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Unofficial Apple Archive

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My own random Apple-connected moment of delight. In 2005, when they announced Dashboard widgets, I was running a data-visualization site built off Google News called Buzztracker [0]. It was a really simple idea and hackneyed execution, but it worked and was quite popular: it mapped the news from 1000s of sources onto a map, allowing you to navigate via geography into the day's events.

I took an afternoon and knocked out a widget edition of the site. If I remember correctly, you submitted your widgets to Apple.com and they had a little gallery. Well, I came home a few days later and my server was melting: thousands of hits/second from apple.com. It turned out they decided to make the entire homepage of apple.com a hot-link to my widget. [1] It stayed that way for about 24 hours — June 17 - 18, 2005.

I love this era of the 'net — when apple.com would just link to a dev's or designer's project. I almost fell out of my chair. Printed the screenshot out. I still remember the bar I went to that night, who I had a celebratory drink with in Kagurazaka, Tokyo, sort of marveling at the absurdity of it all.

The exposure didn't have any marked direct effect on my career or work, but it did boost my confidence in that maybe I wasn't working on such useless stuff in isolation on the other side of the world.

[0] http://buzztracker.org — the maps don't work because the SSIs are broken; but we often forget, Google News was one of the first times world-wide news was consolidated into a somewhat homogenous format (most sites weren't using RSS when it launched in 2001/2), certainly not one you could easily scrape and process global news patterns.

[1] https://craigmod.com/images/misc/buzztracker_apple.jpg

edit: grammar

I had a very similar experience!

My "Christmas Countdown Clock" widget (hey, I was only 12 at the time...) got literally hundreds of thousands of downloads when Apple linked to my hosting space from their old widget gallery.

After this first taste of "success" I doubled-down on learning to code and, well, here we are today :)

My own little moment of fame: WWDC June 8, 2009, Keynote, 21 minutes and 22 seconds in: Bertrand Serlet says (about improvements to Preview): "We have added lots of little touches. The one I like...we have added a little bit of AI to actually infer the selection"

My colleague and I (we co-developed the "little bit of AI") never saw this comment (and the applause) live: we were still lining up outside of Moscone West. As Apple employees we weren't allowed in until all the guests and paying attendees had entered. Still, we watched the video afterwards and got a huge kick out of the mention.

BTW, the AI we added did not use neural nets or deep learning.

That must be an amazing feeling! Is this a feature that's still in macOS today? Can I see it in action?

The feature is there. I assume our code is still used, but it may have been rewritten since I retired. You can use this as an example if you like: https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/FNR/FNR-269-W.pdf

(which is random, but you need two columns in the PDF). Try select from column 1 near the bottom, across to column 2.

PDFs are very diverse. Our algorithm does not always work, alas, but it is significantly better than what existed before.

In fact, for some reason, it works well for this document on page 1 and 3 but not so well on page 2! But I no longer have access to the low level tools I used to use to figure out what went wrong.

This is so neat. Like someone else mentioned already, this feature has been very useful for me countless times. In fact, when it doesn't work, I tend to blame the PDF itself :). Thanks a ton!

Yup, just open Preview for an image (possibly other documents as well e.g., PDF), go into “markup” mode, and begin to draw with the pen or pencil. Preview will try to “perfect” your drawn check mark, X, straight line, curved line, etc.

That's a nice feature! But it was added after we left Apple. I cannot claim any credit for it.

That's a different "smart" feature -- the one mentioned has to do with guessing where the selected text continues (when it goes on to a different column, text box, etc).

PDFs are more "baked" layouts rather than high level semantic markup, so it's not easy to automatically determine this. The AI is probably a set of heuristics.

Very interesting! Also a great reminder that AI is just a program that solves a problem in a certain way that may not need the most talked-about techniques, like deep learning.

Just to confirm, are you the person the changed the Preview PDF text selection in newer macOS versions? o_0

We created a low-level framework that was used by PDFKit (and hence by Preview) to change the way selection of text in PDF documents is done. We never worked on Preview itself. Since the feature is part of PDFKit, it is also available to third-party apps that use PDFKit.

I remember that! It's such a great feature!

Unfortunately it doesn't work correctly for the PDFs I get from my accountant.

