The Original Macintosh: Calculator Construction Set

https://www.folklore.org/Calculator_Construction_Set.html

52•fidotron•7mo ago

Comments

yjftsjthsd-h•7mo ago

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

johnplatte•7mo ago

And why NeXT's Cocoa had Interface Builder?

WillAdams•7mo 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•7mo ago

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

WillAdams•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo ago

i thought this was actually a well established fact

leakycap•7mo 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•7mo 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

danielhlockard•7mo 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.

leakycap•7mo 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.

WillAdams•7mo ago

The XKCD on this:

https://xkcd.com/1053/

leakycap•7mo 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•7mo ago

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

jFriedensreich•7mo 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.

HFguy•7mo ago

There are two equals buttons?

msgilligan•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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

Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

The Waymo World Model

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

Making geo joins faster with H3 indexes

Where did all the starships go?

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

Welcome to the Room – A lesson in leadership by Satya Nadella

Ga68, a GNU Algol 68 Compiler

What Is Ruliology?

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS

An Update on Heroku

Cross-Region MSK Replication: K2K vs. MirrorMaker2

Was Benoit Mandelbrot a hedgehog or a fox?

PC Floppy Copy Protection: Vault Prolok

Dark Alley Mathematics

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

How to effectively write quality code with AI

Delimited Continuations vs. Lwt for Threads

I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

Introducing the Developer Knowledge API and MCP Server

Understanding Neural Network, Visually

Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

The Waymo World Model

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

Making geo joins faster with H3 indexes

Where did all the starships go?

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

Welcome to the Room – A lesson in leadership by Satya Nadella

Ga68, a GNU Algol 68 Compiler

What Is Ruliology?

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS

An Update on Heroku

Cross-Region MSK Replication: K2K vs. MirrorMaker2

Was Benoit Mandelbrot a hedgehog or a fox?

PC Floppy Copy Protection: Vault Prolok

Dark Alley Mathematics

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

How to effectively write quality code with AI

Delimited Continuations vs. Lwt for Threads

I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

Introducing the Developer Knowledge API and MCP Server

Understanding Neural Network, Visually

The Original Macintosh: Calculator Construction Set

Comments