Apple used to be weirder and maybe more fun

Apple was at its best and most creative during the long Steveless interregnum. The inmates were running the asylum, so they couldn't ship products or make money. But it definitely seemed weirder and more fun, at least from the outside.

> October 17, 1988

> The typical Apple engineer’s office contains [...] about a gigabyte of hard disk space

A gigabyte?! In 1988?? Am I misremembering, or was that about 10-20x what we consumers had in our computers?

I think it refers to the combined storage of the 4 to 5 computers each developer had.

I agree, today it's like having one of the latest Mac Studios, one older Mac Studio and a couple of MacBooks. Or even just one maxed-out Mac Studio. Enviable but credible.

I looked up computer shopper october 88.

most "normal" systems had 40mb hard disks.

mac ii 40mb hard drive... $3800

But a Compaq Deskpro 386/25 could come with a 300mb hard disk for ... $9650

an ibm ps2 with 314mb hard disk... $8585

I have an April Fool's issue (circa 87-88 or so) of the developer newsletter in box somewhere. Self-referential, silly... I kind of miss that Apple.

Smaller companies usually are