Mac at 25: Send us insanely great stories
What was your favorite Mac? The original iMac, maybe, introduced by Steve Jobs in 1998?
(Credit: Apple)Next week marks the 25th anniversary of the debut of Apple's Macintosh--and we'd like to hear from you.
We're putting together a package to mark the 25th anniversary of the Macintosh, and if you'd like to be included, send us your stories, pictures, and thoughts by the end of this week. It could be your first Mac, your favorite Mac, and the Mac you still can't stop laughing about (we're looking at you, Cube).
Please try to keep submissions down to around 250-300 words if you'd like to be considered. We'd especially love to see any photos you have of old Macs that you'd be willing to let us use as part of our package.
You can e-mail me directly at tom.krazit@cnet.com or post your stories in the comments below. Please have everything into me, or in this post, by the close of business Friday to be considered for next week's package.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
I will see what I find.
And Apple could have overtaken Microsoft. All they needed to do was to produce machines that ran applications just as fast as an IBM-compatible box, and price it cheaper than their competitors. But then we had the iMac...and the thousands of Apple excuses, such as the "Megahertz Myth". Then we have Apple never lowering the price on any of their machines, and making their machines totally incompatible with Windows 95 SE and Windows 98, which were gaining popularity like a plague. Then we have the final nail in the coffin as Apple starts putting IBM-compatible CPUs in their machines...making the choice between Apple and Microsoft a choice between a reasonably-priced IBM-compatible machine, and an overpriced toy-looking box that can also BE an IBM-compatible machine.
I think the only "great" stories you can tell about Apple is their early days of existence, of their early dominance of the market due to real ingenuity, integrity, and originality.
Now, you can "think different" by buying an IBM wannabe.
FAT Mac - 512KE.
I spent:
$2500 with UCLA discount on the Mac with an external Numeric Keypad and ImageWriter Dot-Matrix printer.
$500 for a SCSI port to be put into the battery compartment.
$1200 for a SuperMac Dataframe 10 SCSI hard drive - 10MB!!!
A few hundred more $$$ for software and there was the thing that changed my life.
Never went back to the IBM XT/ATs we had in the lab.
New Macs are a better deal, but I miss that first one! :)
It was my last, great fling at hobbyist customization of any computer (be it Mac, PC, or what-have-you). Its small size made for a challenge, but the extensibility of the thing was fantastic. I went from a 500MHz to a 1.2GHz G4 processor. I managed to shoehorn a Radeon 7000-series card into it. By the time I was done playing around on the thing, I managed to sell it (about three months before the Mini came out) for a price far higher than I ever expected to get for any four-year-old machine, let alone a tiny Mac that had been beaten to within an inch of its life by a hobbyist... and it was still as quiet as a complete vacuum (no fans at all in there - it was all convection-cooled all the way up until the CPU bump, when I broke down and stuck in a small fan to push things along).
OTOH, I remember an old PowerBook 540 I had - it was built in 1994, and yet when I gave it away in 2005 to a buddy of mine, the battery was shot, but still ran its original install of MacOS 7 just fine.
It's that kind of longevity and toughness that led me to use Macs as my mainstay machinery... I have yet to see anything Pentium-class or newer last nearly as long, and yet take so much abuse.
Imagine it`s January 2009 and Steve Jobs is a no show and there are no new compelling Mac products.
Then BAM ! Ex Apple designer Jon Rubinstein blind sides Apple with a new phone and OS. Best of show overall , Best of show cell phone , People`s Choice award.
Jon Rubinstein is the "New Steve Jobs". Palm Pre is the new phone/OS to beat. Many thanks also to BONO and Elevation Partners.
It's much slower; Rubinstein and his team say that's because the OS X code is not lean enough to run swiftly on a mobile device's relatively tiny processor and small memory footprint. And you can only do one thing at a time.
Apple introduced OS X for its personal computers in 2001, but pieces of the system trace their roots back to the 1980s, when they were used in the operating software of computers made by Jobs's other computer company, NeXT. Palm sees an opportunity to come out with something newer, better and?perhaps most impressive to gadget geeks?faster. A lot faster. "We're already four times faster than the iPhone, and we're still optimizing," McNamee boasts.
Palm expects people will keep 15 to 20 applications open at the same time.
If the Blackberry Storm couldn't put a dent in iPhone sales, what makes you think that the more expensive Pre will?
And now that the N97 is in the game and so is the Pre, unless Apple come's out with a completely amazing Phone, it should lose comparing specs and Brand Name's but I suppose the Apple Fanboi's will be like "Oh s*** the IPhone is losing, I'm going to break my current one so I can buy another one to boost IPhone sales.
I'm sorry I got into this, I used to be an apple Fanboi myself, but ever since I actually bothered looking at what is best in the Market for the price I have dropped that. To be Honest if you CAN'T find a non-apple product that beats it's apple equivalent in value for money i'd be amazed. This is excluding the Macbook Air of course since there is no pricing on the adamo yet.
Ha. Ha ha. Hahahahaha.
I know Ruby. He's no Steve. Very smart, talented buy - but not a great manager.
You're still operating on conjecture, not fact... fact is, the Storm didn't sell enough to make a dent in the iPhone's marketshare. Neither has the Android. Neither have any of the other clones that came out since the iPhone was launched. I sincerely doubt that the Nokia N97 or the Pre will do much when they come out.
Disclosure: I use (and am perfectly happy with) a Blackberry Curve. So no, no fanboyism here... just fact.
