Mac Folklore Radio

Jan 26 2025 119 ep. 18 mins 149

Mac Folklore Radio Podcast artwork

Comfort food for Macintosh users of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

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Darin Adler: 20 Years of Computer Software (1996)

Jan 26 2025 42 mins

Original text by Darin Adler. An overview of the Motorola MEK6800D2 single board computer/development kit. Roger Heinen “engineers are a dime a dozen” story from episode 40 of the Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs Podcast. The General Magic documentary is a good hard look at how General Magic fizzled out, though it somehow managed to survive long enough to power the Ge

Craig Hickman - The History of Kid Pix (2013)

Dec 11 2024 27 mins

How a little paint program became a worldwide phenomenon. Original text by Craig Hickman. Craig talks about his 8-bit Atari projects on episode 378 of the ANTIC Podcast. Apple honoured Craig in their already-zapped-from-history Macintosh 30th Anniversary website. John Sculley demonstrating Kid Pix on stage in 1991. John loves talking about “objects” the way Apple loves talki

Greg Maletic on OpenDoc (2006)

Nov 10 2024 28 mins

Original text by Greg Maletic who is now at Panic, one of the few companies still making beautiful native non-Electron, non-Flutter Mac desktop applications–an endangered species. A technical walkthrough of OpenDoc from co-architect Kurt Piersol. Best comment: “… it’s telling just how much talking is happening in this presentation and how little ‘actually showing OpenDoc

Apple's 1989 Year In Review (1990)

Oct 19 2024 34 mins

Original text by Steven Levy, Macworld January 1990. The sad story of dBASE Mac, which was quickly sold off and briefly revived as nuBASE. Followup article. MindWrite and how it relates to the collapse of mail order house Icon Review. Useless product of the year: WristMac, as shown at Macworld Expo San Francisco 1989. Watch Jean-Louis Gassee assemble a Macintosh IIcx live on st

That Time I Had Steve Jobs Keynote at Unix Expo (1991)

Oct 05 2024 11 mins

Original text by Chris MacAskill at the now-defunct cake.co. “Team FDA” jean jacket pictures in the comments (scroll down). Steve Jobs with the 1991 Unix Expo keynote audience under hypnosis. (scroll down) Lotus Improv tutorial VHS tape, Lotus technical talk about Improv and NeXTSTEP, and Moose O’Malley’s Improv Guided Tour.

Steve Hayman - A Different Apple/NeXT Story (1995)

Sep 09 2024 4 mins

Original text by Steve Hayman. Humungous Entertainment’s CD-ROM titles for classic Macs. The infamous Power Mac 5200 featured the horrendously slow PowerPC 603 (not the 603e). As if that wasn’t bad enough, a recycled motherboard design fed the 603’s 64-bit memory bus with a 32-bit wide memory subsystem, exacerbating the 603’s los performance. Add some reliability issues,

The Desktop Critic - High Trek (1994)

Aug 10 2024 18 mins

Original text by David Pogue, Macworld May 1994. Products mentioned in this article: Interplay’s “Star Trek: 25th Anniversary” adventure game download, CD-ROM download with voice acting, complete playthrough on YouTube. David Landis’ Stak Trek episode guide HyperCard stacks. David Pogue interviewed Mark Okrand, creator of Klingon and other conlangs, for the Unsung Scien

Left Behind: A Be, Inc. and BeOS Post-Mortem (2024)

Jul 10 2024 51 mins

A broader look at the circumstances surrounding the demise of BeOS. Original text by me. Text version available. No links here this time; they’re all inside the text version.

Calling In Sick

MFR will be off its usual schedule while your host recovers from a brutal flu. Sound effect from MacPuke/MacBarfX.

Jean-Louis Gassée Interview (1998)

May 14 2024 36 mins

A snapshot of Be’s direction in 1998 post-Apple merger talks and pre-bankruptcy. Original text by Henry Bortman. Selected Jean-Louis Gassée quotes: “Who could have put a date on not getting fired for using Linux?” “One of my role models is Michael Dell. […] He looks like a sage in the industry now, but he didn’t always look like this.” “The simple fact is, tod