OK, Genius, fix this one!

Far be it from us to ridicule folks who desperately cling to ancient technology, hoping against hope it will serve their current needs — nevermind, let's ridicule them. This pic was apparently snapped at the Genius Bar of an Apple Store, where the customer had brought in a Mac SE, circa 1988, asking for upgrade recommendations. The guy had apparently been using the machine, which runs at a blazing 8MHz (and this time that's not a typo!), for his banking — and for some bizarre reason he decided it was time to look into something a little beefier. Given that the Genius actually appears to be checking the machine out, rather than smirking knowingly and recommending that the customer turn it into a fish tank, we think there's a good chance he told him to upgrade the RAM (the SE can handle a whopping 4MB) and sent him home. And then smirked knowingly to his fellow Geniuses.

[Via TUAW]

[Alasdair Allan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

I've never figured out what to do with the Apple Plus I picked up dumpster diving, actually using it for real work hadn't occurred to me...

[Talkin Ape @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

That's fricking classic!

[Steve @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Seeing that brought back college all over! Go Mac Classic! If Mac had gotten game developers onboard I wouldn't have had to switch to PCs in 88. What could have been..............

[pedro @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Ridiculing them?? Come on, TUAW, I expected more.
This guy has been using something *worked for him* since 1988. Imagine all those people with perfectly working older macs who "upgraded" to a Windows PC only to get hobbled with spyware etc. Find me a Dell from 10 years ago that is still operational. This is a 17 year old that has seen regular use and still works! Amazing!

The fact that he was able to walk into an Apple store and get an honest appraisal of what would work for him is commendable by the geniuses. I think that is one of the things that seperates the mac community from the pc one. We love and still use our old macs and they are still useful!

[Terry @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

I worked in a Computer Renaissance for a few years recently, and every few months someone would come in with an old SE or so needing System 7 reinstalled or some second-hand 20mb scsi drive installed or something. These people just used them as glorified typewriters and saw absolutly no need to upgrade to anything else, that SE/30 did everything they could think of needing.

I did buy an original Mac 128k off a customer once. Thing was sweet.

[Galley @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Just last week a friend asked for some advice for an old version of Quicken that his dad was using on a WinXP machine. Well, come to find out, that it was DOS-based, as it was written for Windows 3.1. He was having problems with storing the data on floppies. He wanted to store it on a USB flash drive, but I told him that it was probably programmed to see the A: drive and nothing else.

[Cheddar @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

There are two lines of thought regarding the customer service/support guy:

1. Kudos! He identified the customers need and responded helpfully. Regardless of the antique machine the customer brought in. Pretty nice to know that, even though you're completely disconnected from technological evolution, there will always be someone there to help you stay that way.

2. WTF! Upsell upsell upsell! Why waste time fixing a dud, than trying to get him on the bandwagon and give him an more up to date machine?? Yes customer service is number one, but hey, lets not be freakin stupid!

[BoomBoom @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Just think of the ImageWriter dot matrix printer he must use with the Mac Se. Both were built like tanks.

[popeye @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Key word: Apparently - I say hoax.

Who out there is still using anything from 1988 save a Chrysler K model or a NES unit let alone a Mac SE for banking. What did this guy finally come out of the bat cave to see what evil lurked in the hearts of men only to find an Apple store he could get ye olde Mac worked on?

[ruykava @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

pedro: gross over-generalisation.

i've got a PC in my house running DOS, that's been chugging on for 20 years as well, nothing strange about it. uncle uses it every day for his writing - he just isn't interested in changing. as long as you want them, they will keep working. if i'm not crazy about new tech, i could run my PC as long as I want until spare parts completely ran out...

n i can bring it to any 2nd hand store and probably get good service as well. it all depends on the shopkeeper - kudos to genius, then. this talk of "the mac community", whether true or not, is really over-reaching.

[Brian @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

I have two of these machines sitting up in my closet at home. If any of you want them you can have them all you have to do is pay for shipping. They both work, but the display on one has died. Long live APPLE!

[LennyMan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

RE: Comment 5...

