Craftster.org member DogGrrl posted pictures of their excellent room, painstakingly painted and decorated to look like a diner. Just the murals are impressive enough to warrant it a second look, but buried on the fourth page of the thread is a link to DogGrrl’s office:
A vintage Coke machine on the outside…
and an impressive iMac house on the inside!
DogGrrl says:
“To compliment my new dining room mural I bought an old unworking coke machine, gutted it and then sent it to a friend to weld some shelves onto it. Tada! Here is my new new computer cabinet! The Pepsi and Coke picnic coolers I am using to house my files/office stuff.”
Well done indeed. There’s a nice keyboard tray in there, a shelf for the printer, space for files and a phone, and the inside of the door is neatly multi-purposed as a magnetic calendar and note holder!
For those of you who remember the good old days of the Error Bomb and the SE-30, you may remember the old Broderbund game Shufflepuck Café. You were thrust into rough and tumble space bar, clearly the outsider, forced to prove yourself in a true game of wits and agility: computer air hockey. It was a simple game for simple times: a handful of wacky alien characters, mild nudity, and an animated screen crack when your opponent scored. Ah to go back for one more round.
But you’d need a vintage Mac for that, and you threw yours out with your velour leisure suit years ago. Fret not! There are a few free possibilities for a quick match on OS X! None line up perfectly with the original, and for that I am exploring the avenues of emulation, but in a pinch these will do.
TuxPuck is perhaps the most reminiscent of the original, with a character closely resembling Princess Bejin. It is, however, limited in the characters you can play against and might need a bit of massaging to get it to play.
Shufflepuck REVOLUTION provides a bit more variety in the way of characters, including Woz and Jobs as opponents, but it’s also updated the system with 3D graphics. Unlike TuxPuck, Shufflepuck REVOLUTION insists on playing in fullscreen, which is a bit off-putting if you don’t know that right away.
The quest for the perfect OS X Shufflepuck match continues!
I recently started reading comic books from the 80’s that I’m borrowing from a friend. Every issue is a blast. The most interesting thing about these comics is that the advertisements in them are actually worth reading. There are bits for other comic books, grinning kids with Ataris and other paneled strips hawking Nesquik. It’s pretty cool, and even now I kind of want to buy some of that stuff.
I’ve read a couple issues of the Flash, paged through a Green Lantern or two, but I really got hooked on Groo the Wanderer by the MAD magazine comic artist, Sergio Aragonés. Groo is great, but the real surprise was on the back of issue 6 in this ad for “The Nutty Over Payday Instant Winner Game”:
Yes, if you won the grand prize, one of five Apple IIe computers could have been yours!
Ahh, remember back when? When rumor sites didn’t exist? Where second-guessing the next Stevenote meant walking in the rain to your nearest User Group meeting, and having a heated discussion with your friends Gary, Bob and Bob about what future Macs might be like?
(And how you and Bob would disagree, and at the end of the evening neither of you had given way on the argument, so you said to Bob: “I’ll write you a letter to spell out exactly what I mean,” and Bob said: “Hey even better, you can send me a message on my new FAX MACHINE!”, and you felt completely out-manouvered?)
Ballistickcoffeeboy has a Flickr photostream stuffed to the brim with vintage Mac stuff. Adverts, screenshots, product pics, photos of his own kit, you name it. Go dive in and wallow for a bit.
(Photo of “Start a personal relationship at the office” used under Creative Commons license, thanks to ballistikcoffeeboy.)
“Steampunk lies at the intersection of science and romance,” says one of its foremost practitioners, Jake Von Slatt. “It embraces technology but demands technology return the favor.”
We came across Von Slatt while checking in with our friend Bob Eckstein, whose recently completed project, The History of the Snowman is now out in the world after six years of grueling research.
One of Eckstein’s next projects is producing a graphic novel out of a nautical explorer’s diary from 1850. A full-immersion writer, Eckstein has gotten himself in the mood for the work by transforming his office space into a 19th century Captain’s Quarters. He refitted his computers and office equipment into old ship instruments to lend verité to his efforts, and secured vintage trappings to serve up authenticity to his muse.
