skippy blair special concept
My post about Apple’s “SillyBalls” example program had a loose end. The mysterious phrase “Skippy Blair special concept” appears in the comments of SillyBalls.c, but what did it mean?
So I was thrilled to receive an email last week from Jeremy Penner that explains everything! Jeremy did some amazing detective work to uncover the true identity of “Skippy Blair.” The email is so good that I’m posting it here in its entirety. Enjoy!
Just a note to say I really enjoyed your recent blog post on Apple’s Sillyballs example program! I had never heard of it before, it’s exactly the sort of whimsical computing history I think is important to highlight and pass on.
You mention that the Pascal version was “lost”, but for something that was clearly this important, I was sure there was no way that could be true. Probably not hosted on developer.apple.com, but surely not lost. And indeed, a quick search on discmaster.textfiles.com for “sillyballs.p” pulls up many, many copies. This one, the official v1.1 release, is from Apple’s “ETO Development Tools” CD-ROM, which contains several versions of MPW: https://discmaster.textfiles.com/view/10926/ETO%20Development%20Tools%202.iso/Tools%20-%20Objects/Macintosh%20Programmer%E2%80%99s%20Workshop/MPW%203.0/MPW/Examples/PExamples/SillyBalls.p
A version 1.0 appears elsewhere on the disc; the only difference appears to be some tweaks to the build instructions: https://discmaster.textfiles.com/view/10926/ETO%20Development%20Tools%202.iso/Essentials/Developer%20Essentials%20Nov%2090/DTS%20Sample%20Code/Macintosh%20Sample%20Code/SC.003.SillyBalls/SillyBalls.p
However! Note the three different dates in this file. Release date in the copyright header: “8/88” / “August 1, 1988” Under “Program SillyBalls”: “Version 1.0: 6/2/88” and finally, of course: “This program was written by Bo3b Johnson, 1/88.”
Is there a pre-1.0 version of the program from January?
Spoiler: YES THERE IS. Discmaster comes through with the original source code: https://discmaster.textfiles.com/view/13264/Gigarom%20Macintosh%20Archives%20(Quantum%20Leap)(CDRM1080320)(1993).iso/FILES/DEM/S-Z/SillyBalls/SillyBalls/SillyBalls.p/SillyBalls.p
Further, there’s an accompanying readme, identifying Bo3b’s role at Apple as “Macintosh Developer Technical Support”: https://discmaster.textfiles.com/view/13264/Gigarom%20Macintosh%20Archives%20(Quantum%20Leap)(CDRM1080320)(1993).iso/FILES/DEM/S-Z/SillyBalls/SillyBalls/About%20SillyBalls%E2%80%A6
Note the comment:
The inverted Bob text was a RIck Blair special concept, kept for obvious aesthetic reasons.
The mysterious Skippy Blair has (had?) another name!
A content search for “Rick Blair”, narrowed to “Programming” CD-ROMs, produces hundreds of results. A huge number of them are text resources from random Mac apps, containing credits for the MacApp team (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacApp). The canonical source of those credits appears to be here: https://discmaster.textfiles.com/view/10926/ETO%20Development%20Tools%202.iso/Tools%20-%20Objects/MacApp/MacApp%20CD%20Release/MacApp%202.0.1%20(Many%20Libraries)/Libraries/Defaults.r
I was tickled that these three names appear, consecutively, in this order, under “Technical support past and present…”:
- Rick Blair
- Clarus™ the DogCow™ (Moof™!)
- Bo3b Johnson
It makes complete sense that Sillyballs would come from the same internal culture that also produced Clarus the DogCow.
Rick Blair is the author of quite a few Macintosh tech notes, from 1986 to 1988: https://discmaster.textfiles.com/view/10927/ETO%20Development%20Tools%204.iso/Essentials/MPW%20411/TechNotesHelp
There is one reference in that 1.6mb of text to “Skippy White” (Technote #189, “Version Territory”), but none to Skippy Blair.
Rick Blair is also credited as a technical reviewer in the inaugural issue of Develop magazine, January 1990. I’m certain it’s the same guy - half the names on that list show up as Technote authors! https://discmaster.textfiles.com/view/12652/www.mactech.com.tar/www.mactech.com/articles/develop/issue_01/editorial.html
While on the subject of names, Bo3b is credited in his first couple of technotes as “Bryan ‘Bo3b’ Johnson”, but soon switches to just “Bo3b Johnson”, and in one particularly amusing instance, is referred to as “Bo3bdar the everpresent” (technote #139, “Macintosh Plus ROM Versions”), signing off some kind of free-verse poem about SCSI bugfixes with the phrase “Bo3b Bo3b a boola, a wiff Ba2m Bo1om.”
Searching for “Skippy Blair” in programming CD-ROMs finds a bunch of copies and forks of SillyBalls, as you would expect, and not much else. One exception stands out. There are two versions of another Macintosh example program called “FracApp”.
v1 is credited to Bo3b Johnson, and contains the following comment:
With thanks to Skippy Blair for the discussions of color QuickDraw and the Palette Manager.
v2 is credited to Keith Rollin and Bo3b Johnson, and the readme contains this comment:
With thanks… to Bo3b Johnson for writing FracApp 1.0, and who had the following thanks in FracApp 1.0:
With thanks to Rick (nee Skippy) Blair for the discussions of color QuickDraw and the Palette Manager.
Thus, the only uncorrected references to “Skippy Blair” appear in example programs written by Bo3b Johnson and published as part of the August 1988 MPW 3.0 release. Rick Blair is consistently credited everywhere else as Rick Blair, both before and after that date. So, my best guess is that “Skippy Blair” is an inside joke that Bo3b inserted into this particular product release for his own amusement.
Oooops, I’ve accidentally spent hours going down this rabbit hole! I’m going to get some lunch. I hope you enjoyed this unprompted descent into madness from a stranger on the internet.
Cheers,
Jeremy