Slashdot Mirror

Been there...

<BZZT>Wrong. According to the Henrico Site, these were G3/500 models. From reliable sources, this means PC100 RAM, 8MB VRAM with 1024x768 resolution, and benchmarks somewhere between a 600-900Mhz x86-type CPU. The Henrico models had 802.11b Wireless, but no optical burner.

It's still not worth a riot over, but it's not total crap. Suitable for someone who just wants a low-end laptop for web browsing, email, word processing, or a secure *nix platform to play with. Not suitable for gaming or video editing, but I could live with that. So could my twelve year old niece.

The 8600 is eight years old. For frak's sake, get a decent computer to do your work on. I don't know any "Mac fanatics" that still use things like 8600s for real work these days. I'd consider myself a "Mac fanatic" and I have a two year old G5.

No way. The smaller laptops get, the more expensive they get-- the iBook is the consumer line, so they can't be them at higher price points than they are now, and the new models' pricing has already been reported to remain the same as the current models. Sub-notebooks are also more fragile, and if the iBooks get that way, what portables will Apple have to sell to school districts?

I've carried a 12" iBook around with me every day since the dual USB models were introduced in 2001, and I wouldn't trade the built-in CD drive and full complement of ports for a little less weight in my backpack. I've seen the compromises that have to be made to really shrink a laptop, and IMHO they suck-- in my job, I frequently need to burn CDs and connect all manner of stuff to my iBook when I'm in the field. I would not be a happy camper if I had to lug around some damned external CD drive or docking station.

Apple's old Powerbook Duo line was underappreciated and ahead of its time. I had a Duo 210 back in 1993 and loved it. I didn't need the Dock back then, just the external floppy drive-- which I didn't need to carry around often.

There's certainly room in Apple's laptop line for a subnotebook, but it probably won't be a new incarnation of the Duo system and it definitely won't replace the iBook models. It will probably be an additional choice in the Powerbook line, like "PowerBook mini" or something-- guts of the 12" PowerBook, but with an external CD drive and everything else shrunk accordingly and/or moved into the space vacated by the internal CD drive. If we're going to see one, though, it probably won't happen until the Intel transition hits the laptops.

~Philly

No way. The smaller laptops get, the more expensive they get-- the iBook is the consumer line, so they can't be them at higher price points than they are now, and the new models' pricing has already been reported to remain the same as the current models. Sub-notebooks are also more fragile, and if the iBooks get that way, what portables will Apple have to sell to school districts?

I've carried a 12" iBook around with me every day since the dual USB models were introduced in 2001, and I wouldn't trade the built-in CD drive and full complement of ports for a little less weight in my backpack. I've seen the compromises that have to be made to really shrink a laptop, and IMHO they suck-- in my job, I frequently need to burn CDs and connect all manner of stuff to my iBook when I'm in the field. I would not be a happy camper if I had to lug around some damned external CD drive or docking station.

Apple's old Powerbook Duo line was underappreciated and ahead of its time. I had a Duo 210 back in 1993 and loved it. I didn't need the Dock back then, just the external floppy drive-- which I didn't need to carry around often.

There's certainly room in Apple's laptop line for a subnotebook, but it probably won't be a new incarnation of the Duo system and it definitely won't replace the iBook models. It will probably be an additional choice in the Powerbook line, like "PowerBook mini" or something-- guts of the 12" PowerBook, but with an external CD drive and everything else shrunk accordingly and/or moved into the space vacated by the internal CD drive. If we're going to see one, though, it probably won't happen until the Intel transition hits the laptops.

~Philly

Hm. What he wrote was:

"I constantly hear Mac zealots all excited about their new shiny G5 in some overly pretentious colour like magenta or something"

The last colorful Mac was the iMac (Summer 2001). The G5 was announced in June 2003 and its predecessor wasn't what I'd call overly colorful either. That's why I smelled a troll.

Hm. What he wrote was:

"I constantly hear Mac zealots all excited about their new shiny G5 in some overly pretentious colour like magenta or something"

The last colorful Mac was the iMac (Summer 2001). The G5 was announced in June 2003 and its predecessor wasn't what I'd call overly colorful either. That's why I smelled a troll.

Hm. What he wrote was:

"I constantly hear Mac zealots all excited about their new shiny G5 in some overly pretentious colour like magenta or something"

The last colorful Mac was the iMac (Summer 2001). The G5 was announced in June 2003 and its predecessor wasn't what I'd call overly colorful either. That's why I smelled a troll.

These improvements are significant as this line has not seen a refresh in about a year...

Lombard models do not include built in firewire, so 10.3 will be as late as you can go.

