A Mac For Mick (2005) | Hacker News Reader

A Mac For Mick (2005)

folklore.org

88 pointsstmw29 comments

Set aside everything about this story that involves celebrity, for a moment, and focus on the 12 year old who walks in and is immediately captivated and excited to learn and experiment. That’s the magic of the personal computer. That’s the manifestation of how macs and PCs changed the world.

Woz did a stint as an educator after working at Apple, and one of the stories he recounted was how a student told him he was able to create an animation on a computer. Woz's first thought was that it was not possible, because there was no video software on the machine. But the student had rigged it so that a sequence of still frames, each in separate windows, arranged in a chronological sequence, would all close when a program would close, and the effect would be an animation as each of the windows was closed in turn. That, Woz said, was hacking.

I don't recall where I heard that story, and my recollection may be off, but that story always stuck with me.

Sounds a tad improbable to me. There were animations on the Apple II. There was even a flight simulator. There is just no way that Woz would think animation was impossible on anything available after he left Apple.

He's saying on that particular machine there was no video software installed.

The story was told after he left, but it sounded like the conversation that he was recounting had taken place while he was still at Apple

This reminds me of all the unholy things I’ve seen done with excel over the years.

One guy I worked with at a big corp IT shop had broken PowerPoint and the IT guys couldn’t fix it (turned out to be a profile corruption issue). So he did his presentation in excel with and wrote something that captured a mouse click and used it to activate the next sheet in the workbook. I was vaguely impressed as he wasn’t a programmer by any means.

Apple definitely understood the kid factor early on. The sights and sounds of Bugdom (a packaged game) on those gumdrop iMacs was absolute magic, both in the store and in the school computer lab.

Bugdom, snood, deimos rising. Some absolute classics. I miss the practice of bundling a game or two with computers.

My neighbor's mother was a graphic designer and at some point got an at-the-time state of the art first generation PPC mac (I want to say a PowerMac 7100) so she could work at home. Playing with Kid Pix on that machine was magical to pre-teen me.

This was me the first time I saw MacPaint as a child. Bill Atkinson did genius work.

> Jade Sheena Jezebel Jagger (born 21 October 1971) is a British-French jewellery designer, home designer, and former model. [wikipedia]

And she grew up to have a rewarding career in the arts rather than growing up to be a software engineer. Maybe it means something... Maybe it means nothing... (?)

Not everyone that was fascinated by computers as a kid became a software engineer! I'd assume most didn't. I was obsessed with dinosaurs as a kid and I didn't become a paleontologist.

Apple produced great hardware open to experimentation up until the original Macintosh which eschewed all open extension capabilities.

I'd say that Apple produced great bicycle-for-the-mind software up until they discontinued HyperCard; they still support Garage Band, though.

Otherwise, to my mind, Apple's computers became the epitome of "my way or highway" approach, closer and closer to consumer appliances.

Apple created a version of Basic for the Mac, but Microsoft threatened to yank the license for the Apple II version of Basic if they didn't kill it.

>Apple's original deal with Microsoft for licensing Applesoft Basic had a term of eight years, and it was due to expire in September 1985. Apple still depended on the Apple II for the lion's share of its revenues, and it would be difficult to replace Microsoft Basic without fragmenting the software base. Bill Gates had Apple in a tight squeeze, and, in an early display of his ruthless business acumen, he exploited it to the hilt.

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=MacBasic.txt

“ Mick was polite, but he didn't seem to have heard of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs or the Macintosh. Steve tried to strike up a conversation, but he wasn't very successful. Steve told me that Mick couldn't seem to put together a coherent sentence. "His speech was slurred and very slow", Steve described it later, "in fact I think he was on drugs. Either that or he's brain-damaged." After a few minutes, it was clear that Mick had absolutely no interest whatsoever in Apple or the Macintosh, and an awkward silence ensued.”

This is actually pretty hilarious, would love to see this as a Quentin Tarantino scene.

Which does Quentin play?

Quentin plays the Mac and has Jade (played by Arianna Grande if available. if not, Uma Thurman) operate it with her feet.

Steve Buscemi plays Mick Jagger, Adam Driver plays both Bill A and Steve J. If Adam refuses to wear the turtleneck, hire Patrick Stewart to play Steve.

I really hope Apple makes a tv show like Halt and Catch Fire with the stories from folklore.org.

How cute. What a lucky girl.

It seems like her drugged out father is leaving her to be entertained by total strangers. Great when it's a computer-innovation legend demoing new technology. Maybe not that great the rest of the time.

Yes, I had a very mundane childhood and wouldn't have wanted to switch spots with Jade according to this story.

Yeah. Steve Jobs didn't spend half an hour demoing the Mac to me. My dad taught me how to use a computer and let me use his. That seems infinitely better to me.

Remember the windows 95 "release music" was "satisfaction".

Actually “start it up”.

Edit: “Start me up”, that’s it. Thank you, child comment.

Close, it was “Start Me Up”.

https://www.aaaa.org/timeline-event/start-3-million-anthem-l...

Yeah, right. Don't understand how could I have mixed these.

Ironically one of the lyrics was “…you make a grown man cry” which, as a Solaris user at the time, windows 95 did.

Peter Gabriel once gave me his iBook. I jammed the mousepad button down and put it in a closet and set a record on what is now: https://www.worldsdumbestgame.com/

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