Krazy Ken: In 1997, Apple's website went dark for 24 hours, and it mysteriously showed a picture of a chocolate chip cookie, a shopping cart, and a screwdriver. What the heck could this possibly mean? Was it a hint for a new product? Let's find out. Apple Keynote Chronicles is made possible by our awesome friends at Linode. You can simplify your infrastructure and cut your cloud bills in half with Linode's Linux virtual machines. To put it simply, if it runs on Linux, it runs on Linode. Hey guys, how are you all doing? If you're new here, welcome. My name is Krazy Ken, and welcome back to Apple Keynote Chronicles. Today, as usual, I'm joined by Brad, who has, for some stupid reason, agreed to go on this torturous journey with me. So thank you, Brad. I really appreciate it. I think

Brad: I caught the crazy, I just haven't passed it on, yet.

Krazy Ken: That's true, you haven't. But hopefully, if my plan works out... Okay, it's not really a plan, it's just an idea baby right now, I would like to have other guests on the show, too. It'd be cool to talk with some other people, who were maybe even at these keynotes, but that's for the future. So yes, we're here again today, and we're talking about two Apple events, or just quickly going through a Seybold Seminar that Steve Jobs was at. But then the main event was the November 1997 Apple special event, where they introduced the PowerPC G3 processor. Today, we're using Apple's chips, the M1, and all this stuff, this was kind of like that. Not really, but kind of. It was an all new processor for these new products they were releasing as part of Steve Jobs' new strategy for Apple. So this was kind of a big deal, and that's what we'll be talking about today.

Krazy Ken: So, I can't find a video online for the Seybold Seminar, but I do have a transcript, I do have a link in the show notes, and this is actually our first time covering a Seybold Seminar, and Steve Jobs was speaking at it. So, in short, what was Seybold? Well, Seybold Seminars were a series of trade shows and these seminars tailoring to the pre-press industry and desktop publishing. We were talking about creative content and pre-press and design work, and how the Mac is so big in those markets. So it made sense for Steve Jobs to represent Apple at the Seybold Seminars.

Krazy Ken: So, because the Macintosh was huge in those industries, it just made sense. These seminars started before the Mac existed, in 1981, by Jonathan Seybold. But ultimately, the event was discontinued in 2005, and that's probably why many newer computer users have no idea what it is, but it did have a good run.

Brad: I did not know about them.

Krazy Ken: That's okay. So, Jobs recaps a few things during the seminar, like the Microsoft partnership. Also, Rhapsody, the next gen operating system, he says it's on track and will come out as a server product first, which I always thought was interesting. I really should look into Apple's interest with servers more, because they don't do that. They had the Xserve and all that stuff, but they don't sell any of that anymore. But yeah, that was a big focus for them, was to make Rhapsody as a server product before it was a client OS, and we'll be talking about that much more in a future episode. There was a dedicated scene from a keynote where he talks about what eventually was called macOS X, macOS X Server.

Krazy Ken: So, he also mentions the Newton. He says, it's important, but macOS is the core of Apple, and as we know, the Newton's died off shortly after 1997. And then he hints at some problems to fix, such as Apple's inventory, which we'll dive into during the main event. So I think Steve Jobs was kind of teasing what he was going to be talking about in this next event, because inventory was a problem. Now, it's November 1997, it's time for the Apple special event, and before the keynote, the Apple website has been down. It was down for a whole day, and it was replaced with three pictures; a chocolate chip cookie, an empty shopping cart, and a screwdriver. So what the heck does that stuff mean?

Brad: Did you try to take a guess, or did you already know, going into it?

Krazy Ken: I took guesses, but I really... The chocolate chip cookie was kind of obvious to me. Looking back at this, I was like, "Oh, chip, processor, CPU." But I did not... The screwdriver was the only thing I was really confused about. The shopping cart, I was like, "Okay, like, a shopping thing?" I wasn't really sure what, but the screwdriver, I really didn't know. What about you?

Brad: The chip thing, I kind of confused me. I think maybe he was just talking about the internet, or something literally-

Krazy Ken: Oh, because-

Brad: ... right before it, when he introduced it, so I thought cookies. Were cookies a thing to make... So chip, I guess, I can't think of a better representation of saying chip, we have a new chip, but yeah. It's kind

of the evolution of icons, even, because you don't see a whole shopping cart used as an icon really anymore-

Krazy Ken: Right, it was-

Brad: ... generally a basket.

Krazy Ken: Yes.

Brad: And you don't see a screwdriver alone, even on the app store, or whatever, it's a screwdriver and a hammer crossing it.

Krazy Ken: And they weren't even icons, they were like actual alpha channel photographs, like a [inaudible 00:04:54].

Brad: Yeah.

