Happy #Marchintosh to those who celebrate.
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@decryption God, I know. That was the main reason I loved the Mac, and Apple, so much as a kid: they had a quirky sense of humor, whether it was weird easter eggs or official product design.
Someone—I believe Mitch Kapor—said, back in the 80s, that “The IBM PC is a machine you can respect. The Macintosh is a machine you can love.”
And I think that's changed. I respect the Mac nowadays (at least the hardware side of it; software's a different story) but it's not a machine I can *love* anymore.
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So, a mystery: I know someone who claims to have seen Mr Macintosh, even though he was supposedly never actually implemented.
This was maybe 2000 or so. My dad's lab assistant had been working on one of the Macs when he said that a small cartoon man abruptly appeared on the screen, waved at him, and then vanished.
It sounded exactly like how Jobs described Mr Macintosh. But the original Mac people never added him, and I've never heard any evidence that Mr Mac was hidden anywhere else, either.
@csilverman Thiz the first I've ever heard of Mr. Macintosh!
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@csilverman Thiz the first I've ever heard of Mr. Macintosh!
@isocat @csilverman same. Will you tell us about the story of Mr Macintosh grandpa?
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So, a mystery: I know someone who claims to have seen Mr Macintosh, even though he was supposedly never actually implemented.
This was maybe 2000 or so. My dad's lab assistant had been working on one of the Macs when he said that a small cartoon man abruptly appeared on the screen, waved at him, and then vanished.
It sounded exactly like how Jobs described Mr Macintosh. But the original Mac people never added him, and I've never heard any evidence that Mr Mac was hidden anywhere else, either.
@csilverman Never heard of this being implemented as a Mac extension, but there is now a JS version for the browser: https://github.com/corrinely/mr-macintosh
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@nygl I've heard of NetBunny! The guy who wrote it, Dean Yu, was one of the core System 7 "Blue Meanies" team, if I remember.
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@csilverman Never heard of this being implemented as a Mac extension, but there is now a JS version for the browser: https://github.com/corrinely/mr-macintosh
@_the_cloud ha! Of course someone did a browser extension for this—nice. I didn't even think to check.
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@nygl I don't know enough about GlobalTalk's inner workings to responsibly encourage this, but I'll admit I'm curious to know if it would work. A shared global map, with people adding pins every time the bunny shows up on their machine, would be kind of neat.
You remember if it was restricted to a specific zone, or did it have access to the full AppleTalk network?
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@nygl I don't know enough about GlobalTalk's inner workings to responsibly encourage this, but I'll admit I'm curious to know if it would work. A shared global map, with people adding pins every time the bunny shows up on their machine, would be kind of neat.
You remember if it was restricted to a specific zone, or did it have access to the full AppleTalk network?
@csilverman @nygl NetBunny was released at MacHack and there are two versions on the MacHack CDs. The MacHack '90 version did not appear to use zones, but the updated version for MacHack '91 says "choose a zone from the left list, then choose a machine name from the right list" to start it going, so I suspect it probably would work. Search on archive.org for "machack cd" to find many CD images (note: each year included all the hacks from the previous years.)
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The lab assistant didn't have any reason to make this up, either. He was a very straight-laced guy who didn't know anything about Apple lore and wouldn't have been aware of stuff like Mr Macintosh. He thought one of the students was playing a prank on him.
So maybe someone out there did actually put Andy Hertzfeld's MrMacHook to good use in an extension or something. If anyone has any ideas what the lab guy might have seen, I would love to know.
@csilverman Could it have been a Microsoft Office Assistant?
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Happy #Marchintosh to those who celebrate.
@csilverman I love my Mac. I mostly like my iPhone. I hate Apple.
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So, a mystery: I know someone who claims to have seen Mr Macintosh, even though he was supposedly never actually implemented.
This was maybe 2000 or so. My dad's lab assistant had been working on one of the Macs when he said that a small cartoon man abruptly appeared on the screen, waved at him, and then vanished.
It sounded exactly like how Jobs described Mr Macintosh. But the original Mac people never added him, and I've never heard any evidence that Mr Mac was hidden anywhere else, either.
@csilverman It wasn't the guy from Macintosh Basics was it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ScS4OYDfHE
Gosh this takes me back to 1994, on our family's LCII, potentially before I could read.
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