PODCAST · technology
Simple Beep
by Ed Cormany and Brian Sutorius
A podcast looking back at the history of Apple and the Mac community. Hosted by Ed Cormany and Brian Sutorius.
Episodes
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e90 – The iPod at 20
We're celebrating another major milestone in Apple history: the 20th anniversary of the announcement of the iPod. We cover its incredibly rapid development, its worldwide popularity, and the fact that we still carry widescreen iPods with touch controls today.
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e89 – Mac OS X at 20
We're back with a special episode to mark the 20th anniversary of Mac OS X. We remember what it was like to enter the lickable world of Aqua, leave behind our Classic apps, and grow with macOS over two decades.
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e88 – The iPad at 10
In our final regular episode, we celebrate a great milestone: the 10th anniversary of the introduction of the iPad.
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e87 – Desktop Publishing
This episode we cover the desktop publishing revolution, the Apple-led trifecta that kicked it off in the late '80s, and how it's evolved over three decades. For a holiday bonus, Ed talks about how he used a Mac to design and lay out his family's Christmas cards in the '90s. And finally, we wrap…
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e86 – General Magic
A team of ex-Apple engineers in the early 90s made a product that flopped worse than the Newton but might be the reason we have iPhones today. We look at the little-known history of General Magic and the newly released documentary about the company.
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e85 – Apple Kremlinology
Apple hardly ever gives away information about upcoming products…unless you believe that there are secret clues in hidden places. We look at what Apple may (or may not) have signaled in event invitations and product codenames over the years.
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e84 – Apple.com
Apple's online presence has evolved significantly since the days of the early web. From rainbow imagemaps to WebObjects to epic scrolljacking, we tour the technology and content of Apple dot com.
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e83 – Mac Mods
Brian made a summer project of putting a Mac Mini in a Macintosh Classic and it got us thinking about all kinds of mods people have done with old Apple hardware. Besides the "Classic Mini", we cover Macquariums, unexpected iLamps, weight-bearing cheese graters, and more.
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e82 – Pro
The announcement of the 2019 Mac Pro got us thinking about what Apple has called "Pro" in the past. That includes incredibly expensive hard drives, printers with RAM slots, an OS patch release, and even its employees!
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e81 – The NeXT Transition
Mac OS as we know it today can be traced to one major event: Apple's decision to scrap internal attempts at creating a new operating system and to acquire NeXT instead. We look at how influential NeXTSTEP was in the creation of Mac OS X and just how much of it still lives on in Apple's...
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e80 – Fictional Mac Draft
As Apple turns its attention to TV and movies, so do we! In this episode we pick our favorite appearances by Macs and other Apple products on the big and small screens.
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e79 – Bungie
This episode is all about the venerable game developer Bungie and how they got their start on the Classic Mac. We cover all their titles, including a trio of Marathons, terrible code names, and the coolest game Steve Jobs had ever seen.
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e78 – Apple Audio
Apple has been building computers — and standalone products — with sound capabilities for over 40 years. We discuss 1-bit audio, incredible hardware hacks, usable and unusable old speakers, a CD drive with a horrible logo, and even the HomePod.
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e77 - Word Processors
This episode, we trace the evolution of Mac word processing from MacWrite to the present. Along the way we find a secret moose, complain about Microsoft, and learn that some apps have true staying power.
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e76 – System Alert Sounds
For our 4th anniversary episode, we return to our roots of discussing classic Mac sound design. We cover the tragic backstory of the Wild Eep, the immortal Sosumi, the poorly named "ChuToy", and much more.
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e75 – MacAddict
This episode we revisit MacAddict magazine and its freakin' awesome coverage of the Apple world in the late '90s.
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Myst 25th Anniversary on Twitch
We'll be doing our first live event on Twitch, on Monday September 24 at 8:30 PM Eastern time. We'll be streaming Myst on its 25th birthday!
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e74 – The Rumor Mill
With an iPhone event right around the corner, the rumor mill is operating at full capacity. We examine how this important part of the Apple world got to where it is today, from wild speculations, to Apple lawsuits, to outright hoaxes.
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e73 – The iMac at 20
We celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of the original iMac, tracing how the revolutionary Bondi gumdrop evolved into flagship desktop Mac of today.
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e72 – The App Store at 10
We celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the App Store launching on July 10, 2008. After a brief history of the store itself, we pick some of our favorite, most influential early iOS apps.
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e71 – Apple Typography
Great typography has been part of Apple products since the original Macintosh. From 1-bit wonders to Thinking Different in Garamond to SF Mono, we examine decades of Apple's fonts on screen and in print.
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e70 – AirPort
Apple has officially discontinued its AirPort line of wireless products after nearly 20 years(!) We examine how our Wi-Fi has evolved from the original iBook until today.
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e69 – Apple's Education Initiatives
Apple's March 2018 event highlighted how they've been working in the education space for over 40 years. We pick some of our favorite products and programs they've developed for schools, students, and teachers.
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e68 – Haxies
The transition from Classic Mac OS to OS X was difficult for many users who felt like OS X removed their favorite features. Enter a little company named Unsanity, who solved those problems and created new ones.
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e67 – Wish Lists
To start 2018 off right, we run through our wish lists of what we'd like to see from Apple — in years past. What will System 7 bring? What will the iPod Phone look like? And will Apple ever make a TV set?
