5 ms·

Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup

147 points by azinman2 2y ago

stefanpie 2y ago
Very cool to learn where my Linux file manager GUI app came from. One point that is light on details in the wiki was what exactly their monetization plan was or if they even had one at all? It sounds like they wanted to integrate business/enterprise features and support, or perhaps features that plug into other internet services that they could possibly monetize. It sounds like the "network user experience" with "Eazel Online Storage" and "Software Catalog" were their initial monetization ideas.
- dialup_sounds 2y ago
  This was 1999. Monetization hadn't been invented yet.
  - klez 2y ago
    You make it sound like companies didn't need to make money before 2000 rolled around.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - kccqzy 2y ago
      During the dotcom bubble, they really didn't.
    - kiney 2y ago
      which was the case for internet related companies
- wmf 2y ago
  They wanted to be Dropbox before Dropbox.
tmountain 2y ago
I remember the hype when Nautilus first came out. I was a teenager, but even then, I had my doubts as to how a file manager make sense as the centerpiece for building a business. IIRC there were conversations about how to monetize it using premium add-ons which seemed pretty ridiculous at the time.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  A user's "home page" is valuable real estate for good reason. If they could have become the home page for a large number of users then they might have been able to monetize without losing those users, but that's a pretty big if on a convoluted path.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    > A user's "home page" We'd (sadly) call that Facebook nowadays.-
    - Suppafly 2y ago
      No, it's generally talking about the page that comes up when you first open the browser, generally this is google or bing nowadays, or some portal your company or ISP redirects you to.
      - Bluestein 2y ago
        That homepage. Stand corrected. Thanks.-
        Suppafly 2y ago
        yeah it might theoretically mean the first page they navigate to, but generally I think they mean the first page they start at. we had years of browsers and sites and malware all trying to hijack your homepage because it's valuable and often non-technical people don't know how to change it back and will just roll with it being what it is. I remember helping people who were confused if their homepage changed from aol or yahoo because they literally had no real concept of how to browse the internet and check their mail and such if the links weren't on the homepage.
byyoung3 2y ago
looks like Steve picked up the whole team without paying a dime.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  Yes, several of them are still at Apple. For example Bud Tribble helps run the privacy team IIRC and Darin Adler is in charge of Safari, iMessage, Mail, etc.
joshmarinacci 2y ago
Wow. I remember this. I really wanted to work for them. I dreamed of giving the Gimp a giant overhaul.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >I dreamed of giving the Gimp a giant overhaul. Has anyone done that yet or does it still look like crap?
  - kuhl 2y ago
    Honestly it would be better if Blender ported over all the image filters and such. GIMP users don't want change.
codetrotter 2y ago
> Susan Kare designed new vector graphics-based iconography, having designed the original Macintosh icons > […] > On March 13, 2001, Eazel simultaneously launched the first release of Nautilus (version 1.0), and laid off most of its 75 employees in an attempt to secure funding in its final few months. > […] > The Nautilus file manager was received positively, and has been incorporated into GNOME since GNOME version 1.4. Here’s the Nautilus docs from GNOME 1.4, complete with some screenshots of the version of Nautilus that came with GNOME 1.4: http://www.fifi.org/doc/gnome-users-guide/html/gnome-users-guide/C/nautilus.html http://www.fifi.org/doc/gnome-users-guide/html/gnome-users-g... There are multiple pages with more screenshots of Nautilus in those docs. Keep clicking next at the bottom of the page to see more of those Nautilus screenshots from GNOME 1.4 Btw, does anyone know if the version in these screenshots are using any iconography that Susan Kare created?
- dewey 2y ago
  She sells really nice prints of her icons in case you are interested in that: https://kareprints.com https://kareprints.com
  - amandasystems 2y ago
    Quite the illustrious kareer (sorry I had to).
- treprinum 2y ago
  Who designed the icons in MacOS up to Mavericks and iOS 6? Those were IMO the peak icon design on Apple devices. Would be great to hire that person for some Linux UI.
  - roosgit 2y ago
    I think Louie Mantia was an icon designer at Apple back then https://lmnt.me/ https://lmnt.me/. Maybe Sebastiaan de With as well https://sdw.space/ https://sdw.space/.
- JeremyNT 2y ago
tech_ken 2y ago
Absolutely love the logo, is there a term for this design style? edit: closest I could find was 'Corporate Gen-X Cyber' (https://cari.institute/aesthetics/corporate-gen-x-cyber https://cari.institute/aesthetics/corporate-gen-x-cyber)
AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
As I was reading through the article, a thought experiment occurred: if a new Eazel emerged tomorrow (another Linux-focused startup led by ex-Apple "rock stars"), how would they best contribute to the Linux desktop? Join GNOME? Join KDE? Would any of their Apple-influenced paradigms even be accepted among the developers of mature DEs? Would they go create their own desktop environment ala Pantheon/elementaryOS? Would they go distro-agnostic and just contribute some "polish" to major Linux applications? It unfortunately strikes me that the window when such a team might have had a major influence on the Linux ecosystem has passed, and most of the distros are happily entrenched in their own little fiefdoms.
- peutetre 2y ago
  > if a new Eazel emerged tomorrow (another Linux-focused startup led by ex-Apple "rock stars"), how would they best contribute to the Linux desktop? Probably by joining elementary OS: https://elementary.io/ https://elementary.io/
  - codetrotter 2y ago
    Or instead of Linux they could join something FreeBSD-based, like ravynOS https://ravynos.com/ https://ravynos.com/ > We love macOS, but we’re not a fan of the ever-closing hardware and ecosystem. So, we are creating ravynOS — an OS aimed to provide the finesse of macOS with the freedom of FreeBSD. Imagine former Apple employees joining them! That’d be so awesome!
    - clan 2y ago
      Other players as well: https://github.com/helloSystem/hello https://github.com/helloSystem/hello
    - eddieroger 2y ago
      The most recent release of ravyn seems to be from 2022. I'm not sure they'd take this on if they started tomorrow.
philipwhiuk 2y ago
Title sounds like it's a live startup made of ex-Apple employees, rather than the reality, which is it's an ex-startup that got acquired by Apple. Suggest title of: "Eazel, ex-startup, acquired by Apple (2001)"
- oautholaf 2y ago
  As a former Eazel employee, I can say that indeed Eazel did not get acquired by Apple. As the Wikipedia page states, a sizable pool of people went to work on Safari 1.0 (and some are still working on Safari). Others went to Apple to work on the Finder or Core Graphics. Another big chunk of people went to Danger to work on the T-Mobile Sidekick. But the company shut down. No one was left besides the CFO.
- codetrotter 2y ago
  FTA: > Staff consisted of former employees of many technology companies such as Apple, Netscape, Be Inc., Linuxcare, Microsoft, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems. Sounds like some of the people that founded, or at least worked at, the company did come from Apple. FTA: > The company attempted to sell its core development group but ceased operations on May 15, 2001. > Hertzfeld arranged a meeting with Steve Jobs and most of Apple's high level management. In June 2001, most of Eazel's final roster of senior engineers joined Apple's Safari team Sounds to me like your suggested title saying that they were acquired by Apple would not be an accurate way to put it.
agentcooper 2y ago
Ken Kocienda's book Creative Selection mentions Eazel several times. Ken worked there with Don Melton, who founded the Safari web browser for Apple. After Eazel failed, Apple organized a job fair for Eazel employees. Eazel is also covered in an excellent interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xImAMe32Itg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xImAMe32Itg) from the Computer History Museum.
trollian 2y ago
I moved across the world (from Perth, WA) to work on open source software with some of my heroes (Bud Tribble, Andy Hertzfeld, Susan Kare) at Eazel. It was only a short time run, but I'm still in the Bay Area, still friends with many of the people I met there. And I still use the software that I worked on at Eazel most days, which I can't say for anything I worked on since then.
runjake 2y ago
dang, consider adding [2001] to the title? This is a long-defunct company.
diegof79 2y ago
This post brings back memories from when Windows dominated the market, and many online sites—e.g., Slashdot—talked about the "year of the Linux Desktop." (Sadly, in 2024, the closest thing to the year of the Linux desktop is Android.) I tried multiple Linux DEs at the time. I also remember "Helix Gnome" (later renamed to Ximian). I also remember that Helix Gnome used icons created by a person with the "Tigert" user alias. His icon designs were terrific and greatly influenced all the later Gnome icons. The main Gnome problem at the time was stability: Nautilus and Helix Gnome generated core dumps constantly. At that time, I switched to KDE for my daily work (I loved KDE's architectural consistency) and later to Xfce. In retrospect, as a user of Linux DEs at that time—nowadays, I use macOS—the KDE vs. GNOME "fight" didn't help. KDE had a more stable code base but lacked a polished UX. GNOME had the investment of a few companies (like RedHat, Ximian, Sun, and later Canonical) that improved the visuals and UX over time, but its internals were a mess.
