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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

Donate Your Old Mac For Art

Satta van Dahl wants your old Mac.

They’ll be put to good use: the German-born, Melbourne based artist has an ongoing iPaint myMac project, in the works since 2006, which now counts 50 Macs embellished with stencils and paint.

So far they include an orange-and-red 1991 PowerBook 100 and a iconic Happy Mac Classic.

If you don’t have anything to donate, you can always follow the project on his website or Flickr stream .

His current wish list:
* iMac (the one with the half-sphered foot)
* eMac
* Cube (yes, iKnow, they are hard to come by, but hey, there might be the odd chance.. and if it’s just an empty case …)
* Macintosh Portable (they claim this was the first portable Mac, but it was so heavy, no way anyone took it anywhere)
* anything made after 2000 (there aren’t many dead ones to collect around yet)
* Classic, SE & Plus (I already have a few dozen of them, but I need more …)
* any type of Apple //, the legendary Lisa … ok, I’m dreaming now
* anything odd with an Apple logo on it (instruction VHS tapes, old PR material, shop displays, … you name it).

As part of the collection process, he also runs a “Mac surgery convention,” because most of the donated machines don’t work anymore, but there are enough bits to cobble one working machine out of two or three dead ones.
Last time he invited Mac savvy geek friends to bring their screw drivers around for an evening of pizza and computers, there were 10 running old Macs as a result.

Image via Flickr

About the author

nicole_martinelli

Nicole Martinelli was born in San Francisco and has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. Cultish tendencies and love for DIY increased while living on the Old Continent, where tech came late and cost more in Big Mac index terms. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek, and since 1999 on her site, Zoomata. If you're so inclined, friend her on Facebook or connect on Linked in.

Email the author | Read more posts by Nicole Martinelli.

4 comments

    The “happy mac” is awesome…*nostalgia*

    We’re looking forward to Satta finishing this project. We got to interview him about it on our podcast last year:

    http://retromaccast.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=214283

    Damn. And here I thought I’d finally find a home for my old Performa.

    [...] way to give life to your old Mac is to turn it into art, as we wrote about a few months back is the iPaint my Mac project by Satta Van [...]

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