Apple II Bits

Apple’s logo has had many variations through the years: while always the same shape, it’s gone from multicolored to monochromatic, 2D to 3D and back to 2D. But Rob Janoff‘s original rainbow scheme remains in the hearts of old-school Apple enthusiasts, with its appearance instantly striking a nostalgic chord.

Apple occasionally bandies that classic logo when it suits them, especially if playing to that nostalgia can bring commercial success — behold last year’s proposal for rainbow shirts and hats. But sometimes, Apple can be as nostalgic as its fans, using the logo to acknowledge its history and pay tribute to its founders.

Apple’s new campus, Apple Park, celebrated its formal opening on May 17, and as a tribute to Steve Jobs, the rainbow logo was on display in full force, as seen in these photos from MacRumors.

Jony Ive told Cult of Mac: "There is the resonance with the rainbow logo that’s been part of our identity for many years. The rainbow is also a positive and joyful expression of some of our inclusion values… The rainbow’s presence and optimism is keenly felt in many places and at the end of the day — it’s hard to find somebody that doesn’t love a rainbow."

It sometimes feels like Apple wants to forget its history with the Apple II. But when our retrocomputer’s logo inspires this modern décor, it gives me hope that we’ve earned a place not only in the history books, but in the hearts of Apple.

Ever since I left Computerworld for a new job in Boston, my daily commute has included public transit. Although some people may prefer the agency and solitude of driving to work, I enjoy letting someone else drive while I kick back for a relaxing ride.

Not being a smartphone owner, I’m not much for passing the time with calls, texts, games, or apps. Since my eyes aren’t glued to a pocket-sized screen, I’ve done plenty of people-watching in my two years on the bus and subway. It’s hard to ignore how smartphones have proliferated into everyone’s hands — most days, I see more digital diversions than the print publications I still enjoy. As someone whose career was founded in print, I feel a bit sad about its demise.

But on a completely different track, I also feel heartened when I see everyone holding not just smartphones, but iPhones. These devices are a far cry from the machine we celebrate on Open Apple and in Juiced.GS — yet from those humble beginnings sprang an empire that has worked its way into the lives of millions. I look around the sybway and see in everyone’s hands and pockets the same logo that was on the computer on which I learned to program, to write, and to game.

Image courtesy Jens Schott Knudsen.

As a college instructor, I’ve had plenty of students who have never used an Apple II or don’t even know what one is. And in a way, that’s okay, because some part of the Apple II has survived to today. The scrappy company born in a garage was so successful in marketing a product to me and my contemporaries that they grew beyond our wildest dreams.

Every morning, I see more Apple users on the subway than I’ve ever seen at KansasFest. To the makers of that smartphone, I think, "Well done, guys" — and to the people using them, I think, "You’re welcome."

Today, the KansasFest committee released this image:

The blog post had no title (-20 to SEO), no body (-10), no ALT or TITLE tags (-5), and no informative filename (kfest2014.png) or slug (kfest-2014-teaser) — that is to say, no hidden clues.

But that isn’t to say we can’t make some inferences. Today is not the first time the KansasFest committee issued a teaser in advance of announcing the keynote speaker. In 2012, they posted this image to their Web site:

The image made no attempt at being obtuse: gamers quickly recognized it as the logo of Quake, a quintessential first-person shooter from id software, original creators of the Apple IIGS game Wolfenstein 3D. Early id employees included Softdisk alumni John Romero and John Carmack, as well as former KansasFest keynote speaker Lane Roathe. Carmack still has a streak of the retrocomputing enthusiast in him:
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/283632618946318336

Given Carmack’s commitments to id and Oculus, it seemed unlikely he was available to speak at an Apple II convention. That left only John Romero — who was confirmed only hours later with an official press release.

So what can we learn from this latest image out of KansasFest? It features an entirely different style from the logos used for KansasFests 2006–2013. Presuming this teaser image is in fact the 2014 logo, and that its departure from tradition is not merely for aesthetic purposes, we should investigate its influences.

Fortunately, the committee has made this part easy. The logo was posted to not only the KansasFest blog, but also various social media sites, including the Softalk Forever group on Facebook. There, KansasFest publicist Peter Neubauer confirmed that this logo was designed in collaboration with committee chair Tony Diaz, who "created a new font using letters captured from original issues."

The debut issue of Softalk.

