A Proto-Type Mac OS
A Proto-Type Mac OS
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in January 1997, he was ready to clean house in the design department. The computers Apple released were ugly pizza boxes like the LC series. Jony Ive, who had arrived at Apple five years before Jobs’ return, walked down the hall with a resignation letter in his pocket to his first meeting with Jobs. The letter was never accepted because the Industrial Design Group was producing some amazing work that was locked away in the back room. What was the work that saved Jony’s job? What were the designs sitting on the workbench that so impressed Steve Jobs? How to play roulette at casino.
In the last couple of months, there are good deals on used AMD GPUs. One of the cards on my wishlist was the WX 4100.It's the Radeon Pro version of RX 460/560. These cards have native macOS eGPU support as of 10.14.1. Prototype Twiggy Mac ROM 2.45: Notes and; Notes on MacPPP 2.0.1; I'm still here! Very early apple cpu's; Using the same Mac for 10 years; 1,000 copies sold of The New. System Requirements. From Mac OS 6.0 up to Mac OS 9.2. Compatibility notes. Architecture: 68K. At least 1MB of RAM. Mac OS 6.x - Mac OS 9.2.2. Note: ResEdit 2.1.3 will run on any 68K or PPC Mac made after the Macintosh Plus.
“What were the designs that saved Ive’s job?”
A rare look into early Apple prototypes is provided by the book, “Apple Design: The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group” by Paul Kunkel from January 1997. It gives unprecedented access to prototypes and lost designs from this era. Just before Jobs return there were two major design studies, Pomona and Spartacus, that resulted in physical prototypes. This was the work that so impressed Jobs that he kept Ive and the rest of the team.
I’ve always had a bit of an obsession with one of the computers from the Pomona design series. It's the “Curved Wood and Black Metal concept with detachable speakers”. Its curving lines and use of wood were so radically different from anything on the market in 2001, when I got the book.
I love turning ideas into physical objects, and for years I played around with ideas for reproducing the iconic curves of this design. Steam bending wood exceeded the limits of my small basement shop. It wasn’t until a Maker Space moved in near me that I had the tools recreate this iconic prototype. The laser cutter was the tool that finally gave me the skills to recreate this prototype and explore a path-not-taken in personal computing.
Robert Brunner was the design chief at Apple from 1989 to 1996. Goodbye (zs laboratories) mac os. His leadership was visionary and established the Apple Industrial Design Group that has created all of the recent iconic product lines. He created a design brief, Pomona, calling for a rethinking of the personal computer. The brief called for designs that redefined home computing, employing new materials (leather, wood) and new shapes that would blend into the home environment. It was to be a desktop Mac with a minimum footprint that did not conform to Apple’s existing design language. It would also, for the first time, combine the thin LCD screens with the power of a desktop CPU. The design was to explore “minimum footprint opportunities. As remembered by Brunner..
“Pomona concepts should not necessarily follow Apple’s existing product language. Instead they should project high-performance values with compelling vision, provocative forms, rich materials unique configurations, and added functionality using miniature components.”(1)
There are only two images of this prototype (see above). One from the Apple Design book and another that I had to dig up at the Library of Congress from a very old copy of MacUser magazine from January 1994 in the article “Why 2004 won’t be like 1994” by Jon Zilber.
From these two images I was able to design to create the design in Illustrator and export to the laser cutter. Images and details of the build are here.
In recreating this machine, I didn’t want to create just a shell, I wanted to produce a working late 1990’s era Mac. That meant a computer running Mac OS 7.5.5 or OS 8. The heart of the machine is an Intel NUC running Ubuntu with the MacBuntu skin to make it look like OSX. It's also running two emulators. SheepShaver which emulates a PowerPC setup with OS9 and Basilisk II which emulates 68040 with Quadra 630 ROM that runs both System 7.5.5 and OS8. I really wanted to get a working copy of Apple’s lost OS, Copland, but couldn’t find a working install. The screen is an iPad 2 screen with 1024x768 with an HDMI adapter that picked up on Alibaba.
Here are some images (more here) of the finished prototype running OS 7.5.5.
The work on the Pomona design series lead to the prototypes for the Twentieth Anniversary Mac. Jony Ive led this work and the 20th Anniversary Mac was his first released design. It was released on in January 1997, the same month Jobs returned to Apple with the Next acquisition.
This was an incredibly rewarding build that drove me to pick up an entirely new set of skills that I’ve applied to many other projects. My thanks to the Apple Industrial Design team, even your discarded projects are inspiring.
