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Macintosh & Internet History — how all this computer stuff got started

Mac History

Books

Books about Apple's history that I've read and recommend:
(Feel free to purchase via these links too.)

• Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made.
  It's quite the collector's item.
  The website is free for the reading, but I also highly recommend the book. See it at Amazon.
  
  
• Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company by Owen Linzmayer.
  See it at Amazon.
  
  
• On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple, by Gil Amelio and William L. Simon.
  I had the honor of knowing Gil Amelio in person. I was surprised and also very impressed when he reacted so well to a suggestion I'd made at his press conference, then later saw me on the show floor and approached me.
  
  I have great respect for Gil and believe he did a great deal to save Apple at that critical time. Without Gil's guts there may not have been anything for Steve Jobs to come back to and build up so brilliantly. I was happy to see this book come out and got a lot out of reading it. It's also got great lessons for anyone who is building a business.

Websites

• The site of all history sites for first-hand account is Folklore.org, a site started and maintained by Andy Hertzfeld, a member of the original Macintosh team. The site contains story contributions from many others, rounding out the story.
  Andy has now authored a book that tells the Mac story. It's called Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made. (I listed it above.)
• NPR has an entire section on their site called:
  Celebrating 20 Years of the Mac
  Line Revolutionized Computer Design, Ease of Use
• At AppleHistory, you can choose any Mac model (sorted by year) or topic from the pop-up menu to learn its history and see what it looked like. They begin with the Apple I. It's fun. You can also use the list that appears at the side, to see all models, listed by year.
• MacDirectory's Flashback takes you on a short nostalgic tour too.
• Apple II History by Steven Weyhrich
• MacKiDo has a section on computer history and one about all the computer innovations that came from Apple. They also have a section on Mac "easter eggs," which are fun things hidden in the code, and a section on all of Apple's code names. (That's past code names, not the ones currently being used, of course.) Its easy to find each of these sections from MacKiDo's main page, but I link to each for you anyway.
• In January of 1984 the Mercury News ran an article entitled, "A look at secret new Apple computer." It's now online at their site, MercuryNews.com for you to read.
• Making the Macintosh: Technology and Culture in Silicon Valley is an article by Stanford University.
• All serious Mac fans know the name Jef Raskin. Jef helped create the Mac, clicking and dragging and more. He also wrote a book called The Humane Interface (Addison-Wesley 2000). You can learn more about Jef at sourceforge.net. He's got JefRaskin.com but it's resolving to this url instead. For example, Summary of The Humane Interface.
• The Alabang Life Apple Macintosh Users Group timeline.
  (Thanks guys. Great addition to a user group site.)

Apple Macintosh TV Commercials

If you don't know the "1984" commercial that first announced the Mac — and the dawn of a whole new era in computing — you owe it to yourself to watch it.

• You can find it at Uriah's site. Not only is the 1984 commercial here, complete with the text of "Big Brother's" speech, but Uriah also has many other Mac and Mac-related commercials here. My other favorites are The Power To Be Your Best, and Serious Business Computer.
  (QuickTime video has come a long way since those commercials. And be patient; they take a while to load, even with DSL.)
• You can also see and download 1984 from AppleHistory.

2004 was the 20 year anniversary of that famouse 1984 SuperBowl commercial so at Macworld Expo January 2004, Apple replay the famous 1984 commercial at the keynote — only this time the star sported an iPod! See the 1984 with iPod commercial at Apple's site. It's under Hardware: Ads.

Every Mac commericial and video, and then some, is archived by Gary Gray.

Internet History

Interested in the history of the Internet? PBS has a great set of pages Nerds 2.0.1 as companions to their Revenge of the Nerds programs. There's a Glossary of Geek, an Internet Timeline, and more.

On September 2, 1999, UCLA celebrated the 30th Anniversary of the Internet because it was born there when Leonard Kleinrock sent the first computer to computer message. I was there. So was Matthew Haughey, a nice guy who put up these photos.