Some strange Macintosh computers

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

116 90 2 years ago

sircastor4• 2 years ago

I’ve been enjoying the coverage over the last week of the 40th anniversary of the Mac. Lots of nostalgia to dig into if you grew up in 80s and 90s.

If you happen to enjoy the interesting history of the Mac and Apple, I highly recommend Jason Snell’s series “20 Macs for 2020”[1]. I just discovered it last year, but I’ve found it to be a really fascinating look at Apple and the computer industry through the lens of computers Apple released over the previous 36 years.

[1]https://www.relay.fm/20macs

cirrus3• 2 years ago

"20 Macs for 2020" is great! If you like that also, check out Upgrade #496: 40th Anniversary of the Mac Draft https://www.relay.fm/upgrade/496

sircastor4• 2 years ago

I just listened to this yesterday and it felt like a great band reunion tour.

hbn• 2 years ago

I've been enjoying it too as someone who only really became familiar with Apple in their 2000s renaissance with the iPod (I mean, I wasn't alive for long prior to that)

What's really wild to me is seeing the prices on these things, especially adjusted for inflation. The Macintosh XL was $10,000 in 1983, or a whopping $31,000+ adjusted for inflation!

It's quite incredible how the playing field has really levelled out these days. At least in the west, whether you're rich or not, everyone is using fundamentally the same technology. Maybe film production studios will spend tens of thousands of dollars on a specialized machine for rendering video or 3D worlds, but in most cases you're probably using the same or a similar device as the richest individuals on earth. Everyone from Taylor Swift to Elon Musk have smart phones and laptops that do the same things as mine.

nxobject• 2 years ago

The "Molar Mac" is truly a thing to behold. Come to think of it, I would kill for a all-in-one PC with all of the creature comforts of a standard ATX motherboard...

JKCalhoun• 2 years ago

I thought instead it looked like it had a human back ... on top ... if that makes sense. "Back Mac".

pavlov• 2 years ago

QuasimodoMac?

justjash• 2 years ago

This is the one that I remember having in elementary school. Such a funky shape, always thought the top looked cool.

justsomehnguy• 2 years ago

just slap an LCD/OLED panel to the side of any ATX cases. They are ridiculosly big nowadays, especially considering most of the time the only non-integrated or mounted directly on a motherboard would be a GPU

telesilla• 2 years ago

Revolution in The Valley is a fun read on how the Macintosh was created, from the perspective of the engineering team, via the author Andy Hertzfeld who worked closely with Jobs but 'most of the essays in the book are about the people that did the dirty work to make the Macintosh happen, their struggles, their sacrifices and their camaraderie'. Not much unlike any modern day team working to build something hard.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40492.Revolution_in_The_...

musicale4• 2 years ago

Most of the material from the book (and possibly more?) seems also to be available at Andy Hertzfeld's excellent:

https://folklore.org

One of my favorite bits is Bill Atkinson's remarkable Polaroid photos of the Lisa/Mac UI evolution from 1978 to 1982:

https://www.folklore.org/Busy_Being_Born.html

donatj• 2 years ago

Power Macintosh G3 All-In-One

Everyone knows that as the Molar Mac. They look like a tooth and were used primarily in Education. They were a decent if not hideous machine.

I learned HTML and JavaScript on one in 1998-1999. We had the option to spend study hall in the computer lab and I took it every time. I would spend an hour every day working on my Geocities site. Those were the days.

I would frankly just love to find one in decent condition to have for the memories, the transparent top grille seems to always be busted up.

geerlingguy• 2 years ago

It was a toss up between eMac, iMac, and molar Mac for a few years, but eventually iMac won that race and seemed to be on top for years until laptops and chromebooks took over.

bitwize2• 2 years ago

I had an eMac. It was lovely.

It's hilarious because the eMac line is long gone and almost forgotten, but people's iPhones still autocorrect "Emacs" to "eMacs", so its legacy still lives on.

TonyTrapp• 2 years ago

When you come across a strange Macintosh, make sure it's not a creation of NanoRaptor, like this Apple 2e with Laserdisc drive: https://bitbang.social/@NanoRaptor/111173459132307169

brianbreslin• 2 years ago

The cube was so pretty. Still holds up.

TillE• 2 years ago

It's a cool design! I think they could've fixed nearly all of the issues with it by just installing one big, relatively quiet fan at the bottom, a la the trashcan Mac Pro.

dhosek2• 2 years ago

I bought a refurbed G4 Cube in 2001 and it was a wonderful machine. I don’t remember why I sold it (I think probably too many computers on my desk), but it was great for hauling to gigs to do live recordings before I got my first Powerbook. I used to pack it, an LCD monitor, keyboard and mouse into a suitcase padded with towels.

voxadam• 2 years ago

Previously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39125016 | 2 days ago | 11 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39116705 | 2 days ago | 10 comments

thenipper3• 2 years ago

My favorite one that isn't listed here is the Outbound Systems laptop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbound_Systems My parents got me one in elementary school in the early 90s to help with my learning disabilities. From what I recall they had ripped out the guts of an SE or SE-30 and turned it into a laptop. It ran on camcorder batteries. I've still got it in my basement but can't get it to boot up at all.

rainbowzootsuit• 2 years ago

Maybe you should see if one of the retro computer YouTubers might be up for a rare guest computer. Adrian's Digital Basement comes to mind here but he's kind of an Amiga guy.

calgarymicro• 2 years ago

He's more of a Commodore guy than just an Amiga guy, but having been a long-time subscriber of his, it seems like he'll work on anything and everything. Worth sending him an email asking if he wants it at least; I've done it before and he responds pretty quickly.

thenipper3• 2 years ago

Oh I'd definitely be into this... i should ask around.

ralphc• 2 years ago

I strongly second this. Mac84 or Action Retro would be good candidates, they specialize in old Macintoshes.

fzzzy• 2 years ago

Adrian does some mac stuff too.

sircastor4• 2 years ago

I just looked up the outbound laptop the other day. I saw one on an airplane when I was very young and I could not understand how there was a Mac that had this funny Kanagroo logo on it.

I know they had to pull the ROM from a Mac, I’m not sure what else went into the machine.

vmfunction• 2 years ago

Looks like pre-newton type of system!

robterrell• 2 years ago

I have an Outbound too! IIRC there's a weird little 7.5v battery that I had to replace to get it to boot up (roughly the diameter of a AA battery, but 1/3 the length) -- maybe check that out?

jgrahamc2• 2 years ago

I think the battery you are referring to is the 6V Sanyo 2CR1/3N which is the "backup battery" in that laptop. It's still widely available.

thenipper3• 2 years ago

Thanks! I’ll open it up this week and look at it.

alentred• 2 years ago

I wonder how good that trackpad was. Looks pretty cool. Also, can't help but notice the Control key position, it's right where it was meant to be!

philomath_mn• 2 years ago

Introductory price: US $4,000 (equivalent to $9,443 in 2022)

It's wild how expensive laptops used to be

Our_Benefactors• 2 years ago

macintosh in these days were niche devices for wealthy professionals with a narrow set of requirements. There’s a reason the company almost died, windows was far cheaper and had better performance with vastly more software for the majority of users. The rest, as they say, is history.

pstuart• 2 years ago

These all demonstrate how vital Steve Jobs was to Apple. All they could do is repackage the same thing over and over -- so many different form factors of the same thing.

Even the OS. Copland went around in circles and never landed.

iSnow2• 2 years ago

I used to pirate a lot of stuff and had a couple of Copland CDs. Even installed some versions and they would never last longer than 5min before crashing.

lioeters• 2 years ago

The Lisa line predated the Macintosh by one year, launching in 1983 for a pricey $9,995 (about $31,348 today, adjusted)

Imagine being one of the few customers of the Lisa, paying 10K USD for the best personal computer in the world, then the next year it's already deprecated.

A curious tidbit: Lisas running MacWorks XL originally inspired the term "hackintosh."

