Simon Willison's Weblog: mac

The original WWW proposal is a Word for Macintosh 4.0 file from 1990, can we open it?

2024-02-13T16:06:51+00:00

The original WWW proposal is a Word for Macintosh 4.0 file from 1990, can we open it?

In which John Graham-Cumming attempts to open the original WWW proposal by Tim Berners-Lee, a 68,608 bytes Microsoft Word for Macintosh 4.0 file.

Microsoft Word and Apple Pages fail. OpenOffice gets the text but not the formatting. LibreOffice gets the diagrams too, but the best results come from the Infinite Mac WebAssembly emulator.

Via Hacker News

Tags: history, john-graham-cumming, mac, tim-berners-lee, webassembly

Quoting Steven Levy

2024-01-27T01:33:56+00:00

If you have had any prior experience with personal computers, what you might expect to see is some sort of opaque code, called a “prompt,” consisting of phosphorescent green or white letters on a murky background. What you see with Macintosh is the Finder. On a pleasant, light background (you can later change the background to any of a number of patterns, if you like), little pictures called “icons” appear, representing choices available to you.

— Steven Levy, in 1984

Tags: mac, usability, llms

Mac OS 8 emulated in WebAssembly

2022-04-26T19:16:17+00:00

Mac OS 8 emulated in WebAssembly

Absolutely incredible project by Mihai Parparita. This is a full, working copy of Mac OS 8 (from 1997) running in your browser via WebAssembly—and it’s fully loaded with games and applications too. I played with Photoshop 3.0 and Civilization and there’s so much more on there to explore too—I finally get to try out HyperCard!

Via Infinite Mac: An Instant-Booting Quadra in Your Browser

Tags: computer-history, mac, mihai-parparita, webassembly

sfical.py

2008-06-27T08:09:42+00:00

sfical.py

Neat idea: write a CGI script that turns a proprietary API (in this case the SalesForce events API) in to standard ical format, then run it on your Mac’s local Apache server and subscribe to it from iCal.

Tags: apache, cgi, icalendar, mac, macos, salesforce, simon-fell

iTimeMachine

2008-01-29T23:33:46+00:00

iTimeMachine

Enables Time Machine to see network drives (a ReadyNAS NV+ for example). There’s also a defaults setting but it didn’t seem to work; this did.

Tags: backups, itimemachine, mac, macos, readynas, timemachine

MacHeist Bundle

2008-01-16T21:44:17+00:00

MacHeist Bundle

Everything’s now unlocked, meaning you can pick up TaskPaper, CSSEdit, Snapz Pro X (excellent for screencasts) and Pixelmator for $49.

Tags: cssedit, mac, macheist, macos, pixelmator, screencasts, snayzprox, software, taskpaper

BBC iPlayer now supports streaming Flash for Mac and Linux

2007-12-14T12:36:47+00:00

BBC iPlayer now supports streaming Flash for Mac and Linux

Absolutely fantastic—it Just Works, you hit the homepage and you can be watching video in seconds. No need to even sign up for an account. I imagine IP ranges are used to block access from outside the UK.

Tags: bbc, flash, iplayer, linux, mac, macos

The Tale of the Mechanical Virus

2007-09-09T12:11:34+00:00

The Tale of the Mechanical Virus

“What I had discovered, in essence, was a mechanical virus. It infects Mac laptops and speads via the DVI adapters.”—I really hope this isn’t why my DVI adapter is on the blink.

Tags: apple, dvi, mac, mechanicalvirus, virus

Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual

2007-08-30T05:32:35+00:00

Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual

“[I] was struck by how it had to explain a total paradigm shift in interacting with computers”.

Tags: documentation, mac, peter-merholtz

PostgreSQL for Mac

2007-07-10T08:24:45+00:00

PostgreSQL for Mac

Looks like a great way of getting PostgreSQL up and running on a Mac.

Via Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Tags: mac, macos, postgresql

So long Safari?

2006-05-10T12:34:00+00:00

My answer to So long Safari? on Ask MetaFilter

All browsers have bugs - especially relating to fancy JavaScript stuff. Any truly complex web application is likely to run in to browser bugs, and fixing them takes a whole bunch of time. Bugs in IE and Firefox are pretty well understood, as are the workarounds for them.

Safari has been out in the wild for less time, and also has a smaller number of people testing on it because it only runs on OS X. Here are a couple of issues that Safari suffers from that have affected me in the past:

1. addEventListener doesn't work in Safari if you try to use it with a dblclick event.

2. preventDefault and stopPropagation don't work in Safari (this may now have been fixed)

There's a huge list of other bugs here.

I think you'll agree that these are pretty obscure problems (so obscure that the vast majority of sites never trigger them). It's only the modern trend for Ajax/JavaScript heavy web apps that is bringing them to the surface.

Like I said, all browsers have their own DOM/JavaScript bugs - which means you have to debug seperately in each browser. My hunch is that Safari has more JS/DOM-related problems than other browsers at the moment. To their credit, every release of Safari offers huge improvements, they release often and updates tend to be pushed out to Safari users very quickly. But when you're launching your new hugely complicated Ajax site the temptation to leave the Safari fixes until later is understandable.

In answer to the original question, I don't see Safari going anywhere. It's a great browser to develop for, and it's getting less buggy all the time. The web development community's shared understanding of its current bugs and their workarounds is growing constantly as well. I think it has a very bright future.

Tags: apple, ask-metafilter, browsers, mac, macos, safari

I've ordered my PowerBook

2003-12-20T23:31:40+00:00

Thanks to everyone who provided advice on buying a Mac - it provide incredibly helpful in making my selection. I placed my order this afternoon for a 15" 1 GHz PowerBook with a SuperDrive, backlit keyboard and 60 GB of Hard Disk space. I went with the minimum possible memory (256 MB) and plan to buy an extra 512 MB from Crucial (for less than half the price Apple charge) in a few weeks time.

I saved a serious chunk of money thanks to the Student Developer program (tip off from Leonard Lin), which for a $99 membership fee and proof of student status gives you up to 20% off your first hardware purchase from the Apple store. In total, I saved nearly a thousand pounds ($1500+) on the cost of the same machine in the UK. Truth be told, it was the amount I would save by buying here that inspired me to look at PowerBooks rather than iBooks in the first place.

Delivery in 2-3 business days. I can hardly wait.

Tags: apple, mac