Old computers tend to lead sedentary lives. Parked in shelves and closets, maybe touched by the occasional dusting; the lucky ones still run old games from time to time. But sometimes one becomes a sensation.

The Twiggy Macintosh is a prototype Macintosh 128k that used a 5.25-inch disk drive. Long thought lost to history, two of these primordial Macinti were recently resurrected and returned to life in full working glory. Their rebirth brought about a rare reunion of the original Macintosh design team. And one of them recently repaid the effort by fetching about $40,000 at an auction.

They are — without a doubt — the oldest working Macs in the world.

Here is the story of their amazing journey.

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include guides to this day in history, redecorating and cooking steaks.

Here you go:

On A Day Like This — Reference — $0.99

On A Day Like This is a brand-new app that fills you in on significant events for any day you choose. You just swipe in the date you want, and you can flip through events, births, deaths, and holidays and observances. It’s a simple, clean, easy-to-use app that contains a lot of interesting and potentially useful information.

For example, did you know that November 14 is the day that scientists discovered 90377 Sedna, an object that is orbits the sun at three times the distance of Neptune? Slip that into conversation at work and see what happens.

On A Day Like This

Houseplan — Productivity — Free

In the past, whenever I’ve wanted to change the furniture layout in a room, I’ve broken out the graph paper and made a tiny scale mockup of the space and everything in it. HousePlan is a new app that is designed specifically to keep things like that from happening. First, you place the walls, windows, and doors, and then you can figure out where the furniture goes before you actually have to lift anything. It’s quick and easy to use and the best part is that you don’t have to wonder if that piece of paper you just threw away is a scrap or your chifferobe.

Houseplan

SteakMate — Health & Fitness — Free

How do you know when a steak is done? You have the finger and thumb trick, the weirder face test, the less elegant “cut it open and look at it” test, or a meat thermometer.

Those wanting a more high-tech way to handle meat cookery might want to try SteakMate, a new app that provides custom timers for your grilling needs. You enter in the cut, thickness, cooking method and desired doneness, and it tells you what to do, including when to flip and how long to let it rest. It can even track multiple steaks simultaneously.

Plus, it’s way cleaner and less awkward than touching the steak and then your face.

SteakMate

1 Minute Desk Workout — Health & Fitness — Free

You know how it goes: You’re sitting there at work and you know you should take a break before your hands fall off, but you have all this stuff to do and you’ll get to it after you do this one last thing, but then you don’t. And then you get carpal tunnel syndrome. Like, immediately.

Enter 1-Minute Desk Workout. It will remind you to take hand and back breaks every hour and it’ll walk you through 60 seconds of exercises while it’s at it. It’s kinda like your mom telling you to stop playing video games and go outside. But for your cubicle.

1 Minute Desk Workout

Upcycling — Entertainment — Free

Green-lifestyle blog Eve of Reduction saw your landfill at Whole Foods the other day and thinks it looks tired and kinda flabby. It wants to help, so it has a thing you might want to check out.

Upcycling is a free app full of instructions and suggestions for repurposing and repairing out-of-use items. It’ll show you how to reupholster a chair, what you can do with used paint cans, and show you cool things other people have done with their would-be junk. It’s all arranged and indexed conveniently within the app, and even if you don’t do anything in there, it’s still interesting to browse through.

Upcycling

When I moved to the States 20 years ago from the UK, I had two suitcases. One contained my clothes and other worldly possessions. The other case was filled with my crappy old Macintosh.

The Mac was obsolete even then, but leaving it behind was unthinkable. I held on to it for decades, hauling it across the country and multiple house moves. I’d still have it now, if I hadn’t cooked it showing my kids the joys of OS 6. Moronically, I blocked the top vents with a box and the explosive pop of overheated circuits nearly gave me a heart attack.

The busted Mac was just one of a garage-full of creaky old Apple technology I chucked out recently in a major de-cluttering (mandated, btw, by the wife). The list is too heartbreaking to mention in full, but included dozens of desktops and laptops, as well as boxfuls of obsolete iPods, mice, keyboards, modems, printers, monitors and cables.

Other things that I threw out and probably shouldn’t have? I also disposed of boxes of Apple press passes and press kits, including one for the special-edition U2 iPod that included a nifty poster. I kept one “Think Different” poster (featuring Gandhi) but recycled a bunch of others.

Why did I hoard all this stuff? Mostly laziness. eWaste is a headache. It’s easier to just hold onto it. But part of it was because a lot of this stuff still worked! I might have gotten a new, bigger monitor, but there was nothing wrong with the old one. Sure, it’s VGA resolution, but it still functions!

And then, I always felt there would be a time when I needed that FireWire extension cord, or a serial-to-USB adapter. Right? I’d kick myself if I had one once but threw it out when I needed it. But mostly it was sentimentality. Each item had a specific memory, triggered by softly stroking its chunky beige keys.

EndlessTV – Seasons — Lifestyle — Free

Now that we’ve gotten that pesky “Halloween” thing out of the way with all its gross movies and candy and fun, we can get down to the serious business of planning “The Holidays.” And if you’re getting ready to celebrate American Thanksgiving and need appropriate programming on your phone or iPad right now, EndlessTV’s “Seasons” app might be what you need. It features quick-loading, topical shows (mostly about food) that you can swipe through at your leisure.

I learned how to make a pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin, and I don’t even know what I’m going to do with that knowledge.

EndlessTV – Seasons

I only really have a Facebook account for work purposes, and I usually only go there when I want to feel bad about myself. So I typically have no idea what’s going on there.

Apparently, Alpha Zen, a quotation-focused new game by developer Large Animal Games, wants me to know what’s going on with my friends, so it includes a mode that makes their statuses into game pieces.

It’s a little weird, but let me explain how the game works.

The third-generation iPad mini and second-generation iPad Air will have Touch ID, there’s no doubt. Just like Siri — a feature that debuted in an ‘S’ year for the iPhone — took a year to creep to the iPad, TouchID will have a year’s exclusivity before it comes to Apple’s line-up of tablets.

Don’t hold your breath, though. We’re almost a year away from Touch ID coming to the iPad mini. So you should take this picture of a ‘leaked’ iPad mini 3 with Touch ID with super pessimism.

Joining Belkin’s armada of WeMo home-automation devices today is the WeMo Insight Switch. Like the plain-vanilla WeMo Switch, the Insight Switch will let you power on or off whatever is connected to its outlet via the WeMo iOS or Android app. Unlike the regular Switch, the Insight lets you also see exactly how much money you’er spending on juice, and adds more control flexibility.

Meteor is a $1 app with a brilliant, simple solution to a common problem no one seems to have addressed until now — and it’ll almost certainly unclutter your phone.

The Inner Balance system pairs a $99 dongle/earclip sensor with an accompanying app with the goal of training its users to de-stress themselves (probably an over-simplification, but that’s the gist of it) through gamified breathing exercises.

To further this goal, HeartMath, the company behind the Inner Balance kit, has just launched a cloud-based service called HeartCloud to further gamify the Inner Balance sessions with the introduction of social aspects. HeartMath has also announced that new Lightning dongles for the earclip sensor will be available at the end of this month.

SAN FRANCISCO — It may come as a surprise, but AT&T’s is one of the biggest retailers of Apple accessories. The company has more than 2,200 stores across the country, compared to Apple’s 253 US stores. and they sell a boatload of goodies.

On Thursday night, AT&T showcased some of the hottest iPhone and iPad accessories that will be available this Holiday at it’s retail locations.

Check them out: