Category: Apple

How do you hide a browser like Safari?

More tales from the very super secret design and pre-release days of Safari from Don Melton. So, secrecy. We weren’t under physical lockdown like Jony Ive’s design group was then, or like the iPhone team would be years later. But unless you knew who to look for, you were never going to find us on campus…. Twitter and Facebook didn’t exist then. Nobody at Apple was stupid enough to blog about work, so what was I worried about? Server logs. They scared the hell out of me. When a Web browser fetches a page from a Web server, the browser

When Browsers Are Named…

A delightful tale from Don Melton. “What… is it?” I asked with my teeth nearly clenched. “Safari,” Kurt whispered. I didn’t say anything. But Kurt must have noticed that I was more relaxed. “Dazed” as he described it to me later. Probably a little stupider looking than usual, too. “What do you think?” he asked. I honestly didn’t know what to think. My mind was a blank because I just didn’t expect it. The name seemed to come out of nowhere. It sounded more foreign at that moment than its actual origin. “It doesn’t suck,” I finally offered.

Pockets must have been bigger in the nineties

One of Apple’s first forays into the arena that we think of today as ‘mobile’ computing was the Newton MessagePad. As a pocketable, hand-sized device that was meant to be a a personal organizer, the MessagePad ended up being a long-winded failure for Apple, but it did plant some seeds for what would eventually become Apple’s mobile empire, including the iPhone and iPad.