"To be Honest if you CAN'T find a non-apple product that beats it's apple equivalent in value for money i'd be amazed"
Compared spec-for-spec, you'd be hard pressed to find a non-Apple equivalent that would provide the same value-for-price. It's not impossible (the grey market exists and thrives, after all), but you would seriously need to do some research, and even then you'd have to start looking at things like longevity and customer satisfaction. Throw in Vista, and suddenly the Apple product looks a hell of a lot more attractive...
/P
Here are a few problems with your statement. The N97 will never make a dent in the US (just like every other NXX phone Nokia makes) because no carrier seems to want to pick them up and subsidize them. I used to want an N series so bad but it just wasnt worth paying all the money for it. If that changes then maybe the N97 has a chance but as of right now its not even in consideration.
As for the Pre, we will have to see what happens, I love how its the best phone ever yet no one has touched one yet. It reminds me of the Storm, I was actually really excited about the Storm and when my sister was looking for a new BB I sent her all the specs. If the storm actually performed like it looked on TV then it would be awesome (except for Verizon not allowing Wifi which I will never understand). So with that in mind when it came out we both played with it extensively, she HATED it, hopefully firmware updates will fix it but it is incredibly slow.
The Pre could have something, but its problem is 1. Its not overly attractive from the looks of it its ok, but very plasticy and bulky. 2. It still remains to be seen if they can get a good App store going, webapps will not do it Apple failed trying that at first as well, and 3. this is a big one for now its on Sprint which is aweful (except for their aircards which are awesome).
I would like to see great competition from the Pre, it brings the rest of the market up, but I dont see it being the next HUGE phone, at least until its offered on another carrier.
SE, SE/30, IIci, Quadra 650, PowerMac 6100, PowerMac G4 450 mHz, iBook G4 1.25 gHz, PowerMac G4 MDD 1.25 gHz, Mac Pro, MacBook Pro
(I still have the SE/30 and it continues to work.)
The Color Classic was a cute all-in-one before the iMacs came along.
I have my 20th Anniversary Mac (TAM) still in it's original box. (Any takers?)
As an Apple salesman for McGraw-Hill Computer Store in NYC on 6th Avenue, I was thrilled when I put the 1st Mac II out on our sales floor. Later, we got a Radius Pivot Display! I was McGraw Hill's top LaserWriter salesman during a promotion they held at the time called The Great LaserWriter Challenge. The winner from each store was sent on a 3 day vacation in the Bahamas, curtesey of Apple Computer, all expenses paid (Thank you Apple).
Any old McGraw-Hill customers out there?
Then I got a Tandy 486 running Win '95, and never looked back. Until now.
And to think, I'm writing this on Windows 7.
Heh.
None the less the crew saved the day. We got home and I returned to the loft where the now Famous Macintosh sat with that halo proudly shining. A few years later my brother was very busy in his business and needed a specialized software that wasn't available for the Macintosh. It was then banished to the basement covered in a garbage bag. I said WHAT! you can't do that. Suffice it to say the computer came home with me. ( I did not sleep that night at all!) I was feverishly trying every program, every desk accessory, - everything. Each program had an entire operating system on the floppy disk. My favorite program was FileMaker Plus, a seemingly little database program (Formerly named Nutshell - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filemaker) hence I own and operate the largest discussion forum (http://www.fmforums.com) and am also a certified FileMaker Developer.
A few years later I got my next computer it was the Macintosh Plus, with 2 floppy drives and a HARD DRIVE! When in high school as a freshman I was the only student who had one (a Mac) the teacher in the Graphics Arts department had three of them. One day student killed a keyboard somehow, I had a spare keyboard so I became teachers pet when brought mine with me while they waited to get a replacement.
Years have passed and I have owned: Apple ][ Plus, Macintosh 512k E, Macintosh Plus, Macintosh LC, Macintosh VX, Macintosh 7100, QuickTake 150, Powerbook 170, Newton Message Pad 130, Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White), PowerBook G3 (Wallstreet), PowerBook G3 (Lombard), iBook (Dual USB), iMac( Bondi Blue), iMac 15 inch Flat Panel (LampStyle) PowerMac G4(QuickSilver), iSight Camera, PowerBook 12 Inch, MacBookPro 15 Inch, Mac Mini, IMac 24 Inch Aluminum (Spring 08), MacBook Pro 15 Inch (Spring 08), iPhone 1gen, iPhone 3G, Original iPod, iPod Dock connector 30 GB, Original iPodNano, Apple TV. Cinema Displays 19 inch CRT, Blue & White, and 20 inch LCD. Airport Base Station (all versions) Airport Extreme and Time Capsule, Airport Express, ImageWriter II and LaserWriter Plus.
Best Mac? My current 2008 Mac Pro.
- by billmosby January 13, 2009 10:08 PM PST
- Shortly after turning out my first shareware product, I went to work for a national lab, in the nuclear material safeguards field (1986). In short order, I and a colleague had written a gamma-ray spectroscopy data acquisition and analysis program, one version of which we used to drive a nuclear waste drum scanner. In those days, most such equipment was built and programmed in-house unless you wanted to pay LANL an arm and a leg for their hi-quality, hi-overhead stuff. The 512k Mac the software ran on was replaced by a Mac SE in the late 80s, if I am not mistaken. As of 2004 when I retired, it was still in use and running fine. Over the years I've had a 128k mac, a Mac II, an original iMac, a lampshade iMac, a 12" PowerBook, a G4 iMac, a MacBook, and now a 24" iMac. Plus an iPhone, an Apple TV, and miscellaneous iPods. My favorite? Whatever I have most recently bought.
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