I probably would have gone this route, to attempt changing horses mid-stream. Although, according to Wikipedia, the term "Hackintoshing" began as a result of Apple's 2005 transition to Intel's x86-64 processors. With the new ARM-based processors, I've heard this proud tradition of hacking the Macintosh is nearing its end.

schnable• 2 years ago

My family bought an Apple IIGS around the same time, and my dad was mad forever that it was essentially a dead end as the Macintosh became the future. We switched to PC after that.

jghn3• 2 years ago

We had one for a while. I can only imagine my dad somehow got it from his work as there was absolutely no way we had a $30K computer on our own dime. A year or two later it was replaced by a 128K Mac, and then later the 512k.

That last one still sits in my basement, and is perpetually on my todo list to do something with it. But I never seem to get to doing anything with it. Also can never decide if I want to try to refurbish it, turn it into an aquarium, etc etc

jgrahamc2• 2 years ago

Please refurb it or find it a home. I used the Apple Lisa way back then and it was a lovely (if unloved) machine. Way too expensive but a real vision of what was to come.

FullyFunctional2• 2 years ago

OMG, please please do not turn it into an aquarium. That thing is so rare that it would be a crime! If you aren't up for restoring it, maybe consider selling it (for much $$$) to somebody who would.

cm21872• 2 years ago

I remember the macintosh portable had a terrible screen refresh rate. You would see multiple pointers every time you moved it.

CharlesW3• 2 years ago

Are you sure you're not thinking of other Mac laptops with passive-matrix screens? I remember that the active-matrix screen of the Macintosh Portable was so unbelievably sharp.

cm21872• 2 years ago

I must say that almost 30y later I can't be certain

pmarreck3• 2 years ago

I was in high school working after school at an Apple computer store and they let me take one home for a weekend (!!!). The refresh rate was actually one of the more outstanding features at the time as thanks to the active-matrix display, there was NO ghosting of what you speak of. But every other Mac (and non-Mac) laptop had the ghosting from the passive-matrix screens. I think you're confusing them. The Portable screen was crystal-clear as long as you were in a bright room (since it had no backlighting).

CharlesW3• 2 years ago

Until it did! https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook/specs/mac_porta... IIRC the backlight would effectively halve your battery life.

LordGrey• 2 years ago

I worked at an Apple dealer when the Portable came out. We called it the "Mac Luggable".

Its carry bag had only a shoulder strap. It should have had a full-blown backpack to distribute the weight better.

scelerat• 2 years ago

I remember a single-panel comic from one of the Mac rags at the time -- MacWorld? MacUser? wasn't there an IT-oriented tabloid-format Mac mag? -- anyway, kind of reminiscent of a New Yorker cartoon, an adult with his arm moderately flexed and a child looking on in awe, perhaps grasping his bicep, with the caption, "That's the arm daddy uses to carry his Mac Portable"

musicale4• 2 years ago

The original Macintosh Portable[1] seems like a pretty high quality machine all the way through:

Reflective active matrix LCD screen (fast response, no ghosting), full-travel mechanical keyboard, movable trackpad, built-in floppy and hard drives, expansion slots, all-day battery life. And an attractive and clever industrial design (note the cutouts for left-handed or right-handed trackball placement.)

Fantastic design for someone who didn't mind a bulky, 16-pound "portable". ;-)

In 2024, portable Macs are better in nearly every way (including battery life) but the keyboards aren't nearly as nice, and the screens aren't great in broad daylight (unlike a reflective LCD.)

(And didn't Apple subsequently invent the "palm rest" laptop design where you move the keyboard back toward the screen?[2])

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Portable

[2] https://techland.time.com/2014/01/24/mac-thirtieth-anniversa...

CharlesW3• 2 years ago

I’m stunned that this list overlooks the brilliant PowerBook Duo and its Duo Dock, which mechanically injected and ejected the Duo like a VHS tape. https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Duo_Dock

leejoramo2• 2 years ago

The Duo 280 is my all time favorite Mac. Active matrix greyscale screen worked great without backlighting turned on. Even better in full daylight.