Krazy Ken: But it was 1997, that visual-

Brad: It's really interesting to see the evolution of how things-

Krazy Ken: It totally is. So, they open up with, I think, different ad, here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the square pegs and the round holes. Fun fact for everybody, Robin Williams was the star of a show called The Crazy Ones, it was a one season thing. It was inspired by that. Have you watched ?

Brad: I haven't. I did not know that that was the inspiration behind it.

Krazy Ken: I don't know if it was the inspiration from the writer and creator perspective, but in the TV show itself, in the first episode, they talk about the Apple ad.

Brad: I will just say, as we're on the topic, even though we're talking about the evolution, it's very Apple, what they're doing right there. There's the cookie, the shopping cart. I think we see the evolution of how the icons came to be and all this and that, but also the reveal that's very reminiscent of how he introduced the first iPhone and everything.

Krazy Ken: Dude, I'm so glad you say that, because this is the first real Steve note. It's not a business thing or a status report thing or a Seybold Seminar, this is Steve Jobs' first real Steve note, where has the suspense. That's a good way to put it, because he was like, we're releasing G3 products; an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. That's-

Brad: Because even the last event was a Macworld thing. There is a different vibe. I can see why Apple hosts their own events now, because you don't have to put up with the pageantry or the handoff or the niceties of the beginnings of someone else introducing your keynote.

Krazy Ken: And that did change, because even the iPhone thing was... The first iPhone, that was still a Macworld, but it still felt like a Steve note. But one of the main reasons they eventually moved away from Macworld was because of the scheduling. They wanted to announce and release their products on their schedule, and not have to fight the Macworld-

Brad: Gotcha.

Krazy Ken: ... convention schedule. But yeah, we'll cover that in a future, future episode. The last Macworld Apple was Macworld 2009. But for today, it's Apple's own special event. Steve comes out on stage, and we're back at the Flint Center. The Flint Center was where the first Macintosh was revealed, and lots of long applause. No turtleneck yet, he hasn't evolved that look, yet. He's wearing kind of like a waist coat sort of thing-

Brad: Again-

Krazy Ken: ... and a beard.

Brad: ... fashion choices are always a topic of a discussion here. This one is interesting. I call this one the... I would call this a high school principal Steve Jobs. That's what he looked like. A Grizzly Adams High School principal or something.

Krazy Ken: You liked the beard? You liked-

Brad: Yeah.

Krazy Ken: ... his beard?

Brad: Yeah, the full beard, robust. He had not the turtleneck, yet. It's a powerful presence.

Krazy Ken: Yeah, absolutely. So, he teases the three pictures, he's going to go through one at a time. First was the cookie, "A very different chip," is what he said, and there was some laughs and applause there. Chip is a thing Apple still says, like M1 ship. They still use chip for system-on-a chip, they just abbreviate it to chip or CPU. They just say chip, it's really simple. So, this is the first time where they announced the PowerPC

G3 processor. It's funny, because like today... Apple just recently announced their all-new iMac with Apple Silicon, and they've been rolling out the M1 products and all that stuff, and this was kind of like that. M1 from Intel is a big transition from PowerPC to PowerPC G3 in comparison, but it's still like a new chip, and it was a huge thing for the future of the Mac.

Krazy Ken: This was made possible by the AIM Alliance, which stood for Apple, IBM, and Motorola, the AIM Alliance. So, a big upgrade with this generation three chip was it had a separate bus for backside cache, and up to 266 megahertz clock. So, Jobs talks about this a lot. There's even a future keynote where he talks about the megahertz myth. It may sound like lower megahertz is actually slower, but that's not true all the time. So he talks about, even though it's like "half the megahertz" of like a Wintel system with a Pentium 2, it's half the megahertz, it's still like twice as bad.

Brad: Well, the next keynote, they spent a good portion of it talking about-

Krazy Ken: Roasting-

Brad: ... it's twice as fast.

Krazy Ken: ... Intel, which is funny, because then, who do they to a few years later? Intel. Hey Intel, remember all those things we made fun of you back then, when we put your processor on a snail and had it walk across the screen to show ho slow it was? Hey, can we just forget about that, man? We kind of need you. The PowerPC G5 is turning our notebook into a frying pan. That's in the future. Anyway. So, for example, Jobs would like to compare the new PowerPC G3 to the Pentium 2 a lot. So, it was 67 square millimeters, six watts of power compared to the Pentium 2, which was 203 square millimeters, and it used 43 watts of power. "You could fry an egg on this thing," was the thing he always said. He was like, "You could fry an egg on it."

Krazy Ken: So, I still think it's just so funny how they roast Intel, but then they... Intel clearly innovated, because they caught up with the performance per watt game, where they could crank out the performance, but not put out as much heat energy as much. So then Jobs liked to use byte marks a lot to show benchmarks between the two chips. So, according to the numbers he showed, the byte marks integer benchmark was 7.53 for the G3, compared to the 4.24 on the Pentium 2, and the floating point test was 5.74 to 5.0.

