Cult of Mac: a blog about the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone - and the people who love them

62 comments

[...] http://cultofmac.com/after-20-years-maryland-mans-mac-iici-finally-dies/12420 [...]

applestories's status on Wednesday, 01-Jul-09 22:20:20 UTC - Identi.ca, on July 1st, 2009 at 3:20 pm

You gotta be kiddin’ me! I would love to keep using my iMac and Macbook for the next twenty years, but seriously, what did the guy do to keep his total file archive down to 2.2mb? Simply unbelievable. Clearly not a power user.

thanx_al, on July 1st, 2009 at 3:58 pm

“Apple rightly has a reputation for making quality gear. The company doesn’t make junk that breaks down in a few months, or even years. Or even 20 years.”

Obviously you didn’t have an iMac G5

C.S. McDonald, on July 1st, 2009 at 4:08 pm

I have an iMac G5 that has worked fine every day for the last 4-1/2 years, thank you very much.

Chris Jones, on July 1st, 2009 at 4:39 pm

The II was the first Mac with color, the IIci came after it.

Samuel Herschbein, on July 1st, 2009 at 4:48 pm

Actually, the Mac II was the first to have all of those features. In fact, it had 6 nubus slots. I know this because I still have one, though I don’t actually use it. I take it out once a year to make sure it still works (and to play Strategic Conquest

Granted, the color video and hard disk were not standard (as I believe they were on the IIci).

Alex, on July 1st, 2009 at 5:33 pm

I have an iMac G5 and have had no problems. Should I be expecting some?

Hal Summers, on July 1st, 2009 at 5:46 pm

Hardware Overview:

Machine Name: iMac G5
Machine Model: PowerMac8,1
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.0)

Ah! now I understand why this machine was free! Didn’t know that it was a troubled model. But, in truth, it has evidenced more problem than all my other Macs combined.

emory, on July 1st, 2009 at 5:57 pm

I call shenanigans on this. No PPC Mac will run System 7.0.anything and only the first-generation NuBus PPCs (the 6100, 7100, and 8100 series, along with the Workgroup Server 9150) will run System 7.1 with a model-specific Enabler file.

All the other PPC Macs required System 7.5 or better.

If the onboard video was dead, why not just set the guy up with a NuBus video card? There are plenty of those out there, and a number of them are far better than the onboard video in the IIci (or even the NuBus PPC Macs).

p

the pickle, on July 1st, 2009 at 5:58 pm

I can believe it I still have a working apple iie with the original apple monitor and 5.25 disk drives that came with it. Probably have nearly 100 disks with programs and such also and all are well over 20 years old.

Tim, on July 1st, 2009 at 6:49 pm

I have 27 iMac G5s in my classroom–never a problem with any of them. Ever.

yianniB, on July 1st, 2009 at 7:00 pm

[...] After 20 Years, Maryland Man’s Mac IIci Finally Dies | Cult of Mac. [...]

Luego de 20 años de uso, una Mac IIci tira finalmente la toalla, on July 2nd, 2009 at 1:04 am

Hang on, MacMedics replaced the decade-long reliable IIci with a Performa 5200 – a road Apple? The 5200 was notoriously unreliable, far worse than, say my delightful 4.75 year old original iMac G5

Most likely cause of Mobo failure surely is only a dry joint or failed cap – MacMedics should whip out their soldering irons and prove they do some real surgery. I mean, how would you like it if you took your dad into hospital because he had blurred and patchy vision and the doctors simply swapped him for some guy they found in a ward with the explanation: “It’s OK, this one’s 30% younger and 4x faster, and we taught him a few tricks your old Dad knew.” Wouldn’t do at all would it?

-cheers from julz @P

Julz, on July 2nd, 2009 at 1:33 am

“The company doesn’t make junk that breaks down in a few months, or even years. Or even 20 years.”

Why are so many Mac fans so insistent on making claims like this? It’s a computer – there’s a good chance it will break. My Macbook 2.0Ghz had the logic board replaced after just 11 months. It’s been fine since, but I’m not expecting 20 years out of it. Seriously, I love Apple, but when people ask me about buying one, I tell them “yes, they do break. Mine did.” And they’re almost shocked because so many Apple Fan boys have led them to believe that the damn things are indestructible. But I also tell them that the tech support was great, it was fixed promptly, and besides that one rather disappointing failure I’ve been very happy with it and will buy another in the future.

