Just exactly what does "Cape Macintosh" mean? We don't get asked this all that often, but it's a reasonable question. When this web site was started back in 1995, it was just a simple one page collection of links. At first, it was just "Ken Paul's Home Page", not a particularly imaginative label, but it was adequate for the time. After a year or two, when the site had grown into a fairly elaborate internet launch pad for various interests of mine, it occured to me that it should have a unique name of its own. Initially, I thought of resurrecting the naming convention from the string of BBS systems that I had operated in the 80s and early 90s, where the BBS would be referred to as a "SpacePort", as a sort of evolutionary vision of the major airport of the city in which I was living at the time. For example, while I was in Milwaukee from 1989-1991, the BBS was named "General Mitchell Interplanetary SpacePort", or "Mitchell SpacePort" for short. That idea didn't really scale very well to the worldwide scope of the internet's World Wide Web. Naming a web site after a particular city's airport would tend to minimize the site's scope and narrow its focus unnecessarily. At the time in 1997, I had recently acquired my Apple Macintosh Performa 6360 computer and was enjoying it enormously. Meanwhile, Apple Computer itself was in the deepest throes of its difficulties, before Steve Jobs returned to the company at Macworld Boston, and there was serious concern among Macintosh fans whether the company and platform would survive. So it seemed a natural connection between the idea of a future place of departure to the planets and stars and the desire to promote and evangelize the Macintosh platform at a time when it and Apple were in serious trouble. Since the current point of embarkation to space is "Cape Canaveral", that and "Macintosh" were fused together to form "Cape Macintosh", a point of departure to the worlds of space, flight, and Macintosh computing to be found out on the World Wide Web. Since then, Apple has recovered fabulously, the web has positively exploded. I'm back in Milwaukee now, and have at times toyed with the idea of resurrecting the "Mitchell SpacePort" identity to tie the modern web site to the legacy of the BBS of a decade ago... Given the length of time that the site has carried this identity, though, I believe we'll keep it as it is now, even if the critical need to evangelize and promote the Macintosh has long since passed. Now aren't you sorry you asked? -- Ken

1990 BBS Flyer: Outer | Inner | Printable PDF