Hardware on Melabit

50 years with Apple

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0000

– The first image of an Apple II computer ever published in Bit, the most important Italian magazine dedicated to personal computers between the late 1970s and early 1980s (Bit no. 5, November–December 1979).

Fifty years ago, I was a spot-ridden high school student who wouldn’t have known about Apple until the early ’80s, when Bit —- the first Italian magazine dedicated to personal computers -— started featuring the first advertising pages dedicated to the Apple II computer.

– First advertising page dedicated to an “Apple Computer” (Bit no. 6, February 1980, back cover).

In those years, most of the coverage of the Apple II came from Bit’s main competitor, MCmicrocomputer, which, from its very first issue in September 1981, dedicated significant space to the California company.

In 1981 an Apple II with 48 KB of RAM, an 11-inch monitor and a floppy disk drive cost 5 million lire, more than a small FIAT city car, just to give you an idea. An amount of money that was out of reach for a university student like me, who could afford at most a Commodore 64 bought after winning on Totocalcio.¹

– The complete price list for Apple products from September 1981 (taken from MC Microcomputer no. 1, September 1981, page 84).

However, there were quite a few Apple IIs in the Physics Department, because they could be used to build the first automatic measurement instruments or to digitize images.² You just had to wander through the various labs to find one, and if you were lucky you could also use it when it was free.

One of the first Macintosh 128K arrived soon. I only managed to use it briefly, as it was stolen after a couple of days.

Shortly later, at my first conference, I noticed that Ken Gray, one of the most prominent speakers, had used a Macintosh computer to prepare both the article and the slides. Among a hundred participants, all with texts written on typewriters and images glued on, his work stood out and was immediately noticeable. The Mac sparked immediate sympathy between us two, so much so that he asked me to move to Chicago to work with him. But I had already accepted going to the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Germany, and preferred to keep my word.

It was precisely at PTB that the turning point came in terms of Apple products. Besides sophisticated instrumentation and one or two older Macs, my measurement laboratory housed a Macintosh II, the first expandable Mac (at last!), a true workstation that could rival the much pricier Sun and DEC models. It had plenty of expansion options, which was great! I don’t remember if the Macintosh II was connected to a system for acquiring and processing images for a microscope, which was truly state-of-the-art at the time (once back in Italy, I spent years trying to create a pale imitation of it).

But I remember very well that it had an analogue-to-digital conversion card installed, which could be used to digitize measurements on our samples. This card arrived together with the first version of LabVIEW, the first visual programming language, which for that reason ran exclusively on the Macintosh. For various reasons we used the card little, but LabVIEW immediately became the favorite pastime of mine and a Danish colleague (and friend). In the evenings, when no one was around, we would spend hours using LabVIEW for the most absurd things, the further they were from the original purposes of the language, the better.

The Macintoshes in the lab were set up to use German, and System 6 at that time didn’t support multiple users and languages. But despite my German being very poor (very poor, actually) I managed to use the Mac without too many problems because I remembered the position of the menu items that I had seen in manuals or magazines. Compared to the proprietary Unix system localized in German that I was forced to use occasionally, it was truly another world!³

Back home, my Apple winter began. That lasted until the dawn of the new millennium. Apple computers had become incompatible with everything: keyboards and mice for PCs didn’t work on Macs and vice versa. The same applied to RAM or video cards. And also to more sophisticated stuff that I used every day, like data and image acquisition cards or instrument control cards. Even transferring a file via floppy from a PC to a Mac tested the patience (and stubbornness) of a saint.

Then came Mac OS X.

In the early ’90s I had discovered Unix, mostly because it was the only way to manage to do some rather complicated numerical calculations.⁴ So when Linux arrived, I immediately jumped on the bandwagon and started using it everywhere.

Technically Linux was awesome, but the graphical aspect was, shall we say, somewhat limited. Therefore, when I saw an iBook G3 “Snow” with Jaguar in a shop display and read in Macworld that the new operating system was based on BSD Unix, I knew I had to get one.

The same happened with the iMac G4: I saw it, fell in love with it and bought it immediately. And for weeks colleagues came to the office, admired the monitor and started looking for the computer… 😂.

