This is CS history part 2 I took a good amount of time this winter learning about Apple computer from the original Macintosh project, the apple one and two. Stories of Steve jobs
Woz and many of the awesome people that went on to make cool stuff. I watched the two biopics on Netflix read a lot of Wikipedia and some other cool stuff.
1. Folklore.org
Andy Hertszield has a long list of cool stories technical details and antidotes on the orginal Mac team and developent. This can be found on https://www.folklore.org and is full of some fun stuff a few of them are mentioned in the other items of this list but I tried to keep the really cool stuff over there
2. The donkey.bas story
This taught me a lot a bit about the rivalry of mac and Microsoft was well as their early relationship, basic history dialects of basic and that even famous programmers like bill gates made games and failed first.
The story goes like this, Apple hires Microsoft to make some 3rd party apps for the Macintosh, they sign a contract saying that they will not make their own hardware or OS for a year. This was supposed to give the Mac team time to finish but when the release date of the Mac was pushed back Microsoft was able to publish a computer with a GUI that was super similar a bit after the mac.
Years before hand, The Mac guys taking a look at a computer Microsoft sells with IBM in 1981 find a game that is considered terrible called donkey.baz, in the comments of the game are the names Bill Gates and Neil Konzen.
3. Xerox parc is cool AF
This is a simple one but I have to say I am mystified by a full on research center or just a campus of innovation. The engineers at Xerox were considered the best of the best and many of them are sprinkled across Computer science history and innovations.
4. Woz and Steve made Breakout
This was a complete shock to me, and more proof that game dev is the instruments of computer scientists to learn and develop their skills. Working at Atari Jobs is put on a special project, he designs the game but is not much of a programmer so he offers Steve steve Wozniak $350 half of the $700 he says Atari is paying him to program and help him finish the game. The only problem is that Steve was paid $5000 for the finished project.
That is one thing you learn about Steve Jobs and Woz. Jobs was a shameless dick to the bitter end, Woz cares more about innovation and fun than about money.
5. Woz used to work at HP
I really like this last item cause while it is simple its important to realize back then HP was not as big as it is today. I just like the idea of him working for a modest calculator company and today they are also quite big in computing