Newton Poetry

Here’s a novel concept: use what you’ve got until you can’t use it anymore.

For Newton users, the concept isn’t new or novel. We do it every time we see our green screens glow.

But the good folks at Last Year’s Model are spreading the good word that new isn’t always better. The “need” to upgrade to the newest and shiniest (and I’m as guilty as anyone) isn’t always the best policy, especially when what you’ve got works just fine.

I’ve loved the idea behind Last Year’s Model since I stumbled on my iMac G3 at a recycling event. The best Macs (ahem) are often the ones that are quote-unquote obsolete.

And hey, there’s a whole group of productive, sane, intelligent human beings who use a last-decade’s-model PDA. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

There’s not a lot of oomph behind Last Year’s Model. It’s really a place to share stories and spread the word, with Facebook and Myspace groups along with a Twitter hashtag. The site doesn’t ask you to share videos or spam your friends’ inboxes. The aim is to simply raise awareness that, say, your eMate is just fine banging out the latest novel project you’re working on.

I love how Google Chrome’s icons are a throwback to Susan Kare’s classic Macintosh icons.

This is the only one I’ve seen, but there are others that mimic the Sad Mac icon, too.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

Via badbanana.

“If you look at the some of the work done in the early to mid-eighties you can see the limitation. We finally got a 512k machine, the Mac Plus, which is how Design Quarterly was done. We used MacVision, which was a little beige box that hooked up to a video camera and ported right into the Mac. You could scan over an image and it was tiled out. We kept moving the camera, scanning and repeating.”

– April Greiman, designer, in an interview on idsgn.org.

Perhaps the quality wasn’t all there, but Greiman’s interview shows that even the lowest end of the low end Macs were capable of design work. Great two-part interview.

Here’s an Intel iMac caught in the wild – held up by a cool modern table. IKEA, maybe?

Thanks to Thomas Brand for reminding me what the different is between an iMac G5 and an Intel iMac: the iSight camera at the top.

The new, aluminum iMacs are gorgeous, but I’ll always be partial to the gleaming white iMacs, starting with the Snowy White G3s, of the PowerPC era.

[Via Ffffound!]

Low End Mac’s Dan Knight on whether to go with a new iMac or 15″ MacBook Pro:

Now that Apple has an “antiglare” option for the 15″ MacBook Pro, I think it could be the perfect production machine for me at some point in the future. The size and weight aren’t an issue, and even the entry-level 2.53 GHz dual-core model has vastly more power than the 1.6 GHz dual G4 upgraded Power Mac I work with…The perfect desktop computer would take the current iMac design, move some ports for easier access, and offer an antiglare option.

It’s a decision I’m going to make in the next few weeks as well. I’ve been working on a new MacBook Pro for a few weeks now (I’ll post something here soon), and it really is the perfect laptop. I can’t imagine one any bigger or smaller.

However, I’m a consumer Mac guy, and the new iMacs offer tremendous appeal. I always said, once Snow Leopard comes out, I’m finally going to spring for a new Mac.

And while I assumed I would get a new iMac, the new MacBook Pro has me questioning my original assumption.

Another entry from the “iMacs in the wordspace” desk – this time either a G5 or Intel Mac.

Love the chair, but I wonder how comfy it is?

[Via Design Sponge.]

Backup isn’t backup, the saying goes, unless you automate it.

Backup experts also say you should keep a second, off-site copy of all of your important materials. If your house burns down, or zombies darken your door, that melted or masticated external hard drive isn’t going to be worth squat. Better to make a backup to a cloud-based system or a drive you keep away from your home.

A recent, goofy hard drive glitch got me thinking about both scenarios: the need to make an easy, automatic backup, and the need to archive it to some remote location. Since I don’t have OS X 10.5, with it’s compulsory Time Machine backup system, I needed to make my own backup strategy using the tools at hand on OS X Tiger.

So here’s how I used two OS X 10.4 applications, Automator with a dash of iCal, to develop a backup system that fits my needs.

More… »

Imagine, if you will, an Apple Computer before the Macintosh, before the iPod, before the iPhone – shucks, before Steve Jobs was kicked out and brought back for Apple’s sprint to success.

This is Apple in the year 1983. It was, says Ted Friedman, a rough year:

In any case, by 1983, Apple was in danger. Their competitors in the emerging PC industry had been joined by IBM. Purchasers who’d chosen Apple out of necessity were relieved to be able to turn now to Big Blue. Apple’s first attempt at a next-generation product that could re-establish the company’s pre-eminence was the Lisa. A $10,000 computer designed for the business market, it was a flop.

Steve Jobs gives a keynote that warns of the danger of IBM’s dominance. A former soda-pop president named John Sculley comes on board. Apple sells its millionth Apple II computer.

And then we all know what happens in 1984.

I’m fascinated by how Apple’s web site has changed over the years. And because it has that iconic design, often copied, I thought it’d be cool to use it as a time-traveling template to take a peek into the past.

So with some randomly-available product pics and a bit of PhotoShop, I crafted the above Apple.com mockup as it may have appeared in the year 1983. It’s not accurate, of course, because I took some embellishments on the iPhone prototype and the fact that some sort of World Wide Wide existed during the Reagan administration.

Whatever. It was me having a bit of fun with some Apple history.

What would be cool is if someone took a snapshot of Apple.com as it would appear throughout the years before it’s actual launch in 1996. For instance, I’d love to see what the homepage would’ve looked like on the Newton’s launch day, or the first PowerBook, or System 7.

In the meantime, enjoy what could have been.

The Cult of Mac pointed me to a cool t-shirt design with classic Macs (now that G3s can be considered “classic”). What’s neat is that I have all three Macs on the shirt.

It also got me thinking about my growing collection of Mac shirts. As soon as I saw the Exploded 128 shirt, I had to have it. And now I’m in a group with a bunch of other nerdy Mac hippies wearing some other guy’s shirt (here’s me with mine).

I used to have one of these beauties, but Cafe Press doesn’t seem to make shirts that fit me. They’re either too big or too small. Still, it was a fun shirt to wear in public.

Insanely Great Tees makes some classic Mac t-shirts, and I really thought about springing for one of FastMac’s anniversary shirts.

Like the white Apple sticker on my rear windshield, Apple shirts always make for great conversation. There’s something smug in proudly displaying your computing preference across your OS X-powered chest. And why not? Everyone thinks Mac users are arrogant anyway.

If you did it right, you could wear a different Apple shirt each day of the week.