TechJunkie

Ah, for a world where the Apple III was one of the best business machines around.

https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_applelisasarketingCatalogSummer1988_28586791/page/n3/mode/1up

For those who don't know, Jobs got to the Apple III design before anyone could stop him:

https://www.cultofmac.com/541415/apple-iii-overheating-motherboard/

> Steve Jobs insisted that the computer not feature a cooling fan. He also dictated the Apple III’s size and shape, without concern for what this would mean for electrical engineers. This resulted in the overheating motherboard, and Apple’s “just drop your computer” workaround.

https://www.techjunkie.com/apple-iii-drop/

> One such flaw was overheating, which could cause some of the system’s integrated chips to move or dislodge as they expanded. An obvious solution would be the addition of fans and adequate ventilation, but Jobs hated the relatively loud fans found on many computers of the day, and didn’t want to mar the Apple III’s design with ugly vents. So the Apple III shipped without any fans or vents, relying instead on a design that utilized a massive aluminum heat sink that formed the base of the computer.

> Without proper heat dissipation, computer magazine BYTE reported in 1982, the Apple III’s “integrated circuits tended to wander out of their sockets.” Owners of affected systems would begin to see garbled data on the screen, or notice that disks inserted into the system would come out warped or even “melted.”

> These…

I think as tech got more standardized, we're seeing industries move away from this (eg. new movies use AWS as a render-farm instead of just buying powerful desktops for the office).

Interestingly, there is historic reasons that apple has disproportionately been successful with creatives and its not the marketing of MacBooks to hapless poets. Some of it is just "photoshop was first available on a Mac so other software was first made for a Mac".

Early Macs were historically faster and more capable due to using POWER chips, which made them desirable for performance oriented work. It led to a story that Macs were export-banned like weapons due to performance (reality is more fuzzy here) [1]. Other unique advantages Macs supposedly have: the first color monitor (def better for creative work).

Additionally, apple (Steve Jobs?) cared about graphics and color more than competitors, so any creative would want to use a system that cared about what they cared about. Even today, apple advertises their very expensive "reference grade" monitors. I'm not a creative, so I don't know how truly the apple monitor fills that purpose. The aesthetic and big $5k monitor (which works best with a Mac) was claimed to replace a $30k small and ugly reference monitor, which would leave lots of budget to splurge on a Mac Pro.

---
[1] https://www.techjunkie.com/apples-1999-power-mac-g4-really-classified-weapon/

Linux doesn't have economics of scale, placement or subsidies... You're paying what Microsoft subsidizes to install windows, office, etc.

https://www.techjunkie.com/why-would-a-linux-laptop-be-more-expensive-than-a-windows-one/

> Bloatware Saves You Money
> Because those companies who make those titles pay fees to have that software pre-installed on your new computer. They see that new desktop as a big billboard, waiting to be populated. And, boy do they load it up!
> This Ubuntu installation doesn’t come with any bloatware, Dell isn’t making the kick-back, hence it increases cost.

> Other Costs
> But, let’s not forget that these companies are USED to Windows. All of their internal processes are based around Windows systems. All their support personel are trained in Windows.
> So, smaller supply and a dedicated demand equals higher cost. Basic economics.
> Not to mention the additional cost of support staff for these laptops, who need to be trained in an entirely different environment

So it's "you self-reported you were [fe]male on some other site; you didn't block scripts; ergo you're [fe]male".

Actually this https://www.techjunkie.com/demographics-reddit/ lists a few sources. The primary one appears to be Pew Research, the methodology is interesting http://www.journalism.org/2016/02/25/reddit-methodology/.

They random dialled, then surveyed 6000 people, ~4500 agreed to be surveyed further (with cash incentive), of those ~300 are Reddit users and the stats are taken from there. You can choose to do the survey by web or regular mail .. respondents who agree to be surveyed by mail actually take the survey at a level of 20%; if I read correctly they assume none of those sent the mail survey are net users.

The point of the survey was analysing political activity.

It seems likely to give only broad indications at best. Unfortunately this result from < 300 USAmericans seems to be repeated as "this is the global demographic of Reddit" in a few places.

Googler opinions are my own.

If you search around the internet, you can find some full screenshots of it as people discovered the features.

https://www.techjunkie.com/google-hangouts-easter-eggs/

Many of the commands that exist, are effectively just text replacement where you swap out some / command for a string that is an emoji like thing, such as: /tableflip

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

The above was actually added to hangouts by a coworker long ago when there weren't as many Easter egg commands (and we worked in payments at that time). The fun of having a fully open codebase, where you can edit and propose changes to anyone's code, you just have to convince them to approve it.

Though I will add, some of the commands actually had animated pictures with them, such as /shydino and /corgis.

> I get the impression this is what it would have been like if instead of making an Apple II, Jobs and Woz said "well, these keep selling" and just decided to keep hacking away on the Apple I.

That same Apple went on to make the infamously unreliable Apple ///, the Lisa's unreliable "Twiggy" floppy drives, etc.

Steve Jobs himself was responsible for many issues - he insisted upon the Apple ///'s attractive-but-impractical case design (which required splitting the motherboard across two boards connected by a ribbon cable), claimed that any computer with a case fan was junk (see: overheating in the Apple /// and Macintosh), etc.

https://www.techjunkie.com/apple-iii-drop/