vintage tech - page 7

I just love this picture. It sums up perfectly the progress that’s been made in computing over the last couple of decades. That which was once beige and plasticky is now sleek and silvery. (I know some people still swear by those old clacky keyboards, though: John Gruber once called the Extended Keyboard II “the single best hardware product Apple has ever manufactured.”)

You get the same feel from this one. I remember being utterly amazed by the G4 iMac’s design. I borrowed one from Apple to write a review, and marveled at the computer’s shiny hinged neck and (for the time) large, bright display. Now compare it to a modern iMac. It looks like a toy. (Those of you still using a G4 iMac and enjoying it, get in touch to tell me how and why. Send pics.)

(Photos used under Creative Commons licence. Thanks to: Blakespot and Editor B

Dead Macs. You see them sometimes. Upended in a trash bin or shopping cart. Pilfered for parts, poked and prodded by scavengers who have left just the most useless innards behind.

James Wages is a man on a mission. Where you and I might see a tired old computer that’s not much use to anyone anymore, he sees a decent machine with plenty of potential.

The results of his tinkering are spectacular; this ancient SE/30 is in regular use by the Wages family, for writing things, drawing things, and (most impressively, I think) getting online.

This little puppy is as maxed out as an SE/30 can get. These machines originally appeared in 1989, running System 6 and costing only $6,500. Blimey. Now you can pick them up for nothing – or even cheaper – and if you’re prepared to put the work in, maybe you can get yours doing all the stuff James has got his doing.

This machine was built before the web was invented, but he’s got it surfing quite satisfactorily. How did he do it?

I asked him.

Google’s 2001 retro-search tool has provided endless amusement over the past few weeks. None so much as the image at right, which is the “iPhone 2,” released by InfoTech in mid-1999 and reviewed on StreetTech by Gareth Branwyn.

And yes, it was a comical Internet landline phone, featuring full QWERTY keyboard. Like today’s iPhone 3G, it featured a touchscreen, Internet access, e-mail, and location-based services. Also like today’s iPhone 3G, it improved on significant shortcomings in its predecessor, by adding a better keyboard, higher data speed, and better speaker-phone sound quality.

And, eeriest of all, it had notable areas that needed improving. There was no “Forward” browser button, no “Find” function, and, hilariously, no Cut, Copy, or Paste features. In many ways, it’s exactly like today’s iPhone. Just, you know, totally janky.

Some things never change, apparently.

Thanks, Jwester!

This is the actual Mac plus that Scotty tried talking to in Star Trek IV, spotted and photographed by Marcin Wichary at the Star Trek: The Experience exhibition shortly before it closed last month.

Note how shiny and clean this particular Plus is. Bet it boots up shiny and clean, too. And if it has problems, it can run a Level One Diagnostic.

Now that the Experience has left the Las Vegas Hilton, it has no home of its own. Where is this Mac now? Probably packed away in a container somewhere. Possibly wrapped up in Spock’s Vulcan gown that it was once displayed alongside.

Annnyway: Borg teddy bears.

Photo used under Creative Commons license. Thanks to Marcin Wichary.

In honor of its 10th anniversary, Google has rolled back the clock as far as it can go — its January 2001 index. Though the company got rolling in fall 1998, this is the most materially complete version of the original Google that they have, and they’ve even included links to the Internet Archive to retrieve long-since dead web pages. An era before the iPod.

When you go looking for your humble Cult of Mac curators, however, it’s possible to discover a lot of proto-Cult of Mac content, most of which is extremely amusing. It’s like reading today’s Cult of Mac yesterday — but without the benefit of decent web design.

Why here’s Leander at Wired News, writing about the 2001 MacWorld keynote after years kicking around various tech publications and becoming a bicycle messenger: It’s a Mac, Mac, Mac, Macworld.

Or this riveting narrative of Apple’s decision to replace QuickDraw GX with Unicode!

This site even tells of a prehistoric July 15, 1996 MacWeek article in which Leander reports on shocking Mac sales slumps. Damn you, Windows 95!

Other than a bunch of articles from college, searching myself only yields my earliest ever Mac tip from a MacCentral round-up of Mac celebrities that included my report on Radiohead.

