Stanford University Housing Historical Archive of Apple Documents

Cool stuff.

The preservation of recent history is a somewhat thankless job. Most people don't find it too interesting, but without people saving recent history we'd have no museums full of ancient history. So good for them.

Yeah well, Stanford's never been known for being generous. They're just kind of douchey.

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Um. Between 1985 and 1997?

Please sit yourself down at a computer running System 7, and then try running Windows 3.1. Mac OS 8 and Windows 95.

You're obviously a bandwagon Mac user, who was either too poor to too stupid to buy Macs in the 90s.

He has some points. Apple in the 90s was definitely running off momentum of the original Mac genesis. IMO, the big folly was Scully trying to make "his Mac" that was know as the Newton. As one of the original, independent Newton developers and also interviewing with the original Newton design team, IMO too many "establishment" types that Steve fought was firmly entrenched at Apple in the time.

This was the era of Steve #3, Donna, Larry and others that were trying to do something that one upped the highly touted General Magic, Magic Cap OS made by the original Mac crew. It was too many cooks on the soup. The elites at Apple R&D kicked out those that matched Job's and Woz's personality for being "not sophisticated enough." This corporate introversion created brilliant products that earned a lot of Ph.D.'s but not market share due to IMO VERY poor market communication promotions.

Scully left the place after his Newton mistress lost all dignity in an orgy. Her coming out party failed to attract any good suitors. Then Spindler came in and just bottom lined the place to near death. Amello came in and, while he got a lot of blame, did the best triage he could with the elegant scalpel work he used.

Problem is that Apple didn't need a scalpel, it needed a wrecking ball and high explosives. That is what Steve Jobs did coming in via the NeXT buyout with firing authority of anyone below the board including VPs. People were fired during elevator rides in The Loop, they were fired for leaving early for a social gathering, they were fired for not coming in on a Saturday to make a dead line, they were fired for wearing a band t-shirt that Steve didn't like (yes Tom, I remember) and even getting fired for buying a new car from a bonus paid during a quarter Apple posted a loss.

Rude? Yes. Crude? Yes. Did it turn the place around? Hell yes! God bless him and the hell with those that think they can stay comfortable at the peak of their career.

Most of what apple did in those years can be summed up as

1- lost market share and
2- failed to make any significant progress on creating the operating system for the future.

Semi wrong and wrong. I'll fix it up for you.

1- lost market share in most segments but kept and gained market share in the education and creative professional sectors

2- Made a good OS but cause of point 1 was not very wide spread.

Most of what apple did in those years can be summed up as

1- lost market share and
2- failed to make any significant progress on creating the operating system for the future.

That's ridiculous revisionism.

There's no indication when or if Stanford plans to make the documents available for public viewing.

Uh... then what's the point of pack-ratting this stuff?

Uh... then what's the point of pack-ratting this stuff?

Yeah well, Stanford's never been known for being generous. They're just kind of douchey.

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Most of what apple did in those years can be summed up as

2- failed to make any significant progress on creating the operating system for the future.

Um. Between 1985 and 1997?

Please sit yourself down at a computer running System 7, and then try running Windows 3.1. Mac OS 8 and Windows 95.

You're obviously a bandwagon Mac user, who was either too poor to too stupid to buy Macs in the 90s.

Anyone else notice that whenever Apple's history is discussed its "Jobs was kicked out in '85, founded NEXT, returned in '97, invented the iPod, etc." Its more of a Steve Jobs history than anything else. I know more about what NEXT did between 1985 and 1997 than I know what Apple did in that same time period...

...A 1976 letter written by a printer who had just met Jobs and Wozniak and warns his colleagues about the young entrepreneurs: "This joker (Jobs) is going to be calling you ... They are two guys, they build kits, operate out of a garage..."

I've saw this letter on another news site yesterday, really funny. It said a bit more, something like "they aren't willing to show us what they are working on. Beware."

Ahh, found it.

Yeah well, Stanford's never been known for being generous. They're just kind of douchey.

Ain't that the truth. :mad:

Uh... then what's the point of pack-ratting this stuff?

The collection isn't held behind a locked door from everyone, it is a normal library special collection. Most all of it would be available to patrons of the library.

Stanford can, and will, digitize most of it, but there are far more things housed by Stanford that would be considered to have higher scholarly value or be more at-risk to deterioration. Given the choice between this and say, some of Abraham Lincoln's personal papers, I'd find it hard to give priority to this content.

Also, unless it is specifically allowed in the donor agreement between Stanford and Apple, Stanford cannot publicly share anything they digitize of the content. It will all be under copyright and require explicit permission from Apple (or whomever owns the copyright) to share. Given the time it was given to Stanford, it is very unlikely that permission to share digitally was given. The issue of copyright is the biggest hurdle with getting this kind of stuff online.