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Inside Macintosh (1985) [pdf]
- dang 7y agoUrl changed from https://maeda.pm/2019/02/09/inside-macintosh-1985/ https://maeda.pm/2019/02/09/inside-macintosh-1985/, which points to this.
- knolax 7y agoI wonder what they used to typeset it.
- RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 7y agoPossibly FrameMaker. I read later editions of the series from my local library ages ago, and IIRC there's a note at the beginning stating so.
- wsh 7y agoThe Wikipedia article about FrameMaker says it was first released in 1986, and for the Mac in 1990, five years after the original Inside Macintosh books were published. FrameMaker was used for the new Inside Macintosh series, starting in 1992. From my copy of Inside Macintosh: Overview, on one of the last pages: THE APPLE PUBLISHING SYSTEM This Apple manual was written, edited, and composed on a desktop publishing system using Apple Macintosh computers and FrameMaker software. Proof pages were created on an Apple LaserWriter IIɴᴛⅹ printer. Final page negatives were output directly from text files on an AGFA ProSet 9800 imagesetter. Line art was created using Adobe™ Illustrator. PostScript™, the page-description language for the LaserWriter, was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated. The same page acknowledges, by name, the members of the writing, editorial, and production team.
- azinman2 7y agoMaybe later editions, but in the beginning it was troff (I just talked to Chris Espinosa about it the other day).
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoToo early, I think Framemaker came out in 1986.
- linguae 7y agoI miss the classic Mac OS. From time to time I turn on one of my classic Macs and use Mac OS 8 or 9 for a while, going down memory lane. While the classic Mac OS was unstable due to its lack of both memory protection and preemptive multitasking, there's a certain simplicity to the interface, as well as a near-universal adherence to the Apple Human Interface Guidelines by most applications, that is unfortunately missing in today's desktop computing environments. Modern GUI software has a lot of "bling", but I feel that Apple got it right in the 1980s and 1990s, with less emphasis on slick, shiny designs and more emphasis on the substance of building usable interfaces. I wish more developers would learn from Apple's usability guidelines from the 1980s and 1990s.
- Austin_Conlon 7y ago1995 Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines: http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf.
- pjmlp 7y agoWhat I kind of miss, was how Apple was into better languages for OS development (Object Pascal, Hypercard, MCL, Dylan, NewtonScript). I guess that with Swift and Playgrounds, they are kind of back on track.
- Razengan 7y agoPlaygrounds are still buggy, almost 6 years later. Even Swift has had weird regressions where previously fine code throws runtime errors in a recent Xcode.
- pjmlp 7y agoThey might not be perfect, but they exist and provide a much better developer experience than the PDP-11 one.
- linguae 7y agoThere were a lot of really cool technologies developed during the "interregnum" years between 1985 and 1997 at Apple. OpenDoc is one of the most interesting technologies to be developed during this time period. OpenDoc would have dramatically disrupted the desktop applications market; people would have bought component-based software instead of monolithic applications such as Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop. While it was canned when Steve Jobs returned (I suspect the main reason for this is because Apple desperately needed Microsoft's and Adobe's continued support for Mac OS back when Apple's situation looked precarious), something that I've pondered a lot recently is what would have happened had the free/open source software community had developed something like OpenDoc to build component-based applications for Linux, where the community could spend its time developing components, instead of imitating the Mac and Windows approaches of building large, monolithic applications, which unfortunately have resulted in a very long game of catchup (compare GIMP to Photoshop, or compare LibreOffice to Microsoft Office).
- pjmlp 7y agoAh, the pleasure of Object Pascal for systems programming.
- TMWNN 7y agoFrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Macintosh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Macintosh : >Bruce F. Webster in BYTE in December 1985 described Inside Macintosh as "infamous, expensive, and obscure", but "for anyone wanting to do much with the Mac ... the only real [printed] source of information". He quoted Kathe Spracklen, developer of Sargon, as saying that the book "consists of 25 chapters, each of which requires that you understand the other 24 before reading it". "The best guide to the Mac's ROMs is Inside Macintosh", Robert C. Platt said in August 1985. "Unfortunately, Inside Macintosh is also the most incomprehensible documentation ever written". A reason why it was so infamous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh#1984.E2.80.9390:_Desktop_publishing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh#1984.E2.80.9390:_Des... : >Developers were required to learn how to write software that used the Macintosh's graphic user interface; despite standardizing on Pascal for software development Apple did not release a native-code Pascal compiler. Until third-party Pascal compilers appeared, developers had to write software in other languages while still learning enough Pascal to understand Inside Macintosh. As a result, >Although outselling every other computer, it did not meet expectations during the first year, especially among business customers. Only about ten applications including MacWrite and MacPaint were widely available ... After one year, [the Mac] had less than one quarter of the software selection available compared to the IBM PC—including only one word processor, two databases, and one spreadsheet—although Apple had sold 280,000 Macintoshes compared to IBM's first year sales of fewer than 100,000 PCs.
- macintux 7y agoWhat’s amazing to me from that is that the Mac had even 1/4 the selection. Clearly both the PC and Mac software markets were in very early stages.
- GeekyBear 7y ago>Apple did not release a native-code Pascal compiler. Originally, an Apple Lisa computer was used to develop Macintosh software. A Pascal compiler that ran natively on the Mac came later. >Macintosh development in the early days (circa 1983-1985) was done using the Apple Lisa computer and its Lisa Workshop development environment. The Lisa Workshop hosted a command line interface which accessed a wonderful mouse based editor, a Pascal compiler, a 68000 macro assembler, an object file Linker, the RMaker resource compiler utility program, and the MacCom Lisa-to-Macintosh utility communications program. https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=3rd_Party_Developers_and_Macintosh_Development.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=3rd_Party_Develo...
