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Andy Hertzfeld Shares His Thoughts on 25 Years of the Mac
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Aug 27, 2008 04:16 PM
from the never-forget-your-first-mac dept.
from the never-forget-your-first-mac dept.
blackbearnh writes "It may make you feel very, very old, but the Macintosh will be turning 25 in January. As we approach this momentous anniversary, O'Reilly News had a talk with Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original Macintosh designers, about the long and storied history of the Mac. Hertzfeld, who tells the story of the Mac in his book A Revolution in the Valley, shares his thoughts about how the Mac has aged over time, how life might have been different if Steve Jobs had stayed on at Apple, and the differences between working for Apple, and for Google (his current employer.)" Read on below for a bit of what Hertzfeld had to say.
"They're very similar in certain ways — essentially both Apple and Google want to rewrite the rulebook; they don't want to do things in conventional ways. They want to come up with a better way — for everything; that's not even just the technology but the work processes, the work environment, everything has to be unique and better, so they're very similar in that way. One of the ways that they're different has to do with essentially trust of employees. Apple is very secretive within the company; people working on Macs don't know anything about the new iPods, et cetera. Google is extremely open within the company; once you're a Google employee you have access to just about every piece of information there is."
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What has he done lately? (Score:2, Funny)
I'm curious as to why people are still interviewing Mr. Hertzfeld, given that his most recent successful project was the Mac. Even more puzzling is that he continues to be able to raise funds, attract developers, etc., in view of his decades-long track record of failure.
Re:What has he done lately? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm curious as to why people are still interviewing Mr. Hertzfeld, given that his most recent successful project was the Mac. Even more puzzling is that he continues to be able to raise funds, attract developers, etc., in view of his decades-long track record of failure.
I don't know why people give him money, but as for an interview subject, he was a witness to history.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The daily history of breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Re:What has he done lately? (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds positively epic. I think I may have to lie down.
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Re:What has he done lately? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:What has he done lately? (Score:5, Informative)
what are you talking about? The company he co-founded, General Magic, went on to create OnStar. I wouldn't call that a failure.
Most of his other ventures like Radius and all that weren't failures, but they weren't big-time hits either.
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Re:What has he done lately? (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm... no. OnStar existed before General Magic added speech recognition services to it and Hertzfeld was gone before General Magic started getting into speech recognition applications.
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Well he works for Google for one thing.
And you know that whole Mac thing is a pretty big stuff.
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When you're associated with success, the press just calls you for things..just like sci-fi actors and actresses. Plus, he interviews well.
General Magic - Android (Score:2, Funny)
Android will crush you all, it won't have a kill switch. We underestimate the General Magic heritage. It was a pretty cool device, I knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who had one.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's hard to create a wildly successful product once, let alone twice.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
While working at General Magic, I talked to him a few times while he was still working at General Magic and my impression of him is that he is extremely confident and really good at selling himself and his role in the development of the Macintosh. He never struck me as a genius or anything like that. I think he was just the right person in the right place at the right time.
Unfortunately, he is starting to give off that high school football star 25 years later vibe....
Re:What has he done lately? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps so, but he does have interesting things to say and a very intelligent way to say them. That was one of the best interviews I have read in a while, because both the questions and answers were intelligent and interesting.
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Leopard... (Score:2)
...is doing just fine, thanks a lot, on my MacBook.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Nautilus is the Gnome file manager and replaced nothing. You are thinking of Pennington's Metacity which replaced Sawfish. And I thought that Eazel's Nautilus was a tremendous failure, they allegedly burned through $15 million of venture capital and left behind a practically unusable file manager, which took the other contributors years to get into a good state. It's possible that Eazel lost funding too early and that they would have come up with a great tool if just given a year more time, but then I guess
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Nautilus is the Gnome file manager and replaced nothing.
Please quote here the appropriate law about errors in posts that correct errors.
Nautilus did replace something: Midnight Commander.
More Andy Hertzfeld (Score:5, Informative)
He was the first interview of the very good NerdTV series of 2005.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/shows/ [pbs.org]
Who's got other gems?
Re:More Andy Hertzfeld (Score:5, Informative)
It includes a link to the awesome notebook page [macdevcenter.com] and it's timeless classic, "Memory layout is a bitch."
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Very, very? (Score:5, Funny)
Get the heck off my lawn. And take your fruit machine with you.