It's one of those features that are really obvious, but probably surprisingly hard to implement.

> BTW, the AI we added did not use neural nets or deep learning.

So proper old-school AI then? Perl and regexes?

We took a rule-based approach, coupled with some heavy-duty statistics.

That’s “AI” alright.

I didn’t mean any disrespect. My comment was meant to be humorous.

As was mine.

(Have you _seen_ the internals of Perl's regex code? I swear it has more inexplicable random interconnectedness than most neural nets...)

I remember this being introduced, and thought ‘that’s cool’. I use that function in Preview most days so - thank you.

I know you.

haha, I think I know who you are (though I don't _know you_) .. developer of Glider and Pararena, among others? :) If so, thank you for making such fun and memorable games!

You are correct.

This might explain a bug that's been bugging me for years: text selection in preview tends to fail when working with PDFs printed from Firefox (and others). The selection jumps from the cursor and includes too much text from below. If I select from below it jumps and selects from above. Not just words, but sometimes entire extra sentences or paragraphs.

This is quite similar to iOS text selection in practice: mostly works, but when it doesn't you're screwed.

And then Apple went and borked Preview by rewriting it post-Mavericks. Used to keep a VM just for it. Not sure why they decided to "fix" something that wasn't broken but to this day Preview lacks a lot of functionality it once had.

Just a bit of an aside. I'm still somewhat bitter about it :-p

I love the early 2000's Apple aesthetic. I'm not sure if it was actually really good, or I just associate it with a happy time in my life.

I still have an iTunes playlist with all of the music from the dancing silhouette iPod commercials, and I get the warm and fuzzies when I listen to it.

I wish there was a high-quality archive of these commercials online to relive some of those memories. Unfortunately, every time I look for them on YouTube, they're incomplete copies of over-compressed copies of watermarked copies of cropped copies of altered copies of something someone recorded off what looks like low-grade Betamax.

>> I'm not sure if it was actually really good, or I just associate it with a happy time in my life.

I am a collector of Macs from around this time. I just picked up an orange G3 Clamshell iBook, and I absolutely adore my 'pixar lamp' iMac G4.

I'm considering internal hardware mod projects to get these two up to a reasonable speed.

The monitor on my iLamp went black last week for no reason that I can determine. The machine still works, and I can VNC into it to use it, but that's not so much fun.

I have the tools to fix it, but no longer possess the manual dexterity. Sadly, it will probably end up in the garbage because my local Apple Store won't take it back for recycling.

That's unfortunate. The LCD displays on these units are stunning. I still use mine for small Photoshop work and drawing in Flash. It's just beautiful and inviting for work.

If you were anywhere near Toronto I'd take it off your hands. I specifically want broken units for my hardware mods as I feel bad intentionally destroying a functioning unit. It's just kinda shitty to collectors.

I've love to let you have it, but I'm over 2,000 miles from Toronto.

There may be other local electronics recyclers who will take it.

Just the country, but only one day a month, business hours only, and it's an hour drive each way to the dump.

Better try to sell it/give it away, maybe someone else will be able to fix it. Recycling should be last step ;)

I got one of these lamps a while ago, and even used it for a while, but there were one too many painful moments (its crazy how far our expectations have come in terms of what we can put up with in terms of stability; or just even being able to watch YouTube) for the joyful novelty of its use to overcome ... I do want to bring it out again some day, but for now its in the attic ...

Any thoughts on what you might do with yours? I did some research and there seems to be a few options at various levels of the stack but all with efforts levels that far exceed my current resources. Some guys say they have NetBSD running on it ... there’s another guy who figured out the idiosyncratic video interface so you can gut it if you want and reppace the innards with something more modern (it doesn’t feel right to me).

I thought it might see some use as a sexy remote terminal for my main computer but nope - it couldn’t even do VNC without vertically flipping the right hand half of the image. Something to do with the screy nvidia drivers I presume ... incidentally the reason why there’s not much in the way of interesting Linux support. I might use it as an emacs terminal maybe now that I think of it. It sure is pretty though!

I used it as a media server. I could still use it for that because a media server doesn't need a screen, but my wife won't allow it to sit in the living room if it doesn't have a pretty screen saver running on it.