- dazzawazza 7y agoMy first job was making multimedia CDROMS for Macintosh 6/7 and Windows 3.11/95. The Inside Mac books were simply amazing compared to the Windows documentation. I still prefer to code with book in front of me and I don't subscribe to the Stack Overflow is better mindset. You move more slowly at first but a much much deeper knowledge is gained from well written books. I also get a much deeper sense of satisfaction which enhances my life.
- bsenftner 7y agoI was in a pre-release Macintosh Processional Developers Seminar at Harvard University summer of '83. Because the OS was still in development then, each class would receive photocopy handouts of the pages of Inside Macintosh written the day before, with programmer's and editor's pen and pencil corrections on the pages. I bound them all together into a phone book thick binder, put them into a lockbox and forgot about it until a few years ago. Just last year, I visited a rare book collector and showed it to them - it is apparently in the "priceless" range and they want me to donate it to the Computer Museum in Boston. I've not made up my mind yet, but am thinking I should scan the entire thing and put it online.
- honopu 7y agoYes, scan it then donate it, or keep it. Something like this should be shared.
- RodgerTheGreat 7y agoPlease do scan it and put it online. Sounds like an amazing piece of history.
- slavapestov 7y agoOne of the neat things about the original Inside Macintosh was that in addition to describing the toolbox APIs it also explained the hardware found in the original Mac with enough detail that one could write a driver (or an emulator). There’s a Wikipedia article with a summary: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K/512K_technical_details https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K/512K_technica... Subsequent volumes did talk about the additions and changes in the Mac Plus, SE and II but not in as much detail.
- rgacote 7y agoInside Macintosh is a beautifully written piece of work (contrary to some other statements in the thread). No mention of Inside Macintosh should exclude the amazing Caroline Rose: http://www.storiesofapple.net/interview-with-caroline-rose.html http://www.storiesofapple.net/interview-with-caroline-rose.h...
- hammerbrostime 7y agoAs a teenager when these books were in use, they were frustratingly expensive and unobtainable. I've since then always put great weight on the accessibility of documentation. E.G., MDN is a treasure for all.
- jnwatson 7y agoI distinct remember the joy of finding a set of Inside Macintosh for cheap, and then the regret when I found several hundred pages repeated due to a printing error.
- RodgerTheGreat 7y agoDoes anyone know where I could find volumes IV and V as PDFs? Apple appears to have taken down or moved most of their legacy reference documentation. The internet archive has some CD-ROMs from the 90s, but they all contain reference documentation in an "Apple Doc Viewer" format that I would be hard-pressed to decode.
- duskwuff 7y agoI'm not aware of any official PDF editions of those volumes -- they primarily consist of updates to the first three volumes, and were incorporated into other documentation before Apple started releasing electronic documentation. However, there are scans at: https://vintageapple.org/inside_o/ https://vintageapple.org/inside_o/ DocViewer is a weird format. :) It's like an early version of PDF based on PICT graphics. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult to convert. However, a lot of Apple's legacy documentation is still available if you have a deep link to its location, e.g. https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/mac/QuickDraw/QuickDraw-2.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/ma... There are also some third-party mirrors of Apple's old documentation site, like: http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/index.html http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/ind...
- RodgerTheGreat 7y agoThank you- that first link has exactly what I need!
- lioeters 7y agoMy favorite part so far: > Every application must have a unique signature by which the Finder can identify it. The signature can be any four-character sequence not being used for another application on any currently mounted volume (except that it can't be one of the standard resource types). > To ensure uniqueness on all volumes, you must register your application's signature by writing to: Macintosh Technical Support Mail Stop 3-T Apple Computer, Inc. 20525 Mariani Avenue Cupertino, CA 95014 So one had to correspond by mail to get a unique application ID issued manually. Makes sense, considering the technical limitations at the time, but it makes me wonder whether other PCs/OSes had a better solution. Also, I see that the application approval process has always been a pain to this day..
- buserror 7y agoYou didn't /have/ to really. I was a mac developer for 20+ years, and I never did 'register' them officially... even pretty big commercial apps wouldn't -- it was easy enough to have a unique sequence; one of the basic rule was that all lowercase ones were Apple. I always thought that the 'creator codes' and other use of that four character sequence system was a great feature. It was gradually lost with osx. Fun fact: All compilers for Mac had language extensions to deal with four character sequences, like 'AbCd' in C would be an integer with ('A'<<24)|('b'<<16)|('C'<<8)|'d'. Beats 0xdeadbeef and 0xcafef00d!
- buserror 7y agoI've learned English just to be able to read Inside Macintosh. I was 14 at the time, with just primitive 'school' english that was completely useless in the real world. I started to read novels, SF books and all I could find to get better just so I could read Inside Mac. In fact, I probably have to thank Inside Mac from most of my English basics as it also taught me a lot :-) So I'm a bit 'branded' -- mind you, I still stopped developing for Mac a long while back now. At the time when the company tech was made by bearded cool people for Doctors and Lawyers to the time the company tech is made by Doctors and Lawyers for bearded 'cool people' with a latte :-)
- Taniwha 7y agoI still have the "telephone book" edition in my library (the version printed on fine newsprint all in one)
- pcunite 7y agoFrom Page 37: The Macintosh is designed to appeal to an audience of nonprogrammers, including people who have previously feared and distrusted computers. To achieve this goal, Macintosh applications should be easy to learn and to use. To help people feel more comfortable with the applications, the applications should build on skills that people already have, not force them to learn new ones. The user should feel in control of the computer, not the other way around. This is achieved in applications that embody three qualities: responsiveness, permissiveness, and consistency. I think the past is wanting to speak to us.