Actually, it wasn't an OS, it was the Power Macintosh 7100. Part of the reason Sagan sued was the Power Macintosh 6100 and 8100 (the other two of the three original Power Macs, developed at the same time as the 7100) were both code-named for hoaxes (Piltdown Man and Code Fusion, respectively). The implications of code-naming two of three projects for hoaxes, and the third for a famous astronomer are pretty clear. ;-)

Actually, it wasn't an OS, it was the Power Macintosh 7100. Part of the reason Sagan sued was the Power Macintosh 6100 and 8100 (the other two of the three original Power Macs, developed at the same time as the 7100) were both code-named for hoaxes (Piltdown Man and Code Fusion, respectively). The implications of code-naming two of three projects for hoaxes, and the third for a famous astronomer are pretty clear. ;-)

Actually, it wasn't an OS, it was the Power Macintosh 7100. Part of the reason Sagan sued was the Power Macintosh 6100 and 8100 (the other two of the three original Power Macs, developed at the same time as the 7100) were both code-named for hoaxes (Piltdown Man and Code Fusion, respectively). The implications of code-naming two of three projects for hoaxes, and the third for a famous astronomer are pretty clear. ;-)

This isn't the first time they've done that.

The Power Mac G3 (B&W) also had an optional modem, for example.

It's good to see they've brought this *back*! It seems positively absurd to have dual 2.7 GHz G5's, dual 1.35 GHz processor busses, 8 GB of RAM, 250 GB of disk, and still be sucking bits over a 56K modem.

This seems almost exactly like the OQO, only they tacked on this 'shells' idea. Really this doesn't seem that different than much older ideas, like Apple's PowerBook Duo.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Not true. The later G3 (CRT) iMacs had slot-loading drives, and the G5 iMac has a slot-loader, but all the G4s (Flat Panel) are tray loaders. (The link is to a description + photo of the final G4 iMac revision, and as you can see there's no slot-loading drive.)

According to the new system requirements. old tray-load iMac owners, and probably old Firewire-less iBook owners too, are at the end of the OS line. While sad, this isn't entirely surprising. But, since Firewire seems to be the deciding factor, one wonders what the fate of the newer but still Firewire-less slot-load 350MHz iMacs will be.

Or you could just say that their first computer, the Apple 1, sold for $666.66.

1992 must have indeed rocked for you, if you had an 840AV, since that machine wasn't released until July of 1993. :-)

http://www.apple-history.com/noframes/body.php?pag e=gallery&model=840

I remember this because Fall of '93 was when I got my 660AV. Still have that baby in my basement. Great machines.

K.

Proper link.

Hyperlinks, motherfucker! Have you heard of them?

<a href="http://example.com">Link text</a>

Learn it. Use it.

This is especially important when Slashdot chops up long words, making your posted-as-text URLs useless.

Isn't the Mac Mini just a Shuttle knock-off?

No, it's not.

Sorry, Apple copied the PC when it comes to mini personal computers

Sorry, you're completely wrong, what a surprise.

And didn't Apple copy their stuff from Xerox PARC research to an astounding extent?

This turd was put to rest so long ago its not even funny anymore. Xerox got paid. Deal with it.

Don't feel so clever, now do you?

So the abacus, in use for centuries, comes in at #60 of all time, but the PowerBook 100, which was in production for a few short years is ranked #1?

The PowerBook 100 was a great machine and all, but let's be serious.

Actually the Powerbook 100 didn't even get produced for a full year, just 10 or 11 months (Oct 91 - Aug 92). And it had a predecessor, the Macintosh Portable. For the day it might have been cool, but it classifies as a luggable these days. And besides, It's not like Apple invented the laptop. Surely there were other better laptops at the time. Otherwise things would be different these days.

So the abacus, in use for centuries, comes in at #60 of all time, but the PowerBook 100, which was in production for a few short years is ranked #1?

The PowerBook 100 was a great machine and all, but let's be serious.

Actually the Powerbook 100 didn't even get produced for a full year, just 10 or 11 months (Oct 91 - Aug 92). And it had a predecessor, the Macintosh Portable. For the day it might have been cool, but it classifies as a luggable these days. And besides, It's not like Apple invented the laptop. Surely there were other better laptops at the time. Otherwise things would be different these days.

Usually referred to as 'dual USB'. For a complete reference on Apple's crazy naming conventions, you can't go wrong with Apple History

I never ran A/UX on a regular desktop Mac, but I used to administer a Mac network at the ad agency I worked at just out of college. We had a Workgroup Server 95, basically a souped-up Quadra 950 designed specifically to run A/UX. It was our file server, connected not via Ethernet, but via oh-so-ungodly-slow AppleTalk, served over plain old twisted-pair phone cables via PhoneNet connectors.

The server was rock-solid, we never had a single problem with it, whereas our old file servers (running System 7.something I think) would crash all the time. I do wonder what I would have done had it broken, because I sure didn't know much about UNIX in those days (1993-1994).

