On Tuesday, software engineer Doug Brown published his discovery of how to trigger a long-known but previously inaccessible Easter egg in the Power Mac G3's ROM: a hidden photo of the development team that nobody could figure out how to display for 27 years. While Pierre Dandumont first documented the JPEG image itself in 2014, the method to view it on the computer remained a mystery until Brown's reverse engineering work revealed that users must format a RAM disk with the text "secret ROM image."
Brown stumbled upon the image while using a hex editor tool called Hex Fiend with Eric Harmon's Mac ROM template to explore the resources stored in the beige Power Mac G3's ROM. The ROM appeared in desktop, minitower, and all-in-one G3 models from 1997 through 1999.
"While I was browsing through the ROM, two things caught my eye," Brown wrote. He found both the HPOE resource containing the JPEG image of team members and a suspicious set of Pascal strings in the PowerPC-native SCSI Manager 4.3 code that included ".Edisk," "secret ROM image," and "The Team."
And now Apple has disappeared another ad campaign, though I don't have any idea why.
This one features Martin Herlihy, the "Saturday Night Live" writer and actor — he's part of the "Please Don't Destroy" troupe that specializes in pre-recorded videos, like this one with Taylor Swift. And the premise is that he's going to teach kids how to convince their parents to buy them a Mac for college. The campaign also came with a kinda clever "Parent Presentation," which you could theoretically download as a PowerPoint and customize in order to close the sale with mom and dad.
The ad went up on YouTube and Apple's site last week, and then disappeared in the last few days.
But you can still see it, for some reason, on the site we used to call Twitter.
Apple just released a 7 minute video and an 81 slide presentation on how to convince your parents to buy you a Mac for college.
The presentation is available on Apple's website as a Keynote, PowerPoint, and Google Slides file. pic.twitter.com/aMQwvBJntR
I've now watched this thing a few times, and I can't imagine what part of the ad offended or worried someone in or outside of Apple. (And yes, I've asked the company.)
If you love conspiracy theories, you could imagine that maybe this is actually a galaxy-brained viral campaign, and that Apple pulled the ad so typers like me would give them free publicity by typing about it. The way some political campaigns will make an incendiary ad that's designed to generate coverage, even if it only runs once.
But I'm not a big conspiracy theory person — the truth is usually much dumber than the theory. And in any case, this doesn't seem like Apple's style, at all.
On Thursday, pioneering computer engineer and Apple veteran William "Bill" Atkinson died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Portola Valley, California, surrounded by family. He was 74. "We regret to write that our beloved husband, father, and stepfather Bill Atkinson passed away," his family wrote on Facebook. "He was a remarkable person, and the world will be forever different because he lived in it."
As Apple employee No. 51, Atkinson transformed abstract computer science into intuitive visual experiences that millions would use daily: His QuickDraw graphics engine made the Macintosh interface possible; he introduced the wider world to bitmap editing with MacPaint; and HyperCard presaged hyperlinked elements of the World Wide Web by years.
A screenshot of Bill Atkinson's MacPaint, released with the Macintosh in January 1984.
Credit:
Benj Edwards / Apple
"I say this with no hyperbole: Bill Atkinson may well have been the best computer programmer who ever lived," wrote veteran Apple analyst John Gruber on Daring Fireball in a tribute. "Without question, he's on the short list. What a man, what a mind, what gifts to the world he left us."
On Tuesday, classic computer collector Joe Strosnider announced the availability of a new 3D-printer filament that replicates the iconic "Platinum" color scheme used in classic Macintosh computers from the late 1980s through the 1990s. The PLA filament (PLA is short for polylactic acid) allows hobbyists to 3D-print nostalgic novelties, replacement parts, and accessories that match the original color of vintage Apple computers.
Hobbyists commonly feed this type of filament into commercial desktop 3D printers, which heat the plastic and extrude it in a computer-controlled way to fabricate new plastic parts.
The Platinum color, which Apple used in its desktop and portable computer lines starting with the Apple IIgs in 1986, has become synonymous with a distinctive era of classic Macintosh aesthetic. Over time, original Macintosh plastics have become brittle and discolored with age, so matching the "original" color can be a somewhat challenging and subjective experience.
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A screenshot of Bill Atkinson's MacPaint, released with the Macintosh in January 1984.
Credit:
Benj Edwards / Apple
