Newton Poetry

Isn’t it wonderful how well the G5 and newer iMacs fit into a modular workspace like the one above?

Check out more great workspaces at The Shelby.

[Via ISO50 Blog.]

You know me: I’m always a sucker for a good iMac G4 appearance.

Back in December, I went to see The Verve Pipe play in East Lansing, Michigan (their hometown – about an hour north of me). A great post-grunge, straight-up-rock band, The Verve Pipe put on an amazing show. I looked up their videos on YouTube and found the one for “Happiness Is,” starring an old friend:

“Happiness Is” shows singer Brian Vander Ark wooing his lady friend with thoughtful gifts while she’s at work. The video, dating back to 2001 or 2002, would place the iMac she’s using in the brand-spanking-new category.

While not as classic as the Macs in the Tragically Hip video, this one holds a special place in my heart.

Macworld is hosting a “Best Mac Ever” roundup, with one model – the Mac SE/30 – getting the most nods. Andy Ihnatko, however, says the best Macintosh is always “the first one you owned.”

And there’s some truth to that. My iBook G4 is still my main computer, and I’ll probably never (ever) get rid of it.

But the best Mac? It has to be the iMac G4.

You, dear reader, probably saw that one coming, right? My time with Macs has been relatively short, but I remember the iMac G4 taking my breath away when I first saw it, and it was the first Mac to really get me thinking about switching to Apple.

Now I use mine every single day. The entire G4 line has been good to me, and they’re the fastest and newest Macs I’ve owned.

What do you think? What’s the best Mac ever?

Another example of an iMac used in an office, with great effect. Last time it was a G4 (my favorite). This time, either a G5 or an early Intel iMac.

The workspace, from Apartment Therapy, is an example of a “floating desk” design for cramped offices.

I like how the iMac’s screen seems to float in mid-air, too, with the white body of the iMac blending into the wall behind it.

Which makes me wonder: will we see computer screens hung on a wall, like high-def TVs are now? Would you run the cords through the wall, so it appeared to float? I’d love to see one.

Tons of books and all. I wish my own office were that clean and tidy.

Happy Macworld Keynote Day. I’ll probably be catching the live blog feed somewhere (Gizmodo usually does a nice job) and hoping for some kind of cool announcement. I actually thought about going to Macworld this year, and just as I was about to hit the “purchase tickets” button, the news hit that Steve Jobs wasn’t going to be there.

Much like Apple, my decision was financially-based: can I really afford a trip out to California?

So I may have missed my chance to see Steve Jobs deliver a “one more thing” announcement forever. But hey, there’s always WWNC.

[Courtesy Remodelista.]

Dan Knight over at Low End Mac posted a great article on how to make a G3 iMac useful. It’s no surprise that I’ve used Dan’s site as a tool ever since I got my own second-hand Bondi Blue iMac, complete with original keyboard and puck mouse, at a recycling e-waste drive.

This happened right after I got my first Mac, my iBook G4, and it gave me a chance to play around with OS 9 and the original Mac interface. It also kick-started my love of classic Macs. The Bondi and I go way back.

Mostly, it’s just nice to look at. The sloping curves, the aqua-green shading, the gum-drop shape – sometimes it’s hard to resist waking it up out of sleep to log on and play around with the OS.

In fact, it’s the one classic Mac I use on a regular basis. At least once a week I fire it up to do several things, both for business and pleasure.

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Of all the Newton connection utilities designed to sync your MessagePad or eMate with OS X, I looked forward to trying out the Newton Connection app the most.

NCX is an application designed by Simon Bell to mimic the original Newton Connection Utilities functionality in the pre-OS X days. As you can see from the home screen above, it offers tons of options for your Newton data, including backup, package installation, Newton Works import and export capabilities, and Mac keyboard functionality.

As with previous connection apps, you want to have a way to connect your Newton with your OS X Mac. NCX gives you the option of using Ethernet or serial-to-USB to connect. I opted for the serial option, using a Keyspan USA-28x serial-to-USB adapter. To get started, you need to download a Keyspan driver [Note: link updated] and restart your Mac.

Download NCX on Simon Bell’s page, and drop the NCX folder in your Applications folder on your Mac.

For this project, I’m using a Newton eMate 300 and an 800 Mhz iMac G4 running the latest install of OS X 10.4 Tiger.

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I love this post from John Hatchett over at Low End Mac:

I was in the middle of recording my vinyl Steely Dan albums to iTunes when it hit me: Why not turn the iMac into a digital jukebox? I could hook it up to my home stereo with a stereo mini-jack-to-RCA cable and have any song in my collection available to listen to. I could even use the iTunes database to customize song selection. And, of course, there is always shuffle.

How fantastic is that? I can imagine a visitor coming over: “Hey, what’s that iMac doing hooked up to your stereo?”

“Oh, that? That’s my jukebox.”

Totally geeky, and totally fitting with his theme of using old-school Macs in these weird times.

You kids have fun with your early mornings and mad crowds and steep discounts. I’ll be celebrating Buy Nothing Day.

Celebrating, that is, unless Apple’s got something really cool lined up. And even then, I’ll shop from the comfort of my iMac.

I try to practice what I preach, so when my grandma’s old Packard Bell computer exploded, I bought a used blueberry iMac G3 to fix up and upgrade for her to use.

The iMac bears the scars of its duration in the public school system, but it still chugs along. I bought a 256 MB SO-DIMM RAM chip for it, thinking it would help pull a new Panther install along on the 333 MHz machine, but I think grandma’s model was one of the iMacs that will only recognize some of the RAM it’s given. Given that, it seems 256 MB of RAM would be better used in my iBook G3 333Mhz blueberry clamshell.

But first, I needed to swap that RAM chip (a PC133 model) with a 256 MB chip inside my Bondi Blue iMac G3 (a PC100 model). More… »