Author: Alan Oppenheimer
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Self-driving Cars
Sometimes the Future is not evenly distributed geographically. Self-driving cars have been part of the Future Future for quite some time. That Future is finally here, but it’s only available in certain locations. Waymo, part of Future distributor Alphabet, Inc., is a self-driving taxi service, currently available in parts of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix…
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1985: The LaserWriter, a brief interlude
A brief interlude to this set of posts: by October 1984, I (Alan) had been working for a year on AppleTalk for the Macintosh and LaserWriter. As a brief interlude to that work, I got to fly to Honolulu for the Apple annual worldwide sales conference. At the 1983 conference, the sales team had been…
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1985: A Little Network called AppleTalk
If there’s one word which summarizes Alan’s tenure at Apple, it’s AppleTalk. AppleTalk was the “network system” which, in the pre-Internet days, was used to connect Macintosh computers together and to many other devices. AppleTalk talk will likely take up even more chapters in this blog than this ongoing LaserWriter talk, but for now we’ll…
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1985: The LaserWriter and a little company called Adobe
The LaserWriter would tie in one additional piece of Xerox’s fumbled Future. To go with its laser printer, Xerox had developed a page description language called Interpress. Interpress would allow the graphics from any personal computer to be printed in a resolution-independent manner on any type of printer. Two researchers at Xerox PARC saw the…
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1985: The LaserWriter, Xerox Fumbles the Future. Again.
“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” In the 1970s and early 80s, the Future was stuck at Xerox. Most of us think of Xerox (and xeroxing) as the distant past, but Xerox and their Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) invented and then gloriously failed to distribute much of the Future…
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1985: The LaserWriter, table of contents
As mentioned, the story about helping distribute the Future brought about by the LaserWriter is going to have a number of chapters. It’s long enough that it merits a table of contents: It may take a while to get through all this. To whet your appetite, an interesting tidbit about the LaserWriter: “LaserWriter” was not…
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1985: The LaserWriter, part 1 (of many)
This is going to be a long story, with a number of chapters. Once in a great while you get a little glimpse of something you know is going to be the Future. And sometimes you’re actually right. Even more rarely, you get to help too. This weekend many of us in the U.S. are…
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1995: Open Door
When it shipped in 1987, the “Open Mac” Macintosh II let third parties create plug-in cards and associated software to bring features to the Macintosh line that would not otherwise be available. It enabled Apple itself to do the same. It was on the Mac II that Alan led an Apple effort to bring Ethernet…
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1985: Open Mac
The Future Future may well bring us an “Open Car.” The Past Future brought us an “Open Mac.” By mid-1985 it was clear that Apple’s 1984-introduced Macintosh was facing some sales and adoption challenges, and thus so was Apple itself. Founder Steve Jobs was forced out by the CEO he recruited, John Sculley. Jean-Louis Gassée…
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Open Car
We just bought our first EV. OK, so we’re not always the earliest of adopters (it does replace a hybrid we bought 15 years ago). Much of the EV Future is already somewhat evenly distributed, but there’s still a very long way to go (so to speak). Having a new piece of technology (and that’s…
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