Hence, my introduction to Steampunk.
Click on pics in the gallery below and follow after the jump for more of the story.
MacMedics get into the Christmas spirit with this little desktop tree, featuring a Bondi Blue Apple tree topper and a snazzy base made from a decommissioned G4 iMac.
Seasons’ greetings from Dana Stibolt and his band of jolly Mac elves, who operate Apple Authorized Resellers and Apple Authorized Service Providers in three locations serving the Baltimore-Annapolis, Washington, and Philadelphia markets.
If you’ve got an old 1940s style rotary phone lying around and about 7 hours you’re not sure what to do with, you can contact Michael at fonejackerhacker in the UK and find out how he made this iPhone docking station. It’s powered by a 16W amp with one speaker behind the dial (10w) on the front of the phone and two speakers in the handset (2x 3w).
The IR sensor and controls are fitted to the side of the phone and the docking port is hidden under the receiver when the hand set is off. Because the speaker is an official ‘works with iPhone’ product all of the normal charging and iPhone features are uncompromised.
Michael is working on a version with a microphone on the handset and, with the use of an iPhone app that he is developing, you’d be able to use this as a handset for the iPhone, or as a headset.
Just in time for getting a little bit of the backstory before the 25th Anniversary of Mac kicks into high gear, Computer Shopper has a great look back at the very early years of Apple Computers by Editor in Chief Emeritus Stan Veit. We’re talking early enough that Steve Jobs was willing to give away 10% of the company for $10,000, according to Veit.
The long article is well worth a read for Veit’s inside take on the two young, “long haired hippies and their friends” who eventually revolutionized the world. It’s not an especially flattering portrait of Jobs, though it’s had plenty of company on that score over the years. The article does contain some great early pics of Jobs and Woz and some of the earliest Apple gear.
I wrote my last “OS9 - Blimey Some People Still Use It” article for Mac DevCenter back in 2004 (see OS9, Mine All Mine); it was fun to write and nostalgic too, but I didn’t imagine I’d be writing a similar piece four years later.
But - blimey - there are STILL some people out there using OS9 and very happy with it too, thank you very much.
One of them is Jerad Walters, who runs publishing house Centipede Press and does so using a mirror-door 1.2 GHz G4, 1.25 GB RAM and 1.7TB of hard disk space spread across four hard drives.
But why, Jerad, why?
“My books are built with InDesign 1.5 and Photoshop 6 running Suitcase 8. The G4 boots up in about 30 seconds and then I have a QuicKey sequence that loads all applications in largest-chunk–of-RAM-required order (Photoshop first, InDesign second, etc). It is all up and running in a couple minutes.
“The speed of the Finder is simply draw-dropping. However, the speed of the Finder is OS X is also pretty quick, but there is just a responsiveness in 9 that cannot be matched by X.
“Menu and window actions all take place so quickly. Plus it is easier to tell windows from background from menus. There is a clarity to the OS 9 display that is lacking in OS X.”
For email, he uses Claris Emailer. For word processing, TexEdit. He makes use of the DragAnyWindow control panel for easier window management, and of HoverBar, a precursor to the OS X Dock.
Jerad does use OS X occasionally - it has a drive all to itself - but when he’s using it he misses things only found in OS9.
“I miss the Put Away command, and the regular trash can more than anything. There’s one thing I wish OS 9 had: an option for a toolbar for Finder windows; that is a really nice feature of OS X.”
So, OS9 users, this is your comments thread. Tell us why we’re all wrong to be using this newfangled OS X stuff.
With the economy exuding the stench of death and government busy creating trillions of dollars worth of fictional capital to “bail out” some of the nation’s brand-name institutions, Low End Mac believes their philosophy of “use it up, wear it out, and then recycle it” could not be more timely.
“We are the kings of making our computers last, last, and last some more,” writes blogger John Hatchett in a great piece describing how he turned his old iMac into a digital jukebox. With a little bit of drive cloning and hooking the iMac up to his home stereo, he now listens to his iTunes library all over his house.
