[HN Gopher] Some strange Macintosh computers
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Some strange Macintosh computers
Author : tambourine_man
Score : 110 points
Date : 2024-01-25 01:21 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| sircastor wrote:
| I've been enjoying the coverage over the last week of the 40th
| anniversary of the Mac. Lots of nostalgia to dig into if you grew
| up in 80s and 90s.
|
| If you happen to enjoy the interesting history of the Mac and
| Apple, I highly recommend Jason Snell's series "20 Macs for
| 2020"[1]. I just discovered it last year, but I've found it to be
| a really fascinating look at Apple and the computer industry
| through the lens of computers Apple released over the previous 36
| years.
|
| [1]https://www.relay.fm/20macs
| cirrus3 wrote:
| "20 Macs for 2020" is great! If you like that also, check out
| Upgrade #496: 40th Anniversary of the Mac Draft
| https://www.relay.fm/upgrade/496
| sircastor wrote:
| I just listened to this yesterday and it felt like a great
| band reunion tour.
| snitty wrote:
| LCIII 4 LIFE
| hbn wrote:
| I've been enjoying it too as someone who only really became
| familiar with Apple in their 2000s renaissance with the iPod (I
| mean, I wasn't alive for long prior to that)
|
| What's really wild to me is seeing the prices on these things,
| especially adjusted for inflation. The Macintosh XL was $10,000
| in 1983, or a whopping $31,000+ adjusted for inflation!
|
| It's quite incredible how the playing field has really levelled
| out these days. At least in the west, whether you're rich or
| not, everyone is using fundamentally the same technology. Maybe
| film production studios will spend tens of thousands of dollars
| on a specialized machine for rendering video or 3D worlds, but
| in most cases you're probably using the same or a similar
| device as the richest individuals on earth. Everyone from
| Taylor Swift to Elon Musk have smart phones and laptops that do
| the same things as mine.
| nxobject wrote:
| The "Molar Mac" is truly a thing to behold. Come to think of it,
| I would kill for a all-in-one PC with all of the creature
| comforts of a standard ATX motherboard...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I thought instead it looked like it had a human back ... on top
| ... if that makes sense. "Back Mac".
| pavlov wrote:
| QuasimodoMac?
| justjash wrote:
| This is the one that I remember having in elementary school.
| Such a funky shape, always thought the top looked cool.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| just slap an LCD/OLED panel to the side of any ATX cases. They
| are ridiculosly big nowadays, especially considering most of
| the time the only non-integrated or mounted directly on a
| motherboard would be a GPU
| telesilla wrote:
| _Revolution in The Valley_ is a fun read on how the Macintosh was
| created, from the perspective of the engineering team, via the
| author Andy Hertzfeld who worked closely with Jobs but 'most of
| the essays in the book are about the people that did the dirty
| work to make the Macintosh happen, their struggles, their
| sacrifices and their camaraderie'. Not much unlike any modern day
| team working to build something hard.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40492.Revolution_in_The_...
| musicale wrote:
| Most of the material from the book (and possibly more?) seems
| also to be available at Andy Hertzfeld's excellent:
|
| https://folklore.org
|
| One of my favorite bits is Bill Atkinson's remarkable Polaroid
| photos of the Lisa/Mac UI evolution from 1978 to 1982:
|
| https://www.folklore.org/Busy_Being_Born.html
| donatj wrote:
| > Power Macintosh G3 All-In-One
|
| Everyone knows that as the Molar Mac. They look like a tooth and
| were used primarily in Education. They were a decent if not
| hideous machine.
|
| I learned HTML and JavaScript on one in 1998-1999. We had the
| option to spend study hall in the computer lab and I took it
| every time. I would spend an hour every day working on my
| Geocities site. Those were the days.
|
| I would frankly just love to find one in decent condition to have
| for the memories, the transparent top grille seems to always be
| busted up.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| It was a toss up between eMac, iMac, and molar Mac for a few
| years, but eventually iMac won that race and seemed to be on
| top for years until laptops and chromebooks took over.
| bitwize wrote:
| I had an eMac. It was lovely.