Turning back the dial on Craig, meanwhile, turned up the archive of his MacToolbox column “Revert to Saved,” including this scandalous rant that Macs crash occasionally!

Ed’s history includes postings on a now-defunct and not-even archived BeOS user message board called “BeSpecific.”

Giles pops up all over, but this interview about what it’s like to be a British journalist is probably the best.

Lonnie turns up this fascinating 1971 camp photo, which might or might not be him.

And Leigh might or might not be this yoga instructor/university department secretary.

It’s like looking into the old mirror. Fascinating.

By day, Damian Ward operates Macs for a printing company in darkest Buckinghamshire, a county just to the north west of London. He’s been doing this for 15 years or so.

By night, Damian hunts for batches of unwanted, unloved old Macs. He hunts down 512k machines, Classics, SEs and SE30s, and early iMacs. He takes them in — from colleagues, friends, Freecycle, eBay, junk sales, anywhere — and tinkers with them. He has quite an impressive collection.

“You bring them home and you think they’ll be beyond repair, and that you’ll only be able to use them for parts,” he says.

“Then you discover they’re working fine, and then you can’t get rid of them can you? You have to keep them.” That’s right. You have to.

Simon Royal asks: Are G3 Macs still viable work machines?.

His answer is a resounding affirmative, but then you’d expect that of an article at Low End Mac. Simon’s a writer, too, so his requirements for a work machine are pretty minimal: just a word processor, most of the time.

My oldest Mac is a 600MHz Dual USB G3 iBook, which copes bravely with Tiger. It does nothing other than play music streamed from elsewhere, and does that job just fine. The only problem is that getting it started up and playing takes a while:

• press on/off button
• (make cup of tea while it boots, connects to network, launches iTunes)
• tell iTunes to connect to shared music
• (make another cup of tea)
• select desired playlist
• (look out of the window wistfully)
• start playing music

Apart from that, it’s fine.

What’s the oldest Mac you’ve got that does a decent job of something or other?

Owner and founder of the Denver graphic design studio Matter, Rick Griffith loves all things Apple. He and his crew use the latest Macs among other gear to do their innovative work. They also love vintage technology and on a recent trip to Denver, my visit to the Matter command center unearthed a pristine Lisa in the wild, which we share with you here.

Bonus points if you can identify what she’s sitting on.

Image from Daily Mail 

For years, Apple (and just about every other digital media company in the world) has battled with Burst.com, a Santa Rosa, California company that holds a huge number of broad patents for streaming audio and video over networks. Microsoft settled with Burst three years ago, as have many other players. Apple maintained for years that those patents are too generic to be enforceable, and was especially upset at the notion that anything about the iPod was derived from Burst’s circa 1990 patents.

And after years, the company has proof: a 52-year-old Brit named Kane Kramer who developed a prototype digital music player called IXI in 1979 that could hold up to three-and-a-half minutes of music (no word on whether he advertised it as putting “One song in your pocket). While his invention never made a direct market impact (and his patents expired in the late 1980s), Kramer’s IXI provides clear evidence that the basic concept behind the iPod existed long before Burst ever thought it was a good idea to make money through patent enforcement.

In spite of Apple’s use of Kramer as a witness in its case with Burst, he quite naturally hasn’t been granted a share of its revenues. In fact, he recently had to sell his house and move into a rental. Still, his original sketch isn’t that far off the mark. Kind of hard to believe.

‘I must admit that at first I thought it was a wind-up by friends. But we spoke for some time, with me still up this ladder slightly bewildered by it all, and she said Apple would like me to come to California to talk to them. ‘Then I had to make a deposition in front of a court stenographer and videographer at a lawyers’ office. The questioning by the Burst legal counsel there was tough, ten hours of it. But I was happy to do it.’ 

Daily Mail via Digg

BoingBoing guest blogger Lisa Katayama has tracked down an amazing work by Japanese cartoonist Mitsuru Sugaya, recounting the story of the founding of Apple from the 1970s to about 1984. The full series of comics is on uagaya’s web page, and it must be seen, if only for the scene of young Woz speaking to an octopus alien via Ham Radio.