Krazy Ken: I'm not a computer programmer expert, but in short integers are whole numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4 floating point values can be decimals. That's what float versus integer means there in a super basic term. Then he talks about Photoshop tasks. The G3 266 took 611 seconds to run all the scripts, and the Pentium 2 at 300 megahertz, again, higher clock speed, could be faster, but it's not. It took 713 seconds to run all the Photoshop scripts.

Krazy Ken: So we have this all-new chip, we need something to shove it into, right? So he introduced the G3 product family, the G3 desktop, which was like the flatter kind of computer, you'd put the monitor on top of it, the G3 mini tower, where it was like a much taller computer sitting next to your monitor, and then a G3 power book, a notebook computer. The desktop model started at 1,999.

Krazy Ken: The power book, on that one slide, said 5,699, but I'm pretty sure that was the max spec model. The hightest end notebook was 5,699. So Powerboat G3, the G3 desktop, and the G3 mini tower. He said the products had been re-engineered from the ground up, but we know much bigger redesigns are waiting in the wings, which we'll talk about in the next episode. Because even though they'd been re-engineered, they still look, well, beige, they look kind of like boxes, for the most part. They don't have a new design twist, but we know that's coming soon.

Brad: Or is it?

Krazy Ken: Oh yes. So then Jobs talks about a quick update about macOS 8. 2 million copies have been sold since summer, so that's doing pretty well. And then, Phil Schiller comes out on stage. I think this is the first time Phil Schiller is on a Steve note. Right?

Brad: We haven't seen him, I don't believe, in any of the previous ones that we watched.

Krazy Ken: But yeah, Phil Schiller is going to be a recurring character. He's in a ton of future Apple keynotes.

Brad: Yup.

Krazy Ken: He hasn't been in the recent product events, but he recently got promoted to Apple Fellow. I guess, technically he's not the senior vice president of product marketing anymore, but Apple Fellow is a huge feather in your cap. That's a ginormous gold feather. So we see him

come out on stage, and he's there to demo the G3 mini tower versus, "the best Pentium you can buy", which was... according to Apple, it was a compact machine, 300 megahertz Pentium 2, they run the Photoshop script, so it's 30 actions put together, it's all automated, and they use a bunch of graphics they used for the macOS 8 promo video stuff. And the G3 finished about 20 seconds faster than the P2, which was about twice as fast, even though, again, megahertz myth, the megahertz on paper was lower than 300, but in practice, it was about twice as fast doing these Photoshop tasks.

Brad: Well, speaking of the tasks, did it stand out to you at all? It was interesting. I'm glad we've moved beyond... When you say they run the demos, they run the demos. There's a lot of time spent on stage in these, where they run the thing, and it's a bit awkward, of like-

Krazy Ken: Due.

Brad: ... just giving-

Krazy Ken: Oh my gosh.

Brad: ... the voiceover of what's happening. Oh, here we are, almost done. How much did you hear? Like, and go it.

Krazy Ken: Yeah, I'm glad they don't do that crap anymore, because it is weird, where it's just awkward waiting for something-

Brad: Well, and they're like, it's not automated, it's like clicking it and starting... trying to get it at the same time, and here we go, or a lot of-

Krazy Ken: Three, two, one, click.

Brad: Yeah.

Krazy Ken: And there was that one time Phil missed the other button. It was on the Pentium, so he was like, "Oh, let's give it a head start, click." I don't remember what keynote it was in, there was even that time, where they did the demo, and then they did it again. Jobs was like, "You want to see that again?" And I'm just like, "No, I don't. I get it." And then he does it a third time. It's like, we get it, it's faster. [inaudible 00:13:42].

Brad: They're really pushing it hard. They keep saying screams to this thing, screams

Krazy Ken: You're right. Yeah, they say screams, and the other one was-

Brad: Hot.

Krazy Ken: ... hot. Like, this is hot, which is even something that I remember jabs saying, even at the iPhone 4 thing, the Retina display, he was like, "This is really hot." [crosstalk 00:14:00].

Brad: I was wondering where that came from. They're so adamant about it, they're saying... It's weird, because they're also talking about how hot the Pentium processor-

Krazy Ken: That true.

Brad: ... clocks.

Krazy Ken: They were talking about literal heat.

Brad: And then sometimes they're talking about like the computer chip in a sexual way or something.

Krazy Ken: Oh man, there is a future keynote we'll cover, where they actually talk about, can a computer be powerful and sexy, and Jobs, on this slide, literally says, "Power plus sex-"

Brad: Oh yeah.