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  For years I'd go back between Windows and Linux, but sometime after 2018 or so I stopped even "going back" altogether. I've been able to daily Linux, my bar is high too. If it doesnt work OOTB I go back to Windows or to a distro that does. I'm not wasting any time fighting a broken OS. I think the era of Linux on the Desktop is already here, just wish BestBuy would sell System76 towers, might push it further along.
- bityard 2y ago
  > "year of the Linux Desktop" Well, Linux as a desktop is quite popular amongst IT and developer types anyway. That's good enough fo rme. In retrospect, I think I should be grateful that the Linux desktop never really went mainstream. It would have ended up being controlled by one (maybe two) companies and twisted into something that removed all of the benefit of it being open source to begin with. So, ChromeOS, I guess?
- bityard 2y ago
  I have basically had a history of using whichever desktop environment got in my way the least. At various times, that has been GNOME 2, MATE, XFCE, GNOME 3 (Ubuntu edition), GNOME 3 (PopOS edition), and probably a few that I'm forgetting. Lately I have been running KDE on Debian and it is basically everything I always wanted Linux on the desktop to be for the last two decades.
bityard 2y ago
I was not involved in this in any way other than being an avid Linux user, but I remember it quite well. A very popular conversation among Linux nerds in the early 2000's was, "what if this thing actually takes off?" There were quite a few Linux-related start-ups around this time that were fueled by dollars from the dot-com boom. As is the usual story, Eazel had same "hire people now and figure out how to make money later" strategy that caused the bubble to burst. There were quite a few high-publicized commercial ventures into the Linux space around this time: Ximian, Corel Linux, VA Linux. Others that I'm forgetting. As to the software, when it was new, Nautilus was absolute garbage. It was memory-hungry, slow, and crashed often while doing perfectly normal things. Eazel had ambitious plans for it, but it didn't really stabilize into something useful until several years later after the community removed most of the bloat and it just became a regular file manager.
bsimpson 2y ago
Interesting to read this in the context of COSMIC, a new Linux shell that just released a blog post celebrating their alpha release: https://blog.system76.com/post/cosmic-alpha-released-heres-what-people-are-saying https://blog.system76.com/post/cosmic-alpha-released-heres-w... The post hat-tips their "design system" - a term that didn't exist in 99, but sounds like a lot of the same type of work that Eazel would have been going through to invent a core app for a nascent OS.
breadwinner 2y ago
What "ex-Apple" Andy Hertzfeld is most famous for, is for being a co-founder of General Magic [1]. General Magic's social interface was seen as a threat by Microsoft, and they responded to the threat with Microsoft Bob [2]. Sun found the agent technology of General Magic interesting, and they responded with Oak, which later became Java [3]. After General Magic collapsed Hertzfeld founded Eazel. I remember attending an Eazel demo, and notably Hertzfeld did not have a good answer when someone in the audience asked "how will you make money?" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob [3] https://www.tech-insider.org/java/research/1995/07.html https://www.tech-insider.org/java/research/1995/07.html
- samstave 2y ago
  We need a term for: (This is Tech Specific, but all Industries need this):: When a memory long forgot is resurrected and a whole dormant pathway of neurons get fingerd, pinged, and tracert with a new TTL, and now that I commented - added to my AI.PII.MS-NSA-OAI.AWS.gov.json.py (I wonder how many records I have under any given TLD? (I remembered a lot about this just by seeing this post that I had long forgot just how much I knew back then...) --- If anyone is spry, on the internet make a "sqlK-box" we can be prompted with a random word/phrase/picture within a given category (like "Silicon Valley" "GPUs" "COMPANY" - but with a date range "Silicon valley 2000s" - or "COMPANY 2020") and you have N time to relive a memory on that topic - then you compare responses from others to the same temporal topic to see what the shared memory landscape looks like. or deltas.
pxc 2y ago
Huh. I didn't realize there was an actual historical connection been at least some GNOME apps and Apple. I guess this explains that god-awful default of opening every folder in a new window and the longtime lack of nice features present in competing, contemporaneous file managers (embedded terminal, tabs, split panes, etc.).
phendrenad2 2y ago
It was truly a time of irrational hype if people thought they could just make a File Manager and recoup millions.
stuaxo 2y ago
Nautilus seemed much cooler in those days. I think the whole file manager as "browser" was interesting - the idea of blurring the boundaries between local and server, support for webdav on the major platforms came from a similar place and also would have been interesting if used more.

