Read this:
http://daringfireball.net/2004/01/folklore

Then bookmark this:
http://www.folklore.org/

This is a particulary insightful and poignant reminiscence from Andy Hertzfeld.

Darr,

Don't feel to bad about the difficulties of naming something.

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But it was a code name that proved to be sturdy and resilient. In the Fall of 1982, Apple paid tens of thousands of dollars to a marketing consulting firm to come up with a themed set of names for Lisa and Macintosh. They came up with lots of ideas, including calling the Mac the "Apple 40" or the "Apple Allegro". After hearing all the suggestions, Steve and the marketing team decided to go with Lisa and Macintosh as the official names. They did manage to reverse engineer an acronym for Lisa, "Local Integrated Systems Architecture", but internally we preferred the recursive "Lisa: Invented Stupid Acronym", or something like that. Macintosh seemed to be acroynm proof.

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Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
This is a particulary insightful and poignant reminiscence from Andy Hertzfeld.

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I thought I couldn't dislike Jobs even more. I was wrong.

mAx is back! welcome back OSX rebel, nice to see you

Holy crap, Lisa had pop-up folders?!@#$!?

And Apple (NeXties) thought they were innovating with roundish stuff!! These are round pull-down menus!!!

[This message was edited by Trifid nebula on Tue January 27 2004 at 12:45 AM.]

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Originally posted by Trifid nebula:
mAx is back! welcome back OSX rebel, nice to see you

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Hey, nice to see you too! I was never gone, just reading a lot.
That and I can't stop playing FIFA 2004 online on the PS2

Brother mAx, it's funny you should mention online gaming... because I had an idea for "the next thing." An X-Men vs. X-Critic Unreal Tournament, where we use our thalo.net or MFI names, and blow each other up.

I don't do much gaming, but I've demoed UT, and I must admit, it is kind of friggin' cathartic to fry digikids.

Even the brothers who refuse to join here, might get baited into a deathmatch on neutral ground. To take out thalo virtually, over and over and over might be just too sweet for them to resist. I see it as kind of an olive branch to those X-Men who might be pouting in silence. An olive branch of war.

Meanwhile, brother Arlo has linked us to a site that's a legacy-fan's wet dream. I can't say it any better than brother Trif: Pop-up folders, tabbed windows, and roundish stuff on the LISA? HOLY CRAP.

I never had a Lisa. I had an Apple II, but the 128k Mac popped my GUI cherry... and I never looked back after that. Um. Until now. Now I'm looking back A LOT. Now I get on my knees every day of this 20th anniversary of the Mac year, and pray for Apple to go retro Classic Coke on us.

Back to gaming for a second: anybody notice how old retro GAMES are hot again? I actually went to a rich buddy's frikkin' MANSION for a party, and he has a collection of old arcade games from our college days: asteroids, Joust, Defender. People still love simple, and yet playable games. It's a drag to have seven thousand keyboard controls to do stuff, special combo moves and such... I personally had more fun when it was one joystick and a couple of buttons.

DGMW (Don't Get Me Wrong)... I think rendered POV games are the balls. The more cinematic they get, the more I like them... but they suffer from not being as playable as some of the older games. I think if they went "Less is More" with the controls, it would be another great leap forward.

The analogy is clear: less interface, more actual doing stuff. That's how you get sucked into the "world" of a game, or your friggin' WORK. When the interface is a means to something, instead of an end in itself, it's got more chops, more power and focus.

We need to be exploring fewer controls, better controls. Fewer menus, more intelligent menus. Cleaner interfaces. That's really the next big thing. Trimming a personal computer interface back down to a few essential skills, a few clear commands... I guarantee that's how you get more done, and have more enjoyment doing it.

Joy abounds-- mAx, the prodigal moderator, has returned to us. Wine for everyone! Slaughter the fatted X-man!

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Slaughter the fatted X-man!

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[Mithradites looks around nervously]

I hope that doesn't mean me?

Even the brothers who refuse to join here, might get baited into a deathmatch on neutral ground. To take out thalo virtually, over and over and over might be just too sweet for them to resist. I see it as kind of an olive branch to those X-Men who might be pouting in silence. An olive branch of war.

