Macintosh Folklore Radio

Burrell talks serial controllers with a Zilog representative. Contributed by Steve Blank.

Mac team engineering manager Rod Holt wanted to change the name of the project after Jef Raskin’s departure. Some genius did indeed reverse-engineer an acronym for “Macintosh”: “Most Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs”. Likewise, we all know that Windows really stands for “Will Install Needless Data Over Whole System”, and that Vista stands for “Viruses, Infections, Spyware, Trojans and Adware”. Vista supposedly means ‘chicken’ in Latvian, so… long live Windows Chicken!

The conception of the original Macintosh chassis. Naturally, I had to take a survey and ask how people preferred to say “Porsche” and “Cuisinart”... Thanks again for the cards and letters.

This is the highest-rated story at folklore.org, and for good reason—you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll wonder how anybody ever got along with Steve Jobs. This episode has been the most fun to rehearse and produce so far and I hope it shows. Not even 48 hours after I announced Macintosh Folklore Radio to the Mac press, I’ve had thousands of visitors from all over the world drop by and have pushed 20GB worth of stories. I started out with 6 people having listened to the welcome message and now over a thousand people have heard my floppy disk techno (thanks for the compliment, Edward). I have been very, very touched by the few thank you e-mails that I received. I’m just getting started here!

Bud defines Steve’s unique talent for dealing with people. The Reality Distortion Field can be experienced with or without Steve’s presence. Witness the number of Mac fanatics who have marched out and bought the new black MacBook, in essence paying an extra $200USD for a black paint job. I’m not wagging my finger at them—I want one too. Drink the Kool-Aid!

The office where the Mac became real. This is the last of the “building” stories.

The Mac team’s original office. Netscape’s campus may have had a parking lot dedicated to hockey, but daily Nerf-ball tag sessions seems like a lot of fun too…

Burrell imitates Jef Raskin, the creator of the Macintosh Project.

The very first image displayed on the very first Macintosh.

Burrell figures out how to get promoted to engineer status. (And here I was feeling silly for not having a computer science degree…)

Bill Atkinson introduces Burrell to Jef Raskin, who initiated (and then was kicked out of…) the Macintosh project. Macintosh Folklore Radio is now a needle in a haystack—that is, we’re listed in the iTunes podcast directory now. Tell your friends!

Burrell Smith, the Macintosh team’s hardware wizard, was creative at more than just engineering. Burrell later co-founded Radius with Andy. Some of the advanced products that Radius produced include the famous Pivot Display, and the Rocket series of accelerator cards which could be run in parallel with one another. Cluster-in-a-box, anyone?

A quick introduction to the series from Derek.