147 points by azinman2 2y ago

Very cool to learn where my Linux file manager GUI app came from. One point that is light on details in the wiki was what exactly their monetization plan was or if they even had one at all? It sounds like they wanted to integrate business/enterprise features and support, or perhaps features that plug into other internet services that they could possibly monetize. It sounds like the "network user experience" with "Eazel Online Storage" and "Software Catalog" were their initial monetization ideas.

dialup_sounds 2y ago
This was 1999. Monetization hadn't been invented yet.
- klez 2y ago
  You make it sound like companies didn't need to make money before 2000 rolled around.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - kccqzy 2y ago
    During the dotcom bubble, they really didn't.
  - kiney 2y ago
    which was the case for internet related companies
wmf 2y ago
They wanted to be Dropbox before Dropbox.

tmountain 2y ago

I remember the hype when Nautilus first came out. I was a teenager, but even then, I had my doubts as to how a file manager make sense as the centerpiece for building a business. IIRC there were conversations about how to monetize it using premium add-ons which seemed pretty ridiculous at the time.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
A user's "home page" is valuable real estate for good reason. If they could have become the home page for a large number of users then they might have been able to monetize without losing those users, but that's a pretty big if on a convoluted path.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > A user's "home page" We'd (sadly) call that Facebook nowadays.-
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    No, it's generally talking about the page that comes up when you first open the browser, generally this is google or bing nowadays, or some portal your company or ISP redirects you to.
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      That homepage. Stand corrected. Thanks.-
      - Suppafly 2y ago
        yeah it might theoretically mean the first page they navigate to, but generally I think they mean the first page they start at. we had years of browsers and sites and malware all trying to hijack your homepage because it's valuable and often non-technical people don't know how to change it back and will just roll with it being what it is. I remember helping people who were confused if their homepage changed from aol or yahoo because they literally had no real concept of how to browse the internet and check their mail and such if the links weren't on the homepage.

byyoung3 2y ago

looks like Steve picked up the whole team without paying a dime.

saagarjha 2y ago
Yes, several of them are still at Apple. For example Bud Tribble helps run the privacy team IIRC and Darin Adler is in charge of Safari, iMessage, Mail, etc.

joshmarinacci 2y ago

Wow. I remember this. I really wanted to work for them. I dreamed of giving the Gimp a giant overhaul.

Suppafly 2y ago
>I dreamed of giving the Gimp a giant overhaul. Has anyone done that yet or does it still look like crap?
- kuhl 2y ago
  Honestly it would be better if Blender ported over all the image filters and such. GIMP users don't want change.

codetrotter 2y ago

> Susan Kare designed new vector graphics-based iconography, having designed the original Macintosh icons > […] > On March 13, 2001, Eazel simultaneously launched the first release of Nautilus (version 1.0), and laid off most of its 75 employees in an attempt to secure funding in its final few months. > […] > The Nautilus file manager was received positively, and has been incorporated into GNOME since GNOME version 1.4. Here’s the Nautilus docs from GNOME 1.4, complete with some screenshots of the version of Nautilus that came with GNOME 1.4: http://www.fifi.org/doc/gnome-users-guide/html/gnome-users-guide/C/nautilus.html http://www.fifi.org/doc/gnome-users-guide/html/gnome-users-g... There are multiple pages with more screenshots of Nautilus in those docs. Keep clicking next at the bottom of the page to see more of those Nautilus screenshots from GNOME 1.4 Btw, does anyone know if the version in these screenshots are using any iconography that Susan Kare created?

dewey 2y ago
She sells really nice prints of her icons in case you are interested in that: https://kareprints.com https://kareprints.com
- amandasystems 2y ago
  Quite the illustrious kareer (sorry I had to).
treprinum 2y ago
Who designed the icons in MacOS up to Mavericks and iOS 6? Those were IMO the peak icon design on Apple devices. Would be great to hire that person for some Linux UI.
- roosgit 2y ago
  I think Louie Mantia was an icon designer at Apple back then https://lmnt.me/ https://lmnt.me/. Maybe Sebastiaan de With as well https://sdw.space/ https://sdw.space/.
JeremyNT 2y ago

tech_ken 2y ago

Absolutely love the logo, is there a term for this design style? edit: closest I could find was 'Corporate Gen-X Cyber' (https://cari.institute/aesthetics/corporate-gen-x-cyber https://cari.institute/aesthetics/corporate-gen-x-cyber)

