Wild Apples: The 12 weirdest and rarest Macs ever made

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/macintosh-at-40-the-oddest-and-rarest-macs-ever-built/

by mariuz • 2 years ago

25 10 2 years ago

arstechnica.com

bitxbitxbitcoin• 2 years ago

I clicked hoping to read about feral McIntosh apple cultivars.

DakotaR• 2 years ago

Interesting, only a 10-year gap between the 68k portable Mac and the 68k TI-89

vanchor3• 2 years ago

I'm surprised the Portable is counted as "rare", it's much cheaper and easier to get than most of those (even with recently rising prices). That and I own far too many Macintosh Portables...

Paul-Craft2• 2 years ago

I think they were dipping a little deep in the pool for "rare" machines toward the end. I'm literally writing this comment on a trashcan Mac that I paid $400 for less than a year ago.

One interesting fact regarding that price though is that until Apple officially stopped supporting it with new OSX releases, you'd probably have had to have paid at least $1000-1500 for the same machine. It's a solid machine (I got mine with 8 cores and 64GB ram, and it comes standard with dual GPUs).

These machines even have a pretty decent following still. See, for instance, https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2019/05/07/the-definitive-ma...

poulsbohemian• 2 years ago

One interesting fact regarding that price though is that until Apple officially stopped supporting it with new OSX releases, you'd probably have had to have paid at least $1000-1500 for the same machine.

This is a great point and kinda stings given my situation... I've got a 5 year old iMac that is still a beast by its specs, but is ancient by Mac standards. No OS updates anymore, so functionally obsolete for anyone who wants to use it as a Mac. Wondering if I should install linux and give it a second life.

CharlesW• 2 years ago

I’m stunned that this list overlooks the amazing PowerBook Duo and it’s Duo Dock, which mechanically injected and ejected the Duo like a VHS tape.

https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Duo_Dock

brailsafe• 2 years ago

The JLPGA PowerBook 170 would be a sweet random find at some thrift store or estate sale. I could imagine it'd be overlooked easily by people who don't know what it is. Would it be worth buying? Nobody knows.

pjmlp• 2 years ago

I guess it shows one's age, when I remeber to see magazine ads and reviews to most of those models.

TMWNN• 2 years ago

My nomination for weirdest: The Power Macintosh 6100. <https://blog.pizzabox.computer/img/powermac6100/front.jpeg>

See that button below the floppy drive? It's not an eject button. One guess on what people used to PCs routinely did.

Wild Apples: The 12 weirdest and rarest Macs ever made

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