Everyone in the Apple community is eager to see Phil Schiller deliver tomorrow's keynote address at Macworld Expo. While we're uncertain as to what he'll do, we know that he won't be leaping onto an inflatable mattress while holding a laptop. Because he's already done that.

At Macworld Expo '99 in New York City, Phil demonstrated a Tangerine iBook's wifi capabilities and accelerometer by falling from a significant height onto a small mattress below, thus ushering him into "The Demo Hall of Fame." It might not have been the Mother of All Demos, but still pretty cool. Way to take one for the team, Phil!

Click below to watch the video.

[Thanks to the folks at thinkingbricks for pointing this out]

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak seems to be a lot more visible lately.

First, he's been making bad web ads for SCOTTEVEST. Next, we received pictures of Woz whizzing from the deck of his Segway. He was fined US$700 for driving his Prius at 104 miles per hour (167 kilometers per hour) on I-5. At last, we've received news that he's actually using that geek cred of his for the good of mankind.

Yes, Stephen Gary Wozniak has just joined the Board of Advisors of Axiotron, makers of the Modbook (that's the mod that turns a stock MacBook into a Tablet Mac).

Andreas Haas, CEO of Axiotron, was quoted late last week as saying "We're thrilled to bring Steve onto our Board of Advisors. His deep knowledge and experience are an invaluable resource for Axiotron. Steve's forward-thinking and non-conformist approach, his incredibly creative engineering designs and his emphasis on the human aspects of technology have always been an inspiration to me."

We'll be visiting Axiotron and reporting on the newly updated Modbook at Macworld Expo 2009, as well as interviewing some well-known artists and designers who use the Modbook as a creative tool. Stay tuned January 5th through 9th for TUAW's extensive coverage of the Expo.

A trio of nostalgic finds covers everything from a visual history of Apple patents to the ads and catalogs that marketed these products to consumers.

Andrew McConnell received an old mail-order computer catalog from 1980, with the first 12 pages featuring Apple products. For the low, low price of $974.95USD, you could purchase a 16K Regular Apple II that weighed less than 12 pounds! Or, if you're really crazy with your money, you could spend $1123.95USD on a 48K Plus system.

The really neat thing about browsing through this catalog is seeing all the accessories available for the system at that time. A $34.95 device called Bright Pen was touted as an alternative to the keyboard or game paddle input, and seemed to be an ancestor of the Wacom tablet. Further in, another accessory called Light Pen appears to be a more expensive Wacom predecessor. SuperTalker added voiceover capabilities to the Mac and SpeechLab allowed for dictation. There was a music synthesizer, the ability to add a real-time clock for $200, basic software, and more.

RedLightRunner has compiled a page of some of the best-known Apple ads from the past couple of decades. Its earliest offering is the infamous 1984 ad and there are several early 80's and late 90's offerings there. My favorite is the ad from 1999 for the Airport Base Station. The device sails across the screen like a UFO, complete with creepy B-movie music that is sure to give some people nightmares. It's definitely not a comprehensive collection of ads - it's missing all the current ones and others from the 80's such as this ad from 1986. But, it is a great start at building a collection.

Over on the Technologizer blog, Harry McCracken has posted a visual history spanning 31 years of Apple patent filings - featuring everything from Woz's drawings of the original Apple II in April 1977 all the way to the "multi-functional hand-held device" from December 2007 which turns out to be the iPhone. It's not all the patents filed by Apple, but it's a great summary of some of the devices Apple has come up with. You can find more articles about various Apple patents here at TUAW as well.

Many thanks to all those who submitted tips!

It was 40 years ago this week that Douglas Engelbart gave the first public demonstration of what would become the modern computer mouse, affectionately called "The mother of all demos." With that in mind, we've decided to take a look at the evolution of the Apple Mouse.

The current version is the Mighty Mouse, of course. With its scroll wheel and touch sensitive clicking surfaces, it's loved by some and despised by others. I'll admit that a wired Mighty Mouse is my main mouse, which will undoubtedly make some of you gasp. Still, we can't fully appreciate the Mighty Mouse without acknowledging its predecessors.

When you think of old Apple mice, you probably think of the ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) variety. But even those were preceded by the DB-9 connector mice that shipped with the Apple Lisa. In fact, those were the first commercially available mice. They were clunky, square-ish affairs that featured a single button -- a design decision that Apple has refused to abandon all these years (yes, the Mighty Mouse isn't a single-button mouse, but certainly looks it from an overhead perspective).

The boxy shape was kept largely intact until 1993, when Apple released the Apple Desktop Bus Mouse II. I can remember using one of these with a Performa and being amazed by it. "it's not square! It fits in my hand! This is incredible!"

