In the tradition of artists throughout history, those proud iconoclasts at Apple who created the original Macintosh signed their creations for posterity. Inscribed into the inside rear panel case mold for the 128k, 512k and Mac Plus are the signatures of Steven Jobs, Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld, Bruce Horn, Jef Raskin and the rest of the historic team.
One look at this vintage pic of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates from the early days of each man’s career says a whole lot about the ultimate trajectories of both their businesses and their customers, dont’cha think?
The original provenance of the photo is unknown, though it clearly predates the historic conversation the two tech titans had at the All Things D conference in 2007.
From the looks of it, we’ll hazard a guess here it’s from a visit Gates made to Jobs’ California home back when the battle between Microsoft and Apple was more of a fair fight. What do you think?
It sounds like every Apple fan’s dream: you start a new job and while you’re riffling through the desk they’ve assigned you, you come across a dusty little Apple branded artifact…
2010 was the year of the hot Apple auctions, with an Apple 1 fetching its highest price ever, $213,000 to an Italian collector.
What’s next?
Cult of Mac’s own Adam Rosen, a Mac consultant whose vintage mac museum collection counts some 36 different models and about 75 total computers, was asked to opine for AntiqueWeek on the going prices for some popular Apple collectibles.
After scratching his head for awhile and wondering what to do with a Macintosh Classic II , Maker Matteo from Ithaca, New York repurposed his old faithful Mac into a shelf-top clock.
From appearances, it looks like the clock — which Matteo rather laughably calls “steampunk” in style — only came into being after its creator accidentally doused his Mac Classic in acid then shot with a bazooka, but the innards of the admittedly ugly timepiece work well enough: a 16MHz CPU, 4MB of RAM and a 20MB hard drive running MacOS 7 and a dozen different shareware and freeware clock programs, including one that counts down the seconds to Matteo’s death.
Yeah, it’s hideous, but we love it: this is just the kind of bizarro clock I can imagine discovering thirty years from now in the basement of an elderly and now quite eccentric Steve Wozniak. Great work, Matteo!
Harking back to a time when Lost‘s mysteries had not been explained away with the MacGuffin of a stupid magic light, the original Dharma Initiative Apple II Plus computer used in the Pearl Station to release electromagnetic radiation every 108 minutes way back in Season Two is soon to go on sale.
If you’re interested in picking up this bit of Apple-centric television history, it’ll be auctioned off on August 21st. If you win, don’t worry about typing in the numbers: like everything in Lost, failure to follow the rules set down by the show’s creators will ultimately have no consequence whatsoever.
MacPaint by Bill Atkinson (Image: anoved via flickr)
Where would the Macintosh (and Computing) World be without Bill Atkinson? MacPaint, QuickDraw, HyperCard – Atkinson stands with the Giants. In homage of his recent donation of the MacPaint source code to the Computer History Museum, flickr artist anoved offers this portrait of Bill Atkinson created entirely in MacPaint. With tools like these, who needs Photoshop? Well done!
Still haven’t gotten that geeky dad of yours anything for Father’s Day? Here’s a late last-minute suggestion: Run out to your local bookshop and grab a copy of 62 Projects To Make With A Dead Computer. It’s a sort of $15 Maker Faire for dummies that’ll keep him busy for months, get rid of some of that junk lying around and maybe save him a little moolah in the process.
This Luxo iMac is living out its retirement as an elegant iPad stand.
Flickr user Rusty took his dear, departed 700MHz Flat Panel iMac and then spent a little of that trial and error time all DIYers know to mold the acrylic holder to the arm. (The first few tries, he notes, shattered or “bent weird.”) Then he added a pair of speakers into the base and a bluetooth keyboard.
The Cult of Mac team had a rollicking good time at BoxTone’s iNSpired party, checking out the machines and chatting to devs.
There were about 20 Apple machines on show, from the Apple I to the iMac. The best part, they were working machines — something the organizers probably regretted with a room full of people intent on playing with them while downing beer and inhaling scrumptious mini-sandwiches.
We start with Wendell Sander, Apple employee no. 16, who fires up his Apple I for a memory dump using an iPod.