Have you tried SUBST'ing the A: for a directory on your Hard Disk:-

Subst A: c:MyPretendFloppy

:o)

[Killian @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

That's awesome. But pedro, I think it would be a little irresponsible for someone to recommend a memory upgrade to a computer that old... He should get something that won't have so many problems interfacing with more modern technologies.

[Derek @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

this si why i recommend emachines to all of my friends who need a computer. 99% of home users only use their machine for web browsing, email and ot look at pictures from friends. there's no need for an incredibly beefy machine. this guy at the apple store was probably plenty happy to simply use it for his banking and a nice typewriter. why would he need to upgrade?

[zack @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Pedro - for the record, TUAW had nothing to do with any ridiculing. The ridiculing is entirely the balliwick of the Engadget folk, at least in this case...

read the original post there and you'll see

[Bartleby @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Aw, it's not that crazy, I've got an SE of my own sitting on my desk at home (although the screen and harddrive are dead). It's mostly just for looks, and geek cred, I mean we're talking about one of the first personal computers that had a hard drive! =P Btw, if it's an SE/30, it actually supports upto 128MB(!) of RAM, not 4. But who knows.

[ken fager @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Genius: Head on over to lowendmac.com. They can help you out with beefing up this puppy.

[Terry @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

popeye, maybe it's a hoax, but I doubt it. Just think about it for a second. These would obviously be the first/only computer these individuals have ever purchased. It would've been back in the mid 80's when even a modest computer was several thousand dollars (in 80's money, no less) they're not using the internet, so they have no frame of reference to tell them how slow their computers are. And as long as it keeps working like when they bought it, many people would fail to see the incentive to replace it with a new computer, which would require learning basically *everything* from the ground up - new hardware types, new os, new applications. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

It's not just Mac users either. Two years ago I migrated a 100+ employee company that was based entirely on IBM 286 machines running Q&A DOS. We basically couldn't find MCA-interface components to keep 'em running anymore. But when all was said and done with the migration, the old system, with it's non-exsistant system overhead, was much quicker for the customer/inventory database tasks they were doing... Go figure.

[pedro @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Thanks for the correction, zack. I had flipped between both sites. Coming from the endgadget folks it makes TOTAL sense, so my words aren't as sharp for them :-)

ruykava- yes I'll dial back my generalization. There are many PC users out there who use machines that still work perfectly and have been working for years. The point that I was trying to make is that there seems to be more apple people who do this than PC folks, to the point that there are entire communities built around it, like www.lowendmac.com.

and Killian, I totally agree. Once the guy got into the store, it probably made the best sense to try and show the guy a new computer, or at least recommend that he have a decent backup solution, and maybe get a a few more SE/30s to keep in reserve. I've got an SE/30 sitting on the top of my bookshelf at my work. I keep it as a talisman :-)

[A_B @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

I think the guy should be commended for resisting sentiments like the one Marc Perton wrote. He's using exactly what he needs. He's not upgrading for the sake of upgrading. He's upgrading when he actually has a need for extra functionality.

Not everyone is looking to play Doom3 at 1600x1200 and all the bells and whistles enabled.

Indeed, I think the sentiment expressed by Mark is exactly the type of thing people should be fighting against. The endless cycle of upgrades is a result of a dumb fetishization of a couple extra FPS or extra shiny toolbars. It doesn't really benefit anyone except the manufacturers and the writers who write about this stuff ...

[Hanno @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

As I wrote to the original blog entry: My mum still uses her Windows 3.1 computer with Ami Pro as a word processor and MS Money for accounting, every day. She had no need to upgrade but recently started bugging me on how to use the web.

My dad got himself a Windows XP computer a few years back, and it collects dust eversince. Both my mun and he never got the hang out of using Word or an Internet Browser.

[Jack @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

You've inspired me to get my free, yardsale Color Classic out of the closet. It needs a hard-drive, otherwise seems to be working.

Now....where to find a hard drive.....

[DrN000b @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

My dad stopped using my c. 1987 Mac SE for Quicken approximately 11 months ago. I built him a M$ box, transferred his data (via null modem cable) and he was PISSED at the transition. All he did was word processing and Quicken on it, and played some cardgame that I couldn't duplicate and he's just now coming around to the idea of a (slightly) more modern approach, along with access to the internet.

