Author: Alan Oppenheimer
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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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2001: WiFi by any other name (part 2)
“Almost immediately, ‘wireless Internet’ took off in homes, businesses and coffee shops, here in Ashland and around the world.” Continuing where we left off, Apple’s 1999 “AirPort” was a big step in distributing the WiFi Future, but it wasn’t quite “wireless Internet” yet. It was wireless, but it wasn’t Internet. Not-so-coincidentally, in 1999 the city…
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1999: WiFi by any other name (part 1)
Similar to the way we’ve almost come to take “Every movie ever made” for granted, we’ve come to take many of the technologies underlying this prophesy from 1999 for granted too. That same year, Apple again did its distribute-the-Future-much-more-widely thing with another now-taken-for-granted technology: WiFi. WiFi is so taken for granted now that we even…
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1999: Every movie ever made
A few years after the prophetic AT&T “You Will” ad campaign, a regional phone and Internet provider, Qwest, did AT&T one better. A guy walks into a shabby motel lobby: “What kind of rooms you got?”Bored motel clerk: “King size.”Guy: “You got room service?”Clerk: “Donuts and coffee.”Guy: “Got entertainment?”Clerk: “All rooms have every movie ever…
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2024: Predict, create, distribute (repeat)
A year ago this month, Apple again did what it does best: predicting, creating and distributing the Future. And we like to think we’ve been helping again too. As mentioned previously, Apple is particularly good at making an already-here, but very-unevenly-distributed Future more affordable and accessible for the rest of us. To quote Steve Jobs…
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