AdmiralAsshat 2y ago

As I was reading through the article, a thought experiment occurred: if a new Eazel emerged tomorrow (another Linux-focused startup led by ex-Apple "rock stars"), how would they best contribute to the Linux desktop? Join GNOME? Join KDE? Would any of their Apple-influenced paradigms even be accepted among the developers of mature DEs? Would they go create their own desktop environment ala Pantheon/elementaryOS? Would they go distro-agnostic and just contribute some "polish" to major Linux applications? It unfortunately strikes me that the window when such a team might have had a major influence on the Linux ecosystem has passed, and most of the distros are happily entrenched in their own little fiefdoms.

peutetre 2y ago
> if a new Eazel emerged tomorrow (another Linux-focused startup led by ex-Apple "rock stars"), how would they best contribute to the Linux desktop? Probably by joining elementary OS: https://elementary.io/ https://elementary.io/
- codetrotter 2y ago
  Or instead of Linux they could join something FreeBSD-based, like ravynOS https://ravynos.com/ https://ravynos.com/ > We love macOS, but we’re not a fan of the ever-closing hardware and ecosystem. So, we are creating ravynOS — an OS aimed to provide the finesse of macOS with the freedom of FreeBSD. Imagine former Apple employees joining them! That’d be so awesome!
  - clan 2y ago
    Other players as well: https://github.com/helloSystem/hello https://github.com/helloSystem/hello
  - eddieroger 2y ago
    The most recent release of ravyn seems to be from 2022. I'm not sure they'd take this on if they started tomorrow.

philipwhiuk 2y ago

Title sounds like it's a live startup made of ex-Apple employees, rather than the reality, which is it's an ex-startup that got acquired by Apple. Suggest title of: "Eazel, ex-startup, acquired by Apple (2001)"

oautholaf 2y ago
As a former Eazel employee, I can say that indeed Eazel did not get acquired by Apple. As the Wikipedia page states, a sizable pool of people went to work on Safari 1.0 (and some are still working on Safari). Others went to Apple to work on the Finder or Core Graphics. Another big chunk of people went to Danger to work on the T-Mobile Sidekick. But the company shut down. No one was left besides the CFO.
codetrotter 2y ago
FTA: > Staff consisted of former employees of many technology companies such as Apple, Netscape, Be Inc., Linuxcare, Microsoft, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems. Sounds like some of the people that founded, or at least worked at, the company did come from Apple. FTA: > The company attempted to sell its core development group but ceased operations on May 15, 2001. > Hertzfeld arranged a meeting with Steve Jobs and most of Apple's high level management. In June 2001, most of Eazel's final roster of senior engineers joined Apple's Safari team Sounds to me like your suggested title saying that they were acquired by Apple would not be an accurate way to put it.

agentcooper 2y ago

Ken Kocienda's book Creative Selection mentions Eazel several times. Ken worked there with Don Melton, who founded the Safari web browser for Apple. After Eazel failed, Apple organized a job fair for Eazel employees. Eazel is also covered in an excellent interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xImAMe32Itg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xImAMe32Itg) from the Computer History Museum.

trollian 2y ago

I moved across the world (from Perth, WA) to work on open source software with some of my heroes (Bud Tribble, Andy Hertzfeld, Susan Kare) at Eazel. It was only a short time run, but I'm still in the Bay Area, still friends with many of the people I met there. And I still use the software that I worked on at Eazel most days, which I can't say for anything I worked on since then.

runjake 2y ago

dang, consider adding [2001] to the title? This is a long-defunct company.

diegof79 2y ago

This post brings back memories from when Windows dominated the market, and many online sites—e.g., Slashdot—talked about the "year of the Linux Desktop." (Sadly, in 2024, the closest thing to the year of the Linux desktop is Android.) I tried multiple Linux DEs at the time. I also remember "Helix Gnome" (later renamed to Ximian). I also remember that Helix Gnome used icons created by a person with the "Tigert" user alias. His icon designs were terrific and greatly influenced all the later Gnome icons. The main Gnome problem at the time was stability: Nautilus and Helix Gnome generated core dumps constantly. At that time, I switched to KDE for my daily work (I loved KDE's architectural consistency) and later to Xfce. In retrospect, as a user of Linux DEs at that time—nowadays, I use macOS—the KDE vs. GNOME "fight" didn't help. KDE had a more stable code base but lacked a polished UX. GNOME had the investment of a few companies (like RedHat, Ximian, Sun, and later Canonical) that improved the visuals and UX over time, but its internals were a mess.