Scott., on July 2nd, 2009 at 6:27 am

I can attest to this. I myself have a Mac Classic my dad bought me at a garage sale, when I was fired up about Macs again as a teen. To this day, it still works perfectly, the floppy drive, HD, etc; and the screen is as bright as ever. It’s the same age as I am, 19 years old, and still running. Obviously not junk hardware, . Albeit, the Classic is not known for speed.

I use it to make old school graphics for art projects, or to type stories when the modern world of tech distracts me too much. I love the lil’ bugger. And unlike the man in this article, I have backed up my stuff, to a PowerMac 8100/100, which I still use as well.

Macs do break of course, but from my experience, they break down FAR less than all the PCs I’ve ever had. Coincidence? I think not. lol

Matthew, on July 2nd, 2009 at 9:28 am

I have a first Gen. iMac G5. It’s never failed, but gets way to hot sometimes and the fans blow like a hairdryer. But that’s with heavy, heavy use (video & such) for a few hours.

I have a Mac SE (1989) that someone gave me 5 years ago, and it runs just fine! Doesn’t do much though.

Brian, on July 2nd, 2009 at 10:00 am

the iMac G5 is famous for the busting capacitors on the logic board…it was a great computer but the issues that run crazy for this model is the main reason to stay away from a used one…but from what I have knowledge about it…the imac g5 is the only mac that has that type of troubled past

I have the following still in great working order, iMac G3 blueberry, iMac G4 1Ghz, Power Mac G4 Cube, PowerBook Titanium G4, iBook G4 1.33Ghz and my intel macmini 1.83ghz core duo, and macbook 2ghz core duo all in great working condition…so it’s safe to say that most macs just work for the duration

great story hope the macs I have last this long…but I also hope I don’t have to stick with them as long just because I can’t afford to buy a new one

thanks

scott, on July 2nd, 2009 at 10:33 am

Wow, this poor guy paid those fools to “upgrade” from one of Apple’s best models ever to one of its worst. The 5200 may be newer and might possibly be faster (unlikely), but it is still one of the worst computers they ever made.

Andrew Fishkin, on July 2nd, 2009 at 4:14 pm

[...] История взята с сайта Cult of Mac [...]

На ремонт через 20 лет., on July 2nd, 2009 at 4:53 pm

[...] Cult of Mac :: After 20 Years, Maryland Man’s Mac IIci Finally Dies [...]

Gears and Widgets :: A Heaping Helping of Tech » Cult of Mac :: After 20 Years, Maryland Man’s Mac IIci Finally Dies, on July 3rd, 2009 at 6:05 pm

My Intel imac has been in the shop 6 times for failures. The only thing not replaced has been the case.

Apple use to make stuff that lasted but that was before the moved production to china. It is now the same quality as all the others. Which is too bad. I had a IIci and I gave it to my cousin who is still using it. BTW the picture is not a IIci.

David Gallego, on July 4th, 2009 at 6:34 am

[...] to cultofmac.com for blogging about this [...]

MacMedics saves data off dead Mac IIci and upgrades client to PowerMac 5200/120 at MacMedics Macintosh Service & Consulting Blog, on July 7th, 2009 at 9:20 am

Never compare modern commodity PC based Macs with the original late eighties machines. There is simply no comparison in build quality.

P.S. I have a dual floppy (800KB naturally, though I added an external 20MB HD – yes MB!) SE I got in 1987 that still functions perfectly.

jsk, on July 10th, 2009 at 1:15 pm

Thats a load of bullshit and chips. My mac has already broken down three times before a year has even passed.

Mac sucks, on July 10th, 2009 at 6:10 pm

That’s not a IIci.

Fred, on July 10th, 2009 at 9:14 pm

I’ve been trying to place it. I believe it’s a Performa Mac, which would make it considerably newer that if it was a IIci. By the way, the IIci was such an elegantly designed piece of hardware. I remember sitting in a hotel room watching an Apple engineer take one apart with no tools and put it back together. Probably my favorite Mac of that era.

Fred Giuffrida
Paladin Software

Fred, on July 10th, 2009 at 9:19 pm

I want to know what this clown was still doing with this old mac. I can only image some crazy old school prof running some old program simply because he never had the skills to find a modern solution.