Since then, and it’s been almost twenty-five years, I’ve always used Apple products: Macs, iPods, iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches, I’m surely forgetting something. After all, they work (almost) always, and even the most technology-resistant family members can use them without any problems. They’re elegant and, although they cost somewhat more than competitors’ products, they also last much longer. It wouldn’t make sense to change, at least for now.

Sure, Apple has recently made some questionable decisions, such as macOS Tahoe and Liquid Glass, the imminent discontinuation of Rosetta, the introduction of paid versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote (not to mention Freeform), the growing restrictions on third-party applications, and the Siri debacle. Not to forget the restructuring of System Settings, which has made them difficult to use, even for someone like me who needs them almost every day.

However, until Apple decides to prevent the installation of third-party applications also on macOS, as happens (not always) rightly on iOS and iPadOS, it will be difficult to leave the mother ship. After all, just as in a marriage with its ups and downs, fifty years spent almost always hand in hand are not easily forgotten.

So many, many, many happy returns to Apple for the next fifty years!

– Fonte: Ray Hennessy su Unsplash.

If you compare the price of the base Apple II reported in this image with that of the advertisement on Bit, you’ll notice that in less than two years the price of the base Apple II had increased by a whole million lire (roughly 1,000-1,500 euros today) due to the rampant inflation of those years. ↩︎
It was the era of transition from human digitizers, who spent their lives bent over huge images that they digitized by hand, to semi-automatic digitization systems, which in the simplest cases were almost always Apple IIs. ↩︎
All shell commands were localized in German, so the standard whoami command, that shows the name of the logged-in user, became wobinich ↩︎
PCs were too slow. As if that wasn’t enough, and despite the threatening signs I left around, some colleagues persisted in turning off the PC on which I was running simulations overnight. They didn’t want to “waste electricity”, they said 😱. ↩︎

Steve Wozniak, 75 years of happiness

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 06:00:00 +0000

I’ve always had great respect for Steve Wozniak, the tubby nerd who, in the eyes of those in the industry, has always been considered one step behind (if not more) his friend and Apple Computer co-founder, Steve Jobs.

Without Steve Jobs’ commercial genius, Apple would never have become the giant it is today. Instead, it would have remained just another company selling personal computers of various shapes and functions in the 1980s, alongside the likes of Tandy, Sinclair, Commodore, Osborne, Atari, Compaq and many others.

But without Steve Wozniak’s engineering genius, the Apple I and Apple II would never have existed, so I’d say it’s a draw.

– Source: TechCrunch_.

Steve Wozniak’s disinterest in money is legendary. Had it been up to him, he would have given away the Apple I project to anyone who asked. After leaving Apple in the 1980s, he sold or gave away most of his shares in the company, shares that would be worth a staggering amount today.

But, as he himself wrote on the day of his 75th birthday,

I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my birth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now speak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much I have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a couple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out.

He is right. Once you’re worth 10 million dollars (though it should actually be 100 million) your life doesn’t change whether you reach 20, 50, 100 or even 1,000 million. It’s better – much better – to have fun, enjoy life, and be happy.

If more people shared Woz’s philosophy, the world would be a much better place.

MDR Dasher vs. Flow 2: fashion or common sense?

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 06:00:00 +0000

It all started with Severance, the cult TV series that almost everyone liked.

To promote the final episode of the second season, Apple launched a webpage showcasing the Lumon Terminal Pro, the computer used by Lumon Industries employees – a replica of a vintage Data General terminal (more images available here and here). This sparked a race among fans to own a keyboard inspired by that terminal.

– Source: Apple.

– Source: Data General Dasher 6053 Terminal on Tech Tangents.

Someone built it themselves. Someone else started a company promising to produce the keyboard, and launched a Kickstarter campaign which will go live on 19 August. The first (lucky?) backers will be able to get the so-called MDR Dasher Keyboard at the discounted price of $599, which will rise to $699 for those who pre-order it after the Kickstarter launch. Those who buy it later through official channels will have to shell out $899, virtually the price of an iPhone 16!

I could be among those lucky ones, but I’ll gladly pass. I already use a keyboard that satisfies me 100%; actually I have two identical ones for my Macs at home and at the office. And I don’t even like the MDR Dasher: it’s too big, too tall, and too uncomfortable for my taste.

