Posted August 28th, 2007 @ 08:21pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Remember a long time ago, in the early days of Mac OS X, when people went so far as to hold contests to see what people thought was written on the TextEdit icon?
Well, I guess we will be guessing no longer:
Now everyone will simply wonder: who's Kate?
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Posted 28 Aug 2007 at 8:45pm #
Actually, I think they remade the icon for Leopard, as in the Tiger icon, the text only has seven lines, some of them have different widths, and the pen looks pretty different.
Still, I love the adding of the "Here's to the crazy ones" text. Beautiful detail.
Posted 28 Aug 2007 at 8:57pm #
[quote comment="42942"]Actually, I think they remade the icon for Leopard[/quote]
Yes, they did. Many of the icons were redone for Leopard in higher resolutions. This is one of 'em.
But c'mon, let us have some fun!!! 🙂
Posted 28 Aug 2007 at 9:14pm #
I'd love to hear what the original icon said...if it wasn't just Lorem Ipsum.
Thanks for the heads-up, this is neat.
Posted 28 Aug 2007 at 9:33pm #
So cool.....
THIS is why I love my Mac.
Posted 28 Aug 2007 at 9:36pm #
[...] NSLog… So that’s what it says on the TextEdit [...]
Posted 28 Aug 2007 at 10:26pm #
Didn't they go through this with the text on the RTF icon a few years back as well?
What I'm wondering is who this John Appleseed fellow is. He seems to be everywhere; in their commercials, on their icons... is he Steve's favorite developer or something? Is he their director of art or marketing?
Seriously, though, do you think Apple uses the names of their employees in their commercials, etc? I can't imagine those being people that are just on some marketing dude's contacts list.
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 4:14am #
Arden: The name originally came from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed. It's got "Apple" in it. Also, Apple's customer seed program is called "AppleSeed".
It's basically an Apple version of "John Doe".
Now to make a replacement Vista WordPad icon containing the "Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives." speech...
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 9:02am #
No way. John Appleseed is the real brains behind the operation. Jobs is just a puppet. 😉
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 10:27am #
[...] [via NSLog] [...]
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 10:43am #
I don't think that mechanical pencil would write in such calligraphic script.
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 11:04am #
My Tiger icon is the same as the above one, the Leopard one might have been redone to be resolution independant but it is the same content
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 11:35am #
[...] joined forces to bring us Leopard’s all new TextEdit icon. Head on over to NSLog to read the lovely letter that John Appleseed (who is that guy? I’m getting a John Galt vibe from him) penned to Kate. [...]
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 12:05pm #
Well, that's an easy one: Kate 🙂
/Andreas
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 12:19pm #
[...] did you always wonder 30Aug07 text edit icon blown up in leopard, icon sizes exceed 128! (via this) [...]
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 12:42pm #
"Now everyone will simply wonder: who's Kate?"
Has anyone looked through the sample contacts in the iPhone ads yet?
...Ah! I just answered my own question out of curiosity. In the "create your favorites list" instructional video, one of the contacts in the list is one Kate Bell. She calls at the end of the "All These Years" ad, and based on the "How To" ad, may be a mother (she has sent an email with a picture of "Chloe after a nap" which you can see scroll by before the user opens another message from her), and in fact, you can hear her in a group call in the "Calls" QuickTour video at /iphone/phone.
Now we'll all just be speculating about what kind of relationship she has with ol' Johnny Boy. 😉
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 1:05pm #
Kate is clearly Katie Cotton, Apple's VP of worldwide corporate communications, made famous by Fake Steve...
😛
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 1:19pm #
That pen looks a lot like the one employees get.
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 4:40pm #
Jesper: seriously? That's where it came from? I, like, totally did not know that, man! I'm glad you're here to enlighten me. 🙄 😉
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 4:47pm #
[quote comment="42964"]Jesper: seriously? That's where it came from? I, like, totally did not know that, man! I'm glad you're here to enlighten me. 🙄 :wink:[/quote]
Geez, no need to be so snarky man. Some people haven't heard of Johnny AppleSeed. It's an American folk story for one thing…
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 4:54pm #
I know, I know, but snarky is my middle name. Right between superficial and savant.
