A reasonable goal, it seemed to me, would be to stick to systems and consoles that have deep personal meaning to me; the ones that claimed years of my life: The Atari 2600, the Apple ][ series, and the Amiga. And for spice maybe I’d add a few things that, although I never owned them in their day, were particularly unique or iconic, like the Vectrex.
…I wanted something that I could plug in, tinker with, repair, and show to anyone who wanted to see. A living museum, not a stuffy tomb of priceless artifacts. Real live working interactive history, not skeletons under glass.
The whole piece is great, but it’s this idea, that if you’re a collector, you should actually use the things you’re collecting, that stuck out for me.
I’ve thought about my own collection over the past few months. Newton Poetry hasn’t been the booming place it once was because I either don’t have the time to play with my old Macs like I use to, or I don’t have the inclination. A lot of the old hardware I have sits unused, and that makes me feel guilty.
There are a few exceptions. I still turn on my iMac G3 for my budgeting needs (with Quicken 2000) and to play WarCraft II. Lately the Mac SE has become a little journaling/writing station. It’s great to just flip it on, fire up MacWrite, and type away on the ol’ Extended II keyboard. But the PowerMac G4? The LC 520? The iBook G3 clamshell? I haven’t turned them on in months, and so I wonder what the heck they’re good for.
Sometimes I can’t wait to update my VHS collection to DVDs or downloads. Or to buy all my Super Nintendo games on the Wii and never have to worry about cartridges again. But then I think, “When does it all end? When will I never have to upgrade?”
We all face this at a certain point. If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt a collector of something – probably MessagePads or Macs. Maybe upgrading isn’t so much an issue as time and attention and space to dedicate to whatever it is you collect. We have limited amounts of each.
So I’ll keep thinking about it, and maybe reserve my time and space for the Macs and hardware I actually use. I like having a PowerMac G4; they’re neat machines. But maybe it doesn’t have a place in what Steven Frank calls my “living museum.”
Thomas was nice enough to share some of his stories as a head Apple Store Genius, why he has such a cool job, and which were some of the worst Macs to repair back in the day.
Much like Grant, talking to Tom for the show helps personalize the fun folks you talk to through Twitter or who leave comments on the blog. We now know what the guy sounds like, and that’s pretty cool.
Damian is a classic Mac collector in the truest sense. We talk about collecting old Macintoshes, why people do such crazy things, and a bit about recent Apple news.
Side note: when it comes to Mario Kart Wii racing, David and I are dead-even. Balloon and coin matches however? That’s another story…
What’s fun is that, with David in Northern England and me here in Michigan, we played a great series of Mario Kart races – even an ocean away.
- Grant Hutchinson, from Twitter, on the new Magic Trackpad. I’m excited about this, just because the trackpad on MacBook Pros are outstanding. The Magic Trackpad takes the Magic Mouse idea and flattens it, and that leaves all kinds of openings for new input methods on the Mac. We can’t touch our iMac screens yet, but this comes darn close.
I use desktop computers for many hours every day. They are my profession, my hobby, and my leisure. But the pace of their software innovation that’s relevant to my everyday use has dramatically slowed. It’s not a bad thing. On the contrary, it’s great that I don’t need to constantly update and upgrade everything to maintain a stable, full-featured computing environment. This is what mature, stable products and industries are like. They work, and they’re built on decades of progress, but modern advances are infrequent and incremental.
In other words, there’s not much whiz bang happening in the personal computer world these days. It seemed, back in the PowerPC era, that we zipped from 233 Mhz to 3 Ghz in a matter of years. Since then, the only way to get more speed (as Arment mentions) is by adding an SSD drive, or maybe more RAM.
The personal computer has plateaued, argues Arment, so the focus – and, maybe most importantly, the excitement – switches to mobile computers. Not what are these devices, but what can these devices do.
This is where Apple shines. “Forget the details,” they tell us, “here’s how it makes your life better.”
Apple could revive the design of the iMac G4 (with sharper angles, a thinner display, and integrated speakers – all in unibody aluminum, of course). By utilizing the oh-so-ergonomic display design, touchscreen computing could be made quite comfortable. And cute.
Well there’s an idea – although I wonder if you need a G4-style body, with the domed based and swivel neck. Wouldn’t another version of the current iMac do just as well?
Part of me (okay, all of me) would love to see the old G4 design return. Practically, it would be nice to bring the screen closer if you need to touch it. Or maybe tilt it a bit to do some drawing.
File this in under “what happens if/when iOS and Mac OS combine.”
This one made me think of how stale the 30″ Cinema Display, with the plain aluminum frame, looks these days. It makes me think of OS X 10.4 Tiger. The new displays scream Snow Leopard.
Matt Pearce, the guy behind Matt’s Macintosh, takes a look back at the revolutionary iMac G4 design.
I like that his YouTube videos are both well-made and show an appreciation for all the old Mac and Apple hardware. He’s got a lot of great new and older stuff to show off.
How fun: a site dedicated (more or less) to classic Mac graphics.
The Vintage Mac Museum is in Japanese, but for us English speakers it’s still navigable. The author, Motohiko Narita, posts photos of projects, too, which are a hoot (check out that vertically-aligned monitor for the Mac IIci!).
Lots of fun to poke around, and a great resource for classic Mac graphics.
