Recent Changes
Sunday, 26 August 2012
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:
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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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