Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Engineers camped outside begging for jobs
The Mac Pioneers
Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld were central to the design and operating system of the original Macintosh, work that gave the world the drop-down menu, the hyperlink, and the double-click of a mouse.
Joanna Hoffman, who had been in charge of marketing the Mac, and Susan Kare, who had done its graphics, joined them. Marc Porat, a charismatic leader, held the group together.
Eager Recruits
Behind them came young software and hardware engineers who admired the Mac team and were desperate to make a dent in the universe. They called every day to beg for a job, and General Magic took its pick of the best of the best.
How did Susan Kare draw Mac icons?
Kare designed the original Macintosh icons and typefaces pixel by pixel on grid paper, because the screen was a grid of black and white dots. Her work included the Chicago typeface and the Happy Mac icon that greeted users at startup. The icons were 32 by 32 pixels, small enough that every dot mattered.
Where did the Mac's interface ideas come from?
Many came from Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, where researchers built the Alto in 1973 with windows, icons, and a mouse. Steve Jobs and other Apple staff visited the center in 1979 and saw the system demonstrated. Apple's Lisa, released in 1983, used such an interface and sold for $9,995. The Macintosh followed in January 1984 for $2,495.
How did HyperCard link information?
Bill Atkinson created HyperCard, which Apple released in 1987. Information lived on virtual cards grouped into stacks, and a button on one card could jump to any other card. Users with no programming background could build stacks of their own. Apple bundled it free with new Macintosh computers.
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