This month is the 20th anniversary of Apple Computer’s Macintosh. To mark the occasion, Wired News is running several stories this week about the groundbreaking machine, the people who created it and the Mac’s impact on computing and culture in general.
The 20 Macs That Mattered Most
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Is hands down my favorite machine of all time.
Yes, the SE/30 was one of the all time greats. I’m not sure, but it may have been the one that was on the market the longest, it was so popular.
I know they had to choose among the ground-breakers, but the Mac Plus, with its 1 MB RAM, was the first Mac that was truly usable in the full sense.
I should have added the Plus could go up to 4 MB RAM too.. And, it turns out, it was the Plus that was on the market the longest – almost four years! Can you imagine that now?
Wow, they left off two of the biggies namely the SE/20 HD and the 840av. The SE20 had was the first MAC to be able to read/write high density floppy disks and the 840Av was the first MAC to share the processing overheads with a DSP processor – a major plus for running certain Photoshop filters…
But perhaps the biggest reason that both of these machines deserve to have made the list is because they both provided me with ample reason to plop down some serious cash for them. Unfortunately I am reminded of that fact every Christmas season when I am forced to confront them in the attic next to my plastic Christmas tree. At least if they made the list I could find some comfort in my past life decisions:)
I agree, they mistakenly left the Mac Plus off the list. It was really the first useable Mac, with a whopping 1 MB of RAM at the time. It also came with an internal 800 KB floppy drop, a vast improvement over the 400 KB floppy in the 128 KB Mac. And just as importantly, it was the first Mac to have SCSI built-in.
The Macs that I’ve owned over the years were:
Mac Plus
Performa 475
PowerBook Duo
PowerBook G4 400 Mhz (current)
My next Mac will probably be a PowerBook G5, whenever that makes an appearance.
Macs I’ve owned and used thorught the years as my primary system:
6100 – my first Mac. I actually rendered Bryce scenes on this!
7200
7500 – was used by a friend up until they got a G4
SuperMac S900 – easily one of my favorites
G4/400 – My S900 could not run MacOSX no matter what!
G3 Tower – Sold my G4 and downgraded to a G3 hoping to soup it up. A big mistake!
G4 MDD 1.25GHZ X2 – the best Mac I’ve owned and maybe one of the noisiest!
I have no plans for a new system at this time but I may get a PowerBook this year.
My first Mac was the Quadra 840 AV. It did a heck of a lot for it’s time. I was productive on it for at least 4 or so years (School, Work, Games) I remember the RAM cost quite a bit and voice recognition worked pretty well. When I delved into the internet back then, AOL was still billed by the minute (OUCH!)
System 7.5 >shudder<
Moved on to a 8600. Nice machine. Massive! What a beast.
Now a G4, longing for a G5…
Macs I ~currently~ own:
LC, LCii, LCiii, Macintosh IIsi, Performa 6200CD, and Powerbook 170
All are recent aquisitions and all were no-cost. Apparantly these things are being tossed in dumpsters by the thousands…
A friend of mine still has an Apple II set up and running. It’s no longer their primary machine though.
Best Wishes,
Bob
Yes, the SE 1/20 was so cool, was my parents’ first Mac. Upgraded to 2 MB RAM. It’s nice that System 6 did fit on one floppy disk
Was very expensive, and the HP printer was also very expensive.
Macs that I currently own: SE FDFD, 512K, Centris 650, 8600/200, IIsi, LC III, UMAX SuperMac S900 and my Power Mac G4 QuickSilver 933.
I have owned: IIci, LC II, Quadra 840av, Performa 600, PowerBook G3 Pismo, B&W Power Mac G3, MDD Dual 867 Power Mac G4, iBook 500, iBook 700, Power Mac G4 533, 7600/132, and a Centris 610. (I think thats all of them)
Mind you, I owned ALL of the above since 2002. In that aspect, I am relatively new to the Mac community. But, when I came into Mac, I DOVE in. I have more experience with Apples OSes and hardware now than most people who have been Mac users since the 80s. That I am proud of. 😛
That said, the favorite Macs that I have owned in order:
1) PowerBook G3 Pismo. <– Simply the most incredible laptop ever produced. Tank like in construction, and infinite in expandability. I have missed it every day since I sold it.
