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The Swedish Campground in Your Mac Menu

2025-07-07

Early Macintosh designers added the Apple logo to menu items to indicate keyboard shortcuts. Steve Jobs, however, deemed this excessive. A frantic search for a replacement led them to a Swedish campground symbol in an international symbol dictionary. This small, floral icon, chosen for its distinctiveness, remains a subtle part of macOS to this day, a hidden piece of design history.

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(www.folklore.org)
Design Macintosh design

The 14-Year-Old Who Shaped the Mac Calculator

2025-06-28

Chris Espinosa, a 14-year-old Apple employee, played a pivotal role in the Macintosh's development. Tasked with documenting Quickdraw, he built a calculator program. Steve Jobs initially disliked it, but Espinosa's innovative solution—a customizable 'Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set'—impressed Jobs and became the iconic Mac calculator for years, lasting until OS 9.

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(www.folklore.org)
Development

Lines of Code: A Flawed Metric - A Lisa Team Anecdote

2025-06-26

In early 1982, Apple's Lisa team tracked engineer productivity by lines of code. Bill Atkinson, QuickDraw's creator, found this metric absurd, prioritizing concise, efficient code. He optimized QuickDraw's region calculation, achieving a six-fold speed increase while reducing code by 2000 lines. On the productivity form, he famously reported '-2000'. Management wisely stopped using this flawed metric.

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(www.folklore.org)
Development Code Efficiency

40 Years at Apple: A Neuroscience PhD's Silicon Valley Odyssey

2025-06-07

Forty years ago, the author traded a neuroscience PhD for a chance at Apple, then a fledgling company of 30. Steve Jobs' vision and the excitement of the work led him to contribute to the Lisa and Macintosh, creating crucial technologies like QuickDraw and the window manager. His later development of HyperCard, a tool empowering non-programmers to create interactive media, further cemented his legacy. This journey, filled with challenges and triumphs, significantly shaped the tech landscape.

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(www.folklore.org)
Tech