Apple's History 3

Author: Andy Hertzfeld
Date: August 1983

In 1980, a company called Franklin Computer produced a clone of the Apple II called the Franklin Ace, designed to run the same software. They copied almost every detail of the Apple II, including all of its ROM based software and all the documentation, and sold it at a lower price than Apple. We even found a place in the manual where they forgot to change "Apple" to "Ace". Apple was infuriated, and sued Franklin. They eventually won, and forced Franklin to withdraw the Ace from the market.

Even though Apple won the case, it was pretty scary for a while, and it wasn't clear until the end that the judge would rule in Apple's favor - Franklin argued that they had a right to copy the Apple II ROMs, since it was just a "functional mechanism" necessary for software compatibility. We anticipated that someone might try a similar trick with the Macintosh someday. If they were clever enough (which Franklin wasn't), they could disguise the code (say by systematically permuting some registers) so it wouldn't look that similar at the binary level. We thought that we better take some precautions.

Steve decided that if a company copied the Mac ROM into their computer, he would like to be able to do a demo during the trial, where he could type a few keystokes into an unmodified infringing machine, and have a large "Stolen From Apple" icon appear on its screen. The routines and data to accomplish that would have to be incorporated into our ROM in a stealthy fashion, so the cloners wouldn't know how to find or remove it.

It was tricky enough to be a fun project. Susan designed a nice "Stolen from Apple" icon, featuring prison bars. Steve Capps had recently come up with a simple scheme for compressing ROM-based icons to save space, so we compressed the icon using his technique, which not only reduced the overhead but also made it much harder to detect the icon. Finally, we wrote a tiny routine to decompress the icon, scale it up and display it on the screen. We hid it in the middle of some data tables, so it would be hard to spot when disassembling the ROM.

All you had to do to invoke it is enter the debugger and type a 6 digit hexadecimal address followed by a "G", which meant execute the routine at that address. We demoed it for Steve and he liked it. We were kind of hoping someone would copy the ROM just so we could show off our foresight.

As far as I know, no one ever did copy the ROM in a commercial project, so it wasn't really necessary, but it did create some intrigue for a while. We let it slip that there was a "stolen from Apple" icon hidden in there somewhere, partially to deter people from copying the ROM. At least one hacker became moderately obsessed with trying to find it.

Steve Jasik was the author of the MacNosy disassembler/debugger, which could be used to create pseudo-source for the ROM. He found out about the "stolen from Apple" icon pretty early on, and became determined to isolate it. He lived in Palo Alto, so I would occasionally bump into him, and he would ask me for hints or tell me his latest theory about how it was concealed, which was invariably wrong.

This went on for two or three years, before he finally cracked it: I ran into him and he had it nailed, telling me about the compressed icon and the address of the display routine. I congratulated him, but was never sure if he figured it out himself or if someone with access to the source code told him.

Great Stuffs

Wow. I found this really cool stuff and decide to share with you guys. Portable applications. Ever wonder if you don't get to own a real software and you only got a trial for like let's say Microsoft office. I mean if you really have to use them if not try not to. ( MAC ROX ). OK. So where is this good freebie??? You must be wondering. Alright, i will tell you. You can find them at portableapps.com

Apple's History 2

Author: Andy Hertzfeld
Date: September 1980

Burrell was hired into Apple in February 1979 as Apple employee #282, in the lowly position of service technician, one of the lowest paying jobs at the company. Even though he'd been doing genius quality work as a hardware designer on the Macintosh project for a while now (more than nine months), and he was even filling in for Steve Wozniak on the low cost Apple II project, he still wasn't officially promoted to engineer as he requested, which was getting pretty frustrating.

Burrell started thinking about what it would take to get promoted. It obviously wasn't a matter of talent or technical skill, since he was already far more accomplished in that regard than most of the other hardware engineers. It wasn't a matter of working harder, since Burrell already worked harder and was more productive than most of the others. Finally, he noticed something that most of the other engineers had in common that he was lacking: they all had fairly prominent moustaches. And the engineering managers tended to have even bigger moustaches. Tom Whitney, the engineering VP, had the largest moustache of all.

