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Sep

Milestone: 20th Anniversary of Portable Mac Era

Posted by Published in 000, 1mb, 20, 21, 3d, 99, ALI, Cult of Mac, IL, Macintosh, News, Object, about, ad, ads, analysis, anniversary, app, apple, ard, art, att, battery, book, car, card, case, ces, chip, chips, cloud, computer, db, desktop, development, down, driving, ds, ea, fee, feed, god, hardware, hp, image, install, it, jobs, laptop, liver, logo, mac, mac-users, macs, macuser, magazine, mini, mod, monitor, motorola, new, old, open, operating system, option, os, ports, post, powerbook, pre, process, processor, product, ram, release, rts, sale, screen, scsi, september, stand, standard, system

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the original release of the Macintosh Portable — the first truly untethered Mac, thanks to its internal battery. There’s a quote attributed to Steve Jobs: “Do not trust a computer that you cannot lift.” The original compact desktop Macs were offered with an optional carrying case, and some pioneer Mac-users did lug them around, but analogous to the tiny Mac mini today, they couldn’t be considered truly portable due to the necessity of a wall-current umbilical. The Mac Portable development project was launched in 1986, not long before Steve Jobs’ departure from Apple, and the product was first released for sale on September 20, 1989. It was featured on the cover of the November 1989 edition of MacUser magazine, which called it “by far the most complex piece of machinery devised by sale by Apple computer.” While it incorporated a laptop-style foldable form factor with a front-mounted carry handle/lockdown lever, the Mac Portable weighed only about a pound less than contemporaneous Mac Compact desktops — a hefty 16 pounds, due partly to it having a robust lead-acid battery. It wasn’t cheap either, selling for a likewise heavyweight $6,500 — or $7,300 with an optional hard drive. Internally, the Mac Portable had a 16MHz Motorola 68HC000 processor chip, an internal 1.4MB 3.5-inch floppy drive, a 40MB 3.5″ hard drive, and a whopping 1MB of RAM, expandable to 9MB but unfortunately in an oddball 30ns SRAM card (one slot) module format. The monitor screen was a crisp 9.8″ 1-bit active matrix, 640×400, LCD — initially without backlighting — and there was also a video output port for driving an external monitor. The upside of that heavy lead-acid battery was a very respectable five-to-10 hour charge life. Also included were an ADB port for a keyboard and mouse, DIN-8 serial ports for printer and modem connections, and a DB-25 SCSI connector

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Jan

25 Years Of Mac: Bruce Fox’s Mac Classic

Posted by Published in 2008, 25 Years of Mac, Cult of Mac, CultOfMac, Macintosh, News, Vintage Tech, ad, ads, art, book, ces, classic, feed, google, hardware, mac, old, photo, photos, ripped, sale, scsi, tea, time, true, upload

Bruce Fox has been a Mac user since 1988. He got in touch with the Cult to tell the story behind his beloved Mac Classic. Take it away, Bruce: “The Mac Classic had done some time in the Los Angeles School District and was surplus obtained by a teacher friend of mine. At the time I had a number of surplus, distressed, or broken Macintosh machines. “I used to use the very nice internal power supplies in my kinetic sculptures. The classic and its bag stayed in service longer than most. I was using it in my Naval Reserve duties for record keeping and documents. As the Navy got more automated I finally started leaving it at home. After the Navy retired me in ‘98 it was only used for Thin C and Tetris. “By that time a larger Mac Performa was the principle machine at home. When I did a wholesale cleaning of old machinery some years back, I stripped out a number of power supplies and recycled the rest of most of the machines. But I kept the best of the machines operating and would boot it up from time to time. “I bundled it up and put it in the loft last year to make room for an old powerbook G3 that hosts a SCSI slide scanner. But I just took it out and booted it for the enclosed photos

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Dec

What the death of VHS means to Mac

Posted by Published in 1984, Images, Macintosh, Music, News, PC, Support, ad, ads, app, apple, art, book, buy, cat, christmas, classic, computer, computers, demo, features, feed, google, iPhone, iPod, imac, image, intel, loo, mac, macbook, mad, movie, movies, mp3, old, retail, return, scsi, stand, tea, tech, time, tv, what the

