While we’re back on Alan’s bookshelves (a central component in the atoms-to-bits discussion), this seems like a good time to take an inventory of what’s on those bookshelves. It turns out to be quite the cornucopia of past, present, and maybe even future, future distribution.
Starting on the top of the first bookshelf:
- A poster displayed in the Open Door Networks booth at the January 2005 Macworld SF for our Macintosh Envision app
- Cat cloning piggy bank
- “It shouldn’t matter how a computer gets information” analog clock from “Networking & Communications Product Introduction, June 1989”. Alan was in NYC for this event, which included the introduction of AppleTalk Phase II.
- Circular slide rule (under the clock)
- Circular CD-ROM for installing Mac OS 9 (which included Open Door’s ShareWay IP software)
- Framed half of a poster for the 2005 party celebrating ten years of Open Door as an ISP
- Beer mug and Lego
- “Etherbug” award for Alan’s work at Apple on “EtherTalk” (barely visible in upper right corner)
- Dozens of packaged CD-ROMs, from the early 1990s through the mid 2010s. Mainly versions of Macintosh software. Grolier’s Encyclopedia was perhaps the first acquired.
- Remember when computers and software used to come with printed documentation? Alan’s collection includes original Macintosh and MacWrite user’s guides from 1984.
- 1993 beer mug honoring Alan’s 10 years at Apple.
- Apple Vision Pro
- First and second editions of Inside AppleTalk, authored by Sidhu, Andrews and Oppenheimer
- Remember when software used to come in boxes? Various Norton (Symantec) security products which included Open Door’s DoorStop Personal Firewall.
- Remember when the Internet was just starting? The tome that came with Adam Engst‘s foundational Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh
- The very first version of the hardware for the “AppleTalk Personal Network” (even it came in boxes back then).
- The AppleTalk PC Card, part of the Macintosh Office
- A number of other products Alan worked on at Apple, including the AppleShare file server, the Apple(Talk) Internet Router and Apple(Talk) Remote Access
- Remember Netscape, the first commercial web browser? You could download it, but how? It came in boxes too.
- Alan’s thesis (bottom left)
- AppleBus Developer’s Handbook, Spring 1984. Essential information for AppleBus (later AppleTalk) developers.
- First edition of Inside Macintosh. Even more essential for early Macintosh software developers.
- Early Macworld and other magazines. Remember when printed magazines used to come through the mail?
- A 1978 first edition of “The C Programming Language”. Another fundamental technology from Bell Labs.
- Nokia smartphone and TiVo user’s guides. Motorola 68000 specification. Other printed books about obsolete products.