It’s also a great primer for everything from Control Panels to those pesky extensions in pre-OS X Macintoshes. And since time on this site seemed to stop in 1997, you have a classic reference piece. The Essential Mac comes courtesy of the South Shore Mac Users Group in Long Island, NY.
In retrospect, it’s easy to see just how important the PowerBook G3s were to Apple. The machines bridged the gap between old-school and modern Macs, and each generation included significant progress in Apple’s mobile technology.
The photos are great, as is the analysis. Having never owned a PowerBook G3, I often find it hard to get the naming system just right.
Thomas Brand at Egg Freckles gives us a history lesson in Apple skeuomorphism, all the way back to the beginning:
Before the Mac there was no skeuomorphism, because there was no graphical user interface. For almost thirty years the iconography of desktop objects have greeted users as they stare into their computer screens. The desktop metaphor has given new computer users a familiar foundation to ground their experiences upon, and expert users terminology such as “files” and “folders” we still use today.
Brushed metal, DVD players, and even the calculator – Brand shows that skeuomorphism is nothing new for Apple.
Even the Newton had its share of skeuomorphism, with the lined paper metaphor greeting us in the Notes app.
With Egg Freckles focused on longer-form pieces, Brand says Mac Floppy helps him get creative with shorter pieces on classic Mac software.
“A lot of people grew up staring at a Macintosh with a monochrome 9 inch screen,” he told me. “I am hoping to collect some of those memories from the Macintosh community by sharing screenshots from my early Mac software collection. If everything goes to plan we should see the comments start to fill up with recollections from other users.”
Brand is looking for guests posts, so let him know if you’re dying to write about an old-school application.
This lovely image comes courtesy of John Carey over at fiftyfootshadows. Carey shares desktop images available for download — and boy, is this one gorgeous for all kinds of reasons. Says John:
I came across an opportunity to take this old Mac out back and shoot it recently. We were cleaning out old storage space and came across our Mac graveyard of sorts. Also In there was a Cube and moving head iMac. Good stuff.
This little project started last fall, after the “Back to the Mac” Apple event. I collected a few Apple product videos, scoured YouTube for the highest quality PowerPC-era Mac commercials I could find – even asked Twitter where to find good, high-res files.
But I made do. And so here it is: a goofy, super geeky take on “Return of the Mack” – dropping the “k” of course.
What I like is that Apple videos make their machines fly – lots of swooping and dramatic angles and shadows. Tons of product rotations. All (except for the PowerMac G5 vid) against a brilliant white background.
For variety, I threw in some random stuff like the chip manufacturing shots. And some Apple reps doing some bad lip syncing.
Anyway. Glad to be done with it. It’s nothing like a pro job: there are still little hints of YouTubeness and window frames in there. But it’s just a fun little music video for us Macintosh geeks.