So Burrell immediately started growing his own moustache. It took around a month or so for it to come in fully, but finally he pronounced it complete. And sure enough, that very afternoon, he was called into Tom Whitney's office and told that he was promoted to "member of technical staff" as a full-fledged engineer.

Softwares + Project

Audacity - Audio Production Tool
Podifier - Create an XML file for your podcast
ArtRage - Whoa, throw away your drawing block!

Joke...

Auntie: Ello? Maxnet(ISP) ah? I cannot connect to the internet....

Helpdesk: hi m'am... Sorry about tat.... You can send an email to our tech support team to report your problem

Auntie: Huh! I cant connect to the internet....

Helpdesk: Yes m'am... Pls send an email to our tech support so they can log in ur problem...

Auntie: Similan?! I cannot even get on the net!

Helpdesk: Dun worry, the tech support team will check out the problem when they receive your email....

Auntie: *pek chek and hang up*


Theres meeting tomorrow hor, continue scrolling down after reading this joke for the previous post...

SYMC

To all iMedia Members,

Please be reminded that there will be a meeting for all levels this Friday(21st April), 2.30 pm. Also, please bring $20 for the SYMC(Singapore Youth And Media Conference) Do be punctual!

GREAT freebie for gmail and firefox users

I have found this great extension for mozilla firefox. We, the video crew, used to use the gmail drive. However, I found out that it is no longer usable. Therefore, I found this extension to replace the old one. Furthermore, this extension is better.

Gspace

The extension name is gspace. The old gmail drive only allows us to upload files lesser than 10 MB. But this extension is totally different. It can upload up to ___. I don't know yet. The largest file I uploaded is about 600 MB. So I don't really know if there is a limit. But you can always try a 1 GB file or even 2GB file and see if there is a limit. Or is the limit the size of gmail?

But how does it work? It is actually very simple. All you have to do is to have a gmail account. Then you install the extension. Then you log in your account using the extension. It is totally easy to master it. I think a P2 kid will also know how to do it.

To upload a file, just select the file you want to upload and then click on the arrow that points like this -->. Then it will start to upload. After uploading, you can refresh to see the result. To upload a big file like me, choose a file. Then the extension will automatically split the file up and upload one by one.

It is that simple and that convenient. Try it out.

Apple's History 1

Every week I'm going to post an interesting story regarding Apple's history, how they started working on the Mac and stuff. These stories are not written by Steve Jobs himself, but by some of the old Apple engineers. Heres a very humorous one regarding Steve Jobs' reaction to Adam Osborne's taunting...

Author: Andy Hertzfeld

The Apple II was officially introduced at the First West Coast Computer Faire in April 1977, one of the very first trade shows dedicated to the newly emerging microcomputing industry. I loved the Computer Faires because they were attended by passionate hobbyists in the days before commercial forces completely dominated.

In April 1981, a few members of the Mac team took off the afternoon and drove up to San Francisco to visit the seventh West Coast Computer Faire at Brooks Hall. The biggest splash at the show was the unveiling of the Osborne I, from a brand new company named Osborne Computer, which was touted as the world's first portable computer.

The Osborne I was the brain-child of Adam Osborne, who was a well known figure in the world of early microcomputers. Adam was a technical writer who founded a publishing company to publish crucial information about microprocessors and software that was sorely lacking at the time, which was eventually sold to McGraw-Hill. He became a controversial columnist, opining on the industry from his pulpit in InfoWorld and other publications. He had a populist vision of computing, touting a no-frills, low cost, high volume approach to the business.

In 1980, he decided to put his theories into practice, and founded the Osborne Computer Company to design, manufacture and market the Osborne 1, which was a low cost, one-piece, portable computer complete with a suite of bundled applications. He recruited Lee Felsenstein, already a microcomputing legend as the master of ceremonies of the Home Brew Computer Club, to design the hardware. Now, they were introducing the fruits of their labor at the West Coast Computer Faire, as Apple had done four years earlier.