Quality control please (Score:5, Funny)
Apple versus google (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't know if Google will work in the long run. And in the long run I am thinking AOL. Google's success depends on the advertising market tolerating secretive and random marketize techniques which appear to be abuse of the near monopoly that Google now has in advertising. The success is also dependent on the ability of cheap commodity severs to provide six nines service, externalizing the majority of the cost of content creation to third parties, and externalizing the majority of infrastructure costs to the taxpayer. I am not saying that at some point their house of cards will fall al a AOL, but I am not quite sure how they are going to make money off cloud computing, other than selling personal information collecting from the love letters of their users to third parties.
All Apple has to do is come up with the next cool thing that people will pay for. This is not a simple thing, but something that Apple has been doing with some success for quite a while. We now see a diversification outside of computers, so, when the Mac OS does become something that is not limited to any machine, and when, by the same rules, MS is not able to limit OEM versions to run only on the machine it was originally shipped with, Apple will be able to enter this brave new work of zero profit computer equipment with new consumer appliances.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
[Google's] success is also dependent on [...] externalizing the majority of infrastructure costs to the taxpayer.
Where did that come from? I can not think of anything here that fits. Clearly you are not talking about Google-owned infrastructure like their data centers et.al. Perhaps you mean internet infrastructure, since this was funded in the past by the government. But then, that is true about the electrical/sewer/telephone/etc. infrastructure. At this point, the initial investment has been paid, and none of these are funded by the government. All services are paid for. Google pays well for good Internet co
G6 dreams (Score:4, Interesting)
So, now that we've got the Cell CPU out the door, do you think we're going to see a G6 soon? The PowerPC line of CPUs has never been so prosperous!
I doubt that Apple's ditching Intel anytime soon, but since they already have a PPC compatible OS, might they dip their toe back into those waters again?
Re:G6 dreams (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think so, they have seen their users actually install/run Boot Camp to run Windows on Mac sometimes and believe me, there are lots and lots of people having "Untitled" on their Desktops now :) It is just like you hear how "awful" MS Office is but somehow it always make top Apple software at Amazon. It must be BillG ordering all those copies I guess? ;)
If Apple was on Cell organisation, you would expect something like Toshiba did. They keep on x86/Windows but they add a Cell processor as a co-processor to do insane things. Also keep in mind there is nothing stopping any company to put a Cell chip to PCI card, contribute to ffmpeg/vlc code and ship a multi platform media accelerator for PCs and Macs.
It is a sad fact today that x86 stays, at least for Desktop. I can't imagine IBM working with Apple again to provide them POWER6UL (rumoured ultra light). Apple in fact seriously hurt POWER image. They could just say "IBM and Motorola are concentrated on different markets" but they spoke about performance/watt, heat consumption etc. which are ONLY true for PPC line of that huge architecture. They couldn't say "They don't give a heck to our needs" of course :)
After all of this, it would be really hard to convince developers to re-code for POWER instruction set, Altivec etc. It is a radically different thing. I am speaking about consumer/desktop developers of course, POWER is kinda x86 on enterprise market.
Can you imagine IBM engineers going mad over "lower than expected fps" on a popular game? That is the issue. Intel and AMD has such people.
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Re:G6 dreams (Score:4, Insightful)
OS X currently supports three instruction sets; x86, PowerPC and ARM. Most software can use any with a straight recompile (the decision to use UIKit instead of AppKit on their ARM-based platforms makes porting GUI apps slightly harder, but this is orthogonal to the question of the CPU). Very little code directly depends on things like AltiVec or SSE. Code that does, often uses libraries for common algorithms (FFT, and so on) which just uses the correct code for the current platform. Other code uses generic vector support in GCC and LLVM, which is compiled to whatever instructions the host architecture supports.
I wouldn't be surprised if PowerPC surfaces again at some point in the future. Freescale, in particular, make some very cheap parts that would make sense in successors to the AppleTV.
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You know what? If some stuff takes off such as ultra-ultra light devices which can perform as a laptop with comical power needs, they are always powered by FreeScale chips. As Apple policy/ideology is OS X should only run on Apple hardware, what does it mean?
Perhaps MS keeps their PowerPC Windows maintained just in case? It wouldn't be surprise. If you look at Windows NT history, they had to deal with that horrible Intel RISC chip so they won't accidentally code x86 specific code in any case. MS still keeps
Re:G6 dreams (Score:4, Interesting)
In contrast, it seems game developers have been using Cider [transgaming.com] quite a bit lately. This makes porting from Windows much easier, but the games will be Intel-only.
