25th

Many of the folks from the original Macintosh team had a gathering a few days ago to celebrate the Macintosh's 25th anniversary. Guy Kawasaki posted the pics and writeup here. Congratulations guys. I consider the Macintosh an astounding achievement for simply enduring. Twenty five years is an epoch in the tech industry; it's just amazing how long it's lasted. Now arguably the original team didn't have much to do with that legacy after the first few generations. I'm sure much of their work was passed on to others, and by now not a shred of the original code remains. But when you look at the philosophy and design of the Mac software today, it's incredible how much they just got right from the start.

Apart from all that, this gathering has a bit of a personal connection for me. Of course, I would have loved to have been a part of this team, but I missed the opportunity due to being born in the wrong place and about a half a generation too late, among other factors. However, in the years since I have been lucky enough to have worked with some of these folks. Alain Rossman was the Chairman of my most recent former employer Vudu, Scott Knaster did some tech writing for Danger during my time there, and while I was at WebTV, so too was Larry Kenyon doing his thing on the firmware side. Also, it's cool to see them celebrating at Alain's palatial house in Palo Alto, since that is where we had the Vudu launch party a few years ago. The Vudu seems unlikely to last as long as the Mac, but there's a lot of my code still running on the Vudu boxes out there, so I'll be holding out hope for an invite to Alain's place in twenty years or so.