March 20, 1997: Apple launches its Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, a futuristic, special-edition Mac that’s ahead of its time in every way.
Not part of any established Mac line, it brings a look (and a price!) unlike anything else available. And yet the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh promptly bombs. Today, it’s a collector’s piece.
March 19, 1990: The ultra-fast Macintosh IIfx makes its debut, sporting a hefty price tag appropriate for such a speedy machine.
The fastest Macintosh of its day, it boasts a CPU running at a “wicked fast” 40 MHz. It gains an additional speed bump from a pair of Apple-designed, application-specific integrated circuits. Prices start at $9,870 and run up to $12,000 — the equivalent of $19,000 to $22,000 in 2019 terms!
February 22, 2001: The iMac Special Edition, sporting custom Flower Power and Blue Dalmatian designs, puts a wacky face on the computer that saved Apple’s bacon at the turn of the century.
A far cry from the super-serious, aluminum-heavy industrial design that will come to define Apple, these colorfully patterned iMacs are some of the most irreverent computers Cupertino ever dreamed up. (C’mon, when was a real Dalmatian blue?)
Under the consciously tacky exterior hummed a pretty darn great iMac G3, though.
February 20, 2004: Music goes small as the iPod mini arrives in Apple stores.
Released with 4GB of storage and in five colors, the diminutive iPod mini features a new “click wheel” that integrates control buttons into a solid-state, touch-sensitive scroll wheel. Despite its small size, the new music player’s market potential looms large. In fact, the iPod mini soon becomes the fastest-selling iPod yet.
The iPad mini hasn’t gotten a sequel since 2015. However, if you’re expecting this year’s rumored refresh to be a massive leap forward, you might want to think again.
At least that’s the take based on an alleged CAD render seen by noted leaker Steve Hemmerstoffer, aka @OnLeaks. While he did not share the image, he suggests the supposed leak indicates the next-gen iPad mini will not see any major external design changes. iPad mini lovers — brace yourself for a simple spec bump.
According to rumors, iOS 13 will bring a redesigned home screen to the iPad. It’s about time. The grid of apps might have worked fine on the iPhone before the App Store, but after nine years of using the expanded version on the iPad, the joke is starting to get old.
So, if Apple is finally ready to make a home screen worthy of the iPad, we have a few suggestions.
The 2018 MacBook Pro might be the most disappointing laptop Apple has come out with in years.
Despite being one of the lightest and most powerful Macs ever, The CultCast host Erfon Elijah finds the 2018 MacBook Pro fraught with problems. In his latest video, he goes through all the reasons — from the lack of ports to the crappy keyboard — why he thinks the new machine is far from perfect.
Let him count the ways the new MacBook Pro falls short.
A few of us here at Cult of Mac work on iPads pretty much exclusively. Apple’s tablet proves more than capable of “real” work, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Far from it, in fact. The iPad Pro 2018 is a fantastic machine that invites you to use it for everything. But that only makes the frustration worse.
Today I’d like to talk about what really drives me nuts about the iPad.
January 27, 2010: Steve Jobs publicly shows off the iPad for the first time.
Aside from the name, which some people joke sounds like a female sanitary product, the iPad immediately earns critical acclaim. “The last time there was this much excitement over a tablet, it had some commandments written on it,” The Wall Street Journal quips.
When it goes on sale, the iPad quickly becomes Apple’s fastest-selling new product ever.
January 16, 1986: Apple introduces the Macintosh Plus, its third Mac model and the first to be released after Steve Jobs was forced out of the company the previous year.
The Mac Plus is also the first Macintosh to include a SCSI port, the main way of attaching a Mac to other devices until Apple abandoned the tech on the iMac G3 upon Jobs’ return. The Mac Plus also boasted an expandable 1MB of RAM and a double-sided 800KB floppy drive.
