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

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Waterluvian ◴[24 Jun 25 15:27 UTC] No.44367257[source]▶

>>44365806 (OP) #

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.

replies(4): >>44368086 #>>44368971 #>>44373830 #>>44375365 #

1. hinkley ◴[24 Jun 25 18:05 UTC] No.44368971[source]▶

>>44367257 #

I wonder too if there was more of this before Agile. With deadline driven development you can run into situations where part of the team is stuck waiting for their teammates to finish something so they can surpass a milestone. You can only poke at the backlog so much. Boredom and being able to rationalize that you aren't really affecting the roadmap by sneaking a little extra something in makes for a lot more 'motive and opportunity' situations.

replies(1): >>44371744 #

2. HenryBemis ◴[24 Jun 25 22:33 UTC] No.44371744[source]▶

>>44368971 (TP) #

Today some auditor (like me) would fail your ITGCs because of the undocumented partition/file/change/etc (take your pick) and force you to submit a deviation to the SOC team, ask you to "review and update the Secure Design Document to reflect to the change", ask you to create a Jira and/or ServiceNow ticket, etc. etc. etc.

Oh, and you would get a red mark on your "HR P&D record" for the 'Secure Software Policy' violation.

(Shit.. I hated myself writing the above, but it's true)

In 2001 though, we would all laugh if we would have 'caught' the devs doing something cool like this!

replies(7): >>44371980 #>>44372823 #>>44374855 #>>44375074 #>>44375735 #>>44376546 #>>44382386 #

3. ahazred8ta ◴[24 Jun 25 23:01 UTC] No.44371980[source]▶

>>44371744 #

Yeah, the federal government used to pay extra for versions of Win/9x with the easter eggs taken out.

replies(1): >>44373949 #

4. echelon ◴[25 Jun 25 01:21 UTC] No.44372823[source]▶

>>44371744 #

Gross.

I hope we do shrink software companies down to the mythical "1-person unicorns" so we can be done with this madness.

I prefer the taste of small auteurs to the consensus of product orgs and their politicking. (Add to that whatever design refreshes we are faced with when the designers declare a new design language.)

5. tobr ◴[25 Jun 25 05:40 UTC] No.44373949{3}[source]▶

>>44371980 #

Oh, so in other words, there is business value in Easter eggs.

replies(1): >>44382387 #

6. FirmwareBurner ◴[25 Jun 25 08:19 UTC] No.44374855[source]▶

>>44371744 #

>"HR P&D record"

Let HR run your engineering, go broke.

replies(1): >>44382390 #

7. dgfitz ◴[25 Jun 25 08:59 UTC] No.44375074[source]▶

>>44371744 #

> Oh, and you would get a red mark on your "HR P&D record" for the 'Secure Software Policy' violation.