Above all, I don’t buy a product just because it’s trendy and looks like something from a TV series. And I definitely wouldn’t buy anything from an unknown company with a fake address, that was created just to capitalise on the current trend.

Instead, a keyboard that I would buy without hesitation is the Flow 2, a mechanical keyboard that has raised almost a million dollars on Kickstarter, one hundred times the initial request. This is not only because it is much more affordable – and very convenient overall for a mechanical keyboard – but because behind it is a reputable company that has been producing quality mechanical keyboards for years.

The Flow 2, in particular, is crafted from a single block of aluminium and features a refined, minimalist design, reminiscent of the Macs we all know and love. Even though it is a mechanical keyboard, you can choose a silent version, which is perfect for those who use the computer at night, or who simply don’t want to disturb family members or colleagues with the excruciating typewriter-like clicking that can be produced by a standard mechanical keyboard.

As the title suggests, on the one hand there’s fashion, hype and shameless marketing; on the other, common sense and a somewhat boring tranquillity. The choice is yours.

Last but not least, Happy Ferragosto to everyone! Unplug, switch off your devices, and enjoy a day of relaxation and good company.

From Intel to Apple Silicon

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 06:00:00 +0000

– Source: Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash.

The transition is complete: since a few days, all the computers I use for work are running on Apple Silicon ARM processors. This includes a Mac Studio M2 Ultra, which I’ve already talked about extensively and which sits on my office desk; a Mac Mini M1 with 16 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD – previously neglected on a shelf for reasons I won’t go into here – now in my home office; and a very basic MacBook Air M1 (just 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD, half the specs of my wife’s) for light use and when I’m on the go.

Oh, and let’s not forget: since last summer, I’ve also been using an 11" iPad Pro M1, which is an absolute gem and deserves a post of its own.

The Mac Studio and Mini are running Sonoma, which I’m not thrilled about, but it’s here to stay. Meanwhile, the Air is still on Monterey. I’ll update it to Sonoma soon to ensure consistency across all my machines.

Needless to say, compared to the Intel models I’ve used up until now, the performance is on another level. The benchmarks already say a lot, but the daily experience speaks volumes more: programs that open instantly, the fluidity of even the most resource-hungry applications, Python or R scripts that used to take minutes now finishing almost before I can blink.

Another clear indication of the speed of these machines is the time it takes to install (as usual) the operating system and all the applications I need from scratch (and there are quite a few).

With the Mini, I completed everything in a single day (around 100 applications to download, register, and configure one by one). I spent a second day on finer details, such as transferring files between Macs, tweaking system settings (a rather complicated process that, thankfully, most users can skip), and installing essential command-line tools like homebrew and conda for my work.

Rosetta installed itself automatically the first time I opened an Intel-only application, and so far, all the apps I’ve installed run without issue – even the more niche ones that require specialized libraries. After all, it’s been over three years since the introduction of the first M1 Macs, and the early challenges should have been resolved long ago.

In short, the transition from Intel to Apple Silicon has been smooth – easier than I initially expected and perhaps even simpler than the previous switch from PowerPC to Intel. And in any case, much easier than crossing a busy street in Rome in the 1960s.

P.S. What about my old Macs? As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I have a new project in mind to repurpose them effectively. The initial tests look very promising, but I’d rather be sure about certain details before writing about it. Stay tuned!

Mac Studio!

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 06:00:00 +0000

And here it is, the Mac Studio. I had to go through a long bureaucratic process to get it, but I finally managed, and now it’s right here in front of me.

The first thing you notice is that the box is heavy, very heavy. The specs state that the Mac Studio is large and weighs about as much as three Mac Minis stacked on top of each other (19.7 x 19.7 x 9.5 cm^3 and 3.6 kg for the Mac Studio versus 19.7 x 19.7 x 3.6 cm^3 and 1.2 kg for the Mac Mini). I’ve never held three Mac Minis together, but the box gives a strong impression of solidity, which is definitely a positive for such an expensive device.

The Mac Studio is indeed not cheap. The configuration I chose is almost top-of-the-line — M2 Ultra processor with a 24-core CPU, 60-core GPU, and 32-core Neural Engine, 128 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD. The total cost was just under €7,000 — the price of two Vision Pros.

But quality comes at a price, and for an equivalent workstation from HP, Dell, or Lenovo, you’d have to shell out €1,000 to €4,000 more.¹ In this case, Apple is even competitive.

