The Original Macintosh: Calculator Construction Set

51 pointsposted 8 days ago
by fidotron
(folklore.org)

20 Comments

jFriedensreich

5 days ago

Happy to learn about this! Though i read random articles on folklore.org this has escaped me. This story is also really relevant today as design is at a turning point where either things go towards a more traditional ai enhanced pipeline with changes happening in something generic like figma, or moving towards directly generating parametrised live UI with custom specialised sliders and other settings for everything. I had my first experience with this reality trying to vibe code a webgl shader and giving up trying to fine tune with prompts. Things were just so much more productive after generating the ui for all interesting shader parameters. My bet is that this will replace 50% of figma usecases.

leakycap

5 days ago

It annoyed me to no end that the calculator button placement like "=" didn't line up with the order on their own keyboard.

But then knowing it was set in stone before Apple made a full keyboard for the Mac made it make sense.

Remember P-Cal? Its still around

msgilligan

5 days ago

See my comment under the "There are two equals buttons?" parent.

HFguy

5 days ago

There are two equals buttons?

msgilligan

5 days ago

The key layout on the calculator (DA or desk accessory) exactly matches the numeric keypad of the Lisa keyboard, but the big '=' key is labelled 'Enter' on the physical keypad. You could use the keypad to use the calculator, which I remember doing on a "Macintosh XL" (a Lisa running Mac OS) Having the big key be '=' was a nice usability feature since 'Enter' didn't make much sense in the calculator DA.

If you search for pictures of "Original Lisa Keyboard" you can see that the layout is the same. However, in the pictures I found the key that corresponds to the small '=' in the screenshot in the article is labelled '-' and there appear to be some other differences. I don't remember these differences or any rationale for them.

Update: They screenshot in the article exactly matches the Macintosh Plus keyboard -- which is a keyboard I actually owned. Although I used Mac XL before getting my Plus, it's probably this keyboard that I'm remembering:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_keyboards#Macintosh_Plus...

atommclain

5 days ago

It’s odd because the original Macintosh had a smaller keyboard without a numpad, however one was offered separately. It’s interesting because this “original” keypad has different placement or operator keys than the Plus keyboard.

amy_petrik

5 days ago

the first equals is a boolean test, like "A=B, True or False", the second equals button is an evaluate mandate, like "2+2" -> = -> 4. Evil bit of code under the hood with the treplicate stack

yjftsjthsd-h

5 days ago

... Is that why it was so flexible in ResEdit?

johnplatte

5 days ago

And why NeXT's Cocoa had Interface Builder?

WillAdams

5 days ago

That was mostly the work (at least initially) of Jean-Marie Hullot

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/06/21/jean-marie-hullot-rip/

Which makes me wish for a site like to folklore.org for NeXT.

rjsw

5 days ago

... and had several Lisp versions before the one at NeXT.

WillAdams

5 days ago

Yeah, I really wish that someone would recreate the Lisp versions for a currently available version of Lisp.

I'm about to break down and begin learning Swift and trying to use SwiftUI --- we'll have to see how it goes.

rjsw

5 days ago

The Lisp versions had the advantage that they were all written for the same GUI - Macintosh. I copied ideas from the LeLisp paper for my Franz Lisp & GEM environment back then.

There are too many holes in current GUI support.

The Lisp that traditionally had the best bindings on the Macintosh, CCL, doesn't run natively on current models.

McCLIM needs backends for Windows and OSX to be considered portable.

san1927

5 days ago

i thought this was actually a well established fact

leakycap

5 days ago

It may be a well established fact among people who know the Pantone number and official name of the beige Macs.

A lot of people are getting exposed to these stories for the first time. New developers and tech enthusiasts are born every day, you know!

san1927

5 days ago

i guess that makes sense

we need an environment where new people can get these stories faster

i mean a place where stories are repeated and a different place where new stories are put up

that makes things interesting as well i guess

leakycap

5 days ago

If I've seen it already and don't want to discuss it more, I just don't click or comment on it.

Sometimes I want to click something I've already read and see what other interesting comments are posted.

danielhlockard

5 days ago

Sure, but why not HN of all places? Things get re-posted here all the time when they are relevant again. I'm not new by any means but I didn't know this.

user

5 days ago

[deleted]