Following my sowing of ...

[Michael Grove]

 “the seed” of the potential of the Virtual [RE]ality of Interactive

 Multimedia Communications, into the mindset of the powers that

 aspire 2[BE] • during the one year update of the launch of the BBC

 Microcomputer in support of the BBC Computer Literacy Project,

 at the World Trade Centre, Tower Bridge in London, in the January

 of 1982 • I was honoured to have been subsequently chosen as

 the stand manager of the Great British Micro Stand at Didacta ’84

 in Basle, Switzerland, and to have there witnessed the European

 launch of Apple’s 128K Macintosh on a small stand adjacent to

 ours.

 

 Three years later, to the month, Steve Jobs launched the concept

 of Desk Top Publishing in the form on an upgraded Apple Mac 

 driving the Apple LaserWriter, which was the very first desktop

 printer to incorporate Adobe's PostScript, a page description

 language that contained scalable typefaces and supported 

 smoothly drawn graphics, such that exactly the same file created 

 on a Macintosh computer and proofed on a LaserWriter could be

 output to a Linotronic 300 phototypesetter at 2,540 dpi, which

 was capable of generating a commercial quality print.

 

 [IT] was following the demise of Acorn Video, as result of the

 financial disaster which was Acorn Computer USA, that I first

 brokered a meeting with Apple UK in Hemel Hempstead • to

 discuss the potential developments of the Virtual [RE]ality of

 Interactive Multimedia Communications, based on the

 technological platform of the Apple Macintosh • but it was not

 until Apple launched the the Macintosh II in colour with their own

 SMALLTALK-like ‘MEMEX’ product called Hypercard in 1987,

 that I was able to advise Apple that they should first consider

 promoting the importance of Hypercard at the same cost of the

 Macintosh II and give the computer away for free!!!  As much as

 the Apple Macintosh served its 'dutiful role' in the advent of

 Interactive Multimedia, it was not until Tim Berners Lee utilised

 one of Jobs NEXT servers, front ended with an Apple Macintosh, 

 using Hypercard's HYPERTALK, to create • http • and the • 

 www • that the Apple Macintosh World was really set on fire, 

 so to speak. The rest as they invariably say has nOw [BE]come

 part and parcel of history.

 THE REAL beauty of the Apple Macintosh however was

 manifested and established from the outset as a direct result

 of Steve Wozniak's very insistence on the creation of a set of

 Human Interface Guidelines, and their subsequent 'WYSIWYG'

 utilisation to the present day in every product that Apple has

 since created, including it's very first monochrome Desktop 

 Publishing Printer, based as it was on that which subsequently

 became Canon's enduring networked [CLC] Printing Technology 

 which provided the heart and mind of the Colour Laser Copier.

 All of which I later packaged into a bespoke system for OUP 

 [Oxford University Press], which was utilised to digitise their

 hand-drawn and painted artwork collection which had been

 accrued since the Press had been established.

 I equally well remember my meeting with David Hockney

 at the V&A, when Canon invited him to demonstrate his

 artistic skills, utilising our DiceNET Colour Server System 

 driving Canon's then recently launched CLC500 Colour

 Photocopier & Image Processing Unit, whose colour

 photocopying engine had been designed by Louise

 Detremont and her team.

  

.

[Michael Grove]

HyperTalk, a computer programming language designed in 1985 as “programming for the rest of us” by American computer scientist Bill Atkinson for Apple’s Macintosh. Using a simple English-like syntax, Hypertalk enabled anyone to combine text, graphics, and audio quickly into “linked stacks” that could be navigated by clicking with a mouse on standard buttons supplied by the program. Hypertalk was particularly popular among American educators in the 1980s and early ’90s for classroom multimedia presentations. Although Hypertalk had many features of object-oriented programming, Apple did not develop it for other computer platforms and let it languish; as Apple’s market share declined in the 1990s, a new cross-platform way of displaying multimedia left Hypertalk all but obsolete.

                                                                 David Hemmendinger

[Michael Grove]

Forty-two years elapsed between April 1976, when two university dropouts formed Apple Computer in a California garage, and August 2018, when the company became the first publicly-traded corporation to hit a vaunted trillion-dollar valuation. Over that time, Apple released the Macintosh, the iMac, the iPod and then the iPhone.

It has taken just two years for Apple to repeat the feat. On Wednesday, the company’s market value surpassed $2 trillion for the first time, climbing to a record high before falling back slightly below the threshold.

In the time it has taken Apple to go from one to two trillion dollars, the company has released no major new products. Its biggest initiatives have been a US-only credit card, an internet TV service that has been met with mixed reviews, and a £5-a-month gaming service.

In the three months to the end of June, Apple’s sales were just 12pc higher than two years earlier. Profits have actually fallen, from $13.3bn (£10.2bn) to $13.1bn. This year, the global economy is due to contract heavily, and millions have become unemployed.

These do not seem like conditions in which a company would double in value, but an unprecedented combination of events - many of them outside Apple’s own control - has made it the world’s most valuable company.

Apple: two years to $2tn

[Michael Grove]

The birth of Leonardo coincided with that of the printing press. Fascinated by typographical presses from the early beginning, around 1480, he studied them already with the innovative idea of of an automatic page-feeder, a concept which was to reappear near the end of the 15th Century.

With his renewed interest in anatomy in the very early years of the 16th Century and with the systematic arrangement of his writings in preparation for compiling numerous treaties. Leonardo became increasingly aware of the need to divulge his inventions through printing. With this in[MIND] he developed a method to be used for the simultaneous reproduction of texts and drawings, three centuries in advance of William Blake.

Carlo Pedretti