Recent Changes

Oops! I forgot to properly sunset the various Macs capable of running OS X Lion but not OS X Mountain Lion. Thanks to Joshua Long for pointing it out !

Tuesday, 21 August 2012

I added the Apple TV, iPad (Retina), new MacBook Airs (11-inch, 13-inch), new MacBook Pros (13-inch, 15-inch, Retina), (ahem) newish Mac Pros (Single CPU, Dual CPU), and a couple of missing iMac education-only models. Made a few minor under-the-hood improvements. This may be the only update until early 2013, though I'll try to be timely adding the new iPhone and whatever else gets announced in September.

Tuesday, 3 January 2012

Welcome to the new apple-history! I've been slowly building the new UI over the past year, making slow but steady progress toward what you now see here. The frames-based site was nearly nine years old, and long overdue for a major rework, and I finally had time to finish it up during the holidays. I hope you love (or can at least tolerate) the new site! Here are some highlights of the new design:

1. Complete re-skin! My goal was a clean, simple site that didn't feel completely foreign. The core layout of each page should still look familiar. I've made an attempt to test this on as many browsers as I can, but there will inevitability be some kinks to iron out. Please be patient!
2. No more frames! I struggled for a long time with how to make every page of the site easily accessible from every other page, and for a long time frames was the best answer I had. After years of experimentation, I think I've found a reasonable solution in the new navigation column you see to your left. It should "remember" its state from screen to screen, and default to a reasonable state when pages are loaded from links or bookmarks. It uses very simple javascript and css, and should degrade nicely to a simple bulleted list for simple browsers. Removing frames has the added benefit of making bookmarking much easier.
3. Short URLs! As you click around the site, you'll notice that the URLs are much shorter. The old-style URLs should all still work fine, but will redirect to the new shorter ones, which should get picked up by the search engines over the next few weeks.
4. Tweet/+1 buttons on ever page! I added tweet buttons to the old site a few months ago, but I think the integration is a little cleaner now. There's also a follow button up top so you can get a tweet whenever I manage to update the site.
5. Model Comparison improvements! The comparison tables are a little better integrated with the rest of the site visually. The pull-down menu is still there, but has been augmented to also behave as an auto-complete search field. I find this makes comparing models pretty easy.

I've also added the iPhone 4S, the late '11 MacBook Pros, and fixed a few small specs errata. I believe I've worked out all of the major bugs in the new site, but there's still a lot to do, which I hope to get to over the course of the next year. The standard caveat still applies, though: I work a busy, full time job, and updates to the site may still be several months removed from one another. Thanks for visiting!

Saturday, 24 September 2011

Holy Moly! I could list all the models I'm adding, but it's basically 2010 and 2011. My newish-job at Twitter keeps me pretty busy, but I've been hacking away as time allows, and am finally up to date, with a number of small corrections as well. Thanks to all the folks who have emailed to check in and make sure I'm still here. I intend to keep the site up, running, and mostly current for the forceable future, though I'll probably continue to be a few months behind most of the time.

I've also been working on a larger structural update to the site, which didn't make the cut for this release, but I hope to get out by the end of the year (along with whatever new machines get released in the interim). I've added a follow button to the site navigation for the @apple_history Twitter account, from which I will tweet when ever I make up an update in the future.

Wednesday, 9 June 2010

Added the new MacBook and MacBook Pro models, added the iPhone 4. Fixed a few typos.

Monday, 8 February 2010

fixed a typo and the price list for the iMac (Late 2009), and added the Mac mini (Late 2009), which I had mostly added already.

Saturday, 6 February 2010

Happy (one month after) New Year! Added the Late 2009 models and the iPad. Made more smallish, not all that apparent under-the-hood changes.

Tuesday, 29 September 2009

Within hours of launching the comparison feature I managed to break it in attempt to fix bookmarking (which had been broken for comparison pages). Both work now. Thanks Matthias!

Sunday, 27 September 2009

Boy oh boy, it's been a while, hasn't it? Nearly a year! Thanks/Sorry to all those who wrote in to ask if I was dead, and even more thanks to those of you who didn't! I'm not dead, I haven't forgotten about or given up on the site, and I do intend to bring it up to date and improve it over time.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way: the site has been updated with all the 2009 models, and has had some major under-the-hood renovations to increase stability, scalability, and to aid in future feature enhancements.

As proof that all that pretty much invisible under-the-hood work was worth something, I've added a new feature, which allows you to compare up to four models side by side. Every model page now has a pull-down menu listing all other models, and a "compare" button. Once you get past the initial annoyance at the list being so darn long, it's easy as pie! You can add a model to the comparison with the same pull-down menu, and you can remove a model by clicking "REMOVE." I intend, at some point, to come up with something better than a 340-item pull down menu, but I had to get the update out before 2010.

In addition to yet another round of corrections, I've also updated a bunch of the images for older models, thanks to the very generous folks at Old Computers (a really great collection of 70's and 80's computers) and Todo Apple Blog. I figure We've got a few weeks before the site goes out of date again, so enjoy!

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