Why the heck isn't the Apple /// in there?

I heard it was such a flop that Apple became kind of superstitious about their naming conventions and refused to name any subsequent products beyond "][". They had the Apple I, Apple ][, and Apple ][+ before the Apple ///. After the Apple /// flopped, they went back to "][" and had the Apple //e, Apple //c, and Apple //gs. For the Macintosh line, they had the Mac //, Mac //x, Mac //cx, Mac //ci, Mac //si, Mac //fx, Mac //vi, and Mac //vx. They never used "///" again, or any roman numeral above it.

Even now, they have dumped numbering their product lines altogether, despite the constant upgrades in hardware configurations. The only exception is the processor suffix (G4 or G5), which doesn't really indicate the product generation anyway. This applies to iPods as well.

USB does the same functions that serial and parallel do for the Cappuccino PC. Serial devices have become very rare on a consumer end. The only serial devices I have are some old mice, modems and an IR dongle, which the current model uses USB. Printers and scanners that used parallel connectors now use USB exclusively.

irda has been superceded by Bluetooth, which is availible for the Mac Mini as an optional extra.

The slot loading drive is smaller than a tray loading drive. Apple went to the slot loading drives in 1999, with the iMac, and that was later echoed in the Powerbook and iBooks. There are some weird CDs out there that will give you problems, I'll give you that, but not many for it to be a major issue.

You mean "Lisa"?

If Macintoshes were ever called McIntoshes, there's no mention of it here. I think you're wrong.

I *love* those amplifiers.

Agreed -- my family used to have one of these (and a preamp) years ago. Wish I could afford one. Until following the (audiophile pornography!) link above (and wasting half an hour drooling and clicking), I had no idea they made speakers too.

Unless it's the hour and booze talking we both agree; the iMac G5 is mid cycle. Very true the averages are slightly misleading because of some random introductions. What I really like about the tool is a simple easy way to keep the introduction dates correct in my own memory.
To compliment this use Apple History to see further back in history and see the actual specs of the machines in question.

I did some googling and the Apple II used a 6502 processor while the Commodore 64 used a 6510.

Speed holes in your car?? Screw that!

I'm putting speed holes in my COMPUTER

The performance of the Cube wasn't that fantastic, and apple stopped production of it within about a year.
The ~$1500-$2200 initial price tag of the Cube didn't exactly help, and probably contributed to it's downfall.

Here are details.

If you do want to see the 1984 commercial, you can find it here: http://www.apple-history.com/frames/body.php?page= gallery&model=1984&format=small

Macs have run on proprietary OS's until very very recently, but now they run proprietary extensions to a reasonably open OS. I am sure you couldn't just give away OS/X the same way you can give away Knoppix on a CD to someone.

Gee, did you even read the link? Or did your willful blindness prevent you from checking my references? It was to an Apple IIe! Apple has made more than just Macs in its history, you know. That was the entire point of my subject line.

Average - When Apple don't produce their own components, they buy middle to high end components and rebadge them. Average is a very adequate description.

Please explain just what was so average about the linked computer, the original Mac. The 68000 processor was far from average at the time, as was the bitmapped display, the 3.5" floppy drive, the built-in networking.... Also, it's more than just the hardware. The original Mac was beyond average in the software department as well.

Underpowered - Reviewing the link provided zealously by the parent, one can see that, as per typical Apple philosophy, no hard facts or trustworthy benchmarks are provided, aside from a slightly amusing "10% faster than.. an older mac". Realisticly, in terms of IPC the G3 in the article was a better performer, it's just a shame that the intel gear of the time was orders of magnitude faster. Great link for proving my point, though.

Woo, you finally looked at a link! Too bad you're so condescending that you didn't realize the link was just to provide a reference, and wasn't meant to prove anything.

The beige G3s shipped in November of 1997 with clock speeds of 233MHz and 266MHz. The top of the line from the x86 camp at the time was, according to this page the 300MHz Pentium II. Was a 300MHz Pentium II really "orders of magnitude" faster than a 266MHz G3? (This will mean at least a factor of two, you realize.) My experience was that the G3 was significantly faster than same-clocked x86 processors, and would more than make up for the 12% difference in clock speed.

Three times the price - This is an exaggeration on my part. Usually it's more like 150%-200% the price of an equivalently performing Dell/HP. A quick look around will show you can get a better laptop than the iBook in terms of performance for a few hundred dollars cheaper than the prices on that website - again confirming my general gist, thankyou.

If all you care about is performance, why get a laptop at all?

Show me a better, cheaper laptop than the iBook in terms of everything and then you have a point. To give you a helping hand, I'll even forget about all of the software and just look at the hardware. Don't forget to consider size, battery life, ports, wireless networking, optical drive, etc.