The big tech news of the last few days is that Hewlett-Packard’s 2008 earnings are better than analyst estimates — and this most recent quarter should be their strongest. It was a major bright spot from one of the world’s largest companies, showing that the current credit crisis doesn’t actually mean that the entire economy has shut down. Specifically, the tech sector might be in less trouble than everyone else.
And it made me wonder, yet again, why exactly stock analysts continue to assume that Apple can’t continue to grow and innovate in the coming years. After all, if one organization knows something about hitting the gas during a down time to get light years ahead of the competition, it is Apple. The stock chart I’ve reproduced above from Google shows the performance of AAPL since the introduction of the iPod in the depths of the post-9/11 and -Enron recession. Even with the recent precipitous drop in AAPL (it’s down almost 60 percent since January), the stock is worth about eight times what it was before the iPod (when you factor in the stock split in 2005).
The iPhone is burning up the charts. Apple has its strongest line-up of laptops in the history of the company and is gobbling up market share. The iPod touch and new nano has cemented Apple’s lead in the media player market. When people aren’t buying cars and houses, they still find time for personal entertainment — it’s a comfort when everything else is crazy. With Apple’s current technology and product pipeline, I believe that Steve has the organization poised to thrive once again. They’re going to maintain their position, continue growth, and get out ahead in creating new markets while their competitors are battening down the hatches and sticking to doing what they already know.
What Apple has to offer isn’t going away because credit is scarce. If anything, it may grow even more appealing.
Dave at Newton Poetry makes a good point in his post One Used Mac Per Child about the culture of throw-it-away that pervades our society. We throw away so many old computers and monitors - still functional, most of them, but no longer fashionable - that we end up “poisoning another country and its people.”
What happened to the “make do and mend” attitude? It got swept away by cheap deals in malls, deals that made making do seem dumb.
I just love this picture. It sums up perfectly the progress that’s been made in computing over the last couple of decades. That which was once beige and plasticky is now sleek and silvery. (I know some people still swear by those old clacky keyboards, though: John Gruber once called the Extended Keyboard II “the single best hardware product Apple has ever manufactured.”)
You get the same feel from this one. I remember being utterly amazed by the G4 iMac’s design. I borrowed one from Apple to write a review, and marveled at the computer’s shiny hinged neck and (for the time) large, bright display. Now compare it to a modern iMac. It looks like a toy. (Those of you still using a G4 iMac and enjoying it, get in touch to tell me how and why. Send pics.)
(Photos used under Creative Commons licence. Thanks to: Blakespot and Editor B
Dead Macs. You see them sometimes. Upended in a trash bin or shopping cart. Pilfered for parts, poked and prodded by scavengers who have left just the most useless innards behind.
James Wages is a man on a mission. Where you and I might see a tired old computer that’s not much use to anyone anymore, he sees a decent machine with plenty of potential.
The results of his tinkering are spectacular; this ancient SE/30 is in regular use by the Wages family, for writing things, drawing things, and (most impressively, I think) getting online.
This little puppy is as maxed out as an SE/30 can get. These machines originally appeared in 1989, running System 6 and costing only $6,500. Blimey. Now you can pick them up for nothing - or even cheaper - and if you’re prepared to put the work in, maybe you can get yours doing all the stuff James has got his doing.
This machine was built before the web was invented, but he’s got it surfing quite satisfactorily. How did he do it?
Google’s 2001 retro-search tool has provided endless amusement over the past few weeks. None so much as the image at right, which is the “iPhone 2,” released by InfoTech in mid-1999 and reviewed on StreetTech by Gareth Branwyn.
And yes, it was a comical Internet landline phone, featuring full QWERTY keyboard. Like today’s iPhone 3G, it featured a touchscreen, Internet access, e-mail, and location-based services. Also like today’s iPhone 3G, it improved on significant shortcomings in its predecessor, by adding a better keyboard, higher data speed, and better speaker-phone sound quality.