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How Microsoft and Intel won the West (Score:4, Funny)
It was probably the decision to openly license it. The Mac--when the Mac came out and for two years thereafter it was at least four or five years ahead of Windows and possibly could have taken the place of Windows if it was openly licensed, but because the Macintosh was restricted to a single member, Apple, it never could become an industry rather than a single platform.
Highly insightful. The Mac was like the old order, where one company made hardware, OS and software. The PC is part of the new order.
Maybe this order will change soon with "cloud computing" (sounds like trying to find the diameter of a fart) but I doubt it.
Re:How Microsoft and Intel won the West (Score:5, Insightful)
It was probably the decision to openly license it. The Mac--when the Mac came out and for two years thereafter it was at least four or five years ahead of Windows and possibly could have taken the place of Windows if it was openly licensed, but because the Macintosh was restricted to a single member, Apple, it never could become an industry rather than a single platform.
Highly insightful. The Mac was like the old order, where one company made hardware, OS and software. The PC is part of the new order.
I disagree with Andy's assessment. The Mac may have been years ahead of Windows, but it's real problem, IMHO, is MS-DOS was already pretty entrenched, and the Mac didn't offer a migration path. I was working for Lotus at the time (working sometimes on the Mac, sometimes on DOS), and we had a pretty large community of 1-2-3 users who would not leave behind their accumulated DOS spreadsheets and what-not for the Mac even if they wanted to.
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The Genius of Hertzfeld, Et Al (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes. Things like QuickDraw [wikipedia.org] were amazing. that they managed to accomplish that with such a tiny footprint is just astounding, and is what allowed the Mac to be a Mac while PCs were still running DOS.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The original Macintosh, as they refer to, I'm assuming was the 128K, released in January 1984, but I (my family) owned a Lisa, which was the same thing, just sideways, in 1983, so I've actually been using macs 25 years already...
What really makes me feel old is I used to operate an original Apple II, equipped with both processors for compiling, back in 1979. I was but a grade school kid at the time, but we had 11 of them in a manually switched network (litterally, you could turn the dial to select what mac
A few nice words about Andy Herzfeld... (Score:5, Insightful)
The original Mac had 128K of memory, some 27K of which was used for the screen buffer alone, and although much of the OS was in ROM, it used a significant amount of the available RAM for itself. And this isn't even to mention any currently running application. A Desk Accessory, then, and the ability to invoke it while an application was running (many people forget that the original Mac OS was not multitasking at all), required some pretty incredible feats of programming to make it fit in the tiny amount of memory left. And he found a way to make it work.
People often speak in awe of how the 512K Amiga did multitasking on its tiny memory budget, and while I also admire that effort (especially having been a Commodore kid from VIC 20 to C64 to Amiga), I still think the original Mac OS represents one of the most incredible feats of software engineering of the early microcomputer era. I get slightly down every so often when I think about how modern developers, including myself, have gigabytes of memory and ultra-fast processors to work with and don't often have to think about the resource consumption of their algorithms/designs. Must have been so cool to work that kind of stuff back there...
Fawning mode off now...
25 years of the Mac (Score:3, Informative)
"The Mac at 25" makes me think back to when I bought my first mac in 1984. These days I'm on linux. My wife has an aging "iLamp" G4 on her desk, which we're probably going to get rid of soon and switch her to a linux box. But anyway I've continuously had a mac in the house for 24 years now.
Looking back, I see that time as dividing into three periods:
Re:25 years of the Mac (Score:4, Funny)
Honestly, you compare a Amiga to the Apple systems and Apple really cannot be compared with Amiga systems, at all. I don't think the Apple was way ahead of it's time, the GUI, publishing, while it was all new, it was all done far better by the Amiga.
I still remember when Apple switched to the Power PC platform and the Amigas were still outdoing the machines in 3d graphics etc. with it's old m68k processor and custom chips.
I have not been impressed by Apple over the years.
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The third era is MacOS X. The big issue now is that low-end PCs can do everything I need, and low-end PCs are insanely cheap, so why buy a mac?
Uuhh...because I want to?
I've noticed on /. that there are people who like linux, and people who like Mac. And the reasons for this are different and have changed over time. I've used ubuntu, and even found recently the two floppy disks I used to install Linux 0.11 on -- well boot up anyways. In those days getting it to install on a hard drive was a real days work.
I
Avie Tevanian saved the Mac (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Avie Tevanian saved the Mac (Score:5, Interesting)
Tevanian and the rest of NeXT's engineers did fantastic technical work, but NeXT didn't go anywhere until it was grafted on top of Apple in 1997.