Seriously what do you do with a 20 year old computer that couldn’t surf the net? Type your thesis?

shawn, on July 10th, 2009 at 10:00 pm

I’m pretty sure he wasn’t running Adobe creative suite… but if you don’t need new software why would you upgrade your computer?

calgary graphic design, on July 10th, 2009 at 10:11 pm

he only had 2.2 MB of data ?
aren’t browser cookies more than that ?
oh wait, i don’t think that machine got a browser.

robb, on July 10th, 2009 at 10:44 pm

To all you people saying i have a G5 lal lalala… the future is calling you.
Cmon people its frickin 2009-
I can accept the nostalgia of old macs but to actually use them? for what?

joe mama, on July 11th, 2009 at 6:53 am

never tried a mac…hear theyre better for art/publishin stuff

igzeebihir, on July 11th, 2009 at 8:11 am

I’ve serviced some IBM Thinkpads from the early 90s that have nothing wrong with them but a fading LCD. One guy spilled coffee in his, and all we had to do was replace his keyboard.

That’s pretty good for a laptop, and I’ve yet to see it paralleled by anything. Though I haven’t seen any toughbooks or anything.

thegnu, on July 11th, 2009 at 9:20 am

From the page: “After 20 Years, Maryland Manâ€s Mac IIci Finally Dies”

I don’t care.

Oh wait… judging by the title of this blog I surmise the people here are the raving Steve Jobs Cultists who actually think Macs are better than a PC running Linux. (I’ll concede Windows. Wundows is garbage.)

Quality? Hardly. It took it ONLY 20 years to die? Shit. I got an an 83 IBM PC that still works, never had a major repair, either.

All Macs are is overpriced.

Not that I expect my opinion to get far in a Cult of Steve Jobs web site.

Anonymous, on July 11th, 2009 at 9:46 am

Is anyone even reading this article. Why does everyone keep pointing out that the photo isn’t of a IIci. It’s of the PowerMac 5200 that replaced it (whose screen clearly shows it’s running System 7.5.2, not 7 or 7.1, which the article never said the “new” machine was running, 7.0.1 was what the IIci was running – btw).

jsk, on July 11th, 2009 at 11:58 am

Typed too fast this morning. Meant 7.5.3, not 7.5.2.

jsk, on July 11th, 2009 at 11:59 am

WOW! I could not agree with the comment right above me anymore. Anon is a genius!

Adam, on July 11th, 2009 at 1:07 pm

Thats a performa. I had to throw one in the skip that was in perfect working order. I had mac build up. Nobody wanted an obsolete machine.

It is funny when some guy has a mac that breaks – suddenly ALL macs are crap. I have had 4 macs – only one has broken.

Yow, on July 12th, 2009 at 12:49 am

I love this story. As someone who repairs both macs and pc I find that older machines on the whole are built to last. Anythink from the last 5 years seems to have a shelf life of about 2-3 years. I’m also shcoked at the pure number of newer macs with failing hard drives. I can sometimes do 10 a week.

Matt Edwards, on July 12th, 2009 at 2:27 am

God i have 2 Mac SE. one LC and a few others still going strong from the day i bought them on my G5 now but my cellar is filled up with fully funtioning machines- and still got ALL the software like Aldus Freehand 1.1. Aldus Pagemaker, Illustrator 88 and so on. Yes Macs works almost forever- PC they usually hold a couple of years then out with the crap
Yours Robin THe Raver Sweden

RobintheRaver, on July 12th, 2009 at 5:28 am

You people need to chill out and go the beach or the park or something. Sometimes, things break. All things. And sometimes, they haven’t broken yet. Let it go.

Tad, on July 12th, 2009 at 7:20 am

This is like comparing Apples to…uh…anyway I should imagine that somewhere out there, there are wintel boxes out that have been working for 20 years, so what’s the big deal? I have both Macs and PCs and I regard them equally (hardware-wise) They are circuit boards, made with the same fiberglass/resin and copper cladding, with chips and other components mounted on/through them. There is no magical fairy dust that differentiates Macs and PCs on a component level (although some of the budget manufacturers do cut corners with cheap capacitors – that said, I recently repaired an iiyama monitor suffering from capacitor plague, and they are supposedly a quality ‘designer’ brand).

