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A Tour of Microsoft's Mac Lab (2006)

115 points7 hoursdavidweiss.blogspot.com
hedgehog4 hours ago

If I recall correctly this was ground level of building 115, now renamed Studio G. Someone from Mac BU cruising the halls on a Razor scooter while wearing a propellor beanie once gave me a peek in that lab.

donatj5 hours ago

It hurts my heart so badly that when you read a post of such vintage the outward facing links are almost certainly all broken.

We've lost so much.

xandrius4 hours ago

Don't be sad, here it is in all its glory: https://web.archive.org/web/20250109120355/http://davidweiss...

And make sure to consider donating to the Internet Archive if this made your heart slightly less achy today :)

Archonical32 minutes ago

The OP was referring to outbound URLs. Those are still broken.

LorenDB5 hours ago

And that's why archive.org exists.

foobarbecue4 hours ago

Yep, but it's missing a lot (feels like about half missing) and it's a fragile single point of failure that's constantly under threat (political, legal, economic, cyberattack).

BobbyTables22 hours ago

Wondered about this one too.

Even the Library of Alexandria was destroyed at some point…

DarkSource43 minutes ago

I really feel for whoever had to test all those printers

FirmwareBurner5 hours ago

*and printer lab

iwontberude2 hours ago

lol they made a reference to Sanford and Son (“the big one”)

nickswalker55 minutes ago

The author is likely referring to the potential for a Cascadia megaquake: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big...

hidd5 hours ago

(2006)

BobbyTables22 hours ago

Don’t get me wrong, love the writeup… Ancient history now but perhaps less so in 2006.

But if I took pictures of my employers’ lab and posted on my personal blog, they might not be thrilled… And if I were to seek permission, they’d want it on the company website instead…

zerkten2 hours ago

Blogging on personal blogs was somewhat condoned back then. There was a period when MS was really encouraging personal blogs and then they pulled back from this to focus on blogs hosted on their platform.

Channel 9 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_9_(Microsoft)) was taking off and they were doing video all around their campus. It was a real look behind the curtain and probably an element of the foundation for their adoption of open source.

sugarpimpdorsey2 hours ago

Like that time someone gave a tour of Twitter HQ on TikTok and it inadvertently exposed that they and their coworkers basically did nothing all day but drink cappuccinos and eat free company food.

You could tell these guys were genuinely thrilled they got free sugary drinks in 2006. That was considered a serious perk back then.

graublau2 hours ago

what harm was caused?