Author: Alan Oppenheimer
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Step (further) into the Future of Art
A week ago, along with its new iPhones, Apple released a new set of operating systems for all its devices, unifying its OS version numbers at 26. Particularly interesting to Alan and company was the “spatial scenes” capability that Apple added to visionOS 26 for the Vision Pro. The Art Authority Museum was introduced the…
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2007: Envisioning the iPhone, part 1
Apple announced the new iPhone 17 line last week. The iPhone is the pinnacle of Apple’s near-half-century of evenly distributing the Future. To pretty much the entire world. There is so much to say about the iPhone that it will likely take until Apple’s half-century anniversary (April 1, 2026) to say even close to half…
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2001: Envisioning the iPod
Before there was the iPhone there was the iPod. At the turn of the 21st century, portable digital music players (and in fact the whole digital music industry) were at that stage where Apple really excels: already here, but very unevenly distributed; complex and not well implemented. At that time, Apple was Apple Computer. A…
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2003: Envisioning the Future
In 2003, Alan and Priscilla mounted a WiFi-enabled iBook on their kitchen wall. It was an early glimpse at the Future, but we certainly did not envision what it would lead to. Digital cameras were starting to become popular, and the worldwide web was rapidly evolving into a very visual place. Digital photo frames were…
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Technology Notes: The Levy Sheet Music Collection
Alan’s great-uncle Lester Levy was one of the foremost collectors of sheet music in the United States. He donated his collection of over 30,000 pieces to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, in 1976, adding to it until his death in 1989. After that his relatives and Johns Hopkins took over. The evolution of the…
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The rise and fall of dial-up Internet
In early 1995, when Alan started his easy-to-use dial-up Internet company, Open Door Networks, there was already a well established company leading that field: America Online. AOL, as it would come to be named, already had well over a million users, and its “You’ve got mail!” greeting would even become the title of a popular…
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1994: QuickTake state-of-the-art camera
In 1994, ten years after introducing a computer that would define the state of the art for decades to come, Apple introduced a state-of-the-art digital camera. It wouldn’t be quite as successful as the Macintosh. The Apple QuickTake had a resolution of 640×480 pixels (about 1/3 of a megapixel). It could be used to take…
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January 24, 1984: The Macintosh introduction
As Apple’s Super Bowl ad promised, the Macintosh was introduced to the world on January 24, 1984. Actually it was introduced to Apple shareholders, employees and other stakeholders, at the Apple shareholders annual meeting. Alan and Priscilla were lucky enough to be in the audience that day, and it’s an experience we will never forget.…
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Open Door by any other (domain) name
In late 1994 Alan was thinking about what to name the easy-to-use dial-up internet company he planned to start. In addition to connoting easy access, the company name had to be available as a domain name too. Luckily in 1994 just about any domain name was available, so Alan was able to grab opendoor.com for…
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“Sequencing at Home”
Our Future Bucket List includes a “Personal DNA analyzer.” But once such a thing exists, what will people be able to do with it? We’re starting on a project that we hope may both answer that question and also help to make such a thing a reality, and part of a much more evenly distributed…
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