Ken Case

@kcase
3.3K Followers
465 Following
958 Posts

CEO of @OmniGroup, a small Seattle-based software company who have won five Apple Design Awards (for @OmniFocus, @OmniGraffle, and @OmniWeb).

Enthusiastic about doing things early: university at age 14; AppKit on NeXT in 1989; apps on launch days for Mac OS X, iPhone, iPad, watchOS, and visionOS.

Gamer. Helped Wizards launch Magic: the Gathering. Helped with Doom on NeXT; with Quake, Oni, and Fallout 1/2 on Mac OS X.
#searchable #fedi22

Websitehttps://people.omnigroup.com/kc/
LocationSeattle

@kcase @sanguish

I still have these

@kcase I have a similar memory. For my senior year of high school I convinced my dad to buy me an Apple II. We weren’t poor but a computer was not in the budget. Anyway as soon as they said yes, I went to the book store and bought a book on the Apple II and spent the next several days reading every page until the day we drove to “the big city” and bought it. I think that remains one of the most exciting moments of my life. I still have that Apple II and all of its original packaging.

The feeling and smell of HTML doesn't quite compare to the feel and smell of those physical books. But I still think of those manuals whenever I see that bright six-color Apple logo.

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When Macintosh was introduced as "the computer for the rest of us"—sporting its bright six-color Apple logo—what really caught my attention was the huge stack of Xeroxed "Inside Macintosh" developer manuals: kept in a three-ringed binder at the University's computer center, filled with loads of Pascal APIs. And when Steve introduced the NeXT cube with its stack of API manuals, I was entranced. My life has revolved around the platform ever since.

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Even without the computer, I thought about what I could make that computer do when I got back, scribbling out BASIC programs in the back seat with pencil on paper.

I was entranced by the empowering possibilities of that early "bicycle for the mind"—a feeling that has never left me.

[2/4]

Every time I see the original bright six-color Apple logo, I'm reminded of the Apple ][ donated to our small school just before the end of the school year. I asked the librarian if I could borrow its stack of spiral-bound manuals over the summer. I pored through that stack of manuals as my family road-tripped from Seattle to South Dakota—my mind fully occupied by the information contained within, as my senses took in the feel of the paper and the smell of the books.

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Earlier this year, Christophe Laporte of the French-language publication MacGeneration asked if I might share a personal memory about Apple for a project they were working on for Apple's 50th anniversary.

As we approach that anniversary this week, I thought I'd share that memory here as well!

https://fr.ulule.com/50-ans-apple-le-livre-par-macgeneration/

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50 ans d'Apple : Le livre et la 1re journée MacGeneration

Apple fête ses 50 ans : le livre indispensable pour tous les passionnés de la pomme.

Ulule
I can’t begin to tell you how much fun I had talking to people who were present at Apple’s creation—Woz, of course, but so many more. I learned so much, and really did feel like I was there. So will you, I think. Here’s a gift link which you’re welcome to share: https://www.fastcompany.com/91514404/apple-founding-50th-anniversary-apple-1-apple-ii-jobs-wozniak?mvgt=E5Loo3fO74zl
How Apple became Apple: The definitive oral history of the company’s earliest days

The true story of how Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and other bright young tech hobbyists of the 1970s joined forces to ignite a revolution.

Fast Company

Alright friends, my new video is up!

It’s a synthwave fueled tale of The Connection Machine – the 80’s AI supercomputer that saw thirty years into the future.

This one was so much work 🤯

Go watch, subscribe, share!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaNuVR75cwY

This AI Supercomputer was 30 years too early

YouTube

Ultimately, with NSFNet expanding in '88 and commercial ISPs emerging in '89, we had more network and computing available than ever—just not on the IBM mainframes hosting Bitnet.

Jarkko Oikarinen took inspiration from Bitnet's Relay and built the Internet Relay Chat (irc) for Unix. It was a little slow to take off, and has had its own drama (with net splits, etc.), but anyone with a Unix system can run their own server—and as a result, some 36+ years later it's still around.