The Desktop Critic - How to Become a Millionare Overnight (1996)

The Desktop Critic - How to Become a Millionare Overnight (1996)

Author: Derek March 9, 2025 Duration: 13:09

Eight best-selling Mac products that don’t exist–yet.

Original text by David Pogue, Macworld April 1996.

More on the history of DiskDoubler.

John V. Holder’s TakeABreak has recently been uncovered from the depths of archive.org.

A hybrid of the imaginary Concatenator Pro and PocketBoot might be Startup Doubler, which gloms together all your extensions (internally, not on the filesystem) to accelerate startup. Apple sort of tried to make extensions management easier by including Ricardo Batista’s Extensions Manager with System 7.5 and later.

I’ve lost track of the number of Uninstaller-type software that’s been produced for the Mac since this article was written, not that I would ever touch any of them.

MacBreakZ is an awful lot like the imaginary Carpal Diem.

From ~2010-2014, I always thought of NexTag as a real-world PriceDex. It’s a shame it disappeared. CamelCamelCamel fills the void for those who haven’t yet separated themselves from Amazon.

Nobody ever went so far as to produce an INIT magazine but Symbionts will give you more technical insight into your System Folder. My all-time favourite feature: a file-by-file breakdown of how much memory is allocated by each INIT and cdev.

Things I don’t miss about the old days: holding my breath while capturing analog video, and waiting for machines with mechanical HDDs to boot. The PocketBoot would nearly useless today anyhow–not because of SSDs, but because Apple is actively striving to make it impossible to boot from external media. Thanks, Tim Cook! Super useful, good job. All because SECURITY. …except in the UK and everywhere else, shortly. Mmmkay, how about you let us boot from external devices again while you’re at it? Better yet, throw out the current version of Mac OS, fork Snow Leopard, and start things over from there, kthxbai

Scott Joplin “Maple Leaf Rag” clip courtesy of ConcertWare.

PPG Wave 2.3 demo courtesy of RetroSound.

More about CANYON.MID, composer George Stone, and how his work ended up shipping with most copies of Windows from 1991-1996. Composed on a Mac running Passport Designs’ Master Tracks Pro.

Live performance of CANYON.MID…?

The canyon.mid Simulator and hard rock cover (pun not intended).


Derek hosts Mac Folklore Radio, a podcast that serves as a warm, nostalgic conversation about the machines that defined personal computing for a generation. This isn't a dry technical history, but rather a collection of stories, memories, and shared experiences centered on the Macintosh ecosystem from its early beige-box days through the colorful iMac era and beyond. Each episode feels like digging through a box of old software manuals and rediscovering the community, the quirks, and the sheer sense of possibility those computers inspired. You'll hear tales of first setups, beloved and baffling peripherals, the games that consumed hours, and the software that felt like magic. It's crafted specifically for those who lived through it-the users, tinkerers, and enthusiasts who remember the hum of a CRT and the distinct scent of a warm motherboard. Tune in for a dose of genuine, fond reminiscence that functions as comfort food for the Apple-centric soul, preserving the personal side of tech history one story at a time. This podcast is a love letter to the culture built around these machines, celebrating the folklore that official manuals never recorded.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Mac Folklore Radio
Podcast Episodes
What Steve Jobs Thinks of Your Industry (1996) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 8:27
Original text by Steve Hayman. Steve Jobs demos WebObjects at Microsoft PDC 1996. Xserve (with free WebObjects server license) introduction from WWDC 2002. WebObjects FedEx and Chrysler demo clips from OpenStep Day 1995,…
The Quix Fix (1995) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 22:46
Original text by Charles Piller, Macworld October 1995. A lot more about Quix Daydream, the Macintosh environment for NeXT hardware: YouTube: booting into Daydream YouTube: a more detailed look at Daydream a brief NeXTWO…
The Forgotten Mac OS Licensee (1991) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:41
Original text by Dan Littman, Tom Moran, and Charles Piller. Apologies for my rough voice in this one. It’s been a difficult year. “Apple and IBM will work together on architecture-independent multimedia products and lic…
Guy Kawasaki - Who Should Apple's Next CEO Be? (1994) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 7:04
Original text by Guy Kawasaki, Macworld, November 1994. Who should be the next CEO of Apple? Acquire NeXT and let it be Steve Jobs, obviously. This was intended as satire but became a case of “truth is stranger than fict…
Bill Atkinson (1951-2025) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 44:28
Original text from The Complete HyperCard Handbook (Expanded 2nd Edition with HyperCard 1.2 supplement!!!) Open HyperCard Stacks with just 512K RAM via HyperDA. If copying HyperCard was such an obvious idea, where did al…
MFR Housekeeping, Spring 2026 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:49
Order David Pogue’s “Apple: The First 50 Years”. Watch the livestreamed Apple 50th event at the Computer History Museum.
KON and BAL's Puzzle Page II (1992, 1993) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:53
Original text by Konstantin Othmer and Bruce Leak for Apple’s develop! magazine, December 1992, March 1993, and June 1993. Apple’s MicroBug documentation: Technote TN1136. Running MacsBug on an alternate monitor: “Using…
Frank Casanova Interview - Maclopedia (1996) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 15:19
Original text from Maclopedia. While I wasn’t looking, Frank Casanova parted ways with Apple in 2024. Whoops. John Buck’s book on Apple’s Advanced Technology Group, Inventing the Future, is worth your while. John is also…
Steve Hayman - Great Idea (2025) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 6:32
Original text by Steve Hayman. NeXT Mail clips from the NeXT launch event in Tokyo and the NeXTSTEP Release 3.0 demo VHS tape.
Jecel on the Unitron 512 Macintosh Clone (1998) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 18:32
Original text by Jecel Mattos de Assumpçao Jr, 1998. Rainer Brockerhoff, who also participated in the Unitron 512 project, provides additional background at Low End Mac. More about Brazil’s reserved market policy, a.k.a.…