So for the children above who mock TFA, I know it's difficult for you to remember that MTV played videos while you were making poopie in your diapers, but realize that for a huge segment of the populace, computers are tools like toasters and they don't need to be replaced of they don't work.

[marilyn @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

I am shocked that he even let the poor guy set it up on their bar. The "Geniuses" do not work on anything (normally) that is more than a few years old. They normally send them to authorized Apple service providers locally. These old machines run forever, the part where it gets dicey is opening them up to do any kind of upgrade, generally once you take out any of their parts these days, you'll find it was the dust bunnies holding that thing together. I have an SE that still works, I'm waiting to have a space for it so I can kill it and have it display the dead mac face as art ;-)

[Justin @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

My fiance made me throw away the SE I had (along with the 6 performas I also had). Granted none of them had an OS installed and I had no idea where to go from there. I even had to throw away an all-in-one mac (pre-G3) that had a cool apple remote! I've still go the remote though...

[carl @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Memory upgrade seems unlikely - I checked two suppliers and neither offer SIMMs for the Mac SE (/SE30) any more. I think the only option is the used market - eBay or the like. I would have recommended a re-conditioned iBook as an alternative.

DrN000b, I hope you turned OFF the admin rights on that M$ box for your Dad...

[matt @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

you people are no fun. more mocking pls.

[Josh @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

One department of the company I used to work had a homebuilt program they used; it ran on a c64. When I left the company in 2003, they were still using it. Another department had an even older program, the original had been written for a punch card machine, and had since been ported to a DOS-compatible version. We were trying to get rid of all the old machines and convert everyone over to Win2k, not an easy job!

[joe @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

They could be middle eastern - they kind of look from the middle east - arent they still using outdated technology? Its like that old question "where did all of the beta max players go to?" Most of the time, its a 3rd world country. Dont knock it though - its better than what they had.

[GanzHimself @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

#10... I'll take the live one off your hands, if no one else has spoken for it...

[Eric Bostrom @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

I just finished an upgrade at my company recently. GigE modules for the switch, cat6, 2 new servers and switching accounting dept. over to term svcs. this is all because the new windows version of their program ran so much slower than their old dos version that they had been using since the 5 1/4" day's. they're happy now, back at dos speeds with $10k of technology to help.

[cyberfrog @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

There actually quite a few places that use old pc machines, particularly in the science community to run experiments using programs in dos mode. Such labs, actually don't want to upgrade since xp only emulates dos, and has problems doing so in certain cases. I find that in such cases, most of the scientists generally know how their machines work and how to replace parts and trouble shoot, as is part of their scientific nature. That being said, I'm in a new lab right now in which an old apple IIe is being used because the original analysis program was written for it! I think these people will be happy when i introduce them to some visual basic.

[aelso @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

My Dad last year had the same 8MHz Macintosh SE from 1986 running System 6 for his accounts. Still works perfect, and boots up within 38 secs. Way ahead of its time.

He decieded to get a new mac last year, so he could use a laser printer instead of a dot-matrix! There are laser printers available for the Mac SE, but are extremly hard to find.

As one earlier mentioned, try finding a PC that has been working fine for all these years. I thought not.

[aelso @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

ps. Ignore my previous comment about finding an old PC still runnning. I overlooked ruykava's comment. Sorry.

[cdbeckman @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

My mother teaches at an elementary school, and it's absolutely amazing some of the compuers they hang onto. The school actually just gave each classroom new Dell Windows XP machines, but they also mandated that the kids not be allowed to touch them. So the kids are still running Apple IIes and machines similar to the one above. They're all in amazing shape considering the abuse they take and their age.

[TIMMAH! @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

I'm still waiting on MSDOS to make a comeback. It's been tested to death and had great tools for building apps, so why not use it in small devices or controllers?

[mike @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

The primary problem with using legacy .... no wait, antiquated hardware is restoring or transferring data, especially when the inevitable upgrade occurs because of the old hardware finally failing.

A 20 year old Mac is not a stable platform to be storing 20 years of financial or business information, and external HDs and floppies from that era should not be relied upon for safe storage.