Ah yeah, I've been keeping my eye out for a great deal on a clamshell iBook G3 for years. I have two iMac G4's (15" and 17"). One day I'll get the 20" ;) Classic hardware with an equally-classic operating system.

Just watched the iMac G4 introduction on the site. That is still the most beautiful computer ever built.

If we're willing to be liberal with our usage of the word computer, I'd like to nominate the Xserve RAID. I still consider buying one to put in my home rack from time to time because they're just so damn pretty.

Wow, these look pretty. Image for the curious: https://www.flickr.com/photos/generated/99991779

Ah man... this reminds me of the old Macintosh group on Flickr that used to be an amazing repository of Mac-related photos. It was around since the earliest days of Flickr and had amassed hundreds of thousands of photos. The admin randomly closed the group years ago and has never responded to messages asking about it :(

They show up on fleaBay every now and then, sometimes by the palette.

Oh I've been plenty tempted numerous times. If the thing wasn't as power hungry as it is for the amount of storage it provides, I'd already have one. I've seen some mod/retrofit project that replace the guts with an mATX mobo and a sata raid card, but I've got too many half finished projects already.

Interesting! I'd have to say it's one of the ugliest computers I've ever seen personally :)

If we're giving awards for looks I'd have to say that the current MacBook Pros take the cake for me.

It wasn't practical though, that arm used to sag and it's almost impossible to service.

To think they went from that to The Cheese Grinder, eh? :D

>I still have an iTunes playlist with all of the music from the dancing silhouette iPod commercials

Me too! They had awesome song choices.

I think it was good. It had a playfulness to it that their modern hardware doesn't have. That's not to say the current design language is bad either. It has a beautiful purity to it that I like but still, I wouldn't mind if they got back some of that playfulness.

I think they're trying. I'm thinking about the new option of having emoji engraved to AirPods cases.

> the music from the dancing silhouette iPod commercials

I always enjoyed the iPod Shuffle with Jerk It Out by Caesars from 2005; the white headphones become a symbol status thanks to how they exposed these in cm's

>> I wish there was a high-quality archive of these commercials online to relive some of those memories.

Even original quality might disappoint, because video quality - especially resolution/ppi has improved so dramatically since those days. I have some high quality digital tape video (transferred to disk) from around that time, which was better resolution than CRT based TV's in North America. Only computer monitors could replay the full resolution of my videos back then. -- Fast forward to now - and even uncompressed, my recordings look like crap on a 4k TV. :-(

>I love the early 2000's Apple aesthetic. I'm not sure if it was actually really good, or I just associate it with a happy time in my life.

I feel similar about the platinum theme that started on MacOS 8

The Copland stuff? Yeah, I remember getting a Mac Addict (or one of the others) that had all the extensions to make 7.6 look like the upcoming Copland stuff. I still am fascinated by System 7. It looks dated now but, it's still pretty dang amazing compared to Windows 3.1.

I think 2004 - 2007 OS X was the most beautiful, enjoyable and usable operating system that ever existed. For me, it had just the right amount of stability and features without being bloated or goofy. Aqua was just so freaking beautiful to look at, it still gives me a coupe de cour when I look at it. I loved the pinstripes before they went to brushed aluminum.

As an ex-KDE3 user, and a Unix starter with Debian Woody, I loved Mac OSX Tiger and stuff like QuickTime VR/Macromedia 3D stuff such as the Street View like (steregraphic?) views on encyclopedias and such.

What's interesting about this is how design and presentation has been a part of Apple's DNA since basically day one.

When they launched the Apple II in 1977 at the West Coast Computer Faire, there were dozens of other micro-computer startups there as well. But Steve had the foresight to hire a professional product designer to create the foam molded case, and professional graphic artists and marketing people to design their logo, brochures, booth, etc. In addition to the technical genius under the hood provided by Woz, the visual components clearly separated Apple from the pack and put them in the same league as multinational corporations Commodore and Tandy when Apple was still essentially two twenty somethings in a rented office in Cupertino.

Corporate DNA is an interesting phenomenon. Throughout the years, under various different leaders, Apple has somehow been able to consistently produce quality technology that people want to own because it looks good and is marketed well. One has to wonder how it becomes so ingrained in a company like that.

Steve Jobs.