- Quote from “Apple Design: The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group” by Paul Kunkel
Background
This is a software MIDI interface designed to accept serial data from an Arduino board and convert it into MIDI drum data in OS X. The application acts as a bridge between sensors connected to the Arduino board and applications such as GarageBand or Logic without requiring additional MIDI hardware. All data is transferred directly over the USB connection and no additional power source is needed.The Ardrumo application has been an enormous success since its launch. To date this site has had tens of thousands of visits and the Ardrumo app has been downloaded almost 3500 times all across the world.
Ardrumo is free open source software, but please consider a small donation to keep the project going.
I wanted to make an inexpensive electronic drum setup that could be used with GarageBand. There are some great projects out there that describe how to output MIDI from an Arduino board (see References below), but these require additional hardware (e.g. MIDI modules, MIDI interface, etc). Since most people don't have extra MIDI hardware, I decided to just write some software to accept serial data from an Arduino board and make a virtual MIDI instrument that would be recognized by GarageBand. Here is the idea:
My Setup
My homemade drum kit is pictured below. Each pad is a circle of Duralar (i.e. thick mylar) sandwiched between two pieces of foam (from Pearl Art Store). Attached to the Duralar circle is a piezo sensor extracted from its plastic casing. Everything is then just glued together. Each pad cost about $3.00 to make.Video
Click on the image below to see a video of Ardrumo in action:Pad Construction
Bill of Materials
A Proto-type Mac Os Model
Total $53Assembly Instructions
Wiring
The wiring is very similar to todbot's. I borrowed his image and modified it below (hope he doesn't mind). I didn't bother using a Zener diode as todbot suggests. It may be safer to do so, but I haven't blown out the Arduino board yet.A Proto-type Mac Os 7
Mac OS X Universal Application
Compatible with OS X 10.4 (Tiger) - OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) (see below for troubleshooting). This software was written in Java, so newer versions of OS X will require Java to be downloaded. This should be automatic. This also assumes you have installed the Arduino drivers and have a working connection between your Mac and Arduino board (how else would you load the sketch below?). If you don't have an Arduino board, you can still run the application and click the on-screen triggers to see how it works. To use it, plug in your Ardruino board with drum triggers attached, start GarageBand (or another MIDI-compatible application), and launch Ardrumo.
Latest Version
Downloads require a quick registration. Registration lets me gauge how useful this software is to users. A link will be sent to your e-mail, but don't worry. I will not use your e-mail address for any other purposes and will never send you any other e-mails or spam.Ardrumo (Universal) (beta v100.2)
Previous Versions
Ardrumo (Universal) (beta v100.1) (November 8, 2007)Source Code
SVN repositoryArduino Sketch
ardrumo.pde Load this sketch into your Arduino and connect up to 6 piezo sensors.Known Issues
'Ardrumo.app is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash.' ErrorA Proto-type Mac Os X
Because of security 'improvements', OS X Gatekeeper may prevent Ardrumo from starting depending on the settings. Since I'm an unregistered developer, unfortunately, the error shown below implies the download is corrupt when, in fact, it isn't.
macOS Sierra (macOS 10.12)
In macOS Sierra, Apple has made it more difficult for users to start applications from unregistered developers for security reasons -- and likely because they can also collect a $100 fee from every registered developer (see this tip for details). To resolve this under macOS Sierra, you may temporarily disable Gatekeeper by opening Terminal (under /Applications/Utilities) and type:This will disable Gatekeeper to enable developers 'Allow from anywhere' security option shown in the Mac OS X El Capitan section below. After starting Ardrumo for the first time, you may reenable Gatekeeper with:
Mac OS X El Capitan (OS X 10.11)
To resolve this under Mac OS X El Capitan and below, please launch OS X 'System Preferences' and adjust your 'Security & Privacy Settings' to allow apps downloaded from anywhere to run (see below). Now, try to launch the Ardrumo application. If successful, Ardrumo will continue to start correctly even if the security setting is changed back to a more restrictive setting, so go ahead and change it back to the original setting. For a more detailed explanation of this error, see here and here.Other known issues
There are several known issues that will be addressed in the next release. Stay tuned! Planned features/bug fixes include:
- Bug: Correct double triggering
- Work in progress: the Threshold knob is not wired up yet
- Feature request: Save 'scenes' feature
- Feature request: MIDI channel support
Troubleshooting
Ardrumo has been tested with Mac OS X from 10.4.8 (Tiger) to macOS Sierra (10.12) on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. Users who run into unrecognized serial port errors should correct permissions by doing the following: (This information from (bacadd) here)Contact
If you use Ardrumo and like it, please drop me a line: ardrumo <AT> gmail <DOT> com I'm happy to answer questions or take suggestions for improvements but request that you make a donation to the project if you find it useful or require technical support.Java Libraries
Ardrumo uses the following Java libraries. Many thanks to the developers!References
This project was inspired by the following projects, especially todbot's:A Proto-Type Mac OS