|
| It's hilarious because the eMac line is long gone and almost
| forgotten, but people's iPhones still autocorrect "Emacs" to
| "eMacs", so its legacy still lives on.
| perardi wrote:
| I remember helping my aunt buy one of those--my memory is
| somewhat hazy, but I assume it because it was cheaper than
| the iMac G4, with a (physically) larger display.
|
| Now the iMac G4. That was a computer. I realize that design
| wouldn't scale to larger displays...and it barely scaled to
| that size of display, given the issues they had with the
| monitor arm...but oh man, what a machine for a computer
| lab. Set whatever angle and height you want, then just
| swing the whole monitor around to show a classmate.
| leejoramo wrote:
| The eMac has the best CRT screens I ever used. It was a
| Sony Trinitron tube, but better than the Sony monitor I had
| used on PCs
| SllX wrote:
| A tip I picked up from Gruber is if you want your phone to
| stop incorrecting you on certain words, add them to your
| Text Replacement dictionary (including capitalization
| variants). This works for certain choice words in the
| English language iPhones like to duck out on, but I got
| annoyed enough about the Emacs to "EMacs" or "eMacs" thing
| that I did it for that as well.
|
| I did like the eMac though, had them at a school I went to.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| When you come across a strange Macintosh, make sure it's not a
| creation of NanoRaptor, like this Apple 2e with Laserdisc drive:
| https://bitbang.social/@NanoRaptor/111173459132307169
| brianbreslin wrote:
| The cube was so pretty. Still holds up.
| TillE wrote:
| It's a cool design! I think they could've fixed nearly all of
| the issues with it by just installing one big, relatively quiet
| fan at the bottom, a la the trashcan Mac Pro.
| dhosek wrote:
| I bought a refurbed G4 Cube in 2001 and it was a wonderful
| machine. I don't remember why I sold it (I think probably too
| many computers on my desk), but it was great for hauling to
| gigs to do live recordings before I got my first Powerbook. I
| used to pack it, an LCD monitor, keyboard and mouse into a
| suitcase padded with towels.
| voxadam wrote:
| Previously:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39125016 | 2 days ago | 11
| comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39116705 | 2 days ago | 10
| comments
| thenipper wrote:
| My favorite one that isn't listed here is the Outbound Systems
| laptop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbound_Systems My parents
| got me one in elementary school in the early 90s to help with my
| learning disabilities. From what I recall they had ripped out the
| guts of an SE or SE-30 and turned it into a laptop. It ran on
| camcorder batteries. I've still got it in my basement but can't
| get it to boot up at all.
| rainbowzootsuit wrote:
| Maybe you should see if one of the retro computer YouTubers
| might be up for a rare guest computer. Adrian's Digital
| Basement comes to mind here but he's kind of an Amiga guy.
| pakyr wrote:
| He's more of a Commodore guy than just an Amiga guy, but
| having been a long-time subscriber of his, it seems like
| he'll work on anything and everything. Worth sending him an
| email asking if he wants it at least; I've done it before and
| he responds pretty quickly.
| thenipper wrote:
| Oh I'd definitely be into this... i should ask around.
| ralphc wrote:
| I strongly second this. Mac84 or Action Retro would be good
| candidates, they specialize in old Macintoshes.
| fzzzy wrote:
| Adrian does some mac stuff too.
| sircastor wrote:
| I just looked up the outbound laptop the other day. I saw one
| on an airplane when I was very young and I could not understand
| how there was a Mac that had this funny Kanagroo logo on it.
|
| I know they had to pull the ROM from a Mac, I'm not sure what
| else went into the machine.
| vmfunction wrote:
| Looks like pre-newton type of system!
| robterrell wrote:
| I have an Outbound too! IIRC there's a weird little 7.5v
| battery that I had to replace to get it to boot up (roughly the
| diameter of a AA battery, but 1/3 the length) -- maybe check
| that out?
| jgrahamc wrote:
| I think the battery you are referring to is the 6V Sanyo
| 2CR1/3N which is the "backup battery" in that laptop. It's
| still widely available.
| alentred wrote:
| I wonder how good that trackpad was. Looks pretty cool. Also,
| can't help but notice the Control key position, it's right
| where it was meant to be!
