The Blue Meanies of Apple Computer was an engineering group primarily responsible for the architecture of System 7 during the early 1990s. Apple Computer, Inc. ... System 7 (codenamed Big Bang) was a version of Mac OS, the operating system of the Apple Macintosh computer. ...

The name, a reference to the evil characters of Pepperland in the movie Yellow Submarine, originated with the "Pink"/"Blue" split in Apple's operating system planning, where "Pink" was to be the further-out project that ultimately became Taligent, while "Blue" designated incremental improvements to the shipping Mac OS. The "Meanie" part of the name derived from the group's architectural role, which frequently entailed telling engineers in other groups what to do. Pepperland is the fictional setting of the Beatles animated film Yellow Submarine. ... Yellow Submarine is a 1968 animated film based on the music of The Beatles. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

While the Meanies have sometimes been characterized as the "coders of System 7", the Mac OS was by then sufficiently large that major subsystems such as QuickDraw and QuickTime were developed and maintained by specialized groups, and the Meanies primarily focussed on getting the pieces to work together. Two quickdraws. ... QuickTime is a multimedia technology developed by Apple Computer, capable of handling various formats of digital video, sound, text, animation, music, and immersive panoramic (and sphere panoramic) images. ...

The name appeared outside of Apple as an Easter egg starting in System 7.0.1, where the text "Help! Help! We're being held prisoner in a system software factory!" and "The Blue Meanies" was followed by a list of names. Subsequent releases were updated to track the comings and goings of people in the group. A virtual Easter egg is a hidden message or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, or computer program. ...

Since many of the Meanies were also the senior engineers interacting with developers at the Worldwide Developers Conference, MacHack, and in other venues, the group came to be well-known by its nickname. WWDC 2005, at Moscone Center The Worldwide Developers Conference, commonly abbreviated WWDC, is an annual trade show for Apple developers. ... MacHack ist a chess program written in the 1960s by MIT student Richard Greenblatt. ...

A number of notables of the Macintosh world were in the Blue Meanies at one time or another, including:

• Darin Adler
• Scott Boyd
• Chris Derossi
• Brian McGhie
• Greg Marriott
• Ed Tecot
• Dean Yu

Darin Adler was the technical lead for Apple Computers System 7 operating system release. ...

External links

• Blue Meanie lists in System 7 releases
• Blue Meanies hidden picture in System 7