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Steve Jobs was almost Clippy and other things learned from prototype Twiggy Macs

Steve Sez

Just months before the original Mac debuted 30 years ago, it was deeply troubled by an in-house 5.25″ flimsy floppy-disk drive it relied on called the Twiggy (you know, for it’s flimsiness). This was replaced by a more stable 3-inch Sony drive before shipping, but the Twiggy Macs had more than just a different drive.

Interestingly, the operating system featured a Steve Jobs rendtion of Microsoft’s dreaded, now retired Clippy assistant. The Ashton Kutcher resemblance has never been clearer… er… pixelated.

Check out the full article for other tidbits at Cult of Mac (via Daring Fireball). 

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Comments

  1. Pete Mrsich (@petem222) - 10 years ago

    That would have ruled. Damn!

  2. rlowhit - 10 years ago

    Unless the Job’s icon was animated and constantly made facial expressions then it is nothing like Clippy.

  3. Shaun G - 10 years ago

    How was it dreaded? I had the little dog instead of clippy. I kind of miss that. It made my PC at work feel a little more human.

  4. Sven Mertens - 10 years ago

    From the looks of it, these are just normal requesters that happen to include hints in brackets, While Clippy was something that was just popping up at seemingly random times, guessing what the user was up to and then making half-assed suggestions, about how to achieve this. “Looks like you are trying to write a letter…”

    To the user Clippy was more like the annoying version of Mr. Macintosh: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Mister_Macintosh.txt

    Intrestinly enough: The Mac version of MS Word (even up to the first version for OS X) used to have Clippy replaced with a small 3D mascot that looked like the original macintosh.

  5. TechPeeve (@TechPeeve) - 10 years ago

    The text would’ve been more like: Steve Sez “You suck at computer, why am I talking to you, your work is shit!”

Author

Avatar for Zac Hall Zac Hall

Zac covers Apple news, hosts the 9to5Mac Happy Hour podcast, and created SpaceExplored.com.