Sugaya via BoingBoing

Check out our gallery of original artwork from Swedish painter Erik Saxen, who painted the work in 1987 for a huge poster campaign and newspaper run promoting the launch of the Macintosh SE in Sweden.

Saxen is seeking a serious collector for the set of oil paintings (some with mixed media), which are currently in climate-controlled storage in Florida. For additional information and contact links see My Old Mac.

“Apple is about the idea that people with passion can change the world.”

Exactly.

Digg via Romaine Moisescot

In many ways, we’re living in a golden age for Apple. The entire product line is rock-solid, and the only complaint any of us can muster is that Apple hasn’t released whatever top-secret products it has in the wings yet. Market share is way up in Macs, dominant in iPods, and rapidly growing for iPhones. The current crop of software for the Mac is better than at any time in the history of Apple (sorry, Framemaker-lovers), and the iPhone development community shows tremendous promise (a few apps are already the best to ever appear on a phone).

So why are so many long-time Apple fanatics, myself included, feel a bit bummed out by the current state of affairs? Is it because we hate the thought of outsiders getting in on our little secret or that we really miss CyberDog and QuickDraw GX? It’s worse — we’ve all become de facto Apple spokespeople. I don’t draw a salary from Apple, but I am a full-time Mac genius in my social circle. If you share my pain, click through.

Photo by Rinox via flickr

Apple has long been a poster child for the wisdom of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand. With active trade in some of its discontinued products, such as the iSight camera (which regularly sells on auction sites such as eBay for more than the original purchase price), and high-resale values for “previously owned” and “refurbished” models of its computers, the reality has been that the cost of owning an Apple over the years has not been nearly so high as its reputation for premium pricing might indicate.

The iPhone is providing additional confirmation that, despite complaints about the company’s obsessive desire to control the user experience, they must be doing something right at 1 Infinite Loop.

iPhone Atlas reported recently on the high prices still being fetched at resale by the original model phones, indicating concern over the ability to unlock and/or jailbreak the upcoming model, combined with significant demand in countries where the iPhone 3G will not initially be on sale, including Russia and China.

While the current value of first-generation iPhones may be high, with reports of the bid on 16GB phones near $600, some believe the market for the phones will stay active with prices coming down as the availability of 3G models gets closer. Michael Johnston at iPhone Alley suggests the window for high prices may be closing soon and Dennis Sellers writes for Macsimum News that active trade in the post-3G launch market for first-gen iPhones could see prices come down under $100.

With Apple and AT&T seeming to have foiled the unlocking/jailbreaking movement that flourished in the wake of iPhone’s initial release, Stateside customers who must have the speed and features of the 3G model but still have, or want, service with a carrier other than AT&T, will either have to wait and see if the new models can be jailboken or look to Apple’s deals with a different carrier in almost every country overseas, where the phones will go on sale next month. Across both ponds Apple has had to agree to a wide range of prices and options for selling the iPhone 3G, making it likely that in quite a few countries outside of the U.S., you’ll be able to buy an iPhone without a contractual agreement.

With a new iPhone all but guaranteed to be announced Monday, there’s never been a better time to perform a quick post-mortem on the existing multi-touch devices from Apple. Though the iPhone has been talked nearly to death, one topic that has gone relatively unexplored over the 18 months since the unveiling of the iPhone is the strategy behind its design. People have talked plenty about its design, of course, from the loved-or-hated chrome bezel to the iconic but somewhat-too slippery back edge to the software and the revolutionary touchscreen interface. That’s all fine, but those are all aesthetic and functional choices. At a more fundamental level, the iPhone constituted a strategic move by Apple into the mobile phone market. And it’s here where the look, feel, and positioning of the iPhone are most fascinating. The iPhone was explicitly designed to rapidly drive the adoption of technologies that most people had never even contemplated before, and it’s been an overwhelming success. To learn why and to hear what this might mean for the second iPhone, click through!

With WWDC on the horizon, and keynote fever ramping up, we thought it might be nice to take a stroll down memory lane. The “One More Thing” timeline below covers every Stevenote we could find, focusing on the “Just One More Thing…” product announcement, with video clips for most of them.