I’m not a former reader of Softalk, so I read Steve Weyhrich’s history of the publication. Of the names that were associated with the magazine over the years, two stand out. According to Wikipedia, "Softalk along with founder/editor Margot Comstock and founder/publisher Al Tommervik are named as pioneers of the microcomputer industry in the Smithsonian Institution." Of the two, Comstock is an active participant in the Apple II Enthusiasts group on Facebook. She has also collaborated with Mike Maginnis on providing material to the Apple II Scans project.

Perhaps Comstock is too obvious a choice for this year’s keynote speaker — after all, the committee has done an excellent job in recent years of bringing unexpected celebrities out of the woodwork, such as John Romero, Mark Simonsen, David Szetela, and Randy Wigginton. But who else associated with Softalk would fit in the impressive lineup of past speakers?

No matter what, I’ll be at KansasFest 2014. But for an opening act? My money’s on Comstock.

Apple Inc.’s logo has been through three major revisions: from the early, cerebral scene of Sir Isaac Newton, to the rainbow logo we Apple II users identify with, to the modern, sleek, silver fruit. The shape of the logo has not significantly changed in more than three decades, its simplicity proving enduring. Such a legacy inspires questions to its origins, which designer Rob Janoff answered in a 2009 interview. Were the rainbow theme and the bite from the apple a joint reference to the fate of Alan Turing, the supposed "father of computer science" who committed suicide by biting a cyanide-laced apple, to avoid prosecution for homosexuality? It’s a clever tale, but not one that holds up to Janoff’s take on history — though supposedly, Steve Jobs himself refused to debunk the myth.

A recent article in Scientific American, "Hunters of Myths: Why Our Brains Love Origins", explains Jobs’s reticence:

Jobs, it seems, understood intuitively an important facet of our minds: we like to know where things come from. We like stories. We like nice tales. We need our myths, our origins, our creations. It would be disappointing to know that the apple was nothing more than an apple—and the bite, a last-minute addition to clarify scale, so that it was clear that we were seeing an apple and not a cherry. And that rainbow? A representation of a screen’s color bars, since the Apple II was the first home computer that could reproduce color images on its monitor.

How boring. How much of a letdown. Far better to have a story " and the better the story, the better for us.

The article elaborates on this anecdote, using it as an example of why clever or secret origin stories are often preferable to the truth:

Psychologist Tania Lombrozo argues that such impromptu causal explanations are critical to our everyday cognition. They contribute to improvements in learning. They can foster further exploration and idea generation. They can help us form coherent beliefs and generalize about phenomena—and then use those beliefs to understand, predict, and control future occurrences and, in turn, form new beliefs.

It’s a short but interesting article that demonstrates yet another aspect of Jobs’s genius. His contribution to design may’ve been questionable, and his first tour of duty at Apple may’ve marked him as an irascible manager who failed to respect the humanity of his employees — but given the success of his products, Jobs did seem to have a keen understanding, if not of human nature, then of human desire. Even when it comes to logos:

Steve Jobs’s silence was truly perceptive. Sometimes, it’s just better to let natural human tendencies take over and start weaving tales, true or not, that will help people understand and relate to you better than anything you say ever could.

In the latest episode of Open Apple, I pointed listeners to an article outlining Apple’s ten worst products ever. Such lists aren’t original — Computerworld blogger Jonny Evans had his own take last year — but it can be entertaining to see what other people interpret to be Apple’s successes and failures.

Back in January, a pair of sites produced more upbeat lists of Apple successes: Computerworld and Complex. The latter’s list of the fifty greatest moments in Apple history is comprehensive — how many of us can name any fifty moments in one company’s history? To list so many points, Complex couldn’t exclude our favorite computer. Many items in Complex’s gallery, which is not in chronological order, revolve around our favorite computer and its creator:

• • Apple-1 is released
• • Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak awarded National Medal of Technology
• • Apple logo is designed by Rob Janoff
• • VisiCalc comes to the Apple II

Technically, the Apple-1 was not a product of Apple Computer Inc., though it certainly laid the groundwork for the company’s eventual founding and success. The machine that launched the corporation was the Apple II, the release of which is noticeably absent from the list. And some of the moments aren’t exactly what I’d call the "greatest" — such as Microsoft invests 150 million into Apple, or Pirates of Silicon Valley hits theaters.

What would you consider key moments in the life of Apple Inc.?