Finding a 27-year-old easter egg in the Power Mac G3 ROM

> This is probably one of the last easter eggs that existed in the Mac prior to Steve Jobs reportedly banning them in 1997 when he returned to Apple.

People often really deify Steve Jobs, but I dunno. I really like the years the Mac spent wandering the desert. I read things like this and feel like - even if it was a net win - Apple's culture and identity really ended up losing something with his return.

I’m a big Steve Jobs fan, but I’m also a fan of what I call the “interregnum” years at Apple from 1985 through 1996. Yes, Sculley, Spindler, and Amelio were not the greatest leaders, and Apple fumbled hard with Pink/Taligent, Copland, and hardware debacles such as the PowerBook 5300 and the Performa 5200/6200/5300/6300 series (1995 in particular was a disastrous year for Apple).

However, there were many wonderful things about this era. Jean Louis Gassée fought for expandable Macs, and his influence helped lead to the Macintosh II, which started a long series of expandable Macs that went unbroken until the “trash can” 2013 Mac Pro was released. System 7 might not have been the most reliable OS, but it had a wonderful UI. Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini promoted solid UI/UX principles and guidelines. HyperCard is from this time period. Apple’s Advanced Technology Group with Larry Tesler, Alan Kay, and many others worked on very interesting projects such as the Dylan programming language and the SK8 environment. OpenDoc was an interesting attempt at making a component-based software platform.

There was also this cozy, whimsical feeling of the classic Mac OS that got lost during the transition to Mac OS X, though I’m greatly appreciative of Mac OS X.

I’m a fan of “interregnum” Apple and also 1997-2011 Apple when Steve Jobs returned, but I’m not much of a fan of Tim Cook’s Apple. This is when I felt Apple has changed dramatically from its roots. Apple is financially the most successful it’s ever been, but the Mac no longer has the same feeling it once had back in the 1990s or the 2000s. Apple has gone from the Mac company to the iPhone company now.

1985 Kinko's had a bank of Macs available for anyone to use. I used to go there late thinking it would be less busy but they were usually in use all the time.

Cook's apple is slowly turning into a services company. Services revenue is higher than mac + ipad revenue combined.

Wasn't Jony Ive also hired during the interregnum period? I think I remember reading in the Isaacson bio that when Jobs came back in the late 90s he encountered Ive who was hired a year or two previously.

Yup, Jony Ive was hired before Steve Jobs returned to Apple. In fact, he worked on the 20th Anniversary Macintosh, though he wasn't the sole designer. If I remember correctly, Ive was considering leaving Apple around the time Jobs returned, but Jobs and Ive ended up hitting it off, and the rest became history, as Ive's designs and Jobs' encouragement helped revitalize Apple, beginning with the iMac.

Higher profit margin too, which is important. If the trend of supply-chain uncertainty in America continues, Apple might have to expect users to buy fewer, more expensive, and lower-margin Apple products. This isn't an issue if these purchases can lure them into a monthly service subscription though. Someone that owns a single iPad might spend more on software services than the hardware itself over the lifespan of the device. That's a huge opportunity to exploit, while retaining the luxury brand halo people love so much.

The whole "services company" characterization gets thrown around as a way to emphasize how many products Apple still has. But this is how it starts; less investment in disruption and more money funneled into new AppleTV+ episodes or publishing on Apple Arcade. Apple Car, Airpower and arguably Vision Pro are all buried in shallow graves, with AI becoming the heir apparent to Apple's technical sheen. The message is clear: selling you software is Apple's goal.

People hear services and think of Apple Music, Apple TV, etc., but the reality is $20B/yr of that “services” revenue is just Google paying Apple to be the default search engine.

>hardware debacles such as the PowerBook 5300

I'm still twitching 30 years later... what a piece of shit mine was. Spent more time in AppleCare than in my possession being used.

>There was also this cozy, whimsical feeling of the classic Mac OS that got lost during the transition to Mac OS X

Yes. It was so personal and so fun to be able to customize things like sounds and window colors, and to have Oscar the Grouch sing every time you emptied the trash. That whimsy and wonder is exactly what's missing in modern computing; the devices are more personal, yet more sterile.

Yeah, Apple released the Jony Ive-designed eMate 300, translucent green plastic and all, under Gil Amelio https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Apple_Ne...

Another big chunk of "Services" revenue that people usually don't think about is AppleCare.

I didn’t know Jony Ive designed the eMate 300! I loved them when I was in elementary school, where we’d sometimes use them in class to write short essays. This was circa 1999-2001 near Elk Grove, CA, a suburb of Sacramento.