| philomath_mn wrote:
| > Introductory price: US $4,000 (equivalent to $9,443 in 2022)
|
| It's wild how expensive laptops used to be
| pstuart wrote:
| These all demonstrate how vital Steve Jobs was to Apple. All they
| could do is repackage the same thing over and over -- so many
| different form factors of the same thing.
|
| Even the OS. Copland went around in circles and never landed.
| iSnow wrote:
| I used to pirate a lot of stuff and had a couple of Copland
| CDs. Even installed some versions and they would never last
| longer than 5min before crashing.
| lioeters wrote:
| > The Lisa line predated the Macintosh by one year, launching in
| 1983 for a pricey $9,995 (about $31,348 today, adjusted)
|
| Imagine being one of the few customers of the Lisa, paying 10K
| USD for the best personal computer in the world, then the next
| year it's already deprecated.
|
| > A curious tidbit: Lisas running MacWorks XL originally inspired
| the term "hackintosh."
|
| I probably would have gone this route, to attempt changing horses
| mid-stream. Although, according to Wikipedia, the term
| "Hackintoshing" began as a result of Apple's 2005 transition to
| Intel's x86-64 processors. With the new ARM-based processors,
| I've heard this proud tradition of hacking the Macintosh is
| nearing its end.
| schnable wrote:
| My family bought an Apple IIGS around the same time, and my dad
| was mad forever that it was essentially a dead end as the
| Macintosh became the future. We switched to PC after that.
| jghn wrote:
| We had one for a while. I can only imagine my dad somehow got
| it from his work as there was absolutely no way we had a $30K
| computer on our own dime. A year or two later it was replaced
| by a 128K Mac, and then later the 512k.
|
| That last one still sits in my basement, and is perpetually on
| my todo list to do something with it. But I never seem to get
| to doing anything with it. Also can never decide if I want to
| try to refurbish it, turn it into an aquarium, etc etc
| jgrahamc wrote:
| Please refurb it or find it a home. I used the Apple Lisa way
| back then and it was a lovely (if unloved) machine. Way too
| expensive but a real vision of what was to come.
| jghn wrote:
| I've come pretty close to refurbing it a couple of times.
| but usually wind up getting scared off by hazard warnings
| regarding electric shock from capacitors. Outside of one
| very minor repair, it's been about 40 years since I've done
| any sort of electronics work & don't trust myself.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| OMG, please please do not turn it into an aquarium. That
| thing is so rare that it would be a crime! If you aren't up
| for restoring it, maybe consider selling it (for much $$$) to
| somebody who would.
| jghn wrote:
| Hah yes that one is a thought whose time has passed. It was
| a trend for a while.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I remember the macintosh portable had a terrible screen refresh
| rate. You would see multiple pointers every time you moved it.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Are you sure you're not thinking of other Mac laptops with
| passive-matrix screens? I remember that the active-matrix
| screen of the Macintosh Portable was so unbelievably sharp.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I must say that almost 30y later I can't be certain
| iSnow wrote:
| I think you must be confusing it with one of the later
| Powerbooks with passive matrix screens.
|
| I have a Portable in the attic somewhere, and I used to
| boot it up and play around with it a bit. The screen was
| dark (no backlight) but very crisp and relatively smooth
| for the era.
| pmarreck wrote:
| I was in high school working after school at an Apple computer
| store and they let me take one home for a weekend (!!!). The
| refresh rate was actually one of the more outstanding features
| at the time as thanks to the active-matrix display, there was
| NO ghosting of what you speak of. But every other Mac (and non-
| Mac) laptop had the ghosting from the passive-matrix screens. I
| think you're confusing them. The Portable screen was crystal-
| clear as long as you were in a bright room (since it had no
| backlighting).
| CharlesW wrote:
| Until it did! https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook/sp
| ecs/mac_porta... IIRC the backlight would effectively halve
| your battery life.
| LordGrey wrote:
| I worked at an Apple dealer when the Portable came out. We
| called it the "Mac Luggable".
|
| Its carry bag had only a shoulder strap. It should have had a
| full-blown backpack to distribute the weight better.