Krazy Ken: In a marker font, it's freaking amazing. We're getting ahead of ourselves, though. So, they do the demos, it's kind of repetitive, but I guess back then it was fun. So yeah, the G3 was about twice as fast in that regard. Then they do an After Effects demo. They render motion video and all that stuff in Adobe After Effects, which is like Photoshop for video, and that's actually where Phil did the three, two, one, and he missed the click on the Pentium, so he gave it a bit of a headstart, and the G3 was just way faster than the P2.

Krazy Ken: Actually, it's so funny that you mentioned that. Right here in my notes, I just say, lots of odd silence, ha ha. It is, it's weird, especially later, when they do like the shockwave or the Macromedia director demos, you hear the sound effects playing-

Brad: Oh yeah.

Krazy Ken: ... awkwardly, too. And it's like a couple of decibels louder than their mics, so it's just loud, random sound effects.

Brad: Yeah, it's not very refined.

Krazy Ken: No.

Brad: There's moments, too, where Steve's talking, but then Phil is also mic'd up and saying, "It's done." I was wondering if splices of different videos got clipped in it. It's-

Krazy Ken: It was like watching NASCAR, but no one in the audience was cheering, and they were all electric cars, so there was no noise. That's what it was like, you were watching a race, but it was so awkwardly quiet. So the PowerBook G3 versus the NEC Versa with the Pentium. This is when they did the Macromedia Director 6. This was an interactive animation speed test, the G3 was playing way smoother. Then, Phil is just like, "Okay, well, we've shown these more advanced speed tests, but whow about basic things you use every day?" So he showed Word, Microsoft Word 6 opening, and it was just super quick, and that got applause. He opened up Excel, it opened immediately, that got applause. So, even just those basic things, the PowerPC G3 processor was able to launch apps so fast.

Brad: Do you think that translated... So they're running these scripts and everything like that, do you think that that would have translated in just day-to-day use, as well?

Krazy Ken: I still think it could have translated, because it's hard to think about sometimes how much faster things have become until you go back and use the old thing. Like, I'll launch Photoshop on like a 68K, Mac and it takes like 15 seconds to render a [inaudible 00:16:34], for example, something that can easily be done in real time now. For like a 512 by 512 image, you click render, and it gives you a modal progress bar. So you're stuck inside there, you can't do anything else in the app, or maybe even in the system, I'm not sure, and it's just chugging along, and then it like slowly paints down the screen, and it's like, wow, we take the speed for granted now.

Brad: Oh no, we really do. Now that you say this, I recently had to help get someone's, not even that old, but maybe a 2011 PC laptop hooked up to a printer at their work-

Krazy Ken: Oh, that sounds like a great way to spend eight days straight.

Brad: It definitely was. They were like, "Wow, I didn't realize it was going to be this complicated." I-

Krazy Ken: Printers?

Brad: ... was like, "I did."

Krazy Ken: Dude, printers Bluetooth are all the technologies that are still so ubiquitous, but have never gotten better.

Brad: Never gotten better, they've never improved. But either way, it was... The thing, as we're going to test-print something, even opening a PDF, the amount of time that it took was enough to like disconnect me from the process-

Krazy Ken: Oh my gosh.

Brad: ... that I'm in.

Krazy Ken: That's so much painful.

Brad: I can definitely see that's what Steve has always aimed to do, that's what Apple has always been doing, is removing friction from whatever you're trying to do. So, even if it's a little bit, I think they've always been about those incremental improvements.

Krazy Ken: Absolutely. So, that takes care of the very different chip, or as Steve said, that takes care of the cookie. That's the way the cookie crumbles. Now, the shopping cart, a very different store. So, this is the Genesis of so many things we use today. It's so cool going back and seeing where it started.

Brad: This was the coolest part, I thought.

Krazy Ken: This part's freaking awesome. Yeah. So, Jobs talks about how they are re partnering with CompUSA, because they have these stores, they have these retail stores, but there's really no national chain, so they want to get their Apple products into CompUSA stores. So they're working with them to make the national buying experience better, and they want to put an Apple store within a store inside every CompUSA. So the whole idea was, you would go into the CompUSA store, but there would be this Apple store within a store that would have the Apple branding, the think different branding, and, best of all, people who knew what they were doing, trained Mac specialists. And just, again, for context, Apple stores didn't exist yet. They wouldn't exist for another four-ish years. So store within a store was the way they had to do this.

Brad: Did you ever go to a CompUSA? I don't think there was a CompUSA near where I grew up.

Krazy Ken: I've never seen a CompUSA.

Brad: I've never seen it. So I think I vaguely remember hearing about this, maybe in the news, I couldn't go visit, but I was pretty familiar with and followed this years later, when they did it with Best Buy, which was similarly a big deal to do-

Krazy Ken: Right.

Brad: ... the store within a store.

Krazy Ken: Right.