Also "incredible" was the amount of time I spent removing the ball and scraping the gunk off of the rollers.

The design stayed pretty much the same until the "hockey puck" was released with the iMac in 1998. Apple's first USB mouse, the hockey puck divided the Mac community. Some declared it the best thing since copy and paste. Others, like me, considered it an abomination.

Just two years later, Apple got the message, retired the hockey puck and introduced the Pro Mouse. The lozenge-shaped device was the immediate predecessor to the Mighty Mouse we all know and love (or despise) today.

There are Apple mouse fanboys, and those who'd never touch one. In fact, even your favorite TUAW bloggers are divided. Below is a gallery of our favorite and current mice, plus a few vintage examples. Finally, we threw in a few alternate input devices as well.

Welcome to Macintosh, a documentary film by Rob Baca and Josh Rizzo that covers the history and community behind the Mac phenomenon, is available for pre-order on DVD.

The DVD costs $19.84. Cute.

Billed as "the first documentary of its kind," the film explores the early years at Apple through interviews with observers and former employees of the company, such as Guy Kawasaki, Andy Hertzfeld, Ron Wayne, John Moltz, and Leander Kahney.

The DVD has three additional hours of footage beyond the 83-minute movie. Quantities, according to the official site, are limited, and orders will ship mid-December.

Thanks Tony W.!

[Via Cult of Mac.]

It's hard to believe that 7 years have passed since Steve took the stage and introduced our friend, the iPod. Over the past few years, the iPod has gone from new guy on the block to "funnest" guy on the block. While the basic design hasn't changed much (for the Classic model at least), the features definitely have. When the iPod launched in 2001, it was basically a FireWire-capable hard drive and MP3 player -- nothing more, nothing less.

The first iPod sold for $399 for a 5GB version (which was Mac-only). Apple later came out with a 10GB version of the same iPod for $499. Here's some fun facts about the first iPod via Mactracker:

• Codename: Dulcimer
• Dimensions: 4.02" H x 2.43" W x 0.78" D
• Weight: 0.41 lbs.
• iPod OS: version 1.0, upgradeable to 1.5
• Introduced: October 2001
• Terminated: April 2003
• Hard Drive: 4200 RPM in capacities of 5/10/20 GB

To celebrate the iPod's birthday, we have created a gallery to show the many changes over the years. If you want to brush-up on your iPod trivia, check out Wikipedia's iPod page. If you have any happy (or unhappy) memories of the iPod, be sure to reminisce in the comments.

It's almost time for the annual tech event we all know and love. Not Macworld Expo, the World Wide Newton Conference! Started in 2004, the WWNC is a gathering of the most vocal and prolific members of the Newton Community. Projects that have come out of the WWNC include Einstein, a Newton OS emulator for Linux-based PDAs, and Newton WaveLAN drivers.

For now, the website has launched and a call for participants has been issued. If you're interested in attending or presenting, you can contact the folks in charge at the official website. WWNC '09 will take place from July 31st - August 2nd in Vancouver, BC, Canada. If you attend, please let us know. Have fun!

TUAW reader Tyler noticed that Google is celebrating its 10th anniversary by digging up its searchable archives from 2001. He took a peek at some Apple history and shared the find with us. The archives dip into the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which I decided to use to dig up a series of archived Apple.com sites. You can surf all the way back to 1996 ... a land where Apple was still Apple Computers, the rainbow apple was still in effect, and web pages were all stuck to the left side of the screen.

According to Wikipedia, the Apple.com domain was registered in 1987 (and hacked in '97, as a marginally NSFW prank). Unfortunately, the Internet Archives only go back to '96, so that's what we're working with (if you, for whatever reason, have an image of the Apple website in the late '80s, please do make my day and send it in). Also according to Wikipedia, the 1987 registration made Apple.com the 64th oldest .com domain. These wiki-facts may or may not appear on this semester's final exam.

In addition to being a fun trip through web design history, it's a good refresher on the Apple timeline. Revel in the release of the iPod, iTunes 3, and the blazing-fast 700 Mhz iBook. In the process, you'll gain a full appreciation for the current refresh of the Apple site. If you want to save some surfing time, check out the gallery of some gems from my dig. Of course, intrepid Apple explorers can venture into the cave and see for themselves.

Thanks, Tyler!

UK newspaper Telegraph recently interviewed Steve Wozniak about the iPod, iPhone and his future wishes for Apple. He discusses, among other things, the gradual end of the iPod's reign.