| scelerat wrote:
| I remember a single-panel comic from one of the Mac rags at
| the time -- MacWorld? MacUser? wasn't there an IT-oriented
| tabloid-format Mac mag? -- anyway, kind of reminiscent of a
| New Yorker cartoon, an adult with his arm moderately flexed
| and a child looking on in awe, perhaps grasping his bicep,
| with the caption, "That's the arm daddy uses to carry his Mac
| Portable"
| CharlesW wrote:
| I'm stunned that this list overlooks the brilliant PowerBook Duo
| and its Duo Dock, which mechanically injected and ejected the Duo
| like a VHS tape. https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Duo_Dock
| leejoramo wrote:
| The Duo 280 is my all time favorite Mac. Active matrix
| greyscale screen worked great without backlighting turned on.
| Even better in full daylight.
|
| In the mid-1990s, I could work most of the day on batteries
| with a super lightweight notebook. Allocate enough RAM Disk
| space to for a minimal Mac OS system and WriteNow for word
| processing. Only spin up the hard drive to save data.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| ditto. i spent all of my money and then some to get one.
| wazoox wrote:
| Oh yeah it was a great computer. I used it to make my band's
| first album art using Photoshop 2.0 (using the DuoDock and a
| colour screen, of course). Networked with the studio's Mac
| IIx (running Studio Vision and Sound Tools II) using serial
| AppleTalk...
| retrac wrote:
| > which mechanically injected and ejected the Duo like a VHS
| tape
|
| Or a Macintosh floppy disk.
| mvexel wrote:
| I was surprised that there was not more mention of the clones of
| the mid 1990s. The Pioneer clone mentioned in the article sure is
| an interesting curiosity, but clone brands like Motorola
| (Starmax) and Power Computing were much more widely available. My
| brother had a really generic looking beige tower that was a 68040
| Mac, from one of those brands. They were equivalent to a mid-to-
| high-end Performa, but significantly more affordable. I would
| love to hear more stories of folks who owned one of those. The
| clone era was short lived, IIRC once they became too successful
| Apple ceased the licensing program and that was the end of that.
|
| Here's a Starmax ad from 1997:
| https://archive.org/details/MacWorld9710October1997/page/n7/...
| sircastor wrote:
| Apparently Apple had expected that the clones would pick up the
| bottom end of the market - make Macs affordable to a broader
| range of people. While some of that no doubt happened, the
| greater profit was to be had in the upper end where Apple's
| margins were high, and Clone makers had a lot of room to
| undercut them.
|
| The clone period was great in the sense of making Macs
| affordable to people, and really stretching the performance of
| systems. Power Computing was especially good at this and really
| gave Apple a run for its money.
|
| At the end of the day, the vision of the Macintosh was a
| product where the hardware and the software were built in sync
| - the computer and the OS were the product together. The clone
| era never really fit in with this.
|
| When Steve Jobs came back to Apple he killed the clone program
| because it was killing Apple, and perhaps more importantly to
| him, it didn't correlate with his vision of computing.
| Someone wrote:
| I think this article is mostly about machines that look
| strange. Most of those clones are way closer to "bland" than to
| "strange", making it perfectly understandable that the article
| doesn't mention them.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Couldn't have been a 68040, clones didn't start until well into
| the PowerPC era (I think the slowest clones were maybe 100 or
| 120MHz PowerPC 603).
| pmarreck wrote:
| They didn't mention the Pippin!
| 1-6 wrote:
| I really want a Mac classic using the latest tech today. It would
| be simply just a fun computer you'd keep in the corner of the
| office.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| It's a little clunky as I'm not that great a designer, I also
| used parts that I already had around (like the power supply).
| Still, I think it may meet your requirement of a "Mac Classic
| using the tech of today". I've since added a proper video card
| (RTX 3060) and a nice cutout for the rear ports.
|
| https://twitch.nervestaple.com/2022/12/19/pc-in-macse-build/
|
| While not as portable as a laptop, it's nice to be able to pick
| it up and move it around.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| The front looks great IMO. Kudos. I have a few compacts
| myself and one project I need to try is tossing a Pi 5 in
| there and having it display on the original CRT. Would make
| for a cute little SSH terminal.