It hasn't been there since he passed - they've been coasting, and it's starting to show.

Tim Cook is trying his best. But yes they are coasting on previous innovations like Android is, and barely adding new features. Just more RAM and faster CPU.

They killed the Mac Pro by making it look like a garbage can. It is back to ATX standards but way too expensive, which drives people to make Hackintoshes to play MacOS games. I home Apple can get the PlayMac or whatever gaming Mac out soon so people can play games on it without spending thousands on a Mac Pro.

People have said that since 2012. Steve died in 2011. It's now 2020. Have you really never used an Apple Watch or talked to someone who has?

Several family members and friends have Apple Watches.

As far I can tell there is nothing significant about the devices. They're a complicated way to stay distracted with a reasonably okay medical monitor built-in.

They don't seem to be a game-changer the way the iPod or iMac was.

I could, of course, be very wrong.

Yeah no, it's a utility. It looks nice, reasonably intuitive to use, and useful for workout tracking. Oh, I can pay for stuff by tapping it to the contactless payment terminal. But all in all, it's totally non-necessary luxury.

The cellular Apple Watch keeps me from being distracted. It keeps me off the web and other apps but I’m still easy to contact.

When I’m running or at the gym, it’s really nice not to have to lug my phone with me and still have access to music, podcasts, and when I’m running GPS to track distance and speed.

The iPod was not technically a leap. They assembled it from third party hardware in less than 9 months. The only reason it wasn’t copied sooner is because Apple (smartly) bought up the complete supply of 1.8 inch hard drives for months.

Competitors still haven’t been able to squeeze the functionality and performance of the Apple Watch in a device as small.

And the AirPods. People will say 'they are just Bluetooth earbuds'. But they also said that the iPod is just an MP3 player. But like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad before, the Apple Watch and AirPods are defining the expectations for their respective categories.

The Apple Watch is more successful in terms of revenue and profit than the iPod. AirPods are either estimated to be more successful or soon will be.

On the other hand, the iPad only came into its own well into the Cook era. It was really just a big iPhone when it came out (I had a first gen).

I think that in certain things like the Mac and iPhones that might be true. However last year’s iOS 13 really impressed me, especially the direction the iPad is going.

But AirPods and Apple Watch are certainly from Tim Cook’s Apple and I think they are outstanding products.

AirPods do seem to be popular.

They are a product I have no use for, and the way people leave them in constantly appalls me.

But, I must admit, friends who have them are impressed, and at least one has given me good reasons why.

So, AirPods serve as good evidence against my belief.

Mildly ironic: The first video I went to is https://www.applearchive.org/1990-feed/steve-jobs-on-the-lib... which has the caption, "We shouldn't build too many more libraries, instead we should connect towns to the internet to provide access to the Library of Congress". 30 years later and copyright has us not much closer to unlocking the Library of Congress.

I love the way the thumbnails for each year change with Apple’s brand typography from the era. The one thing I would change is pre-1984: Apple started using Garamond with the introduction of the Macintosh; I would use either Motter Tektura (from the old logo) or Univers condensed (used in Apple II print materials) for 1977-1983.

First video I watch: "You are strictly prohibited from making a copy or modification of, or from rebroadcasting or re-encoding, this broadcast without the prior written permission from Apple Public Relations"

I'll be surprised if it's online for another week (not that I want that to be the case).

At the same time, the right-click blocker, referral link to Rogue Ameoba, and soliciting of donations just rub me the wrong way. To be honest, these all should have been uploaded directly to archive.org or something.

It's kinda disappointing, as I've gone to apple.com/pr for years and downloaded press images of the products I find cool/appealing. I always hoped there'd somehow be an archive of all the awesome presentations and stuff over the years. It's bittersweet that there's such a rad archive online, but it's approached in such an exclusionary way.

Actually it's even worse than I thought -- went to copy one of the Vimeo links (since I could see the videos are hosted on Vimeo) and they are not viewable outside of the applearchive site? https://player.vimeo.com/video/372119562 for example. "Because of its privacy settings, this video cannot be played here."

You can probably download the videos with youtube-dl and reupload them to archive.org.

I was shockingly accurate: takedowns came exactly a week after my comment: https://twitter.com/samhenrigold/status/1220903242856640512

Sadly, completely expected :\ Hope he still has all the original files on hand.

