Berkeley Macintosh Users Group Explained

The Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, or more commonly "BMUG", was the largest Macintosh User Group. It was founded in September 1984 by a group of UC Berkeley students including Reese Jones[1] and Raines Cohen[2] as a focal-point for the nascent Apple Macintosh user community. With more than 13,000 members, or "BMUGgers" at its peak in 1993, the group was the largest,[3] and generally understood to be the most important,[4] Macintosh users group. A few of the notable members include John "Captain Crunch" Draper, the Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah, notorious murderer Enrique Zambrano,[5] [6] early hacker-chaser Cliff Stoll, Inktomi founder Eric Brewer, and may prominent computing journalists like John Dvorak,[7] Ilene Hoffman, Leo Laporte and Adam Engst. An example of the group's omnipresent blue-floppy-disk lapel pin is held in the Smithsonian Institution's American History collection.[8] BMUG's history and activities were closely linked with the MacWorld Expo meetings, traditionally held in San Francisco each January and Boston each August.

Organization

Day-to-day management of the organization was balanced between the senior full-time staff: business manager Harry Critchfield, technical manager Steve Costa, and support manager Randy Simon.

Business

BMUG's finances and business operations were managed by Harry Critchfield and Alisa Schulman, better known for her role as a DJ at KALX.[9] In 1995 Anne Wrixon replaced Harry Critchfield,[10] and in 1997, Wrixon was replaced by Hal Gibson, who remained until the end.[11]

Technical

One of BMUG's principal operations was collaborative Macintosh repair and maintenance. A benefit of BMUG membership was hardware repair (and often recovery of lost documents from floppy and hard disks). The technical operations were managed by Steve Costa. Electrical engineer Chuck Meyer conducted many of the trickier repairs. Herb Dang was a fixture in BMUG's technical services, and his son Frank continued that tradition into a second generation.[12]

Support

BMUG maintained a Macintosh support call-center, which helped users around the world by answering questions and helping them resolve technical problems with their computers. The support operation was managed by Randy Simon, and staffed by volunteers.[13] While much of the support operation dealt with assisting users whose computers had crashed, a significant portion of it dealt with the specific "vertical market" of desktop publishing and prepress issues, which was then in its infancy and was one of the Macintosh's primary markets. Randy Simon also coordinated the production and publications of BMUG's massive biannual newsletters, sometimes totaling more than a thousand pages per year, initially with the assistance of BMUG volunteers Carolyn Sagami, Zig Zichterman,[14] Robert Lettieri and Bill Woodcock, and later Hans Hansen. A collaboration between BMUG members, Programming SIG chair Greg Dow (now at Adobe) and networking and prepress expert Bill Woodcock (now at Packet Clearing House) resulted in the first example of "database publishing," a 1989 encyclopedia of Macintosh software, for which plates were produced directly from a FileMaker database without intervening processing.[15] [16]

Offices

BMUG was initially located in suite 3B, 2150 Kittredge Street, in downtown Berkeley, directly adjoining the southwest corner of the UC Berkeley campus. This building also housed Farallon Computing until Farallon outgrew the space and moved five blocks south-east to Dwight Way. After six years, BMUG moved to a larger space with street frontage at 2055 Center Street, a block and a half west of campus and directly across from the downtown Berkeley BART station.

Projects

Shareware disk duplication

BMUG's primary revenue-generating activity was the sneakernet distribution of Macintosh shareware software from its comprehensive library on 400k and 800k 3.5" floppy disks.[17] [18] BMUG's shareware disk duplication and distribution program was run by Art Lau and Gerald Raddatz, supplemented by the efforts of many of the other volunteers.

BMUGnet/PhoneNET

One of the early successes for the group was BMUGNet, a variant of Apple's LocalTalk system which used standard telephone wires to connect Macintosh computers together in a local area network.[19] Wiring plans were initially published in the Fall 1985 BMUG Newsletter, but members could purchase adapters assembled by the group. Co-founder Reese Jones branched the production off as the commercial business Farallon Computing in 1986, renaming the product PhoneNet.[20] The group invented other subsequent low-cost hardware kits as well... the 1991 introduction of the low-cost Mac LC prompted BMUG to begin offering a $12 VGA monitor adapter.[21] MacRecorder, the first audio input device for the Macintosh, was also first released in 1985 as a BMUG kit, before being productized by Farallon and then Macromedia.[22]