I actually figured it out just before I originally posted as I thought about it, but figured I'd post anyway. 😉
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 6:16pm #
[quote comment="42953"]My Tiger icon is the same as the above one, the Leopard one might have been redone to be resolution independant but it is the same content[/quote]
Really, cause mine isn't.
mine has 7 lines. The graphic design is the same, but the content of the letter is different.
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 7:18pm #
Mine isn't like that all, it's purple with a gea... oh. My bad. Sorry, I delete textedit on every mac I work on anyway, so I can't check )-:
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 7:30pm #
A better question yet, what is the significance of the number "12374218.75" on the calculator icon ❓
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 7:34pm #
Strange. They left out the last line...
"They push the human race forward."
Kind of odd, but so cool that they included it at all.
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 8:38pm #
[...] That Answers That | NSLog(); - mmmmm TextEdit in Leopard. You can read the text!!! [...]
Posted 30 Aug 2007 at 10:29am #
Johnny Appleseed didn't start out as a folktale. His real name was John Chapman, and he really did plant apple seeds -- though how many, and to what effect, is open to interpretation.
Posted 30 Aug 2007 at 12:00pm #
Interestingly enough, although there are uses for the gigantor icons in Leopard (Finder's CoverFlow is one), I have it on good authority that resolution independance isn't going to be a user-accessible feature in Leopard.
If you recall, the basic support for resolution independance is in Tiger. If you have the Developer Tools installed, open Quartz Debug, and you can activate a "Scale Factor" window, and resize things.
It seems that Resolution Independance is one of the neat features that keeps getting a little better, but never finished, unfortunately.
Posted 30 Aug 2007 at 1:26pm #
Hmmm..... Perhaps John Chapman could be construed as one of the "crazy ones" in his time, and that's why Apple likes him so much. Plus there's the apple connection.
PS Typing this from iPhone is really slow for some reason. All the animates gifs perhaps? Live preview?
Posted 03 Sep 2007 at 9:17am #
[...] That Answers That [NSLog] [...]
Posted 08 Sep 2007 at 10:43pm #
I know Kate.... I worked with her last year and now she is associated with Apple. She's a cool chick. She's also referenced in the iPhone commercial with her e-mail on the display. Expect more things from Kate in the coming months!
Posted 27 Oct 2007 at 2:45pm #
[...] a cute joke of the “look just how much detail you can put in a 512×512 icon” sort (the poem in the new TextEdit icon easily beats it on that count, though). But to leave it in the final build, and in such a [...]
Posted 22 Jul 2008 at 10:55am #
😈
Now what is on the RTF icon? It begins with "A boy once lived..." as far as I can see.
Posted 08 Apr 2009 at 5:19pm #
@ Middle Name
Good question.
I was wondering about that too,
and when I searched for it with google,
I found this page!
By the way,
I run Tiger, and my TextEdit icon has seven Lines too,
I think our friend John is writing to someone else,
and he's using a different greeting at the end.
Posted 11 Apr 2009 at 6:20pm #
this is inaccurate. if you zoom into the leopard text-edit icon, you can CLEARLY see that the signature is three lines. short - longer - short.
Posted 12 Apr 2009 at 8:05am #
[quote comment="53814"]this is inaccurate. if you zoom into the leopard text-edit icon, you can CLEARLY see that the signature is three lines.[/quote]
Perhaps in your country. In the U.S. (on my computers) it very clearly says what's seen above.
Posted 12 Apr 2009 at 8:23am #
On my iMac (Leopard), it shows the text that can be seen on the picture.
But does someone know what it reads on the icon in Tiger?
I think it starts with "dear John", but I'm not sure.
And there's also the RTF icon, with a text about a boy.
Posted 01 May 2009 at 7:22am #
the full quote from Apple:
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
From Apple Computer