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e66 – Hardware Failures and Recalls
We love Apple products, but not all of them have been perfect. We remember some of the worst, including exploding batteries, corrupt data, crumbling plastics, and more.
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e65 – X
On iPhone X release day, we cover Apple's many uses — and pronunciations — of the Roman numeral.
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e64 – Architecture changes
It's our 64th episode and big 64-bit changes are coming to iOS as we record, so there's no better time discuss Apple's architecture changes over the years (and to begin talking about "classic iOS apps").
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e63 – Mysterium and More Emoji
Brian went to Mysterium, the annual Myst fan convention, and brings back stories of Cyan history, their latest game, and a huge fan project. And in a mega follow up segment, we cover many more emoji easter eggs.
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e62 – Emoji Easter Eggs
Inspired by World Emoji Day, we take a look at various bits of history that Apple has hidden in its emoji artwork.
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e61 – The iPhone at 10
The iPhone was released to the world 10 years ago today. We celebrate a decade of the device that changed the world.
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e60 – Everything Old is New Again
The announcements made at WWDC 2017 reminded us of a lot of classic Mac technologies, in name, design, and function.
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e59 – Apple Museums
Inspired by the grand reveal of the new MacPaw museum and some new early Apple exhibits in Seattle, we take a tour of the world's greatest Apple collections on display.
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e58 – Classic Mac Games
The Internet Archive recently made a library of classic Mac software available via in-browser emulation. So we played a bunch of Mac games from the late '80s and early '90s — some that we remembered fondly, some that we'd never played, and some that destroyed us.
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e57 – Colorful Apple Products
Inspired by the release of the PRODUCT (RED) iPhone, we trace case colors throughout Apple's history: candy-color Macs, lots and lots of iPods, and some expensive rarities.
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e56 – Behind the Show
We go behind the scenes of Simple Beep: how we create the show, a comprehensive emulation how-to, and our favorite classic Mac resources.
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e55 – Crazy Apple Concepts
This episode covers a bunch of Apple products that barely or never happened, including a magic tablet, IPTV vaporware, and some wild green machines from Macworld.
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e54 – The Newton Community
Jake Bordens and Thomas Brand join us to share stories of the Newton community, past and present(!)
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e53 – The Newton
This episode, we look at the Newton platform — Apple's first attempt at (almost) handheld computing. Recorded on the 10th anniversary of the iPhone announcement, we notice a lot of parallels between the development of Newton devices and the iOS devices we carry today.
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e52 – Stocking stuffers
It's our Christmas special episode! We've made our own gift lists of classic Apple products that could fit in a stocking — not all of which have turned to coal over time.
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e51 – Designed by Apple in California
Ed is joined by Stephen Hackett to talk about the how and what (rather than the why) of Apple chronicling its own history in the new photo book Designed by Apple in California, as well as Stephen’s new ebook Aqua and Bondi.
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e50 – Legacy I/O
We cover the wild, wonderful, and sometimes half-baked history of getting data in and out of Macs. It turns out we've been citizens of Dongle Town for a long time already.
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e49 – Town Hall
After what is surely-for-real-this-time the last event at Apple's Town Hall event space on the Infinite Loop campus, we cover the history of events big and small that have happened in Apple's most intimate presentation setting.
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e48 – The Apple Community at Release Notes
In this episode, we share five conversations we had at Release Notes about the history of the Mac, iOS, and finding fellow Apple nerds.
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Special: Mac draft
At Release Notes, we joined Stephen Hackett and Christina Warren to pick our personal favorite Macs…and we managed to keep it mostly on the rails.
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e47 – Avara
Avara, the minimalist 3D mech shooter from Ambrosia Software, just turned 20 years old. We celebrate the occasion and are joined by Scarlet Swordfish, who ran a 20th anniversary event that was livestreamed on Twitch.
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e46 – One More Thing
Apple announced a lot of things this past week, but they didn't announce One More Thing. This episode is a comprehensive rundown of Steve Jobs' biggest presentation trope — the good, the bad, and the ugly of specially featured Apple announcements.
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e45 – Mice
From solid steel balls to unusable hockey pucks to sleek pieces of sushi, we cover all of Apple's mouse designs. And we couldn't stop there, so we threw in some trackpads and third-party pointers for good measure.
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e44 – Portability
Apple has been striving to make their products thinner, lighter, and easier to carry around for well over 30 years. We discuss some landmark products in Apple's quest for portability.
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e43 – Help
This episode we discuss the history of how Apple has helped you learn to use the Mac. Along the way we encounter Jay, Cleo, undersea creatures, and the horror of HTML frames.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
A podcast looking back at the history of Apple and the Mac community. Hosted by Ed Cormany and Brian Sutorius.
HOSTED BY
Ed Cormany and Brian Sutorius
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Simple Beep have?
Simple Beep currently has 93 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Simple Beep about?
A podcast looking back at the history of Apple and the Mac community. Hosted by Ed Cormany and Brian Sutorius.
How often does Simple Beep release new episodes?
Simple Beep has 93 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Simple Beep?
You can listen to Simple Beep on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Simple Beep?
Simple Beep is created and hosted by Ed Cormany and Brian Sutorius.
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