| Cult of Mac

These retro Mac fans were podcasting before it was cool

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James Savage and John Leake know a thing or two about computer history, especially when it comes to Macs.
James Savage and John Leake know a thing or two about computer history, especially when it comes to Macs.
Photo: James Savage

Cult of Mac 2.0 bug When James Savage and John Leake uploaded the first episode of their RetroMacCast, they were thrilled with the number of downloads: 18.

Not exactly a meteoric start, but considering neither host ever had that many people at one time interested in hearing them talk about old Apple computers, this was a pretty big deal.

What it’s like to use Photoshop 1.0 on a vintage Mac, 25 years later

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Photoshop 1.0, 25 years later. Screengrab: Cult of Mac
Photoshop 1.0, 25 years later. Screengrab: Cult of Mac

First released in 1990 for the Macintosh Platform, Photoshop 1.0 turned 25 years old last month. To mark the occasion, CreativeLive asked eight Photoshop professionals to try to do their jobs — on camera, of course — on the original 1.0 version of Photoshop.

Spoiler alert: they didn’t have an easy time. “Only one level of Undo? No live preview? Is this even real life?”

This vintage Frankenstein iMac is a dual-booting time machine

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It may seem hard to believe, but there was a time when Apple shipped computers without built-in monitor, not as an exception, but as the rule. Such was the case with the venerable Apple II, which shipped with a behemoth of a 320 x 200 CRT monitor that weighed a monstrous 22 pounds… more than a 27-inch iMac weighs today!

So in a very real way, this computer — built from an old Apple II connected by some kind of magic to an iMac running as the display by Franceso Zaia — isn’t just a sext Frankenstein. It’s actually a lighter, more efficient Apple II monitor than the original. And as an added bonus, you can dual boot up to OS X when the mood suits.

Via: TUAW

What Was It Like To Unbox A Vintage 1984 Macintosh 128K? [Mega-Gallery]

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Everything that was in the 1984 Macintosh 128K's original retail box. Swoon.

Back in 1984, Apple released the first Macintosh home computer, a magnificent piece of vintage computer design that would shape the destiny of the next 25 years of Apple’s corporate history.

What would it have been like to pull a vintage Macintosh 128K out of the box? To first separate the keyboard from its styrofoam lining? To first snap open the hard plastic floppy disc case? To first learn how to use MacWrite using an audio tape?

Over on eBay, one seller has been trying to sell a vintage Macintosh, still in box with complete documentation, equipment and even packaging. In his attempts to sell his prize, he has given us all a treat: a wonderfully thorough and loving unboxing of what it would have been like to open a vintage Macintosh up for the first time.

Since eBay items disappear when the auction ends, we’ve archived these incredible unboxing pics on our servers. Prepare to see a lot of them below.

Every Classic Mac Design, Beautifully Distilled To Its Essence [Gallery]

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Aakash Doshi is a third-year student at the Srsihti School of Art, Design & Technology in Bangalore, India, and he has a wonderfully hobby: he distills Apple’s Mac line-up down to their essence in bright, colorful, beautiful abstractions of their classic designs. I love them. We’ve put more after the jump, but be sure to check them out in hi-res on Doshi’s Tumblr, where he’ll be adding more over time.

Ghosts In The ROM: Hacking Into A 25 Year Old Macintosh Easter Egg

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An old-as-the-hills Easter Egg has been rediscovered by New York based hacker collective NYC Resistor: hidden pictures of the Macintosh team from 1986 hidden in the Mac SE’s system ROM. The Easter Egg has been known about forever — references to it on the Internet go back to at least 1999 — but more interesting than the Easter Egg itself is how NYC Resistor discovered for themselves how it was done: by good, old fashioned hacking.

The Greatest Easter Egg Of All Time Was Exclusive To The Apple II

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If you’ve ever had the pleasure of inserting an old floppy of Jordan Mechner’s classic beat-em-up Karateka into a vintage Apple II, you already know it’s one of the most timelessly classic video ames ever made.

Ever tried inserting the floppy disk upside down, though? If you’re one of the few people who have, whether by accident or design, you’ve experienced one of the greatest and funniest Apple easter eggs of all time: the whole game played upside down.

NASA’s Nuclear-Powered Mars Rover Curiosity Essentially Has The Same Brain As A Bondi Blue iMac G3

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Here’s an interesting little factoid for you. The Curiosity rover — which landed last night on Mars, remote controlled by a team of NASA scientists armed with MacBook Pros — runs on a RAD750 radiation-hardened single board computer.

This computer, in turn, is based on the IBM PowerPC 750 CPU, which Intel first introduce on November 10, 1997. This CPU was used by Apple in many computers in the late 1990s, including the original iMac.

As one insightful redditor notes: “Curiosity is essentially a 2-CPU Power Macintosh G3 with some nifty peripherals and one HELL of a UPS.”

Source: Reddit