Brad: So you're seeing the beginnings of... I don't know what year it was they eventually went to Best Buy, but this is the pioneering of that. Really looking at it in the context of today and now, and what Steve was going to do, they nailed and they nailed. There's so many great things about it. They didn't have the money for opening up retail stores or doing all these big things. What a way to differentiate yourself within the current context and stand out. It's a real genius move to... Even in the end, if they're... We know there's a big difference between the Mac and the PC, but even if there weren't, just on an aesthetics level, this would still be a genius move

Krazy Ken: And transitioning into that, they had Quick Time VR, video rotation demo, where you can actually like click and drag around and have a 360 view of the store, and the Apple part totally stood out. So, think of it like Google Street View, but in 1997, you're inside the store looking around with Quick Time.

Brad: That was really cool, too, just how they were showing off. I didn't realize they had 360 stuff like that, even in 1997.

Krazy Ken: I like how Jobs was like, "See the carpet?" Because it looks nice, it's a nice carpeted section of the store. Apple didn't open their first store. I think it was in Virginia, but it was in like 2001. They didn't open that for a couple of years now, but look at how well it's worked today. With online store shopping and stuff, going up a lot of brick and mortar is going down, but Apple's one of those few exceptions where their brick and mortar stores is increasing, the foot traffic is going up. They are still so wildly successful.

Krazy Ken: So then Jobs is like, we're going to add something really great to the stack, a new Apple website with a new online store. Not only are they doing this new store within a store thing, but they're doing an all-new

online shopping experience. It's so easy to shop online nowadays, it's so convenient, but this was in 1997. It was totally different back then. So, there's this all-new Apple website with an all-new store. It's a simple, beautiful grid of products, it's very visual, especially for 1997, and Steve Jobs broke it into three things. Each Mac you want to buy has three basic configuration options; good, better, best. Those are the stock configurations.

Krazy Ken: But then, even though that online buying experience was really cool and hardly anyone was doing that with eCommerce at the time, there was something else very big that he introduced. This is something Apple still does today, and it was a big shift. I literally just used it to buy the new iMac; BTO, not the rock band, but build-to-order, where you can go and customize your computer. You want a different processor, you want a different hard drive? You have all these dropdown menus, you can just choose what you want, and they will build the computer to the specs you order on the website.

Krazy Ken: During the demo, he goes to the website, he shows a Newton device. I was not expecting that. You could still get the Newton, apparently. Did you see that?

Brad: No, I didn't even catch, but-

Krazy Ken: Yeah, it was on the website still, but like it was about to get killed off, so I thought that was kind of funny. So, Steve goes to do a BTO configuration of the new G3 mini tower with lots of upgrades. He just keeps clicking the upgrade pop up menus and it ends up being over $5,000. And he's like, "You can see why we're doing this." That's a lot of upsells, dude. That's a lot of nice money.

Brad: It's amazing how much it is the same experience, though, today.

Krazy Ken: It is, yeah. Pretty much the only difference is, it's radio buttons instead of pop up menus. It's the same freaking thing. Of course, on the server end, there's different software doing this because this was probably-

Brad: It's the fact that you have that level of BTO ability on a website in 1997. It's so ahead of the game. It's exactly what a lot of places don't even let you do now.

Krazy Ken: Yeah, it's pretty awesome. On a technical level, I don't remember yet, a hundred percent sure what they were using, but they were probably

using Next's web objects technology or something similar, because that was part of the acquisition. They don't do that nowadays, web objects isn't a thing that's really used anymore. But back then, they were probably using that, or something similar. So it ends up being a $7,000 system, but Jobs is just like, "It's a good day today, so I'm going to buy another one." He was so funny. He always had humor in his presentations, and that's just another reason why I really think this was his first real Steve note. He has the humor, he has the suspense, with the cookie and the cart, like, what does this stuff mean? He doesn't have his look dialed in yet, and he has a beard, but it's getting, it's getting there.

Brad: I think he has the humor because he's building... that's the reason that we love Apple, and what I feel like he was doing, and then it carries through today, is like, they're making the products they want to see in the world.

Krazy Ken: Yeah, absolutely.

Brad: You can tell he's excited to show this stuff off-

Krazy Ken: Oh yeah.

Brad: ... he's proud of it. The same way, when he's joking and laughing and building another one, or showing a demo three times in a row-

Krazy Ken: No, save me.

Brad: ... he's doing that with the same sort of glee that he had for showing the 1984 ad.

Krazy Ken: Oh yeah. Yeah, that's true. So then he goes through the checkout process, you get the options you can... Because it's 1997, you can still mail it in or fax it in to do the order. But he's like, "I'm just going to choose the internet option," because that's the whole reason why they're doing this demo. I thought it was funny, he's typing in a credit card number, and he's like, "This is an expired number." I also noticed, as he's going through it, he says, boom a lot. That's another catch phrase you hear him say a ton. So that's another Steve-ism, he says, boom. Boom, boom, boom. Like, click a button, boom, it's done. I've actually noticed I say that. I probably got it from him. I have no idea.

