Absolutely love the logo, is there a term for this design style?
edit: closest I could find was 'Corporate Gen-X Cyber' (https://cari.institute/aesthetics/corporate-gen-x-cyber)
Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
11–20 of 67 posts
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#12looks like Steve picked up the whole team without paying a dime.
Yes, several of them are still at Apple. For example Bud Tribble helps run the privacy team IIRC and Darin Adler is in charge of Safari, iMessage, Mail, etc.
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#13Very cool to learn where my Linux file manager GUI app came from. One point that is light on details in the wiki was what exactly their monetization plan was or if they even had one at all? It sounds like they wanted to integrate business/enterprise features and support, or perhaps features that plug into other internet services that they could possibly monetize. It sounds like the "network user experience" with "Eaz…
This was 1999. Monetization hadn't been invented yet.
You make it sound like companies didn't need to make money before 2000 rolled around.
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#14I remember the hype when Nautilus first came out. I was a teenager, but even then, I had my doubts as to how a file manager make sense as the centerpiece for building a business. IIRC there were conversations about how to monetize it using premium add-ons which seemed pretty ridiculous at the time.
They died only 6 years before Dropbox was founded and had a plan to have cloud storage and an app store. It seems possible they could have executed well on those fronts and have nautilus "just" be a high-end frontend to the services. It probably required a very different mix of engineering focus though.
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#15I remember the hype when Nautilus first came out. I was a teenager, but even then, I had my doubts as to how a file manager make sense as the centerpiece for building a business. IIRC there were conversations about how to monetize it using premium add-ons which seemed pretty ridiculous at the time.
So extra context that may help at least understand the perspective:
There was a considerable amount of overlap between the browser and the file manager originally. The notion of the modern day internet wasn't really here, and instead a lot of companies saw "browsing the web" as mostly equivalent to "browsing your files - but remotely".
Even Microsoft did this - "Windows Explorer" (The file manager) and "Internet Explorer" (The browser) shared a huge amount of code. To that point that I could still write COM browser helper objects that run in both of those programs as late as 2018 - only stopping when MS finally killed IE in favor of Edge-Chromium.
Basically - Back then the web was just files to be browsed, and that was the job of the file manager, and people correctly identified that the web had monetization opportunities. They were just bad at identifying exactly what they were.
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#16As I was reading through the article, a thought experiment occurred: if a new Eazel emerged tomorrow (another Linux-focused startup led by ex-Apple "rock stars"), how would they best contribute to the Linux desktop? Join GNOME? Join KDE? Would any of their Apple-influenced paradigms even be accepted among the developers of mature DEs? Would they go create their own desktop environment ala Pantheon/elementaryOS? Would they go distro-agnostic and just contribute some "polish" to major Linux applications?
It unfortunately strikes me that the window when such a team might have had a major influence on the Linux ecosystem has passed, and most of the distros are happily entrenched in their own little fiefdoms.
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#17As I was reading through the article, a thought experiment occurred: if a new Eazel emerged tomorrow (another Linux-focused startup led by ex-Apple "rock stars"), how would they best contribute to the Linux desktop? Join GNOME? Join KDE? Would any of their Apple-influenced paradigms even be accepted among the developers of mature DEs? Would they go create their own desktop environment ala Pantheon/elementaryOS? Would…
> if a new Eazel emerged tomorrow (another Linux-focused startup led by ex-Apple "rock stars"), how would they best contribute to the Linux desktop?
Probably by joining elementary OS:
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#18I remember the hype when Nautilus first came out. I was a teenager, but even then, I had my doubts as to how a file manager make sense as the centerpiece for building a business. IIRC there were conversations about how to monetize it using premium add-ons which seemed pretty ridiculous at the time.
A user's "home page" is valuable real estate for good reason. If they could have become the home page for a large number of users then they might have been able to monetize without losing those users, but that's a pretty big if on a convoluted path.
> A user's "home page"
We'd (sadly) call that Facebook nowadays.-
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#19> Susan Kare designed new vector graphics-based iconography, having designed the original Macintosh icons > […] > On March 13, 2001, Eazel simultaneously launched the first release of Nautilus (version 1.0), and laid off most of its 75 employees in an attempt to secure funding in its final few months. > […] > The Nautilus file manager was received positively, and has been incorporated into GNOME since GNOME version 1…
She sells really nice prints of her icons in case you are interested in that: https://kareprints.com
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#20I remember the hype when Nautilus first came out. I was a teenager, but even then, I had my doubts as to how a file manager make sense as the centerpiece for building a business. IIRC there were conversations about how to monetize it using premium add-ons which seemed pretty ridiculous at the time.
So extra context that may help at least understand the perspective: There was a considerable amount of overlap between the browser and the file manager originally. The notion of the modern day internet wasn't really here, and instead a lot of companies saw "browsing the web" as mostly equivalent to "browsing your files - but remotely". Even Microsoft did this - "Windows Explorer" (The file manager) and "Internet Expl…
Add to that, all the hype on file systems as well with BeOS FS or WinFS ( I had too look up the name of the abandoned Vista FS, I am almost sure it had another name), plenty of new FS were created during that era as well.
File management was a key activity at that time.