giancarlostoro 2y ago
For years I'd go back between Windows and Linux, but sometime after 2018 or so I stopped even "going back" altogether. I've been able to daily Linux, my bar is high too. If it doesnt work OOTB I go back to Windows or to a distro that does. I'm not wasting any time fighting a broken OS. I think the era of Linux on the Desktop is already here, just wish BestBuy would sell System76 towers, might push it further along.
bityard 2y ago
> "year of the Linux Desktop" Well, Linux as a desktop is quite popular amongst IT and developer types anyway. That's good enough fo rme. In retrospect, I think I should be grateful that the Linux desktop never really went mainstream. It would have ended up being controlled by one (maybe two) companies and twisted into something that removed all of the benefit of it being open source to begin with. So, ChromeOS, I guess?
bityard 2y ago
I have basically had a history of using whichever desktop environment got in my way the least. At various times, that has been GNOME 2, MATE, XFCE, GNOME 3 (Ubuntu edition), GNOME 3 (PopOS edition), and probably a few that I'm forgetting. Lately I have been running KDE on Debian and it is basically everything I always wanted Linux on the desktop to be for the last two decades.

bityard 2y ago

I was not involved in this in any way other than being an avid Linux user, but I remember it quite well. A very popular conversation among Linux nerds in the early 2000's was, "what if this thing actually takes off?" There were quite a few Linux-related start-ups around this time that were fueled by dollars from the dot-com boom. As is the usual story, Eazel had same "hire people now and figure out how to make money later" strategy that caused the bubble to burst. There were quite a few high-publicized commercial ventures into the Linux space around this time: Ximian, Corel Linux, VA Linux. Others that I'm forgetting. As to the software, when it was new, Nautilus was absolute garbage. It was memory-hungry, slow, and crashed often while doing perfectly normal things. Eazel had ambitious plans for it, but it didn't really stabilize into something useful until several years later after the community removed most of the bloat and it just became a regular file manager.

bsimpson 2y ago

Interesting to read this in the context of COSMIC, a new Linux shell that just released a blog post celebrating their alpha release: https://blog.system76.com/post/cosmic-alpha-released-heres-what-people-are-saying https://blog.system76.com/post/cosmic-alpha-released-heres-w... The post hat-tips their "design system" - a term that didn't exist in 99, but sounds like a lot of the same type of work that Eazel would have been going through to invent a core app for a nascent OS.

breadwinner 2y ago

What "ex-Apple" Andy Hertzfeld is most famous for, is for being a co-founder of General Magic [1]. General Magic's social interface was seen as a threat by Microsoft, and they responded to the threat with Microsoft Bob [2]. Sun found the agent technology of General Magic interesting, and they responded with Oak, which later became Java [3]. After General Magic collapsed Hertzfeld founded Eazel. I remember attending an Eazel demo, and notably Hertzfeld did not have a good answer when someone in the audience asked "how will you make money?" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob [3] https://www.tech-insider.org/java/research/1995/07.html https://www.tech-insider.org/java/research/1995/07.html

samstave 2y ago
We need a term for: (This is Tech Specific, but all Industries need this):: When a memory long forgot is resurrected and a whole dormant pathway of neurons get fingerd, pinged, and tracert with a new TTL, and now that I commented - added to my AI.PII.MS-NSA-OAI.AWS.gov.json.py (I wonder how many records I have under any given TLD? (I remembered a lot about this just by seeing this post that I had long forgot just how much I knew back then...) --- If anyone is spry, on the internet make a "sqlK-box" we can be prompted with a random word/phrase/picture within a given category (like "Silicon Valley" "GPUs" "COMPANY" - but with a date range "Silicon valley 2000s" - or "COMPANY 2020") and you have N time to relive a memory on that topic - then you compare responses from others to the same temporal topic to see what the shared memory landscape looks like. or deltas.

pxc 2y ago

Huh. I didn't realize there was an actual historical connection been at least some GNOME apps and Apple. I guess this explains that god-awful default of opening every folder in a new window and the longtime lack of nice features present in competing, contemporaneous file managers (embedded terminal, tabs, split panes, etc.).

phendrenad2 2y ago

It was truly a time of irrational hype if people thought they could just make a File Manager and recoup millions.

stuaxo 2y ago

Nautilus seemed much cooler in those days. I think the whole file manager as "browser" was interesting - the idea of blurring the boundaries between local and server, support for webdav on the major platforms came from a similar place and also would have been interesting if used more.