Krazy Ken: So, the Apple online store with build-to-order configurations from a 50,000-foot view, still the same today, it's what we still use, and this was the Genesis of that, in 1997. So now, the screwdriver. What could

that possibly mean? We'll talk about that in a sec, but because we're talking about websites and web applications and web objects and all this stuff that goes on behind the scenes, it's just like we sometimes forget. The user experience is so easy to use, we sometimes forget all the stuff that is going on behind the scenes.

Krazy Ken: How does all that stuff get made? Well, there is ways to do it. There's these developers making all this stuff. They need the tools and the infrastructure to build these web applications and these websites so they work and they're easy for the end user. That is where I like to talk about our awesome friends at Linode, the awesome people that help make this podcast possible. So with Linode, you can simplify your infrastructure and cut your cloud bills in half with their Linux virtual machines. You can develop, deploy and scale your modern applications faster and easier.

Krazy Ken: So, whether you're doing that personal project, or managing that much bigger workload, you deserve simple, affordable and accessible cloud computing solutions. So here's the cool thing. Just for listening to this podcast... This is to be the easiest $100 you'll ever make in your life. Just for listening to this podcast, you can get started with Linode with $100 in free credit, and you can find all the details at linode.com/computerclan. The link is in the show notes, go ahead and click on that. And the cool thing is they have data centers all around the world with the same simple and consistent pricing. So you don't have to worry about the locations having different things, it's all the same. You can just basically choose the data center closest to you and keep it easy.

Krazy Ken: On top of that, they also have 24/7, 365 human, not robot, tech support. No tiers, no handoffs. Regardless of your plan size, it's all the same great support, doesn't matter what you buy. You can choose between shared and dedicated compute instances, or you can use that $100 in credit on S3-compatible object storage, managed Kubernetes, and a ton more. They have a whole solutions page. Go click on that, you can see a bunch of use cases where this stuff actually is usable in a real world application. Really, to put it simply, if it runs on Linux, it runs on Linode. So visit linode.com/computerclan and click the create free account button to get started with that $100 of free credit. The other awesome thing is, when you do that, you're actually supporting this podcast, because we are partners with Linode and they help us on this. They're fricking awesome. I've been working with these guys for a couple of years now. They are great.

Brad: 100 bucks. I've worked a lot harder for a lot less.

Krazy Ken: I was going to say, so have I. You could sit and listen to a podcast, and boom, there's $200 in your pocket, and you can use that for Linode. So, back to 1997 websites. I don't think Linode existed back then, but it would have been cool if it existed back then. But we have web objects and other Next technologies and all that stuff. So, we covered the website, build-to-order configurations, but how do those things get built? They don't just appear out of nowhere when you buy them on the website. Right?

Brad: I think you're going to need a different kind of factory.

Krazy Ken: You're going to need a very different factory, and that's what the screwdriver was. So Steve talked about how every single product is going to be built to order in the factory, no huge inventory, and there's going to be tons of config choices. Because if you go through all those menus and multiply everything out, there's like a bajillion different combinations. So, it's quite a bit different than the original Macintosh days, where they would have them on a factory with a big inventory.

Krazy Ken: So, Steve plays this video, showing up the factory. They show a lot of snapping components and diagnostic software, and it's fun to see them assembling these modular things in the big Power Mac cases, because I've fiddled with those myself. You open them up, and there's like... The G3 opens up kind of like... Have you ever opened a Power Mac G3? It's kind of interesting. Before the blue and white, this was-

Brad: No, not before the blue and white.

Krazy Ken: You have to lay it down, you take the cover off, and it kind of folds out like a butterfly, the two halves kind of fold out. It's kind of modular, but that's how you would open it up and swap out components and stuff like that. It's cool to see how it works in the factory with that behind the scenes look. So they had that all-new factory in place to help keep the inventory lower, manage that better, and do those custom build-to-order configurations for the users using the new online shopping experience, and that's a lot of how it works today. It's so cool to see this genesis.

Brad: It's crazy that they had the forethought to get ahead of it like that, where... I couldn't think about buying a Mac that I didn't custom-build today. But again, talking about the retail store, being the main source of how people got computers or thought about buying anything back

then, you likely weren't going... You're going to get whatever stock configuration they have on the shelf. And if you were advanced enough to order something, what was the option before that? You'd have a magazine, where you'd fill out-

Krazy Ken: You might've just-

Brad: You do check mark and fax it in. But how much window shopping do we do? We've done like, Hey, let's spec this out. How much more work would it be to-

Krazy Ken: You're right.

Brad: ... spec something out in the past?