In the mid-1990s, I could work most of the day on batteries with a super lightweight notebook. Allocate enough RAM Disk space to for a minimal Mac OS system and WriteNow for word processing. Only spin up the hard drive to save data.

jiveturkey• 2 years ago

ditto. i spent all of my money and then some to get one.

wazoox• 2 years ago

Oh yeah it was a great computer. I used it to make my band's first album art using Photoshop 2.0 (using the DuoDock and a colour screen, of course). Networked with the studio's Mac IIx (running Studio Vision and Sound Tools II) using serial AppleTalk...

musicale4• 2 years ago

Even better in full daylight.

Reflective LCD screens are magical in daylight.

com• 2 years ago

WriteNow! 2.2 was a word processor of wonder. I do still miss its speed and simplicity. I may have used more than 90% of its features too!

retrac• 2 years ago

which mechanically injected and ejected the Duo like a VHS tape

Or a Macintosh floppy disk.

Findecanor• 2 years ago

Not really. The Duo Dock had an Eject button. Macintosh floppy drives didn't: you had to click and drag the floppy icon to ... the trash can.

CTOSian• 2 years ago

yeap, this PowerBook was a real gem, I had the 230 model, with dock etc, used it as subnotebook will mid 2000s - light spreadsheets and note taking! The monochrome screen was really a plus. I really miss that.

mvexel2• 2 years ago

I was surprised that there was not more mention of the clones of the mid 1990s. The Pioneer clone mentioned in the article sure is an interesting curiosity, but clone brands like Motorola (Starmax) and Power Computing were much more widely available. My brother had a really generic looking beige tower that was a 68040 Mac, from one of those brands. They were equivalent to a mid-to-high-end Performa, but significantly more affordable. I would love to hear more stories of folks who owned one of those. The clone era was short lived, IIRC once they became too successful Apple ceased the licensing program and that was the end of that.

Here's a Starmax ad from 1997: https://archive.org/details/MacWorld9710October1997/page/n7/...

sircastor4• 2 years ago

Apparently Apple had expected that the clones would pick up the bottom end of the market - make Macs affordable to a broader range of people. While some of that no doubt happened, the greater profit was to be had in the upper end where Apple's margins were high, and Clone makers had a lot of room to undercut them.

The clone period was great in the sense of making Macs affordable to people, and really stretching the performance of systems. Power Computing was especially good at this and really gave Apple a run for its money.

At the end of the day, the vision of the Macintosh was a product where the hardware and the software were built in sync - the computer and the OS were the product together. The clone era never really fit in with this.

When Steve Jobs came back to Apple he killed the clone program because it was killing Apple, and perhaps more importantly to him, it didn't correlate with his vision of computing.

Someone• 2 years ago

I think this article is mostly about machines that look strange. Most of those clones are way closer to “bland” than to “strange”, making it perfectly understandable that the article doesn’t mention them.

sgerenser• 2 years ago

Couldn’t have been a 68040, clones didn’t start until well into the PowerPC era (I think the slowest clones were maybe 100 or 120MHz PowerPC 603).

mvexel2• 2 years ago

You're right! It was probably a 603.

pmarreck3• 2 years ago

They didn't mention the Pippin!

1-6• 2 years ago

I really want a Mac classic using the latest tech today. It would be simply just a fun computer you’d keep in the corner of the office.

cmiles74• 2 years ago

It's a little clunky as I'm not that great a designer, I also used parts that I already had around (like the power supply). Still, I think it may meet your requirement of a "Mac Classic using the tech of today". I've since added a proper video card (RTX 3060) and a nice cutout for the rear ports.

https://twitch.nervestaple.com/2022/12/19/pc-in-macse-build/

While not as portable as a laptop, it's nice to be able to pick it up and move it around.

FullyFunctional2• 2 years ago

The front looks great IMO. Kudos. I have a few compacts myself and one project I need to try is tossing a Pi 5 in there and having it display on the original CRT. Would make for a cute little SSH terminal.

The most impractical Mac that I'd love to see reviewed is the iLamp, aka iMac G4.

YurgenJurgensen• 2 years ago

You can buy reproduction MiniITX-compatible cases on AliExpress, but then you're likely stuck with whatever China-quality LCD they put in it.

adolph2• 2 years ago

The hero of this story is https://lowendmac.com/ I used to read it weekly, not certain when I stopped, but it exists in my mental list of highly esteemed websites.