The Osborne 1 was on display at their crowded booth near the center of Brooks Hall. It looked a lot like an oversized lunch box, with a keyboard on the back of the lid, crammed full with two floppy drives and a tiny, 5 inch monitor in its center. We were a little surprised, because it looked uncannily like some of Jef Raskin's early sketches for the Macintosh, which Steve had recently abandoned for a vertically oriented design. Portable was sort of a euphemism as the thing weighed around 25 pounds, but at least it fit under an airline seat, barely. As Macintosh elitists, we were suitably grossed out by the character-based CP/M applications, of course, which seemed especially clumsy on the tiny, scrolling screen.

We worked our way up to the front of the crowd to get a good look at the units that were on display. We started to ask one of the presenters a technical question, when we were suprised to see Adam Osborne himself standing a few feet from us, looking at our show badges, preempting the response.

"Oh, some Apple folks", he addressed us in a condescending tone, "What do you think? The Osborne 1 is going to outsell the Apple II by a factor of 10, don't you think so? What part of Apple do you work in?"

When we told him that we were on the Mac team, he started to chuckle. "The Macintosh, I heard about that. When are we going to get to see it? Well, go back and tell Steve Jobs that the Osborne 1 is going to outsell the Apple II and the Macintosh combined!"

So, after returning to Cupertino later that afternoon, we told Steve about our encounter with Adam Osborne. He smiled, with a sort of mock anger, and immediately grabbed the telephone on the spare desk in Bud's office, and called information for the number of the Osborne Computer Corporation. He dialed the number, but it was answered by a secretary.

"Hi, this is Steve Jobs. I'd like to speak with Adam Osborne."

The secretary informed Steve that Mr. Osborne was not available, and would not be back in the office until tomorrow morning. She asked Steve if he would like to leave a message.

"Yes", Steve replied. He paused for a second. "Here's my message. Tell Adam he's an asshole."

There was a long delay, as the secretary tried to figure out how to respond. Steve continued, "One more thing. I hear that Adam's curious about the Macintosh. Tell him that the Macintosh is so good that he's probably going to buy a few for his children even though it put his company out of business!"

Source: http://www.folklore.org

Er... Is that a movie?

Just watched a movie with my parents. Its a DVD so if you thinking its showing at the cinemas, thank god its not. Its was horrible+terrible+vegetable. Worst movie I've ever seen. If you want me to rate this movie, I'll give it 2/10 for the nice camera angles and panning...

I can't make up my mind whether its a detective, horror, mystery, romance or comedy. Well it says here on the disc cover that its suppose to be a horror movie so I guess it is. I was laughing half the time though =/

Not gonna say the movie title. Truth to be told, I didn't even bother remembering the title. I think the lines underneath the title was "Sometimes, inheritance isn't a good thing"

My reaction: "HUH?!?!"

That seriously makes no sense to me even though inheritance is somewhat linked to the storyline but its not the main point.

1. Storyline is... crap...
I don't see how teleporting is linked to a ghost child. This is super lame. Everything is predictable to the extent that they tell you whats happening next.

There are also plenty of fake endings. Yea, fake endings. You think the story is going to end, but the story just drags on and on. My mother even fell asleep...

They tried unsuccessfully to have a twist at the end. Yea, the twist really 'twisted' my mind away from the movie. Totally 'sianed' by the movie. Don't even know how the twist goes...

2. Overuse of effects
Its alright to have effects, but overusing it makes the movie look amateur-ish. You know alot of horror movies like to have flashbacks of the past events suddenly halfway through a scene or between scenes? Not only this movie uses lots of it, it even add like a hundred blur filters to it, as good as not having any flashbacks at all. The most I saw was a little girl. THATS ALL for the flashbacks. -.-

3. Sound effects
Did they even have a sound engineer/editor? The sound is as bad as a rotten egg. You know those horror movies love to have the high pitch continuous sound whenever something is about to happen? This movie uses too much of it... OVERKILL!!! Not-so-exciting parts they also use this sound effect. Its really irritating.

Thats not the only problem. The background sounds are at the same volume as the actors' voices. For example, you turning a page of your book while talking. The flipping of the page is so loud, as though ppl can't see that he is flipping a book...


One advice... Never watch horror films from Taiwan... They should just stick to idol dramas... Argh... Wasted 2 hours...

Microsoft Cafe Joke

Customer: Waiter!

Waiter: Hi, my name is Bill and I'll be your Support Waiter. What seems to be the problem?