Krazy Ken: We literally just did that. Yeah, we bought an iMac. I'm over your shoulder, like, "Click that button, click that button, more RAM." Doing that in the early '90s without a website, without BTO... I'm sure there were maybe some retailers that had special phone support where it's like, "Yeah, we can get the parts in and do that for..." I have no idea, but it definitely was not offered by Apple first party until 1997. Speaking of online stuff, Jobs did give credit to Michael Dell. We were talking about Michael Dell earlier, because according to Steve Jobs, Dell pioneered the online buying experience in 1996, the online store, like what Apple is doing now, a year later. I was kind of intrigued. He puts a picture of Michael Dell on the screen, like, what's Michael doing here? So, for context he's... Was he officially the founder, or was he a co-founder? I don't remember, but Dell-

Brad: I don't know about that, but yeah.

Krazy Ken: He's a billionaire a billion times over, super rich guy. So, this was a funny story I actually did not know until I watched this keynote. Job said Dell came to Next to write the online store software with their web objects technology. Then, as we talked about in the previous episodes, this was big, Apple acquired Next, and that means the people who wrote the Dell online store are now Apple employees. I don't remember it directly, or remember specifically if Steve told Dell about it, or if Dell just caught wind of it, but allegedly Dell said, he'd shut down the online store if he were Apple CEO, and he'd give money back to the shareholders.

Brad: I think Dell was saying that about Apple in general, not just the online store. Michael Dell was saying... they were asked, what would you do if you were the CEO of Apple? Not just the online store, he was saying-

Krazy Ken: Oh, I thought they were just talking about the online-

Brad: No.

Krazy Ken: ... store.

Brad: He was talking about Apple in general. Michael Dell was saying, "I shut the whole thing down-"

Krazy Ken: Oh, the whole-

Brad: The whole thing. Shut the whole thing down and give the money back to the shareholders, Apple as a company.

Krazy Ken: Oh, crap. I clearly wasn't paying attention to that part then, but yeah. Okay. That's way worse than that.

Brad: Yeah, the Whole thing. Because you couldn't give the shareholders just the money back-

Krazy Ken: Oh, dude. Screw that.

Brad: ... for shutting down-

Krazy Ken: Screw that.

Brad: ... the online store.

Krazy Ken: Oh my gosh. So, Jobs was like, "Well, I thought that was rude, so I looked it up." And he literally puts a dictionary definition of the word rude up there, and it's like, oh, it was rude. And then I thought it was hilarious. He puts Michael Dell's face back on the screen, and Jobs is like, "We're coming after you, buddy." And a target graphic, where a cross hair goes [inaudible 00:32:09].

Brad: A weird-looking crosshairs.

Krazy Ken: Yeah, oh my gosh.

Brad: I thought it was a... Basically, he's given a backhanded compliment, he's being like, yeah. Okay. They had the biggest web store, but we made it and we worked for Apple, and we have the better thing now.

Krazy Ken: It's so funny how it's the same technology that made Dell's website, and now that it's owned by Apple, it's so weird that he's just not like, "Oh no, I'd shut it down." Let's see. I think Michael Dell's net worth... He's still doing all right for himself. I think it's 50 bill. Let's see. It is 50.2 bill. Okay. I'm pretty good at guessing things.

Brad: I don't know if you remember the dude You're Getting a Dell commercials.

Krazy Ken: Oh yes.

Brad: They were like-

Krazy Ken: Oh my gosh. It's coming back-

Brad: ... ubiquitous.

Krazy Ken: ... to me.

Brad: I think the guy's name was... He became like a little celebrity. There's this whole ad campaign of, "Dude, you're getting a Dell." He's like a stoner or something.

Krazy Ken: O, dude.

Brad: It was all over the place. It was kind of like the Budweiser what's up. It was one of those things, "Dude, you're getting a Dell," everybody was saying that, I remember.

Krazy Ken: Now I'm looking this up.

Ben Curtis: Dude, you're getting a Dell. Hey, I'm Ben Curtis, I'm an actor here in New York City.

Krazy Ken: Oh, this was the guy that actually... it's a Tech Insider video. This is the guy who... Ben Curtis was the dude... you're getting a Dell guy.

Brad: Yeah.

Krazy Ken: Here's one of the commercials.

Steven: Hello Mrs. Lindsay William?

Mrs. Lindsay Wi...: Hello, Steven.

Steven: You're not, by any chance, computer shopping, are you?

Mrs. Lindsay Wi...: Mm-hmm (affirmative), if I can get some help.

Steven: Just call or go online, tell them what you want, and right to your front door, comes America's favorite PC.

Mrs. Lindsay Wi...: Thanks, Steven.

Steven: Dude, you're getting a Dell.

Speaker 6: Easy to buy, easy to own, easy as Dell.

Krazy Ken: Oh man.

Brad: That was the big thing. Again, I'm fuzzy on the years, but definitely, at the time, the computer world was Dell's and it was Gateway and Gateway stores and stuff like that.

Krazy Ken: Oh, yep, yep, yep. One of my first PCs was a gateway. Yeah.

