Macs I Have Known and Loved

The 30th anniversary of the Mac has reminded me of all the delightful Macs I’ve known and loved over the years. Some of them were better than others but each of them stands out in their own way.

1. Mac 512KE ¹ that had been upgraded with a Mac Plus ROM and 2.5MB of RAM and the addition of external SCSI. Still with an 800KB floppy drive, though.
2. Quadra 630 ²
3. Power Mac 6100
4. PowerBook Duo 280c
5. Power Mac 7500
6. Power Mac G3 (Beige desktop)
7. Power Mac 9500 180MP baller workstation that ran BeOS and Mac OS 9
8. PowerBook G3 Wallstreet
9. PowerMac G3 Blue & White
10. PowerBook G3 Lombard ³
11. PowerMac G4 Yikes
12. PowerMac G4 Sawtooth
13. PowerMac G4 SnakeBite Dual G4
14. iBook Dual USB
15. PowerBook G4 Ti
16. iMac DV SE
17. PowerBook G4 12″
18. PowerMac G5 Omega dual 1.8GHz
19. iMac 17″ iMac4,1
20. MacBook Black
21. MacBook Pro 2,1 or 2,2
22. iMac 24″ ²
23. MacBook Air²
24. MacBook Air 11″ core 2 duo
25. MacBook Air 13″ core 2 duo ²
26. Retina MacBook Pro 15″ ²

In the racks of fine datacenters:

1. Power Mac G3 (Beige tower)
2. Mac Mini G4 (hungus)
3. Xserve G5 Cluster Node (autobahn)

Hacs

These are self-built systems built for OS X but aren’t Macs. They’re fickle and bitchy like a Blue & White G3.

1. Hacintosh 1 — core 2 quad 9550
2. Hacintosh 2 1. core i7 2600k ²

Apple’s Site

Apple’s Thirty Years of Mac site has a delightful interactive timeline and user stories. With a design and performance heritage that rivals some car companies (think Audi, Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, VW) there is surely a Mac for every user as time goes on.