Customer: There's a fly in my soup!

Waiter: Try again, maybe the fly won't be there this time.

Customer: No, it's still there.

Waiter: Maybe it's the way you're using the soup; try eating it with a fork instead.

Customer: Even when I use the fork, the fly is still there.

Waiter: Maybe the soup is incompatible with the bowl; what kind of bowl are you using?

Customer: A SOUP bowl!

Waiter: Hmmm, that should work. Maybe it's a configuration problem; how was the bowl set up?

Customer: You brought it to me on a saucer; what has that to do with the fly in my soup?

Waiter: Can you remember everything you did before you noticed the fly in your soup?

Customer: I sat down and ordered the Soup of the Day!

Waiter: Have you considered upgrading to the latest Soup of the Day?

Customer: You have more than one Soup of the Day each day?

Waiter: Yes, the Soup of the Day is changed every hour.

Customer: Well, what is the Soup of the Day now?

Waiter: The current Soup of the Day is tomato.

Customer: Fine. Bring me the tomato soup and the check. I'm running late now.

[Waiter leaves and returns with another bowl of soup and the check.]
Waiter: Here you are, Sir. The soup and your check.

Customer: This is potato soup.

Waiter: Yes, the tomato soup wasn't ready yet.

Customer: Well, I'm so hungry now, I'll eat anything.
[Waiter leaves.]

Customer: Waiter! Now there's a mosquito in my soup!

The check:
Soup of the Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ 5.00
Upgrade to newer Soup of the Day. . . $ 2.50
Access to support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $10.00
Editors Note: Bug in the soup........included at no extra charge (will be fixed with Tomorrow's soup of the day)

Morning Duties

Today, i went to the general office to supervise the juniors together with Henry. However, i was not pleased with the attitude you guys have. Eugene Leong does not even know that the duty days have been shuffled and have the secondary ones joining us. Jun Wen came late even thought i told him about the duty before anyone else. Ivan was not even there. This kind of attitude should not be the attitude we iMedia people should have. I do not wish to see this kind of things happening again from tomorrow onwards. I will be at the general office at 7 o’clock sharp. Those who come later than me will be considered late. Those who did not turn up or is late will be "dealt" with severely.

Updated dates for CHMA Auditions

To all rock bands and instrumentals which involve the use of drums (I believe theres 2 of you), audtions have been changed from Monday to Tuesday (11 April). Please meet at 4pm, outside the iMedia Studio (beside the bookshop)

Instrumentalists who are not performing with the drums, the auditions remain on Monday.

Audio Crew please take note of the change...

Everyone, iMedia members or not, READ

There are 3 things I want to settle in this post today.

Firstly, I know that one of iMedia's ex-member is featured in one of the school blogs (I'm sure you know which one). I have to stress that he is ALRDY KICKED OUT. LONG TIME AGO! He is definitely NOT in iMedia anymore. Please check and correct the errors, thanks.

Secondly, I have enough of people who mistaken iMedia to be a CCA similar to IT Club. This is not the case. We are a multimedia CCA. We do Audio, Video and Photography. We DO NOT handle Web Design, Robotics or Programming. Get this right.

Note: I did not say that IT Club is lousier than us. Stop putting words in my mouth. Which part of the previous paragraph do you see me doing that? Some people think too much.


Lastly, please handle the mikes properly! Yes, I'm talking to you, not only iMedia members. We have so many case of people abusing the mike I just have to speak up.

1. The mike is to amplify your voice. You do NOT need to shout into the mike.
2. Please do NOT tap the mike. If you wanna test whether it is working, SPEAK into it.
3. Very fun to on, off, on, off, on, off the mike right? Right, hand over 500 bucks. You just spoilt it. Switch it on only when you need to use it. Switch it off only if it is going to be left alone or unused for the next 5mins. As for the wireless mikes, there is a Power and a Mute button. The power button is usually switched on for the entire event while the Mute button is for you to keep the mike on standby.

For god sake, stop troubling us with all these nonsensical stuff. Theres tons of CHMA work to do.

Oh by the way, sorry for all those interference on wednesday assembly. One of the mike points malfunctioned.

Changes made

Sorry for the inconvinence caused but I have to change the duty days for these 3 people.