Unboxing

I’m not a fan of unboxing rituals, but the Mac Studio deserves this initiation ceremony. The box is a tall, sturdy cardboard parallelepiped, more developed in height than width.

Opening the box is incredibly easy: just pull the tab and fold one side of the box open, reminiscent of the opening mechanism of the Mac Pro G4.

Seeing the Mac Studio lying on its side is a bit unsettling — it looks like it could fall at any moment. But the side flaps are much sturdier than they appear, and the Mac Studio is far too large to slip out of their grip.

At this point, you need to lay the box on its side, spread the flaps in the direction of the arrows, remove the protective paper wrapping, and finally hold the Mac Studio in your hands.²

It really does look like a Mac Mini stretched in height, and now it seems appropriately weighted for its size. The additional weight is entirely due to the box, which is clearly designed to provide the best protection for the valuable item inside.

Even the power cable is a piece of engineering — thick yet flexible, with a fabric sheath that reminds me of those on old irons. This one, however, has a much tighter weave and is unquestionably more elegant. Too bad about the plug — I would have preferred a Schuko, but so be it.

Connecting the power cable and the USB-C cable for the monitor is a breeze. Even pairing my wireless keyboard and mouse (Logitech, both excellent) was simple: I just removed the USB dongle from my usual Mac and plugged it into one of the Mac Studio’s ports — no need to configure anything or fuss with Bluetooth.

Finding the power button was a bit trickier. It’s on the bottom-left corner, perfectly flush with the body of the device, and practically imperceptible to touch. But once pressed, badaboom! In a few seconds, the macOS welcome screen appears. A quick system configuration (since I’ll be reinstalling anyway), and the Sonoma desktop appears.

Reinstalling macOS

Call me obsessive, but I always reinstall macOS from scratch on any new Mac I get my hands on. Maybe it’s a habit from the past, a fixation, or just a desire for control, but I’ve never used a Mac without personally installing macOS.

On Apple Silicon Macs, you need to hold down the power button until the Options icon (a gear symbol) appears, usually alongside one or more icons representing the Mac’s disks. Clicking on Options and confirming loads the macOS Recovery utility.

Once Recovery loads, I first initialize the system disk with Disk Utility, giving it a more meaningful name than the default Macintosh HD (usually the same name I use on the network for easy identification). Then, I reinstall macOS using the straightforward guided procedure.

As always, the estimated installation time is wildly inaccurate: the three-plus hours initially shown turn out to be just about 40 minutes — not short, but not excessive for installing a complex OS like macOS.

It’s also curious that after the mandatory reboot, the screen resolution drops significantly, only to return to normal once the macOS welcome screen appears. I’ve never seen this happen with other macOS versions, but it’s worth noting that most of my (re)installations are done on MacBooks, which have more consistent hardware than desktop systems.

After carefully completing the initial macOS setup, I was back on the Sonoma desktop within minutes. Now, I could finally start experiencing how the Mac Studio performs.

How Does the Mac Studio Perform?

The Mac Studio runs beautifully (but was there any doubt?). Everything is smooth, without the slightest hiccup. While this is true for all Apple Silicon Macs, it’s immediately clear that the Studio is a cut above — perhaps even two.

Application installation is instantaneous: double-click the .dmg, drag the icon to the Applications folder, and… done. Even with larger apps like GNU Emacs, GIMP, or Miniconda, the wait is just two or three seconds.

The only app that put up some resistance was QGIS, whose installation took two and a half minutes on the Mac Studio. But that’s understandable for a 3 GB behemoth containing thousands of small files that need to be copied one by one.

I didn’t bother with Geekbench or similar benchmarks to measure the Mac Studio’s performance. The web is already flooded with such data, and my results would only be redundant. Instead, I’m more interested in how the Mac Studio handles demanding applications — I have some early impressions but will wait to share more.

Sonoma, however, is a drag. It’s clear from the start that this operating system is still full of bugs and inconsistencies (which I’ll showcase in the next post), and it doesn’t do justice to what the Mac Studio can really achieve.