Weekly meetings

BMUG was famous for lively meetings, "We are in the business of giving away information" motto, "BMUG Awards", its great MacWorld Expo get-togethers, CD and book publishing, 400+ page biannual "newsletters" akin to the Whole Earth Catalog, and one of the largest shareware collections for Macintosh Public domain software sold to members and customers on floppy disks. These meetings are often cited by tech notables as their introduction to technology.[23]

BMUG hosted an enthusiastic weekly Thursday night meeting with questions and answers, and software demonstrations by vendors, followed at the end by a raffle. Notable speakers included: Steve Jobs, Guy Kawasaki, Ted Nelson, Heidi Roizen, Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, Jean-Louis Gassée, Marc Benioff, Melinda Ann French (Gates) and Bill Gates.

Special Interest Groups

It also held Special Interest Groups (SIGs) on Basic Mac, Troubleshooting, ClarisWorks (integrated word processing, drawing, painting, spreadsheet, database and telecommunications), FileMakerPro relational databases, graphics, video, music, the Internet, programming and mathematics. Branch groups held general meetings in outlying areas, including San Francisco, Cupertino and Tokyo.

Biannual Newsletter

The newsletter was originally edited by volunteers Carolyn Sagami and Zig Zichterman, until Randy Simon was hired as staff, and given the responsibility. The newsletter was published punctually twice each year, and each issue routinely exceeded 300 pages in length.[24]

Bulletin Board System

BMUG's Bulletin board system or "BBS" was managed by Bernard Aboba (then in graduate school at Stanford and UC Berkeley, subsequently at Microsoft) with the assistance of Bill Woodcock. It was an early FidoNet node, and from 1986 through 1993, the home of the FidoNet MacNetAdmin "echo," which spawned the AppleTalk Network Managers Association (which in turn begat the AppleTalk Networking Forum), the inaptly-named A/UX Users Group, and numerous other real-world periodic meet-ups. The BMUG BBS also served as a nexus for the interoperability testing of email gateways between FidoNet, UUCP, SMTP, and a number of proprietary AppleTalk, NetWare, and Internet Protocol electronic mail systems, including CE Software's QuickMail,[25] SoftArc's FirstClass,[26] those from Information Electronics[27] and AppleLink Personal Edition, which went on to become America Online. When the BBS host system in Berkeley was damaged by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Aboba set up a temporary stand-in using a solid-state industrial PLC and multi-line serial controller, which was able to keep up with the heavy call volume by answering, presenting an ASCII banner explaining the situation, and immediately disconnecting. Aboba also authored The BMUG Guide to Bulletin Boards and Beyond.[28] [29] The BBS eventually ran on hardware in Berkeley, Palo Alto, Boston, and Tokyo.

Controversy

Rivalry with the Boston Computer Society

BMUG was certainly the largest Macintosh users group,[30] but the Boston Computer Society was the largest computer users group. BCS-Mac, the Macintosh special interest group of the Boston Computer Society, was the second largest Macintosh users group. A good-humored rivalry obtained between the two groups throughout their mutual existence, but they were ultimately supportive of each other.[31] BMUG's first foray onto BCS-Mac's Boston home turf, at MacWorld Expo on August 11–13 of 1987 was commemorated with a new T-shirt, featuring an inscription "BMUG in Boston" which Bill Woodcock, who designed BMUG's T-shirts, intended to look like graffiti, using a rattle-can to write the original text in black paint on white paper, which was then photographed, scanned, and converted to PostScript in Adobe illustrator, before being silkscreened in red on black shirts. The red-on-black effect, however, was said by startled BCS-Mac members to more resemble dripping blood than spray-paint.