Apple has always dressed up average, underpowered personal computer components, slapped a white case around them, dropped a proprietary OS on them and sold them at three times the price to people who'll gladly pay three times the price for a computer because it's from Apple and it's "Blueberry" or whatever fruit flavour is popular.

Proprietary OS? (I guess this technically had a proprietary OS, but I don't think it really fits with what you mean.)

Average?

Underpowered?

Three times the price?

Apple has always dressed up average, underpowered personal computer components, slapped a white case around them, dropped a proprietary OS on them and sold them at three times the price to people who'll gladly pay three times the price for a computer because it's from Apple and it's "Blueberry" or whatever fruit flavour is popular.

Proprietary OS? (I guess this technically had a proprietary OS, but I don't think it really fits with what you mean.)

Average?

Underpowered?

Three times the price?

Apple has always dressed up average, underpowered personal computer components, slapped a white case around them, dropped a proprietary OS on them and sold them at three times the price to people who'll gladly pay three times the price for a computer because it's from Apple and it's "Blueberry" or whatever fruit flavour is popular.

Proprietary OS? (I guess this technically had a proprietary OS, but I don't think it really fits with what you mean.)

Average?

Underpowered?

Three times the price?

Apple has always dressed up average, underpowered personal computer components, slapped a white case around them, dropped a proprietary OS on them and sold them at three times the price to people who'll gladly pay three times the price for a computer because it's from Apple and it's "Blueberry" or whatever fruit flavour is popular.

Proprietary OS? (I guess this technically had a proprietary OS, but I don't think it really fits with what you mean.)

Average?

Underpowered?

Three times the price?

Second runner up? Perhaps the Apple PowerCD. I actually used one of these and a set of Bose Roommates as my entire stereo system for many years.

Oh I dunno.. I wouldn't exactly call this attractive..

yeah but this one is up there too...

the true winner for ugly Apple products...

I'd nominate the eMate.

It's like, how much more black could the Acer be? And the answer is none. None more black.

(Oh, and the true winner for ugly Apple products is this one.)

Actually, I was referring to Apple's "let's cover everything we make in the same exact tacky, ugly white plastic that's so bright it can hurt people's eyes" style. Not all their products use it, but most of them do, and Apple's using more of it than ever now.

For the record, the PowerBooks are the only Apple (hardware) products from the last few years I've been able to visually tolerate. And assuming that I'm thinking of the right PowerBook, there are significant visual differences between it and the Acer: for one, the Acer uses far more black than the PowerBook.

And while we're on the subject of ugly Apple products and old Apple laptops, let's all take a moment to remember this disaster. Even the Apple fans panned that one.

Actually, I was referring to Apple's "let's cover everything we make in the same exact tacky, ugly white plastic that's so bright it can hurt people's eyes" style. Not all their products use it, but most of them do, and Apple's using more of it than ever now.

For the record, the PowerBooks are the only Apple (hardware) products from the last few years I've been able to visually tolerate. And assuming that I'm thinking of the right PowerBook, there are significant visual differences between it and the Acer: for one, the Acer uses far more black than the PowerBook.

And while we're on the subject of ugly Apple products and old Apple laptops, let's all take a moment to remember this disaster. Even the Apple fans panned that one.

As much as I like free - I haven't seen any of them produce quality games like Half-Life 2, etc et al.

I prefer to keep my non-game computing and my commercial video games in separate cubes, thank you very much. I would play a commercial game on a Treacherous Computing platform provided it could run side-by-side with a non-Treacherous platform, either in separate memory spaces or in separate machines. Besides, have you even played some of the better Free games, such as StepMania or TOD?

And, at least for the near future, MS Office is the industry standard

Well it's a good thing only the most expensive version of Microsoft Office supports digital restrictions management of .doc files. This means that companies won't be distributing information in DRM .doc format to the public, many of whom use the Works Suite edition of Word or the student edition of Office, and OpenOffice.org will still open files in non-DRM .doc format even more reliably than other versions of Microsoft Word do.

I dunno, that $666 Apple was missing some essential functionality.

Like, uh, a case, a keyboard. Power plug. More than 4k of RAM.
Even the cassette interface was extra! Although they did throw in the BASIC tape with the interface.

That said, this was a triumph of low-cost personal computing. Woz rules!

As the first of the "New World" Macs, the Blue & White G3 will still be supported under 10.4 Tiger. It will happily use any old VGA monitor, any old USB or ADB keyboard or mouse, and up to 1G of any PC100 RAM (except for 512M and single-bank 256M modules). It's even got three 64-bit/33MHz PCI slots. (The video card goes into a fourth 32/66 slot, which was the best you could do before AGP.) The CPU can even be upgraded to 1.1GHz for $350.

You will want to fill it with at least 384M-512M of RAM to get sufficient OS X performance. And make sure to look for the "402" rev-2 IDE controller chip next to the bottom PCI slot.