Normally, this kind of thing doesn’t grab my attention, as I have little interest in anything related to Steve Jobs or the Macintosh, but this caught my eye.  For those who don’t know – likely anyone who is unaware (or has forgotten) that Apple made computers before Macintosh (David Pogue, I’m looking in your direction) – Jef Raskin gave birth to what would eventually become the Macintosh long before Jobs had anything to do with the project.  Woz designed the Apple II.  Dr. Wendell Sander and Dan Kottke designed the Apple III.  Other companies designed the iPod and its interface.  And that pretty much sums up Jobs and his responsibilities at Apple.  At least according to Jef Raskin, who didn’t have too many kind things to say about the Apple co-founder.

If you’re unfamiliar with the pre-Macintosh history of Apple Computer and the days leading up to the introduction of the computer for the rest of us, take a minute and read through Steve Weyhrich’s excellent narrative history of Apple here.  You see, Apple, Inc.’s revisionist history gives all the credit to Jobs for bring Macintosh to market but the reality is, Raskin had already done much of the design groundwork and the project was well under way when Jobs forced his way on to the team (and subsequently forced Raskin out the door when the two disagreed over design ideas).  Jobs had little to do with the design of the Apple-1 or Apple II – that was Woz – and his legacy for the Apple III, Apple’s first attempt at at business machine, was to design a case that caused overheating and other problems which contributed to the ultimate failure of the machine.

So other than the Reality Distortion Field – which admittedly, has done wonders to nurse Apple back to health in the 13 years since his return – has Jobs really done that much for Apple?  Well, he did kill several underperforming, money draining projects and streamline Apple’s production systems.  And he has a knack for hiring smart people who do know a thing or two about design.  But when it comes to the true design genius at Apple?  Probably not as much as Jobs would like you to think…

Interestingly, this is one of the only pieces of Apple III advertising, other than scanned magazine print ads, that I’ve been able to find.

This is a bit weird, to say the least.  As I was swimming through the intertubes today, as I often do, I came across this blog entry, titled “Where Apple’s Go To Die”.  The blog belongs to a Lebanese photographer who lives (or lived) in Kuwait and though the page is dormant now (the last blog entry was made in November 2005), it’s still available for perusal.  Mostly routine photography stuff, centered on his life in Kuwait.  One entry in particular though caught my attention.  It’s an apparently-abandoned Apple Store.  And I’m not talking one of the new, shiny places that sell you iPads and a copy of the latest version of Aperture.  No, this place has been there for quite some time.  It featured the rainbow Apple logo and the old Garamond font from the days before King Jobs returned to reclaim his throne and expunge the company of its past.

Stranger still is that whomever owned the place looks to have simply closed up shop one day and never returned.  “Think Different” posters still hang in the windows; shelves of shrink-wrapped software lie undisturbed under layers of dust.  There are even a few old Macs still sitting there.  It’s like one of those bad horror movies where the protagonist awakes one day to find his city completely, suddenly devoid of human life.

One of the commenters points out a promotional poster for a G4 Quicksilver visible in one shot, which means that the store was open at least into 2001.

The blog entry itself is dated January 2005, and I find myself wondering about that store.  Is is still there, untouched like some weird monument to Apple at the turn of the millennium?  Who owned and/or operated the store, and most importantly – what the hell happened there?

Be sure to visit the the photographer’s other page of images, where you can see more photos.

Edit:  Looks like this story made the rounds back in 2005 in all the usual places (Gizmodo, TUAW, Cult of Mac, etc).  Not sure how I missed it, but there you go.  More info on the place can be found here.

Second edit:  The store has re-opened.  This is also old news.

Today, I dug the Newton eMate 300 out of storage with a mind to upgrade the battery and apply the 2010 patch.  I was able to locate the eMate itself, but the box containing the AC adapter, manuals and accessories seems to have gone into hiding.  So, I’m left with a dead eMate and a PCMCIA modem without a dongle.  It looks like the AC adapter can be had on eBay for a few dollars, though for the same $35, I can get an entire system and accessories.  In fact, there’s quite a glut of eMates on eBay at the moment.  In the meantime though, my Newton ambitions are on hold.

In other news, I was given a couple of vintage computers this weekend – one more related to this blog than the other.  Up first, we have a Macintosh Classic from 1991.

It’s dirty and didn’t come with a keyboard or mouse; the letters “HD” are written on the top in black marker, leading me to believe this is the higher end model with the hard drive and extra memory.  The AppleSerialNumberInfo website didn’t recognize this number and Chipmunk.nl identified it as an iPhone 3GS (I wish), so I don’t really know much about it.  I’m not much of a Mac collector, so short of powering it up once or twice and poking around a bit, I doubt I’ll do anything with this.  Maybe someone at KansasFest 2010 would enjoy it more than me.

The other item, a Franklin Ace 2100, is of much more interest.

For those unfamiliar, Franklin was a computer company  in the 1980′s that specialized in cloning Apple II computers.  They were so good at it, in fact, that Apple sued them and eventually won, bringing an end to the line of clones and setting an early precedent for copyright infringement in the young computer industry.  Interestingly, Franklin Electronic Publishers continues to operate, though these days they’re not in the PC industry any more.  The 2100 is part of the 2000 line of Apple IIe clones, and it seems likely that one of the reasons Apple went after Franklin is that these machines were consistently better than Apple’s.  This one, for example, came with 384K of RAM, a 65CS02 processor and an RGB interface out of the box, all expensive add on options if you went with Apple’s offering.  I didn’t get the monitor with this one, but it looks like I can use a standard composite monitor.

And finally, for my remaining Apple /// fan, I haven’t entirely abandoned my efforts there.  The ProFile directory structure is still corrupt and I’ve instead turned my attention to getting the CFFA 2.0 up and running.  I’ve gone as far as installing the card and partitioning it (I think), but I’ve stalled at selecting which OS and program launcher to use.  BOS?  SOS? Catalyst?