MacOS absolutely wipes the floor with anything that M$ have ever produced though

C.

ChayD, on July 12th, 2009 at 4:52 pm

Serious?
I have a Macbook Pro that is under 2 years old and has had a series of hardware failures. Apple has replaced the faulty logic board and battery but refuses to fix the faulty optical drive or address the issue of constant power downs.
I can buy a pc that is roughly 1/3 of the price.
Maybe I can even install OSX on it.

Andrew, on July 13th, 2009 at 8:33 pm

I have a Mac Quadra 660 AV from 1994 and over the course of 15 years, it only had to be opened twice, once for a RAM upgrade and another one for replacing a faulty hard drive. It helps bringing hundreds of VCR tapes into the digital era.

My Pismo is also in active duty, it went under dozens of upgrades over the years and it now sports 1GB of ram, two 120GB hard drives and it has two heavy duty batteries that make it endure for 16 hours (although I have to sacrifice one hard drive for it) and it runs Tiger nicely, not bad for a laptop that is almost 10 years old. For $3,500, it paid for itself multiple times.

Guilherme, on July 14th, 2009 at 4:34 am

I still use my Amiga 1000 from 1986 from time to time with no problems. Granted, it’s not on that often nowdays, but it works.

My uncle still have a computer from 1977 and that also still works for him.

Fredrik, on July 14th, 2009 at 2:16 pm

6 of 8 macs I have owned have had serious (ie. > $500) hardware failures within 3 years. Some were covered under warranty some were not. The first one was a Mac Plus I got in 1988. The power supply failed in 1990. As far as I can tell (not to say my failure rate is normal) Macs are no better or worse than other name brand PCs. The only thing special about Mac hardware is how it looks, but honestly, if you’re buying a Mac for any other reason than the software you are throwing your money away.

Gabe da Silveira, on July 14th, 2009 at 7:02 pm

We’ve got both a IIci and a Quadra 650 in daily use hosting legacy audio hardware (which still sounds great) in the recording studio I run. Neither is ever switched off – still working perfectly.

Jon

Jon Cotton, on July 14th, 2009 at 8:05 pm

Did you ever fart so hard you ended up in another zip code?

Martha, on July 15th, 2009 at 6:13 pm

Starting with the 512Ke Mac I’ve had more Macs than I care to list, quite a few are oldies given to me.
I’ve had a minimum of problems, but a few that were common to many Mac. For years I’ve bought Macs after they were out for at least a year, avoiding the new product bug problem which all manufacturers of all products have.
A few common problems:
1. The early Macs up to and including the MacPlus, suffered from overheating on one side causing the video deflection to fail. You got either a line or a dot on the screen. Apple replaced the video card, I learned to re-solder the connectors at the video card as the original solder cracks after several years of use.
2. HDs tend to fail when over heated, if your room is over 90° you should turn any PC off.
Running PCs in too hot an environment is the cause of many failures. Look at the maximum room temperature, which is below 100°.
3. Some early G5 iMacs suffered from the industry capacitor problem, caused by a company faking them, but not having the complete electrolyte formula. This affected both Macs and Win PCs. If it hasn’t happened after 3 or more years of regular use, the capacitors are probably not the bad ones. So older G5s that have been used regularly should be OK.

IMO current Wintel notebooks are low quality; there is too much push for very low selling price.
In fact the lower quality is quickly obvious by simply comparing the KB and trackpad with a MacBook or higher quality PC, such as a Sony one.

JoshS, on July 16th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

This may be a true story but it did not last because it is a mac. It lasted because 30 years ago most products were made with quality … not marketed as if they where quality

seanFalloy, on July 16th, 2009 at 7:25 pm

I’ve had my MacBook Pro for less than 3 years and have had multiple serious hardware problems, so while 20 years ago Mac may have made quality hardware, their dedication to quality has long since gone down the drain, I wont be buying another.

Molly, on July 16th, 2009 at 7:32 pm

MY one small gripe and i am nitpicking
“Or even 20 years.”
technically, yes it hasnt lasted 20 years, cus its not september 09 yet!

Simon, on July 17th, 2009 at 5:43 am

uh, 6 months into useage, my macbooks harddrive gave up..
my friend’s logic board on his macbook gave in after 14 months..
and my other mates g5 logic board caved after i think almost 2 years..
so i guess reliability comes with luck of the draw..