"The iPod has sort of lived a long life at number one," he says. "Things like, that if you look back to transistor radios and Walkmans, they kind of die out after a while." I've wondered about this myself. How many time can Apple create an iPod model that's adequately unilke previous versions to create incentive to buy? Jonathan Ive is good, but he's not Gandalf. For example, the new nanos are cool, but not cool enough to cause me to abandon my "fat nano."

Towards the end of the interview, Steve suggests that Apple's next product could be an "iWatch," but we're considering that one of his infamous practical jokes.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

If you downloaded the freebie episode of the week from iTunes, then chances are you saw some vintage Apple hardware. That's because episode 1 of Chuck's second season features one of the original Macs in it. It's kinda funny that they're supposed to be building a new system to take over Chuck's job, but they use some really old hardware (at least it's a Mac). Still, this is consistent with last year's premiere, which featured a Mac Plus at the core of the CIA system.

We won't spoil the episode ending, but it involves the Mac blowing up (just sayin'). This is, however, an awesome start to another season of Chuck.

It is ironic that most of the computers in the show are Macs ... despite the fact that it airs on NBC. Get this free episode while you still can! It's definitely worth a watch.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Fun fact: September 16 is the day in 1985 that Steve Jobs left Apple, and also the same day in 1997 that he returned to Apple as then-iCEO.

Jobs first left after CEO John Sculley ousted him from Apple's board of directors after both had tried to be "co-CEOs."

Jobs also filed papers that same day in 1985 founding NeXT, the company that he intended to use as a weapon against Apple. Instead, Apple wound up acquiring NeXT for $400 million in 1996. Parts of the NeXT operating system, NeXTStep, eventually became the underpinnings of Mac OS X.

[Via Wired.]

While everyone waits for Apple to implement copy and paste on the iPhone (or hacks their own), Newton users have been enjoying it for 15 years.

Here's a great video of the just how Apple pulled it off on a previous touch device. Clicking and dragging selects the text, and moving it to the side of the screen sends it to the clipboard, represented by a shortcut. You can then move multiple copies out of the clipboard and into your applications with a drag of that shortcut.

It seems like a variation of this could work for the iPhone -- drag text to an edge or corner as a clipboard. Of course, there's a lot less text manipulation on the iPhone than the Newton, which was a PDA.

Either way, I still love my Newton. Sure, people make fun of me for carrying around a PDA the size of a baby dolphin, but I don't care. At least I have copy and paste.

Alfred DiBlasi is at it again. A few months ago, he impressed us with the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh he found on ebay. What's impressive about that? It was still factory sealed. Never opened, never booted, never used. That's the kind of find that makes my beige, vintage heart flutter.

This time around, he's playing with a vintage Lisa in an exhaustive demonstration video. Before booting it up, he takes it apart and discusses the innards, piece by piece.

Next is the money shot as the computer boots up, and Alfred moves through the UI. It's a pretty cool demonstration of a nice piece of Apple history.

Thanks for sharing, Alfred. What's next?

Reader and Flickr user ismh has posted a series of screenshots of Mac OS 10.0 to our Flickr pool. It was just seven years ago -- March of 2001 -- that Mac OS 10.0 was released to the waiting masses. I distinctly remember driving to my local authorized retailer to buy a copy, and then quickly rushing home to install it on my 333mhz G3 iMac.

What I apparently fogot was how different the UI was. Remember the pinstripes? How about Sherlock? And don't miss the list of supported hardware, including the iBook, the PowerBook G3, The Power Macintosh G3 and the good 'ol Power Mac G4.

I also remember slower-than-molasses performance and aqua lozenge buttons everywhere. Oh, Mac OS X. How you've changed.

Yes, it's time once again to say "Happy Birthday" to our old friend, iMac. Hard to believe the iMac has been around for 10 years today. Apple transitioned the "consumer device," as Steve called it at its introduction, into something more of an icon of computer design. Above is a commercial for the iMac G3 which shipped in Lime, Grape, Blueberry, Tangerine, and Strawberry and featured the song "She's a Rainbow" by the Rolling Stones.

The specs for the original iMac were nothing to laugh about then, but it's certainly laughable now. The G3 iMac sported a 15" CRT monitor (resolution of 1024x768), 4 GB hard drive, 233 MHz PPC G3 (750), 32 MB of RAM (expandable up to 128, whoa!), 56 Kbps modem, 24x tray-loading CD-ROM drive, Mac OS 8.1 (or 8.5 on later models). This monster weighed in at 40 pounds!

The original design followed the iMac until 2003, when Apple retired the design for the "goose-neck" iMac G4 (although as Evan reminds us in the comments, the 'gumdrop' form factor lived on in the education-market model eMac). In 2004, Apple created the iconic design of the iMac G5, which is the same major design style they use for the iMac today.

On an iPhone/iPod touch? Click here to see the video.