The Computer Chronicles - Apple Local Area Networks (1987)

Special thanks to archive.org for hosting these episodes. Downloads of all these episodes and more can be found at: archive.org/det...

[@leninalopez2912]

These programs are gold nuggets of computer history. Thanks a lot to whomever uploaded this

[@rooneye]

People are always in the comments talking about how awesome Kildall was (and he was), same with Stewart Cheifet (also awesome), but no one ever mentions how awesome Jan is! I love that woman, she's cool af.

[@blackneos940]

Yeah, she knew her stuff, and was energetic! I bet the "Good Old Boys network" didn't like women like her, as she was smart, and knew what she wanted out of life. Fortunately, sexism isn't as prevalent now as it once was. :)

[@EstraNiato]

Definitely Killdall was a level on his own, but Cheifet really surrounded himself with brilliant people like Jan. I have a particular appreciation for George Morrow, another great example of the gettings things done mentality and ingenuity of those years.

[@medes5597]

​@@blackneos940 she was a manager at Xerox Parc, she was involved in so many little achievements that other companies "borrowed" from Xerox like Microsoft and Apple. Like Morrow, Jan is overshadowed by Gary but all three of them were important figures in computer history on their own right.

[@JohnMichaelson]

@@medes5597 Jan Lewis was President of the Palo Alto Research Group, not PARC. Adele Goldberg was the research manager at PARC.

[@medes5597]

@@JohnMichaelson yeah i addressed it in another comment thread on here. I read it in the bio on her book - in which she talks about visiting PARC as well as doing business with them, so it should have been really obvious to me I'd made a mistake given that - and completely messed up, assuming they were the same place without closely examining the name. Tim was the only regular to have any experience within PARC. Gary may have visited but his story about doing so is a little patchy.

[@KrisRyanStallard]

It's interesting that there were so many different incompatible networking protocols in use back then. I'm glad that we've solved the problem of interoperability!

[@karlimo4034]

Cisco standarized everything network related.

[@JerikkaBenton]

14:45 There's a great moment here when Cheifet gets excited over the fact that they just saved a Lotus document from a PC, then opened it in Excel on the Mac and made a graph. Stuff like this really was this exciting back then and we take it all for granted now.

[@jessihawkins9116]

no

[@davidt8087]

@@jessihawkins9116s t fu u microbrained gen z r3tard3d zombie copycat insecure Tik toker

[@Blatstein]

Maybe

[@jessihawkins9116]

@@Blatstein no

[@christopheroliver148]

Do we? A while back, I wrote a serializer for LuaJIT, and I could write a Lua function closing local variables on a X86 Linux PC, send it to a Raspberry Pi where it ran, and the result would come back. This still seems a bit like magic, and this is despite RPC existing for a long time.

[@halfsourlizard9319]

My right ear loved this.

[@stupossibleify]

Always love seeing the intro pieces to each episode. Very well done.

[@apl175]

Had to look it up - Arthur Young today is Ernst & Young....

[@AerialBadgerRelease]

Jan's back with another company! #CCDrinkingGame

[@AlexSage]

feels nostalgic watching these old videos, takes back in time...

[@djhaloeight]

Macintosh networking has always been much more robust and easier to implement than same generation DOS or PC. When I was in 6th grade, I had the computer room and teacher as homeroom. I ended up becoming the computer assistant, and I remember setting up two entire labs full of brand new LC520 and LCII/LCIII machines. Completely wired them all up with Farallon PhoneNet, with a file server, and multiple printers. Goes to show how easy and well Apple’s networking was.

[@KarlHamilton]

You're joking, right 🤣🤣🤣

[@medes5597]

This is the opposite of true.

[@jetfrog4574]

@@medes5597 Actually it's very true.

[@danielscott4514]

Robust is certainly not a word I would use to describe Apple networking by the time OS 9 was around (and well past its use-by date). "Diabolical" is more the word I would choose. I vividly recall sitting at a Web Design agency with a room full of Macs, watching them all hang after one of the machines crashed. This, according to the users at that shop was routine. Say what you will about Windows 95 networks of the era, but workstation-domino crashing wasn't a feature of them.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

We had entire buildings cabled with PhoneNet, using a VAX/VMS machine to offer AppleTalk AFP (AppleShare-compatible) file sharing and printer access via AppleTalk PAP (Printer Access Protocol). The Mac clients also had TCP/IP access via MacTCP over the same cabling. This was when Ethernet was still too expensive to run to every desktop.

[@andywolan]

16:00 - "Everything you need , HW and SW is built-in. You just need to buy a $75 connector per node." Sounds like some things with Apple have not changed over the years.

[@oubrioko]

19:31 "... the complexity, the *_caaaawwwst,_* the performance, etc."

