Category Archives: Innovation

My Life With Apple

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill
Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell Jobs

Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell Jobs, 2011 by Lea Suzuki

In 1984, I convinced my about-to-be (then) husband not to buy a Macintosh ($2,495/$5,440 in 2011 $). It wasn’t just because it was expensive. It wasn’t interoperable, you see, and the dairy cooperative we worked for was an IBM shop. Mainframes and IBM PCs (not clones) didn’t talk to Macs. Heck, Microsoft Word wasn’t around yet!

Instead, we bought an Epson cp/m machine with 5 1/4″ floppies, a green screen and a great software bundle (Peachtree). And a dot-matrix printer, of course. I can’t imagine that it was interoperable either, but it was less expensive. And it was the gateway drug to the life I lead today. Continue reading →

Thinking Portability: The Osborne 1 Is 30 Today

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

It was early 1984. Apple had just released the Macintosh, but IBM (and its partner/stepchild/competitor Microsoft) had jumped into the nascent personal computer market in mid-1981 with the IBM PC. However, the tried-and-true operating system (or tired-and-old, depending on your point of view) of the day was not DOS but CP/M.

Somehow I convinced my then husband-to-be that we should not buy a Mac (shiny!) but an Epson CP/M computer that came bundled with Peachtree Software’s office suite: word processing, spreadsheet and database. This was years before Microsoft would release Office for the Mac (1989) or Windows (1990).

What I didn’t know was that what I thought of as “ease of use” was a direct result of the work done for the Osborne 1, a “portable” computer launched 30 years ago today (April 3, 1981). According to Thom Hogan, who had been Osborne’s director of software, the Osborne 1 was the first computer that allowed the buyer to “take the box home, unpack it, plug it in, and start using [the] computer.” Continue reading →

Thinking Visually: IBM Circa 1975

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

I remember the pre-PowerPoint days, and the challenges of creating slide presentations: 35 mm slides created by hand and with computerized augmentation. Here’s a great presentation (wish we had the speaker notes!) ostensibly from IBM (1975). I use “great” because of color and design that feels almost modern and Zen-like (Garr Reynolds). I say “ostensibly” because the provenance is, umm, nuanced.

Continue reading →

Looking Back To Look Forward: Scientific American, 1991

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

Almost 20 years ago, Scientific American dedicated a special issue to Communications, Computers and Networks. The September issue of Current Cities, a technology watch e-newsletter edited by David F.W. Robison at the University of California Berkeley, advised readers to buy a copy:

Scientific American Special Issue on Communications, Computers and Networks 265(3) (September 1991). If you purchase a single issue of a magazine this year, this should be it. Filled with eleven articles by some of the biggest names in computer networking, this issue covers all bases and includes suggestions for further readings on the issues.

In addition, both Elliott Parker and Steve Cisler recommended the issue to members of the Public Access Computer Users Forum; and Willard McCarty highlighted three articles for the Humanist discussion group. EFF gave a copy to all of its members.

I’ve tracked down copies or abstracts of all but one of the articles.

Continue reading →

Who Is “Multi-Format Inc”?

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

Apple Sued for the Sale of Video Programming on iTunes (Jack Purcher / Patently Apple) http://j.mp/bMbZK7 http://techme.me/A5Fo
20 minutes ago via Techmeme

That’s the tweet from TechMeme that alerted me to the “news.”

The lawsuit appears to be concerning the sale and enabling of downloaded video content like movies and HDTV programming on iTunes to all of Apple’s hardware including the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. Multi-Format Inc., is seeking a “reasonable royalty” from Apple and has further asked the court to consider tripling the damages accessed if the damages are not found by a jury – according to the inclusion of sub-section 284 of the U.S. legal Code found in their complaint.

I read the piece, which is straight reporting of the event: it gives details about the contents of the filing. Then I went to the three articles TechMeme listed under “discussion”: Continue reading →