As an offering of a missed strange Mac not mentioned by other comments, the OWC ModBook. Starting in 2007 (maybe '08) OWC would make your MacBook into a tablet. This may stretch the definition of "Strange Mac" since it wasn't an Apple product or a direct clone, but built in anticipation of the iPad the ModBooks digitizer was "fully compatible with Apple Inkwell®, a Mac OS X Leopard feature that provides system-level handwriting and gesture recognition instantly to all Mac applications."

https://web.archive.org/web/20080513175426/http://eshop.macs...

adolph2• 2 years ago

A pretty run of the mill Mac with an strange feature was the Powerbook 1400 and its "BookCover." The BookCover was a section of the lid that could be replaced with clear plastic to display something thin underneath, such as art. Apparently a photovoltaic BookCover was offered by Keep It Simple Systems.

https://www.macworld.com/article/224852/three-cheers-for-the...

Picture of PV BookCover: https://www.flickr.com/photos/21647187@N04/4712178648/in/pho...

pmarreck3• 2 years ago

I will never forget that day when I was 12 and tried the first Mac in a computer store.

Complete and total awe. Having only used Commodore 64's prior, I could not even believe it existed, and yet it screamed "THIS IS THE FUTURE".

LeoPanthera• 2 years ago

I own three of these (!), the TAM, the Cube, and the Mac XL.

They all look good on the shelf, but the TAM is actually still occasionally useful for running Classic MacOS software. It can boot Systems 7 through 9, although even with the G3 accelerator I fitted to it, it can't boot OS X, because it boots using the original CPU and than an extension switches control to the G3. OS X must boot from a G3.

Lammy• 2 years ago

OS X must boot from a G3.

That limitation was introduced in Panther. Mac OS X 10.0 through Jagwire support the 603/604 even though their installers block installation on those models and they don't include full driver support (hence XPostFacto).

I haven't tried it myself (my TAM is happy on 8.6) but there's a kernel patch for Tiger too:

https://www.jump-ing.com/?en/Projects/Tiger_on_7600

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/os-x-tiger-on-a-603-604...

tivert• 2 years ago

I remember seeing a Macintosh TV on display at Best Buy, I had not idea they were only available for such a short period. Though I'm pretty sure I had a catalog (as a kid) that featured it, so maybe it looms unusually large in my mind. It was probably this issue (which has it): https://vintageapple.org/catalogs/pdf/The_Apple_Catalog_Fall....

phibz2• 2 years ago

In the part about the Mac Portable it says "if you're feeling financial". Is this a typo or do you think this might have been written in part by an LLM?

This usage seems... wrong.

benjedwards• 2 years ago

Fully-human author here. I wrote it as a joke (a play on a common phrase), since numeric keypads were often used as data entry for accountants and people using spreadsheets.

phibz2• 2 years ago

I was half joking. I see. Thanks for explaining.

Covalence_• 2 years ago

It made sense to me, finances are a common reason someone has to input a lot of numbers.

LASR• 2 years ago

The 2013 "Trash Can" Mac Pro has a special place in my heart. I bought one for $1000 at auction from a design firm upgrading to iMac Pros in 2017.

It has been my daily driver for the last 6+ years. Upgraded to 12 cores, 128GB RAM, 2TB SSD and an eGPU - it still works surprisingly well. 6 x 4K displays. With Sonoma, I have to apply patches to get it work. So I will finally retire it this year.

But it's been the best $2k investment in computer hardware I've made in many years.

dhosek2• 2 years ago

I remember reading about the 20th anniversary Mac and wishing I had the kind of disposable income where buying one would make sense. Yeah, it was overpriced but it did look seriously cool and they would send a concierge to your home or office to set it up for you!

someonehere• 2 years ago

Some Macs I’ve owned or used that were unique design:

- 20th Anniversary Mac

- Apple TV (it was an LC 575 with tuner card and black)

- The molar G3 Mac for schools

- The eMate 300 (even though that ran Newton)

Some strange Macintosh computers

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