Apple desperately needed a technology infusion, but NeXT's technology wasn't ready for deployment at Apple in a way the market could embrace until 2002.
It was Jobs who turned Apple and the Mac around in the interim, from 1997 to 2002, by taking Apple's System 7 and turning it into a product people would buy: the iMac, new Powerbooks, flashy new Macs with a strong brand rather than a confusing array of white boxes with Sony-like model numbers.
It's a disappointing reality that technology, like art, can't sustain itself. It needs marketing and merchandizing. Without Jobs, Apple would have quickly become another dead technology portfolio just like Amiga, OS/2, Taligent, etc. If technology itself sold products, Linux on the desktop would be whipping Windows and the Newton would have taken off. Technology needs to be made accessible, and Jobs has has a spectacular career at doing just that, despite lacking, as Hertzfeld notes in the interview, the technical expertise of his engineers.
If Apple had instead bought Be or teamed up with Sun, it would have been as successful as Be was at Palm or as OpenStep had been in Sun. That is: zero. A phenomenal amount of technical work performed for nothing because nobody there knew how to productize it.
The Inside Deets on iPhone 2.0.2 and Dropped Calls [roughlydrafted.com]
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Interesting difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, Google is, after all, the company that wants to make all information transparent and available to everyone. Apple, on the other hand, is an often-imitated company that must get its product to market before someone else gets a mimicked product out there. Once its on the market, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but if something like that shows up earlier, it pisses Apple off.
Re:mac, what do you think? (Score:4, Funny)
*makes a-ok sign* It stinks!
Now begins the moderation war between mac addicts and MST3K fans. *grins evilly, sips iced tea*
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*makes a-ok sign* It stinks!
Now begins the moderation war between mac addicts and MST3K fans. *grins evilly, sips iced tea*
I know! And the hardcore MST3K fans are going to mod him down for not saying: *puts on a white shirt with black font that reads "I'M A VIRGIN" across [youtube.com] the front of it*
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I know! And the hardcore MST3K fans are going to mod him down for not saying: *puts on a white shirt with black font that reads "I'M A VIRGIN" across the front of it*
Idiot control now, flying over trout! heh, so many great lines from that episode.
Huzzah!
Dark one, supreme being, chief? McLeod!
Trumpy, you do stupid things!
It looks just like a potato. What's this, winged potatoes.
Pod people got no reason to live.
Re:25 years of... (Score:5, Informative)
Hi AsperFarts
Apple is one of GCC's biggest contributors. Or maybe you're thinking of WebKit. It's such a significant improvement over khtml that Trolltech will be including it as part of QT and KDE will be using it as well. Too bad more people don't "rip off" FOS
OS X has a larger marketshare on the desktop (you know, their target audience). But speaking of market cap, VA Linux went from 22 billion to 44 million.
Your other point is just plain stupid.
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For OS X platform specific code.
Which took so many years for the original KHTML team to decipher and make it useful because of how Apple released the sourcecode initially.
Indeed, there is no point for them have projects running in parallel, thus the KDE team's decision to unify efforts which Apple didn't do initially is quite beneficial.
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Nevermind "monopoly". Being seen by grannies as a drop in replacement
for Windows and being able to withstand the usual Lemming FUD about
compatability would be a nice start.
Quite a bit of "common good" would come from that achievement.
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I would argue that shareholders care a lot more about their marketcap than their marketshare.
Yes, but you have to get investors from somewhere. Even though MS keeps making money, if I had invested in MS I would be selling my stocks. Why? Because MS's marketshare has went down sharply. If McDonalds had a monopoly on drive thrus and everyone wanted to go to a drive thru and so McDonalds prospered, but yet when Burger King had a drive thru and food that tasted better than McDonalds I'm sure that many people would take out their McDonalds shares and invest in Burger King.
Re:25 years of... (Score:4, Informative)
In terms of expected profits (and hence, expected share value or dividends), who cares if market share is dropping a couple percent a year if the market is growing, say, five percent a year? Or if the margin is increasing likewise?
Of course, you might be making a valid point, I haven't crunched the numbers on MSFT. But, AFAICT from a quick googling, long-term projections for MS are still very good.
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Re:whooooo (Score:5, Funny)
Yar! Twenty-freaking-five years later and I'm still trying to find some real choices in my virus scanning and spyware removal software. Damn you Apple!!!
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