Of course if we got anything wrong, or if you have additions, or clips we don’t have, please let us know in the comments, and we’ll get them added — Enjoy!

Image: AP, via Guardian UK

Today’s rumors that Steve Jobs may introduce an incremental update to OS X called Snow Leopard at his Worldwide Developers Conference keynote provide a powerful reminder of just how effective the project to replace the Classic Mac OS has been. Buzz on the wires has it that Snow Leopard would be for Intel processors only, completely abandoning the PowerPC platform that Steve Jobs inherited at Apple in 1996. Some have even speculated that Carbon and the last pieces of the original Mac OS toolkit could be similarly discarded in the release. If all that is true (and the latter part is particularly hard to swallow without bricks of salt), it officially marks the death of the Macintosh OS at the hands of its proud successor, OS X.

This is a really significant achievement, and not because I’m nostalgic for MultiFinder. This officially marks the conclusion of the most patient, incremental, and down-right conservative campaign of change ever waged by one Steven P. Jobs. At a WWDC much like this one, just 10 years ago, he began to wage that war. Next Monday, he will have won. The Mac is dead. Long live OS X. To read why and how this happened, please click through.

Cool tech demo for something new called “NeXTStep 3.” Could be big. Just kidding, of course. Always interesting to see Steve before his more recent, peak form. A little less suave than you might be used to. Still, NeXTStep 3 was awesome for its era – just barely shy of the first few releases of OS X.

Except that GUI. YEESH. Who on earth thought that all those floating palettes was a good idea?

Via Macenstein

Philip Barnes has uploaded a handful of vintage Apple print ads from the late 1970s and early ’80s. He’s got the “Welcome, IBM. Seriously.” spot, as well as the amazing commercial above, which makes the argument that A is for Apple, and therefore, you should use one. Sink your teeth into finances! Do you see that 16-color bar chart on that TV! It’s dope!

Greatest of all time.
I just got back from visiting a friend in San Luis Obispo, California, and he pointed me towards the Mac Superstore. I’d never heard of the place, and Apple has so thoroughly eradicated all unofficial Mac retailers that I didn’t think there were many left (sadly). But I decided to give the place a close look from the inside. What follows, here and on the jump, is a photo-tour to the coolest Apple store that the company doesn’t own – and maybe ever.

Best Doorstops Ever.
The experience at the MacSuperstore, founded in 1998 by Shane Williams, a graduate of Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo, begins before you even walk in the door. Since the weather is almost always sunny and calm in SLO, Williams and staff use vintage all-in-one Macs to hold the doors open to the faithful. I checked closely, and one door is propped by a Mac Plus while the others are SE/30s. The effect is inviting – and a bit disturbing. I last used an SE/30 in mid-1999, and it seemed pretty far from a doorstop then.

All the most interesting stuff is inside, however, so please read on.

Image copyright Andre Gunther

As another year in the Apple-watching game comes to an end, I wanted to take a quick moment to look back on the year that was and search for themes. Given how much Apple got done in 2007, there were a lot to choose from, but one really stands out: Golden Convergence Strikes Back.

For those who weren’t closely watching the moves of Apple closely during the mid-’90s, this might be a new term for you, but it’s a long-time idea in Mac circles. Variously credited to Bahamut of MacEdition and Robert Morgan of Recon for Investors, Golden Convergence speaks to the idea of taking a lot of seemingly divergent technologies and suddenly integrating them into a superior and seamless whole. Originally tagged to the rumored launch of the Apple Media Player in early 1998 (never happened), Golden Convergence has shown up dramatically throughout the second coming of Steve Jobs, from the standardization of USB and FireWire down to the wide use of Mac OS X despite initial resistance by the installed base.

But 2007 was when it really blossomed. We saw Apple take dozens technologies and roll them out to multiple platforms. OS X mutated and got optimized for the AppleTV, iPhone and, later, the iPod Touch. CoverFlow, initially created for iTunes 7, showed up first on the AppleTV, then the iPhone, then the iPod Classic, Nano and Touch before becoming the centerpiece of the Leopard UI. Front Row moved from the AppleTV to virtually every Mac on the market. Flexibility bred new uses, new interactions, new consistency. Everything Apple worked on had a tighter link than ever to another Apple product.