Count me in. But first we need to provide some custom skins. The X-critic characters should be sleek and black (and thus harder to see). The X-Men will be assigned a neon green outfit with pink pulsing trim.

But really, I’d be a little disappointed if I too didn’t get a chance to blow thalo’s brains out. We too have some “issues”. Maybe a little strategic back-shooting would throw him out into the open where the rest of you could take care of him.

Et tu, Bradte?

Can you picture the com-chatter? You know how for some players it's "Take That!" or "GG"... I'd have to have several multi-page OS X treatises in the clipboard, ready to fire out there... people would HAVE to blow me up to stop the text, lol.

Can you really design your own uniforms? Thalo blue and black, with the X logo on the chest for brothers, definitely. X-Critics black with blue trim... X-Men blue with black trim.

Can you really design your own uniforms?

Yeah. I haven’t done so for either the original Unreal Tournament (the legacy) or for UT 2003, but I have downloaded and tried different skins others have made. You can also download “models” which are different body forms onto which you can then add additional skins. The models can be anything from some punk chick to a look-alike of Saddam. You can also get topless skins and/or models. I use one in 2003 of this girl with tight little butt cheeks poking out of a thong. Cheap thrills, but they all add up.

Can you picture the com-chatter? You know how for some players it's "Take That!" or "GG"... I'd have to have several multi-page OS X treatises in the clipboard, ready to fire out there... people would HAVE to blow me up to stop the text, lol.

This could bring a whole new level to trash talking. But please, could some X-Man find a model of Jobs and use it?

"You want to see a label? I'll label you with my flak cannon, muthuh fuhkuh."

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The X-critic characters should be sleek and black (and thus harder to see). The X-Men will be assigned a neon green outfit with pink pulsing trim.

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Of course, the X-Men's boots will stay on throughout the game.

The X-critics will have to keep re-booting, which will make them awfully vulnerable...

"Hey, I SAID Time Out! You're not allowed to obliterate me while I'm loading extensions!"

(That'd be a violation of the 10-point Geneva convention.)

I'm in on that but I haven't played Unreal in a number of years. I am not sure if the new version will even run on my B&W without additional upgrades.

Those arcade games were the best back in the day. Our one friend could play Defender for hours on one quarter. We started to pound lead fishing weights into the size of quarters once the addiction took hold. You could also drill a hole in a quarter put a peice of fishing line thru it and on certain machines you could let the quarter drop thru the slot them pull back and forth to rake up as many credits as you wanted. You couldn't use to strong of a tess because it would not break free from the quarter.

I was better at Quake III than Unreal but I could still light up your asses anyway.

Is everyone here against playing on XBOX?

If so you're missing out on a great gaming experience.

XBOX really got it right as far as seamless networking, awesome graphics and cream of the crop games (if not the thousands that Playstation has).

The XBOX OS UI is gaudy but FUNCTIONAL and wonderfully so. Eye candy that doesn't get in the way = cool. Eye candy that insults you, forces you to wait = SUCKS/Aqua.

My gamer tag is alienz...look for me in Project Gotham Racing 2, Rainbow Six 3, and Ghost Recon: Island Thunder...

In R63 I'm a bastard with the M-16 and Claymore. You will die, promise. </shit talking>

I'm not against playing on XBOX. I've just never laid eyes or hands on one. I only brought up UT because it's the only game I've had the slightest fun with on the Mac in a dog's age. But I only had the demo. I may have to buy the retail. Which will be the first game I've purchased since, holy crap, what, MARATHON?

I can't believe Apple is after digikids, and after three years, this is still such a crappy gaming platform.

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I can't believe Apple is after digikids, and after three years, this is still such a crappy gaming platform.

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Shit, yeah, they can't even do More is Less right.

Looks like it's back to quoits for me.

I'd wish we could play Marathon online X-men vs X-tractors (short for X-detractors, how does that sound?). It's my favourite FPS game of all times, with UT a close second. We used to play after hours over a LAN back when I worked at ad agencies and I can't remember having so much fun with a game since then.

But because it's X-only I haven't even downloaded the UT2K3 demo...OS X kills my enthusiasm about everything computer-related. But for some odd reason I think of those Alienware boxes and I wish I had some extra cash right now to make the switch for good. I don't understand it myself.