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The Apple manuals also had a sense of whimsy about them as well. I learned “defenestrate” from the glossary at the back of one of the Apple ][ manuals. I also s
by dhosek 4y ago
The Apple manuals also had a sense of whimsy about them as well. I learned “defenestrate” from the glossary at the back of one of the Apple ][ manuals. I also seem to remember other jokes scattered throughout the manual including the index.
- zabzonk 4y agodon't know defenestrate is so funny - throw someone out of a window?
- dhosek 4y agoIt is funny in the context of a glossary otherwise composed of computer terms. Their definition, incidentally, was “to throw something or someone out of a window.”
- kadoban 4y agoIt's also just, on its own, a ridiculous thing to have a word for specifically throwing someone out of a window.
- rjsw 4y agoThe word came from a specific [1] event, people were not getting randomly thrown out of windows. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague
- kergonath 4y ago“Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window” is a famous Woz quote. It is not really surprising to have something along those lines in an Apple ][ manual. Defenestrate works for objects as well.
- Sunspark 4y agoAlso Russian oligarchs.
- dekhn 4y agoI bought some originals of the apple manuals I had as a kid on ebay recently. They're remarkably good tutorials https://www.ebay.com/p/1633800065 https://www.ebay.com/p/1633800065 and http://cini.classiccmp.org/pdf/Apple/The%20Applesoft%20Tutorial.pdf http://cini.classiccmp.org/pdf/Apple/The%20Applesoft%20Tutor... and the language is filled with humor and warmth.
- allenrb 4y agoI had a very early Apple //e (purchased 1983) and remember some funny things in the manuals. There was a glossary entry for Write-Only Memory. This contained an entire brief story about how it had been invented by a Prof. Farnsfarfle(?) and subsequently used to store some huge amount of surplus government data.