Brad: And then Compaqs. At schools, they had Compaqs, and that's what they're doing the comparisons with-

Krazy Ken: Yeah, they did-

Brad: ... a lot on this-

Krazy Ken: ... speed tests with a lot of compacts. So then Josh was saying, "We're going to be second to nobody in this industry, including Dell." So we made a special think different ad from Michael Dell, and it's with Muhammad Ali punching the cameras stuff.

Brad: I love that Ad. It was great.

Krazy Ken: I love that he played it twice. That was another little Steve-ism. He does that sometimes, and he did that with the iPhone 3G ad where he'll play it and people will cheer, and he'll be like, "You want to see that again?" And he'll play it again.

Brad: I think that's his way of reinforcing that we're in the fight here.

Krazy Ken: Oh yeah.

Brad: We are coming at you. You're talking about Steve Jobs' sense of humor. That comes through, even in that ad.

Krazy Ken: Absolutely, 100 percent.

Brad: It's a very fun, playful competitiveness.

Krazy Ken: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So then a nice quote that sums it all up from Steve in the keynote is, "We're fundamentally changing the way we do business without losing sight of why we do business, to make the best tools for people who think creatively." He's turning it around, man. They're getting back on track. So, the chip, the shopping cart, and the screwdriver. This keynote was very important, because it was the first introduction of the PowerPC G3, which is imperative for what we're going to be talking about next, the beginning of the online store, which is used every day,, still. All these decades later, it's still being used, everyone's got an online store now, and their build-to-order factory, managing that inventory better. Build-to-order options, BTO configs on the Apple website, we still use that today.

Krazy Ken: So what's next? Brad, what do you think we're going to be talking about next? Maybe their first i product? We always see the lowercase i. That's a ubiquitous thing now with Apple products, iPhones, iPads. Well, it all started somewhere. So, in the next episode, we're going to be talking about the keynote with the first all-new completely redesigned Mac. Not just an existing case with re-engineered insides, but an all-new, completely redesigned Mac. That's what we're talking about next, and it was Apple's first i product iMac.

Brad: Oh, it's a good one.

Krazy Ken: This is a good one. It's good timing, too, because right now, in 2021, Apple just released the new, new iMacs.

Brad: Very much ties in. But I will say with this one, the keynote that we're talking about, it is... As you said, it's the first real Steve note there is, or the future of what would be laid down. It is a very much... I would say this lays the groundwork. There's elements we've talked about that aren't as refined as they would be in the past with the demos and things like that, the icons, how they're introducing stuff, but this is really... You can see the foundations being built of all future keynotes, even up to what they do today.

Krazy Ken: Yeah, this was a good one.

Brad: It was Really good. You can see the evolution of things, the evolution of people, whether it's Phil Schiller, and it's Apple... It's before. It's playing with the old stuff. You can even see the hints of how they are hyping up how they're going to talk about chips, how they're going to

talk about specs, the way that they put it up on the screen, you can see how they simplify things or get to the point of how this is going to benefit the person, or even how they talk about chips, all the way carrying through, this isn't that much different from how they're talking about debuting the M1 or anything like that. So, this is a fascinating one to watch if you're a fan of the keynotes and have been watching for a long time.

Krazy Ken: Oh yeah. This is one of my favorite Steve notes coming up here. I have an original iMac, as well, and it's... the design is still so freaking cool. So we're going to be talking about the first iMac keynote in the next episode, so feel free to subscribe and follow, it's free, and you'll get these new episodes delivered to you every other Monday, because we like to make your Monday a fun day. But also, if you'd like, I do have a Patreon, patreon.com/KrazyKen, Krazy with a K, the link is in the show notes, and you get an ad-free version of this podcast there. Plus, a lot of other stuff. Honestly, I've looked at other Patreon pages and stuff like that, not to toot my own horn, but we give a lot of fun stuff away for only the $2 tier, which is the cheapest tier. So you're getting so much more than just the ad-free stream. You get a lot of other cool stuff. Plus, you're helping support the podcast and the whole Computer Clan, which houses the podcast, and you help us keep our stuff free for everyone else, so thank you for your support.

Krazy Ken: Another thing that helps us a lot is leaving a rating on your podcast platform of choice. Hey, five stars is a cool number. So if you like the show, feel free to leave a five-star review or a five-star rating. But if you didn't, or it's too early, you absolutely don't have to. Since we believe in choice, you obviously don't have to do that, but your support is greatly appreciated. Thanks for listening, and thanks again Linode for making this possible. Feel free to get that $100 of credit. To put it simply, if it runs on Linux, it runs on Linode. Linode.com/computerclan. That link is in the show notes, go check it out. Until next time, all there is left to say is thanks for sticking with me. Catch the crazy and pass it up.

Transcriptions are outsourced. Please forgive any inaccuracies.