Section: Apple , Originals It’d be hard to think of a more popular technology than the VCR, which transformed the way people could watch TV, created the home video market, and brought the piracy issue out of back alleyways and into the home of everyone. And while home video is going stronger than ever, the ubiquitous VHS tape is now officially “dead” as the last major distributor cancels shipments. Pop culture is finally hitting the eject button on the VHS tape, the once-ubiquitous home-video format that will finish this month as a creaky ghost of Christmas past. After three decades of steady if unspectacular service, the spinning wheels of the home-entertainment stalwart are slowing to a halt at retail outlets. On a crisp Friday morning in October, the final truckload of VHS tapes rolled out of a Palm Harbor, Fla., warehouse run by Ryan J. Kugler, the last major supplier of the tapes. And as I read this (looking over at the long-disused but still fuctional VCR sitting under my TV), I began thinking about how Macintosh, introduced in 1984, had gone through years of unpopularity and still hung on while VHS had reigned for years only to quickly pass away, unmourned. The big difference, of course, is that Macintosh as a platform continued to evolve. There’s the familiar point-and-click user interface, folders and arrows, but that’s just a veneer placed over an operating system that works in a completely different manner, addressing an Intel chip and accessing peripherals over the Universal Serial Bus rather than Apple’s proprietary Apple Data Bus. Wireless networking, ripping CDs, editing movies—these are all ideas that were added to the computer; “Macintosh” is more of a concept of how a computer should work rather than the OS itself. And it’s that idea that’s allowed the Mac to survive—to find an audience that would support it—when a more popular technology which couldn’t adapt, has died out. Sometimes that adaptation has been forced. When Apple introduced the iMac with neither a floppy drive nor an ADB port, it was a sea change. You’d need to buy all new peripherals! What about all the data I had on floppies? But Apple bet the farm that the Internet was going to be the Next Big Thing, and that by embracing USB, it would be easier to get peripheral makers to write a bit of code for Mac, rather than gamble on making an ADB version (which were always difficult to find outside of mail-order catalogs)

Tags: 1984, app, apple itunes, apple tv, art, buy, classic, demo, feed, google, image, Images, intel, loo, macbook, monitor, movie, movies, News, old, pics, scsi, Software, software update, Support, time, tree

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Dec

Last second gift ideas for Macintosh owners

Posted by Published in Get a Mac, Images, Mac + Computers, Macintosh, Web, ad, ads, amazon, app, apple, apple.com, art, book, buy, cat, christmas, computer, computers, design, features, feed, google, holiday, holidays, image, mac, memory, mod, notebook, photo, photos, price, prices, sale, scsi, store, time, upgrade, waiting

Section: Mac + Computers , Wireless , Airport , Peripherals , Features , Gift Guide Are you waiting until the last minute? Here are some ideas for the Macintosh owner close to your heart this Christmas. Memory upgrade Let your Mac be the best it can be. With drastically low prices, now is the time to give your system that needed boost. You’ll be amazed how much smoother your Mac will run and snappier it will respond with even a minor upgrade. There is no excuse not to do it. The cheapest I have found with fast shipping is OWC . They claim to be able to ship in time for Christmas on their web site. Sound system upgrade I recommend a Harman Kardon sound system

Tags: ads, app, apple, apple ipod accessories, apple mac computers, apple.com, art, book, cat, colored apple laptops, computer, computers, feed, google, holidays, image, Images, mac, Mac + Computers, Macintosh, memory, mod, notebook, photo, photos, price, prices, sale, scsi, store, time, upgrade

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Nov

Inside the Apple Macintosh classic

Posted by RonZed Published in Cult of Mac, Images, Macintosh, amazing, apple, apple mac, apple macintosh classic, awesome, chips, classic, cnet, computers, crt, disassembled, geek, gutting, hard-drive, image, mac, molex, motherboard, old, opening, pic, pics, picture, pictures, ram, ron_zed, ronzed, rzr, scsi, tech, techonolgy, vintage, vlsi

The Apple Mac is one of the most famous and easily recognizable personal computers ever manufactured. In this “Cracking open” photo gallery, TechRepublic examined just what went into a Mac Classic–and what technology was like in 1991.

Lets go!
Photos by CNET Networks/Mark Kaelin, caption text by Mark Kaelin.

addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fhadshot.net%2Fapple%2Fapple%2Finside-the-apple-macintosh-classic%2F2055′;
[...]

Tags: amazing, apple, apple mac, apple macintosh classic, awesome, chips, classic, cnet, computers, crt, Cult of Mac, disassembled, geek, gutting, hard-drive, image, Images, mac, Macintosh, molex, motherboard, old, opening, pic, pics, picture, pictures, ram, ronzed, ron_zed, rzr, scsi, tech, techonolgy, vintage, vlsi

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Milestone: 20th Anniversary of Portable Mac Era

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