|
| The most impractical Mac that I'd love to see reviewed is the
| iLamp, aka iMac G4.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| You can buy reproduction MiniITX-compatible cases on
| AliExpress, but then you're likely stuck with whatever China-
| quality LCD they put in it.
| adolph wrote:
| The hero of this story is https://lowendmac.com/ I used to read
| it weekly, not certain when I stopped, but it exists in my mental
| list of highly esteemed websites.
|
| As an offering of a missed strange Mac not mentioned by other
| comments, the OWC ModBook. Starting in 2007 (maybe '08) OWC would
| make your MacBook into a tablet. This may stretch the definition
| of "Strange Mac" since it wasn't an Apple product or a direct
| clone, but built in anticipation of the iPad the ModBooks
| digitizer was "fully compatible with Apple Inkwell(r), a Mac OS X
| Leopard feature that provides system-level handwriting and
| gesture recognition instantly to all Mac applications."
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20080513175426/http://eshop.macs...
| adolph wrote:
| A pretty run of the mill Mac with an strange feature was the
| Powerbook 1400 and its "BookCover." The BookCover was a section
| of the lid that could be replaced with clear plastic to display
| something thin underneath, such as art. Apparently a photovoltaic
| BookCover was offered by Keep It Simple Systems.
|
| https://www.macworld.com/article/224852/three-cheers-for-the...
|
| Picture of PV BookCover:
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/21647187@N04/4712178648/in/pho...
| pmarreck wrote:
| I will never forget that day when I was 12 and tried the first
| Mac in a computer store.
|
| Complete and total awe. Having only used Commodore 64's prior, I
| could not even believe it existed, and yet it screamed "THIS IS
| THE FUTURE".
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I own three of these (!), the TAM, the Cube, and the Mac XL.
|
| They all look good on the shelf, but the TAM is actually still
| occasionally useful for running Classic MacOS software. It can
| boot Systems 7 through 9, although even with the G3 accelerator I
| fitted to it, it can't boot OS X, because it boots using the
| original CPU and than an extension switches control to the G3. OS
| X must boot from a G3.
| tivert wrote:
| I remember seeing a Macintosh TV on display at Best Buy, I had
| not idea they were only available for such a short period. Though
| I'm pretty sure I had a catalog (as a kid) that featured it, so
| maybe it looms unusually large in my mind. It was probably this
| issue (which has it):
| https://vintageapple.org/catalogs/pdf/The_Apple_Catalog_Fall....
| phibz wrote:
| In the part about the Mac Portable it says "if you're feeling
| financial". Is this a typo or do you think this might have been
| written in part by an LLM?
|
| This usage seems... wrong.
| benjedwards wrote:
| Fully-human author here. I wrote it as a joke (a play on a
| common phrase), since numeric keypads were often used as data
| entry for accountants and people using spreadsheets.
| Covalence_ wrote:
| It made sense to me, finances are a common reason someone has
| to input a lot of numbers.
| LASR wrote:
| The 2013 "Trash Can" Mac Pro has a special place in my heart. I
| bought one for $1000 at auction from a design firm upgrading to
| iMac Pros in 2017.
|
| It has been my daily driver for the last 6+ years. Upgraded to 12
| cores, 128GB RAM, 2TB SSD and an eGPU - it still works
| surprisingly well. 6 x 4K displays. With Sonoma, I have to apply
| patches to get it work. So I will finally retire it this year.
|
| But it's been the best $2k investment in computer hardware I've
| made in many years.
| dhosek wrote:
| I remember reading about the 20th anniversary Mac and wishing I
| had the kind of disposable income where buying one would make
| sense. Yeah, it was overpriced but it did look seriously cool and
| they would send a concierge to your home or office to set it up
| for you!
| someonehere wrote:
| Some Macs I've owned or used that were unique design:
|
| - 20th Anniversary Mac
|
| - Apple TV (it was an LC 575 with tuner card and black)
|
| - The molar G3 Mac for schools
|
| - The eMate 300 (even though that ran Newton)
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