Apple's history is hiding in a Mac font

https://www.spacebar.news/apple-history-hiding-in-mac-font/

158•rbanffy•6mo ago

Comments

plorg•6mo ago

I'm assuming this came up in reference to this post from yesterday:

https://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2025/08/mac-history-echoes-i...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44819962

rbanffy•6mo ago

I absolutely love the way Windows computers show up as a beige low-budget monitor with a BSOD. I wonder how they show up these days - I no longer have Windows boxes on my network.

pdntspa•6mo ago

They still show up that way, same with linux servers running Samba.

To be completely honest, the joke is getting a little bit old. They could at least update the graphic. But Windows has not been that crashy since Windows ME.

Maybe they could update it with something that pokes fun at how much Windows spies on you by default.

runjake•6mo ago

> Maybe they could update it with something that pokes fun at how much Windows spies on you by default.

The issue there is that Apple collects just about as much telemetry on end users. I'm unsure how much data either give or sell to third parties.

CursedSilicon•6mo ago

Something that has haunted me for many years is how much Apple has built a brand around "we don't let anyone touch your data!"

And I don't mean just as a branding that "normal people" (ones who aren't interested in or involved with tech) believe

They even manage to sell it to people who know how things work behind the curtain!

I have had people I once respected that are as deep into the weeds of technology as I am ask me, point blank to my face. "Can you prove it?" when I snark that things like iCloud in China are obviously backdoored. This was before they bent the knee to the UK as well [1]

Is there something in the water for Apple users?

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/122234

OsrsNeedsf2P•6mo ago

You have no proof Apple gives China a backdoor to encryption. The claim is as baseless as saying Google gives China a backdoor. Stop the FUD.

bigyabai•6mo ago

Chinese iCloud is hosted in domestic servers[0] with custom HSMs (Hardware Security Modules) installed[1] to geolocate E2EE keys for Chinese users in Chinese servers.

If Chinese authorities demanded physical access to the data there is nothing Apple can do to stop them. There is no proof that Apple provides credible security to these users and no historical audits that suggest they can.

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/111754

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/12/business/apple-china-data...

GeekyBear•6mo ago

So when Microsoft responds to an American warrant (or NSL) requiring a copy of a customer's data stored on Microsoft servers, that is a "backdoor in Windows"?

CursedSilicon•6mo ago

That's a weird moving of the goal posts!

Two things can be bad, you know :)

bigyabai•6mo ago

Well, first off, I never called it a backdoor. I just laid out the pitiful security situation Apple created for their Chinese users. You're the one putting words in my mouth.

Secondly, yes, especially if it's OneDrive. Both iCloud and OneDrive are first-party software products, they are built-into their respective operating systems as native features. If BitLocker was compromised, it would be a "Windows backdoor" too.

GeekyBear•6mo ago

> I just laid out the pitiful security situation Apple created for their Chinese users.

Which American companies do you imagine are immune to American warrants or National Security Letters?

GeekyBear•6mo ago

> Windows has not been that crashy since Windows ME.

Windows was still crashy, most frequently due to poorly written drivers.

What changed was that Microsoft altered the default setting so that Windows silently rebooted the computer when it crashed instead of displaying the BSOD information on what caused the crash until the system was manually rebooted.

rbanffy•6mo ago

> They could at least update the graphic.

What does a BSOD look like these days? That one is from the pre-XP era. No NT-based OS used that screen.

sugarpimpdorsey•6mo ago

> To be completely honest, the joke is getting a little bit old.

The real joke is Apple shipping a buggy, DIY'd version of SMB because they ditched Samba over some GPL3 quibble, and they abandoned AFP. Meanwhile, Microsoft is still the reference implementation of SMB...

I assume the icons are still there because there is nobody left at Apple that knows how they got there and where the code is that controls it.

quitit•6mo ago

There's a lot of nuance in there. From the way the beige is tinged yellow, to the loathed sliding mount.

sgt•6mo ago

How do I paste the gid* fonts into TextEdit, for example? Only UTF8 fonts seem to work.

pimlottc•6mo ago

As mentioned in yesterday's article [0], they can't be used because they haven't been mapped to a Unicode code point:

> (A note on most of these characters is that they don't actually map to any defined Unicode code point; they are unconnected glyphs. Font Book will show them but you can't really copy them anywhere. A tool like Ultra Character Map will let you at least grab a graphical representation and paste it somewhere, as I have done here.)

0: https://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2025/08/mac-history-echoes-i...

rbanffy•6mo ago

You can open them in a tool such as FontForge and force an encoding. You might need to add some padding at the beginning so that you get the symbols on a usable range.

shortrounddev2•6mo ago

From a time when apple had soul

rbanffy•6mo ago

Don't be so harsh. There's a lot of great people working there, committed to make great computers and software. It's not an easy task.

NoSalt•6mo ago

They are probably talking about the company as a whole. Back when there were easter eggs and the UI was more raw, yet more "approachable".

I stopped using Apple Macintosh OS after Snow Leopard, aftger they started making it more difficult than necessary to access the full power of the Unix underpinnings. In some way, I miss Macintosh OS 7.5, 8, and 9 more than OS X.

reaperducer•6mo ago

You're mad about lack of Unix power, but pine for OS 7.5?

philwelch•6mo ago

No it makes sense. MacOS is neither a good enough Unix nor is it a good enough Mac OS. There’s a lot to like about either Unix or System 7, many of which aren’t very well reflected in modern MacOS.

jama211•6mo ago

I don’t know what you’re talking about as modern macOS is fantastic for both of those things. I sense nostalgia and rose tinted glasses winning over the facts here.

rbanffy•6mo ago

Remember the NeXT OS didn't come with X support. Not being like mainstream UNIX has always been a core design principle.

robertoandred•6mo ago

They just brought back Clarus the Dogcow a couple years ago.

shortrounddev2•6mo ago

I'm sure there's lots of creative people there, but unfortunately they work for a company that seems to determined to just keep going back to the well over and over

jama211•6mo ago

This is such an old man shakes fist at cloud statement

chaos_a•6mo ago

The old text to speech voices are still around in Sequoia. Some have been changed to a generic "my name is x". But most still make their fun little jokes.

Found in the voice over utility app.

Accessibility > Voice Over > Voice Over Utility > Speech > Add Voice

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlainTalk

quink•6mo ago

> Apple released its final CRT monitor in 2000

Not a standalone monitor, but eMac. 2002, with the last revision first released in 2005.

oddevan•6mo ago

I was honestly surprised at how much older hardware is even in the newer SF Symbols library. When I saw my first iPod in there, I couldn't help but shout it out in my app... https://eph.me/pt-easter-egg.jpg

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Apple's history is hiding in a Mac font

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