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

(www.downtowndougbrown.com)
388 points zdw | 6 comments | 24 Jun 25 13:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source | bottom
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Waterluvian ◴[24 Jun 25 15:27 UTC] No.44367257[source]▶
These Easter eggs really give an “early desktop PC era” vibe to it all. It’s very human and connects you to the fact that you’re using something that people with faces and names made. Back when these were passion projects by a bunch of hardcore nerds.

But they’d rather you not really see through the product abstraction layer anymore. The Product People want to control the full image of the product and it’s just safest to de-humanize it in case that list is too big or people on that list become undesirables or whatnot.

I’m thinking about what this might look like today. Maybe a neat Easter egg in my iPhone that every time I activate it, it shows me a few people at random who played a role in development. I’d love it, but I imagine this would offend the high tastes of the Product People.

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ulfw ◴[24 Jun 25 16:41 UTC] No.44368086[source]▶
I don't know what your odd issue with product people is but this has absolutely nothing to do with Product (management). Software used to be done by a handful of people. Now there are thousands involved across an organisation. For better or worth that's how it is. An Easter Egg highlighting just a few people just doesn't make sense for a large software project nowadays
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1. rusk ◴[24 Jun 25 16:43 UTC] No.44368118[source]▶
It’s more to do with Quality Control than Product Management
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2. ryandrake ◴[24 Jun 25 17:23 UTC] No.44368539[source]▶
Yea, Quality Control and Risk Management. You really don’t want even the slightest risk of messing up the build or the product just so that you can bury some secret treasure in the code! We’ve all at some point been responsible for a big goof-up in code that we believed to be harmless.
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3. hinkley ◴[24 Jun 25 18:06 UTC] No.44368979[source]▶
Yeah but you write the easter egg in one product cycle and you put it in the code at the beginning of the next, so it has all the time in the world to 'bake'.
4. mikepurvis ◴[24 Jun 25 18:44 UTC] No.44369424[source]▶
Not that I don't also wish for a return of more whimsy to software development, but those risks are real— there have been some pretty high profile embarrassments over the years in connection with pranks and easter eggs. The GMail "mic drop" is an obvious one, also the Spider-Man PS4 proposal was another, plus of course stuff like the GTA Hot Coffee minigame.
5. iAMkenough ◴[24 Jun 25 18:58 UTC] No.44369649[source]▶
Also from a Risk Management perspective, you might be embedding the name/photo of a future sociopath or someone who is litigious. The "human" aspect cuts both ways.
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6. Waterluvian ◴[24 Jun 25 19:30 UTC] No.44370048{3}[source]▶
A consequence of drawing the risk line that far to one end is that products end up having no soul. Perfectly valid for a business to decide that. But it just connects back to my main post and how 80s/90s apple had that vibe that today's apple lacks. They Risk Managed and/or Product Designed until they had a sterile, lifeless product.

I think it's what I pick up on when I feel annoyed at the emulated soul they try to instil with their design/branding/commercials.

I think another example, sibling to easter eggs, would be April Fools. Mind you I hate April Fools, but the soul was sterilized as they Risk Managed their way to jokes/pranks that were guaranteed to be safe.