And nowhere is this more evident than the iPhone, the most flexible platform Apple has created since the original Mac. For now, it’s officially impossible to install third-party software on it, but that will change in early 2008 with the release of the iPhone and iPod touch Software Developer’s Kit. The reason that the iPhone is great is that nothing about it makes it a phone only. Its form is built for maximum flexibility. Few hardware buttons. Multi-touch creating hardware controls where and as they are needed. It can be an Internet browsing tablet, an iPod and an e-mail reader. Nothing about its hardware design precludes any future uses. If you build it, this thing will come along.

And that right there is the essence of Apple’s new spin on Golden Convergence. Don’t design anything in hardware that locks you into a current use or goal. Instead, build an interface flexible enough to accommodate all kinds of future uses or even new businesses. The iPhone could become a very powerful gaming platform is Apple decided to steer it in that direction. It could be slightly modified into a point of purchase device. The next version, upgraded with 3G and a GPS chip, could easily become a navigation device to challenge Garmin’s product line. Get a decent CCD into it with a better lens and a flash, and it’s a decent consumer digital camera.

It’s brilliant design, and it flips on its head the way that Apple approached new technologies in the 1990s. Back then, Apple wanted to make everything: printers, digital cameras, scanners, PDAs, stereos, game consoles — everything. Now, Apple still wants to play in all kinds of product categories, but they’re setting themselves up to do that with a single device. Don’t sell everything. Sell everyone iPhones. You’ll reduce your number of SKUs while also locking people into a product that generates monthly revenue long after its purchase price has been swallowed. Every year, build in faster chips and add a few features that are locked into hardware. Do everything else via software.

Apple already started this process in 2007, and I expect to see it increase dramatically over the next five years. After all, would you rather by an Apple TV or just get a high-capacity next-gen iPhone that can wirelessly stream video to your TV? It’s the safest way to innovate, and Apple nailed it. Happy New Year, everyone!

The One Laptop Per Child initiative seeks to bring technology to the developing world to make up for historic educational and economic inequities. Though I think the project has plenty of problems (Did anyone check to see that a laptop was the best way to repair inequalities in Africa and South America? Or, as Om Malik so succinctly put it, “What about the people?“), the actual XO laptop they’ve produced is quite cool and has capabilities rare on mainstream machines.

The machine is outfitted with a touch screen, a stylus, and a keyboard. In other words, it’s exactly like Apple’s eMate, a Newton product line extension from 1996 targeted at the educational market. Jason O’Grady has a great rundown of both the XO and the eMate over at ZDNet, but there’s a bigger point here that hasn’t been made: Technologies are not inherently interesting or bound to succeed. They require the right context and adoption strategies to take off. Though the XO is far from guaranteed to succeed in the long run, if it does, it won’t be because its technology or design is so superior to the eMate’s. It will be because it connects with people in just the right way. That’s all innovation is — the right idea at the right time for the right people.

Let’s face it: There are Mac cultists — folks like you and me — and then there are Mac cult leaders. Take James Savage, a man who has more than 100 Macs in his house. The picture above doesn’t quite do justice. You must read the Gizmodo interview and see the gallery…

Jesus Diaz: The first time I saw your photo I couldn’t believe anyone could have as many Apple computers as you do, at least not outside of a museum. How many do you actually have?
James Savage: About 100 Macs and Apple computers (one NeXT) are in Macca [the spare room], with another 25 or so Macs in our home office and the rest of the Macs are in use throughout the house.

Yikes.

Via Digg.

There are many measures of Apple fandom. Some people hoard old machines and keep them in pristine running condition. Others get tattoos and unfortunate haircuts.

And then there are those who drop cash on limited-edition lego replicas of Steve Jobs and Woz. No, I’m not making this up. According to Ars Technica, the sets go on sale tomorrow at 9 p.m. Eastern. You can be one of the few, the proud, the Mac proud.

Via Digg.