Had to watch the iPod Nano reveal again. That was the first thing I ever live steamed on Quicktime as a teen and it blew my mind.

Edit: also it's weird but I totally had a crush on the faceless dancer in the miniskirt in this iPod Shuffle commercial. https://www.applearchive.org/2005-feed/ipod-shuffle-tv-ad-li...

Now all I can see is someone is being choked by a spaghetti of white wires.

Not weird at all. Fit bodies are attractive, dancing is attractive, skirts are attractive. And your mind gets to fill in the blanks with whatever it prefers!

I've been using OS X since 2010, but in that time I never used the Dashboard. I didn't see any point.

A couple weeks ago, I watched the keynote of Steve Jobs introducing Tiger, and when he demo'd the Dashboard, I had this moment of dawning realization:

"Oh, so that's what you're supposed to use that for. That is... actually completely brilliant. Yes. I want that. Now."

I'm now using the Dashboard quite heavily. It's great.

It got even better a few days later when I watched the Leopard keynote and discovered how you're supposed to use Web Clips.

Too bad you came to use Dashboard so late in the game, it's gone in Catalina:

https://9to5mac.com/2019/06/04/dashboard-in-macos-10-15-cata...

I'm ON Catalina right now, and I didn't even know that. (I typically use my Linux laptop for everything... dunno why I decided to use my Macbook Pro today) I had to triple-swipe right just to see if was really gone. Yup. It's gone. Dang.

what's it for? i never used it when it was around.

There were several widgets I used a lot - a fab BBC radio widget rage let me listen to radio channels (bring up the UI instantly and then dismiss) same for a widget that controlled my MAMP servers and a web clipping of a page showing the status of various systems I monitored

So, worth noting, I'm sure I saw plenty of these explanations over the years, and it still took watching Steve Jobs's demo before I "got" it.

But: it's a workspace for quick glances that don't take you out of the flow of what you're working on. If you've ever kept a paper notepad, or a calculator, or a small tablet on your desk for reference while using your computer, Dashboard is that, but even better because it can be activated and deactivated more quickly than physically looking down at your desk.

(Make sure the Dashboard is set "As Overlay" if you're ever on a system that has it. Modern-ish macOS defaults to "As Space", which reeks of a setting created by people who didn't actually use the Dashboard.)

It is surprising to see that Steve Jobs is the most-featured person on a site that says it is dedicated to “unsung heroes”. It looks like it’s just about Apple in general.

Going from “all about Jobs” to “look at our cutting-edge emoji designs” is a nice encapsulation of Apple history. I know that many people hope the period from Jobs’ death to Ives’ departure was just a phase. But it feels like we’re down to the wire product-wise. The new MBP is a nice start but before long the iPhone SE will reach end-of-life and I just don’t want a flat brick with three cameras and no audio port.

Some more backstory and an interview with the guy who compiled it for those interested:

https://ww.9to5mac.com/2020/01/15/the-unofficial-apple-archi...

Also notable is https://www.folklore.org/ - thatnks for this site!

My favorite

https://www.applearchive.org/1992-feed/whats-on-your-powerbo...

This "easy pay" training video is quite the show https://www.applearchive.org/2006-feed/apple-internal-easy-p...

Check out the employee holiday bonus from 1983: https://www.applearchive.org/1983-feed/apple-holiday-bonus

That's the gift that keeps on giving, the whole year!

Was this an employee holiday bonus, or a public promotion called "Apple Holiday Bonus?" I don't see anything in it making it employee-specific. I think it might just be a play on words.

It has to be for customers and this site mislabeled it as "employee holiday bonus". It's just too embarrassing... a bunch of coupons for magazines and software.

To this day these are some of my favorite coding posters. You have to hit the little arrow to find them, I missed them the first time searching, so I wanted to post it because they are awesome. https://www.applearchive.org/2006-feed/apple-computer-scienc...

As best as I can tell, this is missing my favorite video, “Jaguar on the Loose”. Really reminds me how things felt back then. I’m on mobile though where the experience isn’t fantastic so maybe I just missed it on the site. Provided below:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2zfnka

wow good times, for me it was this video

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2zfnja

the whole thing was rendered in quartz2d afaicr

That is a great one too! I love the fact that the QuickTime video at the end is actually a PDF.