1995-1997 Budget Crisis

By 1995, BMUG had accumulated a debt of $250,000, which forced a two-year period of restructuring and the layoff of some of the staff, but which was weathered successfully.[32] [33]

Conclusion

While BMUG the not-for-profit corporation declared bankruptcy in 2000, its members continue to collaborate and meet.[34] [35] [36] [37] Branch groups of the organisation have continued on their own:

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Strategic News Service - Future in Review 2008 Participants . 2009-01-05 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20081019205532/http://www.futureinreview.com/participants.php?galleryid=3783 . 2008-10-19 .
  2. Web site: 2005 SF Mac Expo (Photo story) - Brian Thomas.
  3. Book: Nakamura . Lisa . Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet . 2002 . Routledge . 190.
  4. Web site: Pang . Alex Soojung-Kim . User Groups and the Macintosh . Making the Macintosh: Technology and Culture in Silicon Valley . Stanford University . 14 July 2000 . The most important Macintosh user group in the area, and arguably within the entire user group movement, was BMUG. Started in 1984 by Berkeley students Reese Jones, Raines Cohen, Tom Chavez, and others, BMUG's members went on to found numerous businesses, most notably the networking companies Farallon and Netopia; develop software and hardware for the Macintosh; write for Macintosh industry magazines; and serve as some of the machine's staunchest advocates..
  5. Web site: Enrique Zambrano . USA Death Row 2019 . 30 November 2019.
  6. News: McCullagh . Declan . Death row inmate's fate turns on the word 'hacker' . 29 November 2021 . clnet . 10 August 2007.
  7. Web site: Dvorak's Inside Track to the Mac . Centre for Computing History . 30 November 2021.
  8. Web site: Advertising Button, Berkeley Macintosh Users Group (BMUG) . National Museum of American History . Smithsonian Institution . 30 November 2021 . This square button, designed to look like a 3½" floppy diskette, has a blue background. At the top, in a yellow rectangle, is a blue image of a clock tower and blue text that reads: 'BMUG Disk / BMUG / 1442A Walnut St. #62 / Berkeley, CA 94709 / (415) 849 9114.' On the reverse is a black card with a metal pin..
  9. Web site: Schulman . Alisa . Set List . . . 29 November 2021.
  10. News: Richtel . Matt . User Group Stands by Its Mac . 30 November 2021 . New York Times . 30 May 1998.
  11. News: Hu . Jim . BMUG plans a comeback . 30 November 2021 . clnet . 7 November 1997.
  12. Web site: Frank Dang Biography . Educause . Educause . 30 November 2021.
  13. News: Breen . Christopher . The Mac at 30: Tales from the Berkeley Mac Users Group . 30 November 2021 . MacWorld . 30 January 2014 . Before the Genius Bar and before Apple's own online forums, when the Mac was young and its users needed help, there were user groups: Part social clubs and part volunteer tech-support staffs, they disseminated tips, troubleshooting advice, news, and arguments about the Mac. They distributed loads of early Mac shareware and became important stops for vendors promoting new Mac products (including one Steve Jobs when he was trying to get NeXT Computer off the ground). And in that early Mac age, no user group was bigger or more important than the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, known to all as BMUG. Founded in 1986 and lasting for 14 contentious years, it at one point reportedly boasted more than 13,000 users, with satellite groups in Boston and Japan..
  14. Web site: Producing a User Group Newsletter . BMUG . 1988.
  15. Book: Dow . Gregory H. . Woodcock . Bill . BMUG Disk Catalog 1989 . 1989 . BMUG, Inc. . Berkeley . 30 November 2021.
  16. News: Rowe . Jonathan . Business Suits, Briefcases Invade Macintosh Mecca . 30 November 2021 . Christian Science Monitor . 25 August 1989 . Consumer groups are trying to fill the void. The Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, BMUG, has 10,000 members, about half in California. Weekly meetings in the Bay Area attract several hundred people. The BMUG booth had an unvarnished hackers' quality that seemed a throwback to Apple's early days. 'We provide technical support to end users that Apple doesn't provide any more,' said Bill Woodcock, a volunteer, who works at Farallon Computing and volunteers two to three hours a day. Dealing with Apple is hard, he says. 'We don't buy thousands of machines every year, and we don't make millions of dollars.'.
  17. News: Potts . Mark . Sharing Shareware's Secrets . 30 November 2021 . Washington Post . 25 October 1993.
