QotD: Favourite Mac
I just realised I’ve been a Mac user since I could afford a lowly Performa 450 back in April 1995, although it might have been May. To celebrate this anniversary, I thought I’d reflect on some of my favourite Mac hardware. These days I have an iMac G4 and a Aluminium PowerBook 15″, but they’re not (speaks quietly) my favourite Macs.
My favourite Mac of all time was not one I owned but one I took care of for a while – a Macintosh SE, also 10 years ago. Sure, it wasn’t the speediest Mac on the planet and probably cost a packet when it was first released but it was just… so cute. You liked it, hell you loved it.
It may have had its faults but had personality and personified what was so cool about Mac at the time. Floppy disk drives were smooth and quiet compared to the crunching of PCs and you ejected them with the software. The black and white screen made System 6 somehow seem so pure, so original and was surprisingly easy on the eye. Finally, its tiny all-in-one compactness made most PCs look like huge, useless metal suitcases filled with hot air – which they were – yet felt so tough you could drop it from tall buildings and the only thing that would crack was the concrete. In fact, I think people have tested this theory with some success.
What is the favourite Mac you’ve ever owed, or if you haven’t owned many, what is the Mac you most want to own?
BTW, any Cube or Twentieth Anniversary Mac owners out there? I always lusted after the former and have always wanted to see the latter in “the flesh”. Maybe one day!
June 30th, 2005 at 10:56 am
Hi. I have a TAM. Was fortunate enough to get it from a distributor who was migrating from selling macs to just PC alone. The people there had now idea what they selling as they were just looking at part numbers on an excel sheet. My wife was working at sister company, spotted it and yelled over the phone to me…i remember, it may have been a steal at less than US$700 but it was still a lot of money to a struggling student back then…what’s more one with already a mac at home. How did i justify this? But I’m glad I did.
That was more than 6 or 7 years ago, and the TAM still functions today…very intermittently with the ethernet card, great with music, usually okay with the hand-me-down crescendo G3 card and so on…
I’m glad I got it.
Gavin from
Singapore
July 5th, 2005 at 11:54 pm
Mmm, TAM, drool!
July 5th, 2005 at 11:54 pm
Also, interesting to note that after reading this one of my friends bought not one but two Cubes! Mad.
October 9th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
My uncle has a Mac SE and me and my cousins always played the games when we went round there — amazing considering it was an old mac — it even had risk!