As discussed on this week’s Connected, I am sharing how I picked my winners on the Mac Madness Bracket. There are some real differences as you will see. For example, I had the 2019 Mac Pro and the 20th Anniversary Mac going further than the public did. However, I was right on the money with the Cube passing the MacBook Air, and the public and I voted the Clamshell iBook along to the same round. You can see all the differences here, and click on the images to enlarge them.
The Public Final Bracket
My Bracket
My winner — the Titanium PowerBook — is my favorite Mac of all time:
After nearly three weeks and 15,000 votes, you have chosen your favorite Mac:
Coming in with 51.3% of the votes placed in the final round, the Power Mac G4 Cube has won, narrowly defeating the 2012-2015 Retina MacBook Pro.
Here is what the final, full bracket looks like:
click image to enlarge
There is a lot to process here, and I’ll be talking about the results and how I would have voted on next week’s Connected, so keep an eye out for episode 289.
In the meantime, thank you all for taking part of this. Mac Madness went from idea to reality very quickly, and I could not be happier about the responses it got, even the cranky ones. I hope this has been as much fun for you as it has been for me.
We should get right to it. After nearly 12,000 total votes, we have arrived at the finals of Mac Madness, and it’s the G4 Cube against the 2012-2015 Retina MacBook Pro:
I really thought the black MacBook was going to edge out the Cube, but as you can tell, it fell a little shy in the Semifinals:
Wow, we are really moving along now! I’m back to report the winners of the quarterfinals:
As you can see, both Mac Pro models in the bracket lost out this round, as did the Power Mac G5 and the original Macintosh. Tough day for desktops, as there’s only one left in the fight: the Power Mac G4 Cube!
(click bracket to see larger version)
Go vote in the Semifinals now! Voting will close on Tuesday, March 31.
Raw Numbers for the Quarterfinals
Mac Pro (2019) — 39.2% 2012-2015 Retina MBP — 60.8%
Power Mac G5 — 45% Clamshell iBook G3 — 55%
G4 Cube — 53.2%
2006-2012 Mac Pro — 46.8%
Black MacBook — 53.3%
Original Macintosh — 46.7%
Go vote in the Semifinals now! Voting will close on Tuesday, March 31.
Voting in Round 2 of Mac Madness has closed, and just shy of 3,000 people voted in this round, picking which Macs were their favorites, sending eight machines into the quarterfinal matches:
Like in Round 1, the raw numbers are at the bottom of this post, but I have to say, I’m sad that both the iMac G3 and G4 have been voted off the island Genius Bar.
(click bracket to see larger version)
Go vote in the Quarterfinals now! Voting will close on Friday.
Raw Numbers for Round 2:
Mac Pro (2019) — 59.5%
Blue and White Power Mac G3 — 40.5%
Voting has closed in Round 1 of Mac Madness. The first round was a huge success, with 3,495 people casting their votes for their favorite Macs.
As promised, I live streamed the results:
The raw numbers can be found at the bottom of this post, but I have to say, I was surprised by several of the totals. As I said, these matchups were selected at random, and that meant that some good machines have already been knocked out.
Also, the 15.8 percent of you who chose “Literally any Performa” are … real special to me.
Here is the bracket for Round 2:
(click bracket to see larger version)
Go vote in Round 2 now! Voting will close on Tuesday.
Raw Numbers for Round 1:
Mac Pro (2019) — 70.5%
PowerBook G3 — 29.5%
Macintosh TV — 10.4% Blue and White Power Mac G3 — 89.6%
2012-2015 Retina MBP — 64.6%
Mac SE/30 — 35.4%
iMac G3 — 72.5%
12-inch Retina MacBook — 27.5%
20th Anniversary Mac — 47.2% Original Mac mini — 52.8%
It’s a weird time in the world, so I thought it would be fun to pick — as a community — our favorite Mac.
As it is March, this naturally took the form of a bracket:
Here’s how this works. I’ll be hosting five rounds of voting over the next couple of weeks, and we should have a winner on Friday, April 3. I’ll announce new rounds here on the blog and on Twitter. You can view all the Mac Madness 2020 blog posts in one place, on this page.
Remember, we are voting for our favorite Mac; not the best Mac.
As such, I think it’s important to share how I came up with these 32 machines. I had an original list of about 45 Macs, then trimmed it down with feedback from several other Apple writer/podcaster people, including John Siracusa, Jason Snell, John Voorhees and my co-hosts on Connected, Myke Hurley and Federico Viticci.
(Ticci didn’t have much to say.)
The placement of machines on the bracket was selected at random. As such, I expect some matchups will be more exciting than others.
This only works if you all vote and share the link — I want this to be as broad of a sampling as possible. I’ll be revealing the winners for this round on Friday at 3 PM Eastern on the Relay FM Twitch stream.
Go vote in Round 1 now! Voting will close on Friday.
