121–130 of 131 posts
[1] https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...
"In 1990, with John Sculley's blessing, I left Apple with Marc Porat and Andy Hertzfeld to co-found General Magic and help to invent the personal communicator." Sculley really wasn't the right person to lead Apple. He should have been begging them to do it in-house.
I don’t disagree with that assessment of Sculley but I’m not sure if that would have helped anyone. What the movie makes clear is that General Magic very badly needed adult supervision (all these “geniuses”! doing absolutely nothing of value! together!), and I’m not sure Apple of that era would have been capable of providing it in a productive way.
They had the right tech, maybe a hair too early, but manageable, and the smart folks to build on it & iterate.
What they were missing was anyone who could take the freedom of wireless and marry it to the constraints of mid-90’s hardware & networks.
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It's very localised and Californian. There were really two big tech scenes - one around MIT and Mass, and one around CalTech/Stanford and adjacent areas - with some also-rans in other areas that were mostly gov mil/aerospace spinoffs. The Mass scene sort of fizzled in the 90s for various reasons - not dead, but not dominant - and the centre of gravity moved to the West Coast. So if you were born in CA and studied the…
FWIW CalTech is in southern California and far away (both geographically and socially) from Stanford. Its strengths also tend to be primarily in physics, rocketry, and astronomy, rather than in CS - its primary ties are with JPL and NASA. The Bay Area tech scene is anchored by Stanford and UC Berkeley, though most Stanford alums would probably say it's just Stanford.
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The real sin is having both.
I don't get it. I grew up with green and amber CRTs and I don't miss those days at all. What makes it mean so much, to you kids who never knew those days to miss?
But yes, I also think of "light mode" as "starting into a light bulb all day" and when possible prefer light text on a dark background. How much of that is real and how much is just part of the same nostalgic impulse that leads me to install PxPlusVGA9 [0]...
[0] https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/font?ibm_vga_...
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You can be a superstar and still not succeed alone, without other superstars around you. They are so successful because they know each other. And survivorship bias guarantees that all those who didn't make it are unknown, or not mentioned. This is the role of successful companies like this, just like top universities. They help create the connection between people with huge potential (or money), superstars, and ampli…
The Fifth Solvay Conference From back row to front, reading left to right: Auguste Piccard, Émile Henriot, Paul Ehrenfest, Édouard Herzen, Théophile de Donder, Erwin Schrödinger, Jules-Émile Verschaffelt, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Ralph Howard Fowler, Léon Brillouin, Peter Debye, Martin Knudsen, William Lawrence Bragg, Hendrik Anthony Kramers, Paul Dirac, Arthur Compton, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Niels Boh…
> I left Apple with Marc Porat and Andy Hertzfeld to co-found General Magic and help to invent the personal communicator. It’s always wild to me how many of the people that are the beginnings of these large prodigy companies and the connection to other powerful rich people. You look up some of these people and see the relationships and it’s wild. Like the name Porat rang a bell so I look up Marc and oh? That’s Ruth P…
You can be a superstar and still not succeed alone, without other superstars around you. They are so successful because they know each other. And survivorship bias guarantees that all those who didn't make it are unknown, or not mentioned. This is the role of successful companies like this, just like top universities. They help create the connection between people with huge potential (or money), superstars, and ampli…
Spite and necessity are much more common motivators for greatness than team synergy. People will do the wildest things because they share a mutual enemy. Just look at the drone innovation that’s happened in Ukraine.
On the other hand, annoying sports analogies are a fantastic recipe for mediocrity.
Great scientists and engineers seldom work alone, but their paths to the top were usually rather unique, and all too often, full of tragedy.
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I don't get it. I grew up with green and amber CRTs and I don't miss those days at all. What makes it mean so much, to you kids who never knew those days to miss?
Can't tell you about the kids, but I started out with an amber monochrome CRT, and I used plenty of Apple II and MS-DOS text mode over the years, so it's not a lately adopted affectation. :) But I'm being around 75% facetious about calling it "original sin" -- I think Atkinson is right that "light mode" is better for graphics work, and his push for it on the Lisa and Mac was probably the right move. But yes, I also t…
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I love h&cf but it’s important for people who are curious about it to know that it is definitely an overdramatized AMC piece akin to mad men. It’s basically mad men but PCs lol. It has some brilliant writing and the acting is off the charts (whoever handled casting is unbelievable), but man it can definitely make you roll your eyes occasionally lol
Rarely. I actually expected it to go in a somewhat different direction. But as somewhat who was at COMDEX and in the industry in general during that period, it felt pretty true.
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Rarely. I actually expected it to go in a somewhat different direction. But as somewhat who was at COMDEX and in the industry in general during that period, it felt pretty true.
It’s really a lot of the interpersonal drama. It’s not like that stuff that didn’t happen, but AMC does have a tendency to soap it up