Apple has accustomed us to a tick-tock approach for its operating systems (similar to the one Intel followed for years with its processors): one year, they release an innovative but buggy and slow OS, followed by a version focusing almost exclusively on bug fixes and optimizations. This happened with Leopard and Snow Leopard, then with Lion and Mountain Lion. Later, the pattern continued with El Capitan, practically perfect after the horrendous Mavericks and Yosemite, and Mojave, following two mediocre releases like Sierra and High Sierra. Most recently, Monterey was excellent after the disaster of Catalina. Sonoma, theoretically the bug-fix version of Ventura, is a disappointment. Hopefully, Apple will fix things at the next WWDC in June — and big time.

Conclusion

I did all the unboxing and setup of the Mac Studio at home, so I could work in peace away from the usual chaos at the institute. But after a week, the Mac Studio moved to my office, taking pride of place on my desk amid monitors, keyboards, mice, cables, and various gadgets.

And my old High Sierra computer? That’s destined for a new project, and I’m really curious to see what comes of it. Stay tuned!

It’s worth noting that the aforementioned workstations are, at least theoretically, more expandable than the Mac Studio. However, expandability isn’t a critical factor for my specific needs. ↩︎
There’s not a single piece of plastic in the box. It may not be much from an environmental perspective, but it shows that it can be done. ↩︎

Jony Ive quits Apple: a tragedy or a blessing?

Wed, 10 Jul 2019 06:00:00 +0000

– Source: The London Standard.

Jonathan “Jony” Ive, after thirty years, is leaving Apple to start his own company, LoveFrom, which will have Apple as its first client. The news has filled tech (and non-tech) headlines worldwide for days (as you can read here, here, and here). Almost everyone, after overcoming the surprise of the announcement, expressed hope that the collaboration between the English knight¹ and the California-based company could continue just as before.

I know this might be an unpopular opinion, but I think that would be a mistake. Jony Ive was overdoing it.

Jony Ive is (or was?) a great designer, and over the course of his long career, he created outstanding products. I’m thinking of the various iMacs, from the G3 that marked Apple’s revival to the lamp-like G4 and the all-in-one G5. I’m thinking of the iPod, the iPhone, and iOS 7. But, like many star designers, at some point, he went overboard, embracing an anorexic aesthetic that prioritized design over functionality. Everything became too thin and minimalist, with zero accessibility and repairability.

This gave us the ultra-thin MacBook Pro, aesthetically perfect but technically incomprehensible – a laptop that forces you to carry around a plethora of adapters just to connect a basic USB stick. Or the horrendous butterfly keyboard, whose keys feel like tapping on glass and can be rendered unusable by a speck of dust, forcing you to replace the entire top case (and sometimes the whole laptop!) for a single malfunctioning key.

Then there are the AirPods, which, when their battery dies (two years if you’re lucky), have to be thrown away because even Apple can’t replace the battery without destroying them. Or the iMacs, Mac Minis, and MacBook Airs with soldered RAM that can’t be upgraded. Whatever configuration you choose at purchase is what you’re stuck with forever.²

And let’s not forget the most spectacular flop of all: the Mac Pro, now good only as a (very expensive) trash can. A professional computer so minimal that, to truly use it, you need a bunch of external accessories, all precariously connected via cables. A professional computer that’s not upgradeable (it’s still stuck in 2013), a true contradiction for anyone wanting to preserve the hefty investment it requires. A professional computer that overheats, overheats a hell of a lot!, making it unsuitable for the heavy workloads it’s supposed to handle. Is this the fault of engineers who can’t do thermal calculations or a designer who cares little about the actual function of the product?

Is it just a coincidence that the latest Mac Mini once again offers easily upgradable RAM? Or that the new Mac Pro has returned to its old design — a large, perforated metal case for better heat dissipation, easy to open, with plenty of space for adding drives, RAM, and interface cards? Or that the MacBook Pro keyboard is being redesigned for the umpteenth time in three years?

Perhaps Tim Cook and Apple’s board concluded that Jony Ive had gone too far and decided to finally get rid of him, despite the narrative of a mutual agreement.

It was about time. As Apple users, we deserve better.

– Source: The London Standard.

Jony Ive was knighted in 2012. ↩︎
A technical absurdity: the amount of RAM needed to keep a computer running optimally increases over time with advancements in operating systems and applications. Upgrading RAM is one of the most effective ways to significantly extend the life of any computer. ↩︎