> QuickTime video at the end is actually a PDF

wow, i never noticed that until now!

Am I crazy or is right-clicking totally broken on this website? Is this intentional? Maybe a joke about the old iMac hockey puck mice?

It is. Dare I ask about middle clicking, which should directly open the link in a new tab? :)

Please follow the old Apple, that was about usability, not the new Apple, that is only about flashy design...

The old Apple mouse only had one button.

They still supported cmd+click for right click didn't they? As opposed to this site...

It is. One of the articles mentioned that they are trying to prevent piracy (rolls eyes) so maybe that’s what it is.

It always mildly amuses me when people are doing this on their websites, it's like watching someone clumsily doing something pointless but you don't say anything and just watch.

That's awkward, since it's not this website author's content to be "pirated". All copyrights for the site's content belong to Apple. Further, it's trivially easy to press F12 and use the browser dev tools to get at anything on the page.

My first contribution to a feature: https://www.applearchive.org/1999-feed/apple-special-event-o... at 13:24

A rather one-off thing, never ported to Mac OS X, but we had fun developing it.

Whoa, really cool!

For anyone curious about the intricacy of the guidelines of the Apple logo: check this out here: https://www.applearchive.org/1987-feed/apple-logo-standards-...

It goes into absolute depth into the do's and don'ts of their logo, which I find quite frankly interesting to see from a designer's perspective.

Ahh, now I understand this Futurama jab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSt04IPqFfM

Compare: https://www.applearchive.org/1984-feed/macintosh-tv-ad-1984

Futurama was written with us old folks in mind. My kids love it (as do I), but it's rich with mockery you can't appreciate without having been there when it was happening.

For some reason, the first thing I clicked was 1983, which led me to an ad for the Lisa computer.

I remember seeing it at the local mall at a computer retailer, and being in awe of how cool it looked compared to other computers at the time, and shocked that it cost $10,000 (equivalent to ~ $25,000 today.)

Even though the Lisa never really went anywhere, it was an amazing achievement at the time.

The amount of content here is incredible. Did Apple create this, or fans?

It says it is unofficial. Must have taken a ton of effort to get this stuff together. Very cool!

It's unofficial, there was a discussion on Reddit yesterday with people asking if the author would provide access the content to archive it in case Apple DMCAs it, to which he gave some childish strop in response about how he deserves the in(fame)y. You'll find it on /r/DataHoarders if you care to look.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ep27pk/probabl...

The relevant comments were deleted.

^Z time: http://removeddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ep27pk/probably...

And just in case: http://archive.is/bU2RM

(An aside: wow, archive.is handles JS perfectly. It's necessary nowadays, but I'm still extremely impressed)

Yeah, he had a Google Drive link in June that got taken down. Hopefully someone archived that (I sadly didn’t) so r/DataHoarders can help keep it in circulation.

>> to which he gave some childish strop in response about how he deserves the in(fame)y

I dunno, he kinda does to an extent? No reason for him to be an asshole about it, but this is an excellent resource and very well-put-together.

I agree, and i'd be 100% on his side if only for a little humility.

It's not his content at the end of the day, and he himself has no rights to use any of it; people in glass houses, as they say.

Apple's design of 10-15 years ago looks excellent even today. Truly - good design does not lose its attractiveness as styles and standards change. Most icons, fonts, panels, colors of most of their old software and promotional materials look very pleasant, even in low resolution.

It comes down to your taste, I thought aqua and the lickable interface was ugly then, and now.

the original osx pinstripe look is pretty hideous, and the faux glossy emboss look hasn't aged well either

https://images.techhive.com/images/article/2016/01/mac-os-x-...

We'll say the same about flat buttons-that-don't-look-like-buttons too.

The good thing about Material Design is that we don't have to wait for it to go out of fashion among developers. People have been saying it's butt ugly from day one.

sure, but the discussion is about "timeless" design

Fortunately they were toned down in 10.2.

The 10.4 version and especially the 10.9 version of Aqua was basically perfect in my eyes… they had dimension and contrast without being overbearing and were bright and cheery without being blinding. I know people are fond of the 10.5 and 10.6 Aqua but I found its darker grey window chrome a bit too dreary looking.

