John Buck

"Apple is in danger of looking like a laggard, not a leader. It must prove that it can introduce new technology, get it to market in a reasonable timeframe, and at a reasonable price.
It has to continue to attract good work from third-party developers. We'll be waiting."

InfoWorld, Oct 1990

Jeremy Jones recalls:

"What Steve Hain and I had written in a basement, was now good enough for former Xerox PARC scientists, Larry Tesler and Alan Kay, as well as Newton's Steve Capps and Steve Sakoman to tell John Sculley to buy Coral Software and create Dylan."

books.by/john-buck #apple #dylan

Vicki Brown recalls Project Oreo:

Our building was off campus and there wasn't any of the Tech-Bro culture. This was Apple, and this was Unix. And between the two of those, if you knew what you were doing, you were a member of the team, and that's all that mattered.

books.by/john-buck #apple #unix

Inventing the Future John Buck

Rod Perkins recalls ATG in '87

"We laid out what users would want from ‘Spider’, adding live audio capability gave rise to voice calls between Macs, like what we have now with Teams and FaceTime, and we saw the need to leave a Voice Message if the respondent was busy or away."

books.by/john-buck

Inventing the Future John Buck

Chris Crawford, pioneer game designer:

"With the benefit of hindsight it's easy to see the Apple II's success but that wasn't clear in 79. Computer junkies bought the less expensive TRS-80 and PET. The II's color display advantage was shattered by the Atari 800's debut"

books.by/john-buck

Inventing the Future John Buck

SuperMac’s Steve Edelman recalls Apple in 87:

That Steve (Jobs) was in exile and not able to resist or even kill an expandable platform was crucial. It allowed the development of products allowing functionality over costs, coming from individuals, inside the company and outside.

books.by/john-buck

Should chyron read ‘assassination’ rather than shooting? @msnbc.com @nicollewallace.bsky.social #deadlinewhitehouse

Rumor is Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig have a new book in the works. “Sharpest Bulb aka Trump 2” 😵‍💫 @carolleonnig.bsky.social

If the Mac was to get millions of colors, it meant someone had to turn Atkinson's QuickDraw into Color QuickDraw. @geprgec.bsky.social recalls: "Steve Jobs told me I must consult Bill Atkinson on any changes I had planned for QuickDraw. Steve held Bill in extremely high regard."

Vale Bill Atkinson

HyperCard was ahead of its time.
“I grew up in a box-centric culture at Apple. If I'd grown up in a network-centric culture, like Sun, HyperCard might have been the first Web browser. I thought everyone being connected was a pipe dream. Boy was I wrong."

Vale Bill Atkinson
@karaswisher.bsky.social

Australian? Austrian? close enough, not. ffs Times @karaswisher.bsky.social @nytimes.com

Inventing the Future John Buck

Cal Hewitt recalls his start at Apple.

"Steve (Jobs) was a visionary.There was a lot of ‘It's too bad that he left, what are we going to do?’ But that dissipated. It allowed a bunch of smart people to try ideas that they may not otherwise have been able to try - and flourish."

books.by/john-buck

If Mark Gurman's OS26 "scoop" turns out to be b/s, I think Apple will have a decent idea who his sources are.

Inventing the Future John Buck

Former Apple scientist David Gessell:

"The Advanced Technology group was the perihelion of pure research when so much was invented that still makes our lives work. The DNA of those inventions persists in today’s computers, UX models, and even in the hardware and code."

books.by/john-buck

Gotta love an economics prof who explains the impact of Trump tariff's clearly and quickly, and saves time to plug Australian wine on MSNBC :-) More please @justinwolfers.bsky.social @chrislhayes.bsky.social @allinwithchris.bsky.social

Inventing the Future John Buck

Apple scientist Jean-Charles Mourey recalls the Advanced Technology Group:
"It was like walking around James Bond's gadget lab. So many smart, innovative people with grand ideas, doing important work, that we believed could change the world. My friends thought I was in a cult."

books.by/john-buck

Inventing the Future John Buck

Eric Hoffert recalls:
Steve Jobs got word of my decision. My phone rang.
'Hello'
'Hi, it's Steve'
'Oh. Hi, Steve'
'You're making the stupidest move of your career. Apple's big, fat, and slow moving. We have all the best people here at NeXT. You need to rescind your Apple offer.'
books.by/john-buck

Long time listener, first time caller. Did NYT pitch the headline "How Kara Swisher Scaled Even Higher" before or after they took the non-metaphorically scaling photo? 2nd -shouldn't you be in a harness ;-) 3rd -scaling a pile of literal cash. @karaswisher.bsky.social @profgalloway.com

Charlie Bedard ran Project Rosebud inside Apple. ‘How we get the user to generate a query, find results they like and say to the device - more like this? How do you teach your Mac to think? We were trying to create a compelling USP to have a Macintosh. books.by/john-buck

Inventing the Future John Buck

Mike Potel recalls:
"JLG was grounded in user experience. Anything that wasn’t ready for prime time got the evil eye, but he encouraged thinking out of the box and backed fledgling ideas. Engineers saw him as a protector, save for when he was shooting down your great idea."
books.by/john-buck#in...

Apple late to the market. Again.
Optical Media lead Tim Oren recalls 1988:
"HyperCard and the CD-ROM were out the door but Apple was trying to catch up using technology that was marginal for the task. The latest Mac SE was barely 20% faster than the original Macintosh 128."

books.by/john-buck#in...

I remember it well.
A great interview.

Aw thanks ☺️ I hate the magnetic timeline and all that springs from it. I’m a Media 100 guy at heart and it’s a shame that UI, that flow died. There’s no question they launched X way too soon.

Inventing the Future John Buck

The reaction to FCPX always felt like entitled rage. 12 years of 32-bit FCP that birthed millions of businesses (including me). Bank it, upgrade, move on. I know Jobs spoke to Randy Ubillos (Premiere & FCP/KeyGrip) about the "Vertigo" aka FCPX launch and they agreed. 64-bit or nothing. @gruber.foo

I'm sorry everyone but someone on TikTok actually built one of Wallace's machines from the films and you have to see this:

Inventing the Future John Buck

Shepardson Microsystems hired Paul Laughton to write a DOS for Apple. "It was a piece of cake." At the time Steve Jobs pitched Bob Shepardson. “To buy his company to form the nucleus of Apple's software development (for) 10% of Apple's stock. Bob refused the deal."

books.by/john-buck

Trump’s approval at 100 days lower than any president in at least seven decades-> “this when those of us in Westminster democracies can pressure our elected reps to dump their clown leader”. @maddow.msnbc.com @nicollewallace.bsky.social

Inventing the Future John Buck

Ron Johnston recalls:
We worked in secrecy at Apple for a year, then Jobs found out, came to my office. ‘Ron, this project is done.' I said, ‘No, no, no. We need a modern OS on Unix. He looked straight at me, ‘There will never be a Mac on top of Unix. I forbid that. And walked out books.by/john-buck

Packs groceries. Graduates. Works at HP. Gets frustrated. Hardware savant at Apple - AND in his downtime…

Inventing the Future John Buck

14 year old Jon Krakower packed groceries at a Texas supermarket. “I remember it as a puzzle. I’d look at everything on the conveyor belt, and quickly work out the most efficient way to pack a customer’s bag.“ Guess who invented the modern laptop layout with the PowerBook140?
books.by/john-buck