Cabel Sasser
cabel.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2020
Cabel Sasser, co-founder of Panic, writes about retro gadgets, Apple history, software ideas and snacks.
What HN saysHN links it for his DAK gadget catalog history, his Woz maze clip post and his call for a dedicated Apple Passwords app. Commenters like his annual snacks post.
23HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
19stories submitted
1.2Kstory points
7 months agolast shared
2020people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1DAK and the Golden Age of Gadget Catalogs5 people · 10 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 2The Courtyard3 people · 4 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 3Firehouse Five and the Cinderella Surprise2 people · 90 points · first shared 2024 · 4 comments on HN
- 4Apple Passwords Deserve an App2 people · 83 points · first shared 2023 · 30 comments on HN
- 5Snacks and Cereals of 20242 people · 8 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
- 6Fantasy Meets Reality2 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 7Woz vs. Wooz2 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 8Turn-On Found2 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 9A forged Apple employee badge1 people · 952 points · first shared 2024 · 348 comments on HN
- 10The Basement (Portland)1 people · 2 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 11The Snacks and Cereals of 20251 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · 1 comments on HN
- 12Backstage Disneyland1 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 13Wes Cook and the McDonald's Mural1 people · 1 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 14Lotte Little Secret1 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
daggersandscars · 2024-06-03
The cabel.com article linked to in many comments has the copy that explains it. [1]
One of the DAK signatures was buying other company's production line "mistakes", "fixing" them, and selling the result.
In this case, the original Thunder Lizard was another firm's speaker[2]. The mistake was that it assembled with the wrong (inferior) tweeter. DAK bought the mistakes, the correct tweeter, and sold them.
The Plus, iirc, was a follow up to this speaker.
[1] https://cabel.com/2023/11/06/dak-and-the-golden-age-of-gadget-catalogs…
[2] Some model of BSR DR1550 series speaker, if web searches are correct.
Edited to add BSR info.
Eric_WVGG · 2023-04-24
Yup. The catch is, it's kind of buried in System Settings.
Cable Sasser wrote a blog post that was making the rounds a few weeks ago, advocating for a dedicated app. He's right, the existing Apple implementation works great but it's still a lot for normies.
https://cabel.com/2023/03/27/apple-passwords-deserve-an-app/
ndr42 · 2026-01-28
Had to let this here: A TV clip on YouTube of an episode of “That’s Incredible”, featuring Apple co-founder Stephen “Woz” Wozniak (aged 38) running through a maze and nearly winning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoJexQjoMtk
(found on the blog of Cabel Sasser: https://cabel.com/woz-vs-wooz/)
haunter · 2025-02-24
If you want something even more detailed than Cabel Sasser’s annual sanck and cereal showcase is something else
https://cabel.com/2025/01/27/the-snacks-cereals-of-2024/
anjel · 2024-06-03
DAK and the Golden Age of Gadget Catalogs (2023) https://cabel.com/2023/11/06/dak-and-the-golden-age-of-gadget-catalogs…
zach · 2024-06-03
The DAK Industries Catalog is a wild masterpiece of copywriting. One carefully-curated product per page, with no table of specifications or even a price box, just densely information-packed, quirky, well-paced, clever conversational descriptions of each item. Every word is the product of Drew A. Kaplan (whose initials provide DAK its name), a kind of blog in its own time. Cabel Sasser recently wrote a definitive tribute that provides many more details: https://cabel.com/2023/11/06/dak-and-the-golden-age-of-gadget-catalogs…
For a still-contemporary comparison, Trader Joe’s still publishes a similar (but more condensed and less personal) story-per-item format catalog for its grocery offerings in its Fearless Flyer, which you can find at https://www.traderjoes.com/home/ff
blueridge · 2023-12-25