K.H. Schumann lives in Bonn (near Cologne), Germany, where he tortures students with his desperate attempts to teach them penal law (or drives his research fellows nuts with his ideas of streamlining their workflow) at the local university. He just started his blog ausersperspective.com a few weeks ago and is still figuring out how to share his love for and thoughts about technology with the rest of the world. If You like his writing here, You would make his day with a comment. Or just follow him and his blog on Twitter @sillyhandle.
Category: Guest Post
Old Mac of the Month: Beige PowerMac G3
This month’s entry is written by John C. Vieira. He’s a copywriter living in Portland, Oregon. It’s very important that you read his blog at jcv.me and follow him on twitter @thelegendofjohn. Seriously, his self-esteem is directly tied to his internet popularity.
What does it mean to be the last of your kind?
The beige Power Macintosh G3 knows. It was the last beige Macintosh. It looked like every Power Mac before it but it was top of the line and it came with that ad campaign where a snail was carrying a Pentium II processor on its shell. It was the first computer to use the G3—the third generation of PowerPC processors. It could perform just as well and sometimes better, than its immediate, supposedly superior and certainly more notorious, replacement.
Old Mac of the Month: the Intel iMac
This month’s entry is by Devir Kahn. He writes a site named “The Geek Companion”, hails from New York State and enjoys long walks on the beach.
“You should really buy some Apple stock,” he said.
He was my friend’s oldest brother. Dark hair and rather tall. “It’s only about 60 bucks and that number is only going up.” He was talking to my friend’s other brother whom, at the time, was trying to convince me how much better the Mac was than the PC. They were both rather obsessed with computers, but I wasn’t buying it.
Old Mac of the Month: Macintosh IIci
Editor’s Note: This month’s submission is written by Jeff Geerling. He writes a blog named Life is Prayer and hails from just north of me, up in St. Louis, MO. If you’d like to share about an old Mac that made a difference in your life, get in touch.
Imagine a time when computing was quickly becoming mainstream; computers with graphical user interfaces were becoming the norm, and expensive Macs were not doing entirely well in the market. Early Windows-based computers were obtrusive, buggy, and required more time setting IRQs and swapping hard drive ribbon cables than they offered uninterrupted uptime.
Old Mac of the Month: The PowerMac 8100/100 AV
Editor’s Note: This month’s post is by Erik Schmidt, who is a software product manager who lives with his wife and two boys in Santa Cruz, California. He can be found on Twitter as @erikschmidt and at his blog, Luxury Bauble.
The PowerMac 8100/100 AV wasn’t the first Mac I used, or the first that I owned. It certainly wasn’t the last. But it stands out as the one computer that truly transformed my life.
Guest Post: The New Genius Bar
Editor’s Note: This was sent to be by a reader of the site who shall remain unnamed, in response to the discussions this week of the shift at Apple’s Genius Bars. The writer’s thoughts closely track with mine at how the Genius Bar — and Apple Retail on the whole — has shifted. It is re-printed here with permission.
Change
Even at training (Early 2009) our instructor warned us about ‘Old School vs. New School’ Geniuses. His emphasis was that the needs of the business change. He advised us to keep our eyes on the Credo, and not to get hung up on the way things used to be. Consumer electronics is a fast-paced world.
Old Mac of the Month: The Performa 637CD
Editor’s Note: This month’s entry is by Garrick Anson. He blogs and tweets while not working or enjoying time with his wife and two sons.
The Christmas season of 1994 was a special time in my life. As with many kids, I had a bad habit of snooping around the house to try to get a glimpse of any unwrapped presents my parents had hidden. We had an old darkroom built-in our basement (my father had been a photographer for years) that had a lockable door to keep people from exposing any film or paper that might be out in the open. This room also served as a perfect place for my parents to lock up those unwrapped gifts each year. After pushing my conscience aside, I went looking for the key to the dark room in my father’s desk. One day after school, and before my parents got home from work, I went in.
Old Mac of the Month: the Macintosh IIvx
Editor’s Note: This month’s “Old Mac of the Month” entry is written by Eric Jorgensen. His blog can be found here and he is on Twitter here.
I am twenty-six, which means that I’ve never known a time when the Macintosh didn’t exist.
Like the Macintosh, I was born in 1984. I first met that machine thanks to my grandparents, who, for a reasons now unclear, had an original Macintosh in their home office. I’m not sure why, as neither grandparent is what anyone would ever describe as “computer-savvy.” Fittingly, I don’t think that I ever saw either one use it. During visits to their house, I would sneak away to boot up the Mac and play with MacPaint.
The World Isn’t Flat, Kickstarter
Editor’s Note: This post is written by my buddy Myke Hurley.
Oh, Hello there! Yeah, I’m over here on this tiny island that’s considered a world superpower, with a pretty big economy and trade presence. Yep, that’s the UK, baby! But for some reason we quite frequently get ignored.
My current state of annoyance stems from the fact that I am unable to submit a project to Kickstarter for funding, as I am not a US resident and nor do I have a US bank account.
Old Mac of the Month: the iMac G4
Editor’s Note: This month’s Old Mac of the Month entry is by Matthew Christensen, a senior Film Production major at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles that also happens to be extremely passionate about Apple. His focus is on post production and specifically editing and color correcting films. Some of his editing/coloring work can be seen here and here. You can follow or get in touch with him on Twitter @the_risingtide.
A Tough Mac to Beat
The very first iMac left some big shoes to fill. Between its industry-busting design, simplicity and intangible cool factor, I can imagine it would have been difficult for computer makers at the time (let alone Apple) to know where to go next. With the iMac G4, the team at Apple did it again. Jonathan Ive describes designing this new machine:
Old Mac of the Month: the Macintosh SE
Editor’s Note: This month’s installment of “Old Mac of the Month” is written by Randy Murray. Randy writes at First Today, Then Tomorrow and has written a book titled Writing Assignments, which is a great tool if you’re looking to improve your writing.
I don’t think of myself as being overly romantic about the past, but I do have a fondness for my first Mac. It not only changed how I worked, but it set me on a path that shaped my career and helped set my future financial position. More than that, I believe that this particular version was the one that established the Mac as a solid business and design machine.
Old Mac of the Month: The 12" PowerBook G4
Editor’s Note: This “Old Mac of the Month” entry is by Shadoe Huard, the writer of SmarterBits, where he covers the world of Apple. Neil Gaiman:
You will hear that she has left the country, that there was a gift she wanted you to have, but it is lost before it reaches you. Late one night the telephone will sign, and a voice that might be hers will say something that you cannot interpret before the connection crackles and is broken.