Macinography 16: How The Aaron Extension Saved The World

The Icon Garden

If there’s one thing users love, it’s customizing their computers. Extensions were the cause of, and solution to, all of Classic Mac OS’ problems. The humble INIT made your Mac more powerful, or just more attractive. Ironically, the system that tried to kill the extension, Copland, inspired some of the most popular add-ons—especially ones that mimicked its new interface. Was Jeff Goldblum really running the Aaron extension on his PowerBook in Independence day? Listen to learn how the shareware community, and the Aaron extension, changed the Mac.

Sources

• Inits - MacTech* Patching Traps for INITs
• Macworld May 1987
• Macworld October 1987
• MacAddict 001
• An Interview with Greg Landweber, Teknidermy
• MyMac - Interview with Greg Landweber
• Newsgroups: Aaaron
• Newsgroups: Copland WDEF
• Newsgroups: Copland Preview
• Newsgroups - Copland instead of Sleep
• Newsgroups - Independence Day and System 8
• Wired Magazine: The Interface Hackers

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Chapters

00:00:00 - Opening 00:00:37 - INIT to Win It 00:13:47 - A Concerto for CDEV 00:31:52 - It's a Mac System... I KNOW This! 00:44:28 - Through The Kaleidoscope Glass 00:51:59 - Outtro and Credits

**Music Credits

Astronaut In A Submarine by | e s c p | https://escp-music.bandcamp.com Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Echoes by LiQWYD | https://www.liqwydmusic.com Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

Lucid Dreaming by | e s c p | https://escp-music.bandcamp.com Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/