[@SummerFunMan]

LOL, back in those days cross-brand networking was an actual issue, whereas now... geesh, even phones and _vehicles_ from different brands can get involved and we hardly have to worry about it -- and not even all of that is TCP/IP (such as that Bluetooth isn't)! And now it's so weird to think about those way-outdated PCs from before almost _any_ version of Windows! One part of this episode complained that Macs are slow and single-tasking, while even earlier we already saw that the Mac II was using the Multifinder. Hmm...!

[@oldtwins]

Well, the Macs were slow and single tasking. That's just how they were built and designed from ground up. It wasn't until OSX that they got true pre-emptive multitasking - which took 13 years after this episode aired.

[@SummerFunMan]

Since when did it take until OS X? Why do you think the Multifinder "didn't count"? And even as soon as MF wasn't really showing, wasn't that way before X, like in 8 or even 7-something? What would speed and multitasking even have to do with network connectivity?

[@kaitlyn__L]

the mac, as in, not "the mac ii". the students were clearly using the original lineup, which did single-task. they talked about the problems stanford ran into with their specific implementation. the mac ii was not only new, it was the absolute high end. a modern comparison would be like.. someone complaining a mac mini from 5 years ago's running out of ram, and you say that the imac pro can go up to 128gb. or whatever.

[@westtell4]

@@SummerFunMan True pre-emptive multitasking was not added until the first release of OSX they had multi-tasking but it was glitchy and caused alot of crashes

[@straightpipediesel]

@@oldtwins That is factually wrong. The Mac got partial preemptive multitasking in System 7.1.2 (1994) with the introduction of the PowerPC architecture and the associated Thread Manager. The system became fully preemptive to programs that were aware of this in MacOS 8.6 (1997). Programs were required to be able to handle this when they became "Carbonized" for OS X.

[@mmahgoub]

Damn those fans

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

2:15 Whaddaya know, today having multiple phone companies is the norm, but the ability to talk to people regardless of which network they (or you) are on is taken for granted, thanks to something called “common standards”. That’s not something that private companies like to adopt on their own, they need Government regulators to push them.

[@jonathanstein6056]

Is George dipping? What is in his right cheek? Why does Chris’s tongue keep darting in and out?

[@medes5597]

According to Stewart's newsletter it was an abscess that appeared the suddenly the same day they were filming.

[@TheStevenWhiting]

22:07 And so it begins. Instead of accepting competition Apple begins suing everyone in an attempt to give Apple dominance so they can charge through the roof for everything.

[@livesimplyandhumbly]

+Steven Whiting It is perfectly legit for Apple to sue companies for making rectangular phones. Apple invented the rectangular phone.

[@TheStevenWhiting]

kidonlyle The point is, half the IPs they claim aren't theirs. Like rectangular buttons.

[@SummerFunMan]

+Steven Whiting "...aren't [there is]"? Huh, what? Also, later on apple did allow for competition using their own ideas for a while, because of the Mac clones that they licensed and even certified.

[@BryonLape]

Both IBM and Microsoft did the same thing

[@JaredConnell]

I cant believe Microsoft and hp stole apples IP that they stole from xerox!

[@NightSprinter]

Love how Paul looks like a drunk for the review.

[@JaredConnell]

Ya, "looks like" lol

[@NeblogaiLT]

LOL George Morrow 19:00

[@lawrencemanning]

17:25 TCP/IP?! It’ll never catch on.

[@BimBims]

umur gw baru 1 tahun saat itu, mereka udah bahas Kabel Lan dan produk Apple, haha, nubie bgt gw

[@alif4142]

Nub :v

[@rabidbigdog]

Jobs refused to allow 'slots' so Apple were forced to have the slowest networking in the history of computing for many years.

[@karlimo4034]

That dude was a tool with way too much luck.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

14:09 Poor old DOS, struggling with truncated 8-dot-3 views of long filenames ...

[@johneygd]

In order to let different computer system and networks talk to eachother.1 there must be a minimum standard for wich all computers and networks can met such as text, 2 compillor cards or emulator cards are needed for each computer to translate computer languange from any type of computer languange from and to it's corrosponding computer languange, or 3 each type of computer and network must be connected to a mainframe server wich takes any type of computer languange in mind and translates them from one to eachother and back & forth once needed via compilors/emulators,just to achieve a cross network system.

[@rafaelalexandre4444]

#2020

[@KarlHamilton]

Macs were truly horrible. So were PCs. Amigas were the only decent thing until the early 2000s.

[@johnmclaughlin8877]

Behave.

[@KarlHamilton]

@@johnmclaughlin8877 no

[@medes5597]

When Aldus and Adobe decide against making software for your graphically inclined powerhouse because you're such a nightmare of a company to deal with, it doesn't matter how good you are. You're destined to be a glorified games machine that can do public access TV graphics til Mehdi Ali runs you into bankruptcy.

[@christopheroliver148]

@@medes5597 Funny that I did none of that with my A500, nor did I have any interest. I used it as a cheap workstation and hacked in C and 68k assembler when I was at my apartment rather than at one of the university's Suns or VAXes. These days, I have PCs running Linux which far outdo the Suns and SGIs I use to work with.