NeXTcube
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Weird and amazing Macs that aren't exactly Macs
If you haven't heard of the upcoming 1984-2014 Maciversary, well either you aren't paying attention or perhaps you have an actual life. Us? We've been going back and forth talking about this thing for the last month. And one of our most contentious issues involves what exactly counts as a Mac. Some systems are obviously Macs. This? This is a Mac. It's a happy Mac! This? This is not a Mac. It's an Apple II. And while many laypersons might not be able to differentiate between a Mac and an Apple II ("Most people now don't know the difference between an Apple and a Mac. Maybe the people reading our site, yes, but not an actual layman.") we can state for certain that this is completely and utterly not a Mac. This is a Macquarium, a phrase coined by Andy Ihnatko. It is not a Mac, although it is compatible with Objective Sea Life. This, on the other hand is basically a Mac. It's an Apple Lisa, the personal computer that preceded the Macintosh. In fact, the ultimate Lisa was sold as the Macintosh XL. The Lisa offered many of the same user interface features as the Mac and was targeted toward business users. This too, is basically a Mac.It's a Xerox Alto, designed at Xerox PARC and dates back to the early 1970s. It used a mouse-driven GUI-based system, and more or less inspired Apple Co-founder Steve Jobs during a site tour. It provided many of the same look and feel strengths that later showed up on the Mac. This is also basically a Mac. It is a NeXT cube. You don't see a screen in this image from Wikipedia, but if it were connected, you'd recognize a lot of the OS. That's because the NeXT basically ran OS X. It only took a bit over a decade for that technology to return to Apple after Jobs went on a quick run out to pick up some nacho chips and started a brand-new company before returning to Apple with orange fingers and the beginnings of OS X. While he was gone, someone at Apple built this. It's not a Mac. It's not even close to being a Mac. But eventually it inspired people who got around to shoving Mac's OS X operating system onto the iPhone (which, too, is a Mac). This is, of course, not to be confused with these, which are also Newtons but which offer far less computational efficiency. Certainly, this is not an exhaustive list of what is and is not a Mac. There were Power Computing Macs, Hackintoshes, retro bubble Macs, extremely beige Mac IIs and many, many more. All of them properly Macs. Today, we own our impossibly thin MacBook Airs, our super powerful Retina Pros and our beloved Mac minis. Here's looking forward to the next 30 years of Mac. Do you have any strong opinions on what is and is not a Mac? Share them in the comments. All images are courtesy of Wikipedia.
Steve Jobs' NeXTcube on display
The Cartoon Art Museum held its annual NeXTEVNT fundraiser on Monday and one of the stars of the show was Steve Jobs' personal NeXTcube that was there on loan from Pixar. Photos of the NeXTcube on display were shot by Dave Hamilton of The Mac Observer. Hamilton attended the event on behalf of TMO, which co-sponsored the shindig with a handful of other tech companies. The NeXT Cube was brought to the NeXTEVNT event by Cartoon Art Museum board member Dr. Michael Johnson, who is a longtime Objective-C coder and Pixarian. Tickets to the event were US$200 each, and the money raised from ticket sales went to support the Cartoon Art Museum. You can read more about the event and check out some additional photos on The Mac Observer's website. It looks like some great geek fun.
Apple fanboy crafts Mac heaven in ultra-mod home
It's one thing to sacrifice your freedom to snatch 39 iPods from a retail shelf in an act of desperation fanboyism, but to devote a substantial chunk of square footage in one's ultra-modern home to Apple is an entirely different type of determination. Sure, we've seen various forms of collections before, but this edition features no fewer than 74 Mac computers, posters galore, and a dedicated bar to boot. In total, Jeremy Mehrle of St. Louis, Missouri has 30 classic Macs situated at the bar, 18 different CRT-based iMacs, various PowerMacs, a plethora of iPod paraphernalia, Mac OS boxes spanning years of development, Apple printers, Newtons, a PowerBook 165c, a Next Cube, four Apple IIs, and to top it off, a 20th Anniversary Mac as well -- and that's still leaving quite a few out. Although we can't fathom how much time, loot, and resources it took to essentially construct an Apple museum with a modernized style similar to Apple retail locations today, we can't help but give credit where its due, so here's your props Mr. Mehrle, now make sure your security system is in working order, okay? Click on through for a few more snapshots, and be sure to tag the read link for all the Mac mania you can handle.[Via ChipChick]
Rig of the Day: Vintage collection
Flickr user brrm (I really like that user name for some reason) shows off his great collection of vintage Apple hardware. Check out the great Lisa II (in very nice condition), his collection of Powerbooks (180, 180c, 520c, 190, 100, 2400/180c, Pismo and 15" G4) doing the wave, Newton 2000 (with original iPod) and various compact Macs. Also noteworthy is his NeXT cube. No, it's not Apple hardware but it does have a place in Apple history. Plus, it's autographed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who used a NeXT cube to write the very first web server and browser. Cool.Untitled by brrm. For the month of April, the theme for our Rig of the Day will be "Vintage Macs" in honor of Apple's anniversary. If you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr pool. Let's see your vintage Macs (Apples and Newtons, too)! We'll select an image every day to highlight.
