[Happy Mac obituary]
The Happy Mac icon, designed by Susan Kare, appeared in 1984 along with Apple
Macintosh. It was the first thing every Macintosh user has seen displayed on
their computers, and the first sign of Macintosh GUI superiority – instead
of undecipherable boot messages on PCs, it was either Happy Mac if everything was
okay or Sad Mac if the computer was somehow damaged. With years Happy Mac got
company in form of “Welcome to Macintosh” and “Starting up”
splash screens, and received colour treatment. To the dismay of many users, it has
become one of the victims of “severing old ties” strategy and replaced
with gray Apple logo in Mac OS X Jaguar in 2002.
[Metal Trash obituary]
The metal Trash, originally drawn by Susan Kare, has been part of Macintosh operating
system since its beginnings in 1984 (and actually dating back to 1983 and Apple Lisa’s
Wastebasket). Part of the “desktop metaphor,” it has been designed for
deleting documents, but also – to the amazement of many users – ejecting
disks from drive. Its appearance has been constantly updated during the following
years. System 3 reversed the ridges for a cleaner look, System 4 added different
appearance for full trash, System 7 shading, and Mac OS 8’s Trash was drawn –
as all icons – in isometric “Copland” view. The metal can finally
gave way to Mac OS X’s office wire Trash in 2001.
[Switcher obituary]
Unlike Apple Lisa, Macintosh originally did not allow for running more than one
program simultaneously. All that changed with the introduction of Andy Hertzfeld’s
Switcher in September 1985. After preselecting a set of applications (up to eight if
there was enough memory) it was later possible to switch between them without
quitting any. While still a far cry from multitasking, it made users of Fat Mac
and Mac Plus significantly happier. The program was available for free or $19.95
with documentation (as Switcher Construction Kit). It was later superseded by
Servant, but both were rendered obsolete in late 1987, when System 4.2 with
MultiFinder was released.
[File Manager obituary]
Short-lived File Manager originated from MS-DOS Executive present in first and second
editions of Microsoft Windows. It was first included with Windows 3.0 in 1990 as a
sidekick to Program Manager, but quickly proved clumsy, inconsistent and awkward
to use. To deal with files people dropped to MS-DOS shells, or in later years launched
one of many third-party replacements. Despite enhancements in Windows 3.1, 3.11 and the
last version in Windows NT 3.51, File Manager never really caught on, being widely
regarded as a failure. It has been superseded by Explorer in 1995’s and
subsequent editions of Windows.
[MS-DOS obituary]
MS-DOS 1.0 was bundled with the original IBM PC. As with the computer itself, it gained
popularity in spite of its obvious flaws. Even though the expected final releases
were to be the popular 3.2 and 3.3, the line continued through bloated 4.0,
multilingual 5.0, and 6.22 in 1994. Reversing the earlier trend, later versions
were available only as part of Windows 95 (7.0) and 98 (7.1). 2000’s Windows
Millennium Edition was based on the last, minimal MS-DOS release, 8.0 – although
later editions of Windows featured Command Prompt, they removed most references
to MS-DOS. Microsoft discontinued the remains of support for its first operating
system by the end of 2002.
[Apple Lisa obituary]
After unsuccessful Apple III, the ranks of Apple Computer’s biggest
failures were joined by Lisa. This in many ways revolutionary machine was
the first commercial personal computer to feature a graphical user interface,
controlled by a unique one-button mouse. Lisa’s GUI refined and enhanced
upon the ideas first seen in Xerox Star workstation, introducing such concepts
as dragging, double-clicking, on-screen trashcan and pull-down menus.
Unfortunately, priced at $9,995, Lisa was an expense not many businesses could
afford. The computer was also slow, and eventually lost the competition
with Macintosh, which offered a little bit less for much less.
[Twiggy obituary]
Twiggy, one of the many ambitious technologies incorporated in Lisa, was the next
generation floppy disk drive, produced in-house by Apple. It featured auto
ejection and was razor-thin like its human namesake. Using proprietary 5” disks,
it allowed for 860 kilobytes of storage (compared to 160 kilobytes for other computers
of its time) by using variable motor speeds and double data rate. However, Twiggy
drives were slow and plagued by reliability and production problems. For a
while threatening the already much delayed Macintosh project, at the eleventh hour
they have been replaced by 400-kilobyte Sony 3.5” disks, which soon became
industry standard.
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