I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe the text shadows on the window title there are overdone but otherwise I think that looks great!

As a designer, I couldn't disagree more. The screenshot you linked is far better than 99% of design today. It took time and effort to create such engaging and aesthetically pleasing design. Today's designers don't care — the profession is overrun by MBAs calling themselves UXers.

We have gained so much along the way (I.e. fast computing), but we’ve lost a lot as well - computers are nowhere near as friendly/stylish.

Great point. I think part of this is that computers are now so ubiquitous, there is less call for making them approachable to people who are not using them.

Personally I like the friendly stylings of old which were empathetic to users' needs. Computers these days seem to take themselves too seriously, and we've lost a bit of the fun as a result.

Is there a good design book, or program that would teach design principles/philosophy like this?

To me, a lot of these modern interfaces (eg Unity) feel like staring at a dark concrete city. I’d love to see some more of this come back.

I've never used them, but from what I've read 10.0–10.2 were pretty bad across the board, and 10.3 (Panther) was when OS X became a truly viable product.

I think Apple knew this, too. If you look at the timeline of macOS releases, 10.0–10.2 were released in the span of just over a year, and 10.3 had barely a year of life before Panther replaced it (incremental annual releases are the norm now, but they weren't then). And of course, Apple was still supporting OS 9 at the time.

10.0 -> 10.1 = 6 months

10.1 -> 10.2 = 11 months

10.2 -> 10.3 = 14 months

10.3 -> 10.4 = 18 months

I love the vaporwave aesthetic of this photo! Thanks for sharing.

When this design came out, I thought it was bold and futuristic. The "juicy" look is dated now, but to hear it described as "vaporwave" makes me feel old.

This. When I say OSX Tiger after sufffering Windows 98 (and having KDE3 in parallel) I was amazed, that doesn't look vaporwave at all. If anything, Amiga OS 3.1 and before is vaporwave. OSX Tiger was "UI done right".

Meanwhile I'd go out of my way to use system themers and programs that supported skins just to get that aqua aesthetic in Windows.

OSX Tiger was not like that, it was the most polished UI from Apple ever since System 7.

I especially notice this with iOS. iPhone OS (back when it was called that) was a masterpiece of design with every app having its own, different personality while being simple & efficient to use.

The last few iOS releases are a disaster on both fronts. Design-wise it’s completely blank, flat & empty, and usability wise a lot of the apps are just shadows of their former selves. Music, messages, maps, App Store, podcasts, etc. Even basic text editing was downgraded.

I cannot see any of the videos.

For all the videos, I get this on a black background:

    Sorry
    
    Because of its privacy settings,
    this video cannot be played here.

What is that? Anybody else seeing this?

I'm seeing the same thing. All the embedded vimeo videos were either deleted or made private.

I get that in Firefox, but if I open it in Safari everything plays just fine. You might just have to play the browser juggling game!

It was a nice "time travel" for half an hour as I watched the clips. I checked what was it like when I was 8 years old, then when we moved to the big city, when I was in middle school, when I entered the college, and then graduated, when I moved to US, when I got married, and when I got my first child. I did not see these before only except the famous 1984 ad.

Thank you very much for this.

Tbh I don’t understand what this is.

Im very curious to know how they got access to recent internal and unreleased material.

Even more interestingly - why this site with this domain name and that much apple-related content still does exist?

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2010/01/07/apple-domain-names/

I didn't see any Mac vs PC ads.

Several in 2006 at least https://www.applearchive.org/2006

Ah, thank you!

They are always fun to watch :)

I forgot Seybold was a thing.

The design of this site is site is so good. I love the layout and how easy it is to discover content.

Don't know why I expected granny smiths and red delicious stored in case of apocalypse.

Aesthetics are pretty objective despite some people refusing to acknowledge beauty in favor of their own ugly idea.

I don't even like Apple and I can say people like stainless steel more than plastic.

That said, if you bought a product because of the color, I got bad news for you.

I wasn't even talking about the hardware, that's a separate story. Apple's old hardware also looks and feels wonderful.

It is the style and design of Apple hardware that helps people choose them more often. After all Apple targets the creative arts community.

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