2) Power Mac G4 533. <– My first true Power Mac. This machine awed me with what it was capable of doing with it’s ‘lowly’ 533MHz processor.
3) Power Mac G4 MDD 867. <– Truly one of the best deals in Apples history. One of the only times that Apple produced a low end machine that it put doubt in the minds of everbody who had traditionally purchased high-end. The case was unbelievably gorgeous. The new motherboard design was great. And the new way of mouning the HDs and optical drives in the case was also just great. I intend to get one of these machines to replace my 933 soon enough.
4) Quadra 840av. <– Truly incredible is all I can say. This machine, at 40MHz, did more for me than any PC I had ever owned under 200MHz. And its video input/output capabilites were wonderful, and truly something to have appreciated when the machine came out 10 years ago.
5) Power Mac G3 B&W. <– The performance god of its day. This machine brought with it the beloved and timeless El Capitan case design. The greatest case design in the history of computers. On the performance side it brought a 50% leap to a 100MHz bus design, which was… quite nice. And while not equipped with an AGP card, it did come with one 32bit 66MHz PCI slot. Still great even by todays standards, and not too far below the bandwidth capabilities of AGP 2x.
and last, but not least…
6) The UMAX SuperMac S900. <– The best clone produced. And produced by a company that proved that it could innovate as much as Apple, and develop a follow almost as devoted. A great machine.
And I’ll go ahead and list my least favorite:
The Performa 600. <– Nothing much to say about it other than that, IMO, it is the worst Mac ever made. And not many people who have delt with one of these machines would disagree with me.
But, I have loved each and every Mac I have owned for certain reasons.
And the Newton message pad, the first PDA, a great product for you time.
I’m currently running a dual 1.25 G4. I’ll get into a G5 later in the year.
Past Macs I’ve had were a Power Center, Power Center Pro, and SuperMac S900.
I have to echo the sentiment that the S900s were probably the best Mac clones ever made. The case was similar to a Dell Dimensions case but the motherboard did not have the limitations the PC motherboard had. For starters you had 8 memory slots, two processor slots. Internal and external SCSI with 5 PCI slots. This thing was a monster back in the day and will still run a G4 to this day.
I was surprised the iMac got second page treatment. I think that one really changed the whole scenery of the computer industry radically. Not only for really reintroducing the all-in-one conept to computers again, but for it’s groundbreaking default items such as built in USB, 10 MB ethernet, modem and the like. Good stuff.
Really a pretty good and fair list. I would say that the IIci probably had more of an impact than the Mac LC for a similar time period, it also I believe is the one computer model that was sold relatively unchanged for the longest time period ever. I know that’s vague but I read something like that along the way…
Good list. I wish I had an Apple, but they’re just too much money for what you get for my needs.
I too am surprised at seeing the SE/30 left out. By the time I’d sold this pup I’d owned and used it the longest of any other Mac I’ve owned to date, and had upgraded it with a Daystar 50Mhz 68030 chip, and an 8-bit color card hooked with a Seiko CM-1445 14″ display, not to mention various HD and RAM updates.
Over time I’ve had
– a Mac 512K (no ‘e’.. this pup only had the 400K floppies. Try loading MS Works 1.0 and opening a document. 27 disk swaps later you’re looking at your file…) running MacOS 3.2.
– a Mac Plus
– a Mac SE/30
– Powerbook 165c which was great at the time, but swiftly outclassed. Needed it for sales since I was on the road a lot.
– and lastly the current PowerPC 7600/132 that I’ve since upgraded with a G3/400 cpu from NewerTech, Voodoo3 3000 PCI card, 248MB of RAM, Initio Miles Bluenote SCSI accelerator with two Quantum 160/m drives (18g and 9g), USB card, Microsoft Intellimouse optical (IMHO the only thing MS has ever made^H^H^H^Hsold that was worth owning)
Now I only await a normally paying regular job so that I can afford a G5 tower (or later, depending on when the job actually happens)