Billed as the site, “All things Apple. Past, present and future,” ThoughtDifferent.com chronociles the past of Apple.com as far back as July 1997. Unlike the Way Back Machine (Internet Archive), ThoughtDifferent seems to be a bit heavier in complete pages of Apple’s past site. Presented in the Cover Flow format, you’ll be able to go back month by month (if available) and then a single click brings up the page (an image) with history to it on the left side. The oldest page in the archive from July 1997 tells us that, “The earliest homepage found shows how radical the new design was. In 1997 this style (and still is) was a standard layout for a page. Cluttered with text and information and graphically not too pleasing on the eye.” It still amazes me how bad web pages looked back then…and I thought they were cutting edge at the time!

You can look at this page and remember that OS X once wasn’t the big news, but rather Mac OS 8 (and its “Platinum” look) was. Also found on the page is Newton’s Internet Enabler 2.0 giving Newton users access to Ethernet.

Boston still had Macworld in the summer, Mars was saying hello to NASA’s Sojourner and Apple was showing of QuickTime VR of the planet, and you could win a PowerBook 3400/200. Oh, don’t forget about Apple’s eMate, either. Aaah, memories…