constructive nonconformist

Bray's Blunder - "For Apple, Mass. move adds up to two firsts"

Apple’s recent acquisition, Quattro Wireless, is based in Waltham, Massachusetts. Hiawatha Bray for the Boston Globe writes in For Apple, Mass. move adds up to two firsts:

In two firsts for computer giant Apple Inc., the company is establishing a presence in Massachusetts and going into the advertising business.

Bray should have stopped at noting that Apple was entering the advertising business.

Leaving aside the weird exclusion of the ten Massachusetts Apple Stores, Quattro is not the first non-retail Apple presence or even the first Apple acquisition in the commonwealth. In 1989 Apple acquired Coral Software, a Cambridge based developer of Lisp development environments. Coral became Apple Cambridge. Apple Cambridge developed the Dylan programming language. The Wikipedia has an article just on the history of Dylan which includes the closing of Apple Cambridge in 1996.

40 Years Ago Today - Remembering Apollo 11

Boston.com: Remembering Apollo 11 - The Big Picture

Evacuation Day

Today is Evacuation Day in Suffolk County, Massachusetts. Evacuation Day commemorates the withdrawal of British forces from the city of Boston during the American Revolution.

General Washington had laid siege to Boston but the British were well supplied by sea. Under cover of darkness on the night of March 4, 1776 American forces seized and fortified Dorchester Heights with fifty-nine cannon. The artillery’s commanding position eventually convinced General Howe, the British commander, to abandon the city. The British sailed to Nova Scotia and American troops entered the city on March 17, 1776.

Dorchester Heights
A Brief History of Fort Ticonderoga

The following link shows a period map. In the lower left quadrant of the map is a peninsular labeled “Dorchester Neck”. This is where General Washington and Colonel Knox placed their canon.

Mapping Boston | Map 13

Happy Evacuation Day. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.