Why I Still Use the Camino Browser Almost Every Day

Camino is a port of Netscape specifically to Mac OS X. It began in late 2001 when Mike Pinkerton and Vidur Apparao launched a proof-of-concept project to embed Netscape’s Gecko rendering engine in a Cocoa application. Cocoa is Apple’s native object-oriented application programming interface (API) for Mac OS X and is rooted in NeXTstep, which […]

The 20th Anniversary Mac, 21 Years Later

The eve of the Ides of March this year marks 2 decades since the inglorious end of a year-long failed experiment by Apple Computer (among many at the time). Nevertheless, the 20th Anniversary Mac would become a bellwether of the groundbreaking products to come under the guidance of newly-returned “interim CEO” Steve Jobs.

The First Expandable Macs and the Mac Portable

1986 marked the replacement of Mike Murray as head of marketing with Jean-Louis Gassée. Gassée started Apple’s French division and drove it in a few years to become one of the most successful divisions in Apple. Unlike Steve Jobs’ vision of an information appliance, Gassée hoped that the Macintosh would turn into an open platform […]

The Macintosh Clone Era

There are three different business models in the PC, smartphone, and tablet industries. The most widely used model is for one company to make the operating system and license it to a host of hardware manufacturers. This has given us the Windows market where no matter how badly PC makers do, Microsoft remains profitable.

A History of the Mac Color Classic

The Color Classic has been lauded by many Mac faithful as what the original Macintosh should have been. The computer was made available to the general public on February 10, 1993, and was received well by reviewers.

NuTek Mac Clones

While most early Mac clones depended on Macintosh ROMs to function, NuTek spent four years reverse engineering the ROMs in a clean room in its quest to produce a legal Mac clone. It didn’t exactly succeed.

The Cortland Index

Cortland, named for a type of Apple, is a column about computer history, especially Apple and the Macintosh. These articles were written by a student in the United Kingdom who has studied Apple for years and enjoys writing about lesser-known Apple related topics.

Andy Hertzfeld: Mac Truly a Better Way

Andy Hertzfeld was a key member of the Macintosh development team. He was the Software Wizard behind much of the Mac’s built-in ROM code and the user interface. His goal is to make computers easier and more fun to use. After leaving Apple, Hertzfeld helped co-found three companies: Radius, General Magic, and Eazel. He is […]

1992: Performas, Quadras, and PowerBook Duos

Apple addressed some little things with System 7.1, introduced in 1992. The biggest innovation was putting a Fonts folder inside the System Folder. An entire generation of Mac users has now grown up never having had to move fonts to or from the System file using Font/DA Mover.