It's going to be difficult to transfer all that legacy content across a 20 year gap in technology. Think of all the connectivity that relic lacks, in addition to software compatibility. Your data may be unrecoverable when that trusty old mac finally kicks the bucket.

Yes, it's warming to see old tech continue to work so well, and yes I think modern computer systems are far more than most people need, which makes the simplicity of older Macintoshes spectacular.

However to use a system far past its MTBF date is a bad business move. It may cost you a lot more in the long run, especially in time, than upgrading every 5 years or so out of habit.

[Drew @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

i love to see something like that at the apple store i work at.

[mike @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

at the apple authorized reseller I used to work at, we got ornery people bringing in old junk like that all the time. The worst is when they want something new to work with it.

'no that printer wont work with your performa'
'no that lcd monitor wont work with your LC'
'no that case wont work with your 1st gen iPod, man! get with the times'

Being at the retail/service end of old tech sucks.

[ZSX @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Things to do with an old mac?

Make it into a modern Windows box!

http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/mac-itx/

[Google Nazi @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

38 seconds to boot up? Hell today's PC's wont even boot in less than 5 minutes! That is high tech right there :)

That poor guy is going to be pissed thinking that the new PC's are slower then his old one... No seriously, it will probobly be slower then his old one.... CURSES WINDOWS XP!!! CURSES!!!

Oh and ram upgrade for that wouldn't be too bad for another 20 years.

[Alex @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

This is why I lovethe internet and connectivity it offers, Thankyou Engadget and thank you cellphone cams.

This made my Day.

In 10 years this post would be like streaming camerphone video of the guy at the Apple store live, Damit I'll be 29 in ten years Dammmiiit!

[Jesus @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

I know some bums that wear the same clothes since 1980s. I guess it still works for them.

Wheeee. They must be grrreeat!

[Eric @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Well I have 4, yes, 4 SE/30's to this day. I bought them and restored them for fun. It is a beautiful design, and still useful for some things. It's too slow and the screen is too small to surf the web, but all the old apps still run like a champ. Send the guy my way, I have enough spare parts (including RAM) to keep that baby useful for a few more years.
People love their macs, and just can't bear to part with them.

[meshcount @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

My favorite thing about those older Macs were the mice, they were bulletproof until changes in 91/92. I recall cleaning the office mice, all except one, the mouse that came from an SE. It made noise but worked fine. I took it apart one day out of curiosity and all sorts of crap flowed out: dustballs, food bits, slivers of peanuts, it was a mess. But the stainless steel tracking pins kept the heavy duty rubber ball rolling with precision.

[RaslDasl @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

I stayed at a Hilton recently that still used Mac Plus's to run the key card system.

[Hooligan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

My wife annd I were cleaning out the attic last weekend and found my old Powerbook 145B that I used in graduate school. It occurs to me that I hadn't even heard of the internet back then. Mind you, I'm typing this comment on a 5 year old iBook running OSX Tiger. Not to shabby either.

[Virtual1 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

We get people bringing in fossils like that from time to time. A few months ago someone brought in a most unusual find - a mac color classic, in a -carrying case-. It was a large, black, velcro and nylon giant backpack, made just for the computer. Both computer and backpack were in near mint condition, and the computer was not in for repair, but for data transfer to... get this... a beige powermac g3. They were migrating data from a 13 yr old system to a 7 yr old system. *sigh*

People do still bring in performas for repair. They get this great look of surprise when I inform them that, in working condition (which they're not) their computer is worth maybe $15. A quarter hour of my time costs more than that. Some still insist on my repairing them though.

Printers for the old macs are getitng very scarce. It's rough when you are running System 7 and need a serial printer. Oddly enough, when someone has an old mac like that with a printer, and they both work, the printer has more value than the computer.

[bliz @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Hey gallery, I suppose that your friend's dad can try virtual floppy programs like this one: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html

[limit @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

With an apple serial to ethernet adapter my old 4/600 PS laser printer is still holding its own in cost per printed page (slow but toner {HP 4 comp} is dirt cheap). When I want something printed quick I will use a modern printer but when time is not a factor...

Not an SE, but a Quadra 840AV is used all day by my parent's for basics: typing, internet, etc. It has a floppy drive that is shared over the network which now and then comes in handy.