Please take note. Only these 3 people are affected. The rest will be the same.

The 3 people are: Michael Anthony
Guo Shan Wei
Yao Zhi Ler

Michael and zhi ler will do duty on odd week thursday and shan wei will do duty on odd week tuesday


those that want to get the most updated version of duty list can get it here
iMedia Duty List 2006

Updated Morning Assembly Duty List

The new duty list starts officially next Monday. It can be downloaded under the Links section.

Reporting time: 7:00am
Setup mike by: 7:10am

DO NOT be late for duty. Yu Hung and John please take note of latecomers. If they did not even turn up for duty, mark them down.

2 Things to take NOTE

1. The duty list for 2006 is out now. Please check the new list outside Media Resource Room tomorrow for your new duty days. It will only take effect next week ( Week 4 ). Therefore, those that have duty this week will still have to come. The secondary 4 are removed from the new list as we do not want to disturb them. Therefore, the secondary 1 will be joining.

I will get Cepheus to upload the new list to the blog as soon as possible but before that, it is your responsibility to check the list and make sure you come down for duty on time.

I will be at the general office everyday and make sure you turn up. I will make sure that you guys would not screw up the simplest duty you can have. If you have any enquires, you can always add me on MSN at jackyliu@hotmail.com. ( If you do not clarify yourself the first time, i will check the member list. If your email does not appear there, too bad. I will block you. )

NOTE: ONLY ONE PERSON WILL BE SUPERVISING THE JUNIORS, SPECIAL CASES LIKE SHORTAGE OF PEOPLE WILL THEN ALLOW MORE THAN 1 PERSON. ( THIS IS FROM MR WANG, NOT ME )

2. All iMedia members are required to turn up on Friday ( 7th April ) for audition of CHMA. The reason for all members to come is to make sure that you observe how the CHMA preparations are done. So do make sure you come so that you will learn more.

Test your IQ and IT skills!

I found this quiz created by a Singapore student and I think it is really challenging. It helps to have some basic IT knowledge. Check it out!

http://weikiat.ikueb.com/thewicked/

My brain is dying... Currently stuck at Level 34 (out of 40). No one got past level 38 yet.

Just guide you through a little... At level 1, the hint means that everything is white. Uh huh... So the clue to level 2 may also be white... Got me so far? K since the background is white and the clue is also white, it may help to select everything on screen by Ctrl+A.

Thats all I gonna help. Get pass the rest by yourself ;-) Enjoy~

iCelia saves the day!!!

No no iCelia is not some Apple product. Its just the name I gave to my iPod.

Today *checks time* nope, Yesterday, we had Sports Night. It seems to be more of Sports Evening. Anyway, I had to dug out our miking control from the tons of rubbish and dust which have collected over the past year in the gymnasium. Not that the gym hasn't been used for such a long time. Its just the control system. I wasn't surprise to see the horrible state it is in...

Firstly, the wireless mike receivers are still working, although the front panel for the second receiver has been knocked off, leaving bare circuitry and LED lights. I though that was the worst when I discovered, there were no wireless mikes. They vanished into thin air...

Secondly, the CD player seemed to become really rusty too. The disc tray slided out 1 cm when ejected and I had to pull the rest of the way. However, it soon opened and closed properly. I also though this was the worst till I insert the disc with the school song. What shows up on the display was:

"Loading..."
"No Disc"

-_-||

Time for the CD Player to retire...

What to do? Equipment all rusty and malfunctioning already. We managed to make do with the corded mike, which although created a lot of interference and static, works surprisingly well. I was expecting worse. Anyway, for the school song and background music part, I resort to something which I had never done before...

Sry for the blank iPod screen. Its just too bright for my phone to take the pic properly...

I plugged my iCelia into the mixer control...

If you notice carefully, the Master and CD Volume are turned up to Max. Yea max volume. This is the downside of using any MP3 player, the signal produced are just too low. This explains why we had to set the mike volume around the 1-2 zone (Max: 10). However, I bet most of you didn't know that all those rock songs I played during the event and the school song were from iCelia right? *grinz*

The rain isn't helping one bit... Of all days... It simply have to rain today... ZzzZzz...