Just that it wasn’t clear that the pixel indicated a new operating system. I wondered if Macs were going to be that enigmatic in the future.
But I didn’t mean to get into the Mac/PC debate. They are just different. I just thought it was interesting that a single pixel could put me on one path rather than the other.
This was the border of a window when the mac was first turned on. The pixel is in the upper left hand corner of the sets of lines. In the first set, the old operating system, the pixel between the horizontal lines next to the vertical line was white. The OS update is shown in the second set, with the same pixel now black.
Right now I’m deleting all my personal information off my iBook G4 and copying the HD contents off my Polycarbonate iMac onto a USB drive. This could take a while.
I bought the iBook G4 on March 22, 2004 and it still works perfectly.
I saw this video and it’s so impressive.
I don’t know why we don’t use this technology now. I think Mary Poppins still beats out so much green screen used now.
Saw the original announcement of the “open source” release and almost posted it over here, but then I noticed a mention of some oddities with the license, so I pulled that license up and… decided against. A license that proclaims it is a Copyleft license in one sentence but then shortly afterwards states that you cannot distribute any modifications either as source or binary is definitely one that has problems, and does not whip the llama’s ass.
I’ve used Winamp for years. Most recent version is 2022 version (5.91). Very useful to open a folder, shuffle, then download the playlist. Then I send the playlist and mp3s to my phone. I also use it to play music at my computer but less often.
I think it’s a great, easy to use, and feature rich music player. Too bad they’re screwing with it instead of just supporting it. I wouldn’t mind paying for it (one time license for maybe $10?) instead of free.
Winamp is still good. On rare occasions I use it, if I want to listen to an album. But mostly I put on music videos on Youtube instead.
I never had cable growing up, so I missed out during the era when MTV had music. By the time I got it, it was all stupid reality shows. So Youtube is my MTV.
I used these at my college station for announcements/station identification as late as at least 1999. fairly goof-proof for an analog format. you can see them used on episodes of WKRP In Cincinnati, too.
I had a Minidisc player briefly around the year 2000. My sister gave me her old one and it seemed positively miraculous. So much smaller and easier to handle than a CD player, no skipping when jostled, and those tiny colorful transparent plastic cartridges with the miniature, shining disc inside seemed like something right out of a sci-fi movie. They’d actually been around since 1992 but never really caught on in the United States, so they had the feeling of some advanced arcane technology from distant lands.
A year or two later I got an iPod for my birthday and suddenly anything that used AA batteries and physical media couldn’t feel all that advanced any more, but I never had the same fondness for MP3 players as I did for Minidiscs. They just felt… cooler, like something from a romanticized cyberpunk future that never quite came to pass.
Earlier this week I had BBC Radio 4 on in the background. A programme about Kodak was on (apparently part of a series about firms that failed).
I heard that there is now just one person in the UK still able to process disc ‘film’ and he does still get quite a few enquiries. It seems some people find these things from the 1970s and forget that they were young and foolish and, well, there have been one or two embarrassing moments when film was processed.
Wow, that took me back. I think I had a disc camera for a year or two - probably never used more than 3 or 4 discs. My Mum had one for a while and I think I’ve still got copies of some of those photos!
They also went on to talk about APS cameras. I only caught the latter part of the programme but it was very insightful as to how and why Kodak fucked up when digital came along as an alternative to film.
The segment about how a Kodak executive ‘hid’ a digital camera development until it was ready, and was then ousted, so he took it to Apple, where it became the Apple QuickTake, was fascinating:
This line from the Wikipedia article does not really tell how this actually came about, according to the guy they interviewed for the programme:
During this time, Apple entered into a set of non-disclosure agreements with Kodak to share its proprietary digital camera architecture and cooperate in its further development
The phrase “entered into a non-disclosure agreement” and “cooperate in its development” is very much not how the guy responsible for this described it!
That’s my blast of topical tech nostalgia for today, except to say…
… as an aside, TOP guys ran a survey at Substack the other day presumably trying to gauge their (new) audience’s interests. One of the questions was ‘which piece of old technology do you miss most’ and I was forced to conclude that I most miss my Blackberry Bold. Physical keyboards rock!
Polaroid camera. It still has film, but I think the battery in the film pack finally gave up the ghost.
I used it for one page zine at an early 90s SF convention. I’d take pictures of events, digitize them with a hand scanner, then insert them into the zine. I’d even shoop some of the pixels.