the original launch price. Fortunately, he takes pretty detailed photographs of his eBay kit. Here are some photos from his memorable unboxing of the original Macintosh 128K.’
25 September 2013
[mac] World’s smallest working Mac is a tiny work of art … forget about your new iPhone – take a look at this is incredible mini retro-computer … ‘Make no mistake — this is a full working Mac running System 6. In fact, if anything, it’s a bit more impressive than the original Mac as it has an Ethernet port, two USB ports and HDMI output. Inside, there are also WiFi and Bluetooth dongles attached to an internal USB hub to provide wireless connectivity. Mini Mac is made at one-third scale, with the exterior pieces lovingly cut from Sintra PVC plastic with an X-Acto knife, filed and sanded to match the bevels and curves around the screen, and then glued together.’
13 March 2013
[apple] Abandoned Apples … pictures of long discarded Apple computers that have been left to slowly decay.
17 August 2011
[useful] Super Remove Dead Tracks‘Surveys iTunes for tracks whose files are no longer available (so-called “dead” tracks, as indicated by a “!” next to their names) and removes them.’
10 August 2009
[macs] Go Watch: Ice-T presents Mac Repair … the rapper and TV star demonstrates an admirable and straightforward approach to personal data security with a claw hammer.
7 February 2009
[apple] Hacking the Apple TV … how-to from the Register … ‘Apple continues to describe its Apple TV set-top box as a “hobby” project: it’ll continue to develop the platform, but it’s not making any money out of it yet. The gadget’s a hobby project for a lot of other folk too. They want to gain access to this closed but surprisingly powerful system to make it more useful. We’ve had an Apple TV unit for a while now, and we decided it was time to dig a little deeper into its foundations…’
9 June 2008
[comics] Peter Gillis remembers his friend Bob Dienenthal who died recently … Dienenthal worked on one of the first fully computer generated comics in the late 1980’s and sounds like a real Mac fanantic … ‘Thunderscan was one of those kludges that are truly inspiring: you took an Apple ImageWriter dot matrix printer, pulled out the printer head and replaced it with the module. Then instead of sending data to the printer to print, it reversed the flow and, as the head moved back and forth and the platen moved, it would send scan information back to the computer and assemble a graphic. This was before scanners were even available retail…’ [via The Comics Reporter]
24 August 2007
[macs] Mac Buyer’s Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac — useful guide – in summary: don’t buy full-size iPod’s or Nano’s because there maybe new versions real soon.
22 October 2005
[macs] Mainly Neat Stuff — web site covering vintage Apple Computers and curios like a second-hand Mac IIfx belonging to Douglas Adams‘I started up MacWrite Pro and noticed that it was registered to “Douglas Adams, Serious Productions Ltd”.’
5 September 2005
[mac] Blank Apple Keyboard! — yet another oddity on eBay … ‘This is an authentic screw-up by Apple – even their mistakes are aesthetically pleasing…’ [thanks Phil]
16 August 2005
[macs] Largest Collection of Macintosh Compacts in Belgium — collecting Mac’s taken to the extreme… [thanks Phil]
25 January 2005
[mac] Kottke: Video of Jobs introducing the Macintosh in 1984‘Hello, I am Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag! Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I’d like to share with you a maxim I thought of the first time I met an IBM mainframe: Never trust a computer that you can’t lift!’
16 January 2005
[mac] How the Mac was born, and other Tales — interview with Andy Hertzfeld regarding his new book Revolution in the Valley‘I had a talk with [Steve Jobs] about a year ago where I was telling him, “Hey, there’s this huge opportunity, things are shifting.” And he kind of said, “No, they’re not. Windows is going to be dominant for at least the next 10 years.” I said something like, “Is it going to be the rest of our lives?” He said, “Depends on how long you live.”‘
23 March 2004
[macs] Douglas Adams’s Mac IIfx — vintage Mac collector finds a Mac IIfx which used to belong to DNA‘I popped an ethernet card in the IIfx, mounted an AppleShare volume and ran Norton Utilities to recover the files onto the server. The results? I recovered hundreds of documents relating to Jane Belson’s professional work and precisely two that bear the hand of Douglas Adams. I doubt whether the copyright lawyers would chase me for publishing his Idiots Guide to using a Mac but you wouldn’t be thanking me either. For now at least, the draft of a TV sketch called Brief Re-encounter is strictly for my personal enjoyment.’
18 July 2003
[quote] ‘For today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths.

image from apple's 1984 advert for macintosh


‘Our Unification of Thought is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!’
13 November 2002
[tech] Making the Macintosh — a website documenting the creation of the Macintosh‘The exhibit features primary documents, such as memos tracing the evolution of the Macintosh mouse; images, such as technical drawings, stills from commercials, notes from user tests; and interviews with members of the Macintosh development team, technical writers, and founders of user groups.’ [via Red Rock Eater Digest]
15 January 2001
[weird tech] It does not get much weirder than this… Macs in Space. ‘Dennis Wingo is one aerospace researcher who definitely thinks outside the box. A self-proclaimed computer geek, he wants an astronaut to hurl a specially modified G4 MacIntosh Cube computer into orbit in 2001 from the International Space Station.’ [Related Links: Some Apple PR, via Unxmaal]
23 March 2000
[tech] Nice overview of why text created on Windows PC’s looks tiny on Macintoshes….