  18. News: Hill . Michael . Mac Heads Respond to Article About Buying an Apple . 30 November 2021 . SFGate . 22 January 1996.
  19. Hanss . Ted . The University of Michigan Computing News . 14 July 1986 . 1 . 1 . 15 .
  20. Web site: Recalling the Loma Prieta earthquake and Mac advantages. ZDNet.
  21. News: Quinlan . Tom . Kit and Connector open LC to VGA . Macintosh News . 8 April 1991 . For Mac LC owners to want to take advantage of the machine's capability to hook up to a VGA monitor, the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group (BMUG) is shipping an adapter that lets users do just that. Users can purchase the adapter as a parts kit from BMUG for $12 or fully assembled for $39.95..
  22. Web site: Sebelumnya . SoundEdit . 30 November 2021 . SoundEdit was the first popular GUI-based audio editor for digitized audio. It was not only one of the first important audio applications for Macintosh, but one of the first significant audio applications for personal computers in general. SoundEdit was one of three audio applications created during a sabbatical by Steve Capps during 1986. The Macintosh had no built-in sound input, so the MacRecorder audio digitizer was invented for this purpose in 1985 by Michael Lamoureux, a mathematics student at the University of California, Berkeley. The MacRecorder hardware and software was publicly released through the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group as a kit in late 1985. SoundEdit first shipped in January 1988, as part of a hardware product called MacRecorder Sound System, by a company called Farallon Computing (which eventually became Netopia). One of the major drivers for SoundEdit was Apple's HyperCard. With MacRecorder Sound System, stack makers could finally create alternatives to HyperCard's two built-in sounds..
  23. Web site: The Tech Class of 2011: Meet the Emerging Leaders . Politico . 30 November 2021.
  24. Web site: Leonard . Peter . The first BMUG newsletter . The Goggles Do Nothing . 21 May 2016.
  25. News: Engst . Adam . CE Ships QuickMail . 29 November 2021 . TidBITS . 16 September 1991.
  26. News: Anbinder . Mark . TCP/IP FirstClass Ships . 29 November 2021 . TidBITS . 14 November 1994.
  27. News: Anbinder . Mark . A New Direction for IE . 29 November 2021 . TidBITS . 6 July 1992.
  28. Book: Aboba . Bernard . The BMUG Guide to Bulletin Boards and Beyond . 1992 . BMUG, Inc. . Berkeley, California . 9781879791039 . 541.
  29. News: Branscum . Deborah . Swap Tips around the World . MacWorld . April 1993 . An excellent, more general guide to Internet, FidoNet, and much more is The BMUG Guide to Bulletin Boards and Beyond by Bernard Aboba, a BMUG sysop and knowledgeable denizen of the online world. (The second edition will be out in March. It should be available from Quantum Books [617/494-5042] in Cambridge, Massachusetts.).
  30. Book: Saigh . Robert . The International Dictionary of Data Communications . 1998 . Glenlake Publishing Company . Chicago . 1-888998-28-8 . 409 . BMUG, the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, is the world's largest advocacy group for Macintosh computer users..
  31. News: Hamblen . Matt . Help pouring in for BCS . 30 November 2021 . ComputerWorld . 23 September 1996 . BMUG is offering BCS members access to its Internet help at both its Berkeley and Boston offices, as well as the biannual 300-page newsletter and help guide, among other services. BCS Interim Executive Director Frank Smith said potentially 7,000 BCS-Mac SIG members will be interested in the BMUG offer..
  32. World's Largest Mac User Group: We'll Survive . 30 November 2021 . WIRED . 5 November 1997.
  33. News: Abate. Tom. November 4, 1997. San Francisco Chronicle. $150,000 Debt Could Kill Berkeley Mac Users Group. Business. C3. 16 December 2008.
  34. News: clnet Staff . BMUG: the end of an era . 30 November 2021 . clnet . 1 September 2009.
  35. Web site: Laporte . Leo . BMUG Reunion . 26 January 2009.
  36. News: Benner . Katie . Mac User Groups Fade in Number and Influence, but Devotees Press On . 30 November 2021 . New York Times . 8 September 2015.
  37. Web site: Cohen . Peter . In praise of Mac User Groups . iMore . 26 June 2015.
  38. Web site: Breen . Christopher . Tales from the Berkeley Mac Users Group . 2023-03-28 . Macworld . en.
  39. Web site: The Silicon Valley Macintosh User Group - General Information . 2022-06-16 . www.svmug.org.
  40. Web site: Planet Mug – Come for the tech support, stay for the Community . 2022-06-16 . www.planetmug.org.
  41. Web site: Welcome to Virtual Harbor . 2022-06-16 . www.bostonbbs.org.

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