And, eeriest of all, it had notable areas that needed improving. There was no “Forward” browser button, no “Find” function, and, hilariously, no Cut, Copy, or Paste features. In many ways, it’s exactly like today’s iPhone. Just, you know, totally janky.
This is the actual Mac plus that Scotty tried talking to in Star Trek IV, spotted and photographed by Marcin Wichary at the Star Trek: The Experience exhibition shortly before it closed last month.
Note how shiny and clean this particular Plus is. Bet it boots up shiny and clean, too. And if it has problems, it can run a Level One Diagnostic.
Now that the Experience has left the Las Vegas Hilton, it has no home of its own. Where is this Mac now? Probably packed away in a container somewhere. Possibly wrapped up in Spock’s Vulcan gown that it was once displayed alongside.
In honor of its 10th anniversary, Google has rolled back the clock as far as it can go — its January 2001 index. Though the company got rolling in fall 1998, this is the most materially complete version of the original Google that they have, and they’ve even included links to the Internet Archive to retrieve long-since dead web pages. An era before the iPod.
When you go looking for your humble Cult of Mac curators, however, it’s possible to discover a lot of proto-Cult of Mac content, most of which is extremely amusing. It’s like reading today’s Cult of Mac yesterday — but without the benefit of decent web design.
Why here’s Leander at Wired News, writing about the 2001 MacWorld keynote after years kicking around various tech publications and becoming a bicycle messenger: It’s a Mac, Mac, Mac, Macworld.
This site even tells of a prehistoric July 15, 1996 MacWeek article in which Leander reports on shocking Mac sales slumps. Damn you, Windows 95!
Other than a bunch of articles from college, searching myself only yields my earliest ever Mac tip from a MacCentral round-up of Mac celebrities that included my report on Radiohead.
Turning back the dial on Craig, meanwhile, turned up the archive of his MacToolbox column “Revert to Saved,” including this scandalous rant that Macs crash occasionally!
Ed’s history includes postings on a now-defunct and not-even archived BeOS user message board called “BeSpecific.”
By day, Damian Ward operates Macs for a printing company in darkest Buckinghamshire, a county just to the north west of London. He’s been doing this for 15 years or so.
By night, Damian hunts for batches of unwanted, unloved old Macs. He hunts down 512k machines, Classics, SEs and SE30s, and early iMacs. He takes them in — from colleagues, friends, Freecycle, eBay, junk sales, anywhere — and tinkers with them. He has quite an impressive collection.
“You bring them home and you think they’ll be beyond repair, and that you’ll only be able to use them for parts,” he says.
“Then you discover they’re working fine, and then you can’t get rid of them can you? You have to keep them.” That’s right. You have to.
I probably shouldn’t be saying this on a Mac site, but reputation be damned: I’m quite interested to see Windows 7. Let me explain why. (Hang on while I put on my flame-proof jacket. There.)
THING THE FIRST: I want a netbook. I want a cheap, tiny, low-power little computer that does text editing and web [...]
It seems that suing Apple is no longer just the sport of crazy chicks allegedly denied their dog-given right to resell iPhones at extortionist rates because Apple discounted them. Instead, we have crazy patent campers who think that 25 years after Apple pioneered the use of the GUI in personal computers, they’re entitled to [...]
Steve Jobs in January 2008. Picture by Macinate. Creative Commons.
In the wake of Apple pulling out of Macworld — and the prospect that Steve Jobs may leave the company — many are wondering if Apple will survive without him.
The answer is yes, Apple will definitely survive without Steve Jobs. It may even thrive.
Here’s three reasons [...]
“Steampunk lies at the intersection of science and romance,” says one of its foremost practitioners, Jake Von Slatt. “It embraces technology but demands technology return the favor.”
Just in time for getting a little bit of the backstory before the 25th Anniversary of Mac kicks into high gear, Computer Shopper has a 
Google’s 2001 retro-search tool has provided endless amusement over the past few weeks. None so much as the image at right, which is the “iPhone 2,” released by InfoTech in mid-1999 and reviewed on 
In honor of its 10th anniversary, Google has rolled back the clock as far as it can go — its 