Scott, on July 17th, 2009 at 3:28 pm

I had an old Texas Instruments TI-Silent 700 terminal that was considered old, useless junk – but I wish I had a dollar for every time I used it worldwide back then, being able to dial into many systems for varIous reasons… I gave it to a kid I worked with – it didn’t have a display – only a thermal paper print capability.

Royce, on July 18th, 2009 at 10:07 pm

I have an I mac and Mac Book Pro on both the HD and the Logic Board died after not even 2 years which SUCKS

I wish apple would not bring out new shit everyy 6-8 month but improve what they have

this shit aint cheap and you expect quality for the buck

Yippi Yeah Apple NOT REALLY

Val, on July 19th, 2009 at 9:11 pm

I had a Mac-SE that survived, with occasional flyback transformer replacements, for ten years. Towards the end I used it as an automatic faxing device. I was impressed, at the time, by it’s longevity. Same with my original iMac, the bondi colored one, that finally died about two years ago in the house of a friend, after many years of service.

But then I went through three laptops, two Titanium Powerbooks and one iBook, in three years. One corroded into a broken mess, one blew it’s hard-drive and optical drive in the first year of operation, covered by a warranty but still a major pain, and the last, the iBook, blew it’s logic-board.

It could be that Apple laptops, at the time, were not nearly as durable as their desktop models, or I just had an incredible streak of bad luck. Regardless of that it was the behavior of Apple in how it treated me during the failures, that was the last straw. It was at that point that I realized that Apple was not the little company I had come to respect in the eighties and had become just another corporation. Maybe it was always like that and I had simply not noticed.

So I ordered a P.C. from a small firm, that exceeded the specifications of the Mac-Pro I was considering at the time, (for two thirds of the price Apple demanded). Had it shipped to me with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed and never looked back.

Granted Linux is, at this stage of it’s development, not even close to the ease of use and UI design of OS X. But I feel a lot less vulnerable to the lock-in, DRM and data loss I experienced with my Macs. And more important to me, if something does go wrong I’ll be able to handle it myself, without having to beg some company, who could care less, to treat me decently.

In the end independence, knowledge and skill are more important than style.
I still “think different”.

Dave, on July 20th, 2009 at 8:24 am

I just got my old Mac SE back, bought it ‘93 second hand, sold it to a friend in ‘97 when I got my, then amazingly fast, 7100. My friend finally bought a new computer in 2008 and kept the old SE in storage until I collected it from her a couple of weeks ago. The darn thing fired up without so much as a whimper, the glorious 9″ b/w screen still crisp, a gigantic 20mb hard drive and all of 4 megs RAM to run Word version 5.1 with lightening speed. Just a total classic.

Beluga-Love, on July 22nd, 2009 at 4:39 am

May it rest in peace.

Will there be a memorial service?

I’m serious – for a computer to live this long, is unheard of (at least for me).

Victoria, on July 22nd, 2009 at 7:10 pm

I’d say the capacitors on the motherboard are the issue, worn out and leaky. Just replace the electrolytics with some of the same rated tantalum caps and it should keep going for another twenty!

Adrian Franulovich, on July 24th, 2009 at 10:31 pm

[...] After 20 Years, Maryland Man’s Mac IIci Finally Dies (cultofmac.com) [...]

Recycled Apple Mac G4 Motherboard Clock : The New Dork Times, on August 10th, 2009 at 10:51 am

I’ve had two macs burn out this year already. An Imac… not three years old, and a two month old mac mini. They don’t make em like they used to. I had a G3 Beige that just got retured two years ago…that was a solid ten years!

ben, on August 10th, 2009 at 12:13 pm

That’s nothing… I still have a BBC Model B (purchased by my parents) from 1984 – still going strong and used for “grunt” BASIC command line programming! Although total of 0.0 Mb directly stored programmes (no hard disk drive) and have been through several 5.25 drives in my time.
That said, the beige brick may outlast me, my children and even time itself!

agghtea!, on August 11th, 2009 at 5:09 am

Jobs is cursing this guy cause he didn’t get his money’s worth from him like the guy got out of his computer. Good news is he spend the same amount of money on a Mac Pro.

blank, on October 29th, 2009 at 9:21 am

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