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100 Years of Macintosh

Zero seconds on the Mac OS system clock is January 1, 1904. The Mac OS epoch hits 100 years ... now. That's assuming you live in the Pacific time zone, anyway: the Mac OS epoch is unique in that it is time zone-specific. Of course, none of this applies unless you are running Mac OS, and all you Mac users are using Mac OS X, right? (Geek note: the Mac OS epoch is unsigned, which is why it can count over 100 years from 0 seconds, and 32-bit Unix can't, though it can count backward to 1901.)

28 of 280 comments (clear)

  1. Well, uh.. happy.. epoch.. then. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I will remove the PRAM battery from my LC II temporarily and boot it up, resetting its internal clock, in commemoration of this event.

  2. Re:Mac OS 9.2.2 seems to be OK by Concerned+Onlooker · · Score: 4, Funny
    You're lucky. I'm on OS X and my computer just asked me to go outside to replace the AE35 unit.

    --
    http://www.rootstrikers.org/
  3. That's one bad apple. by DigiShaman · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ewwww... I don't think I want to see what a 100 year old Apple looks like.

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
    1. Re:That's one bad apple. by Mononoke · · Score: 2, Funny
      Ewwww... I don't think I want to see what a 100 year old Apple looks like.
      It recently turned some really odd colors, and then it lost all color.
      --
      NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
  4. Re:Uhhh no it's not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    ... MAC's ...

    What do Media Access Control addresses have to do with anything?

    Ooohh, you mean "Mac" as in Macintosh.

  5. Oh Yeah?! by dupper · · Score: 4, Funny
    Well I set the arbitrary starting time on my OS to January 1st, 1804, so take that MacOS: The dupperOS epoch hits 200 years... 3h14m ago.

    Nya, nya!

  6. For sale: orignal 1904 Mac by catbutt · · Score: 5, Funny

    Fresnel lens has a small scratch, and vacuum tube port is broken, but otherwise mint. Best offer.

    1. Re:For sale: orignal 1904 Mac by deglr6328 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Sir, I wish to solicit you for a possible exchange of similar electric appliance! I will gladly offer you utilisation of an iGrammo (45 second playback model) for your '04 Mac!! Respectable gentlemen are urged to reply with serious disquisitions only, as this apparatus may be potentially be used to play back musical composition containing lascivious lyrics...Ladies know your limits!

      --
      - "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
  7. Check that 'Speech Recognition'! by MarcQuadra · · Score: 3, Funny

    Before you go, just test to make sure the 'Speech' extension and control panels are in order. Wouldn't want to get stuck out there in the cold with your machine not listening to you.

    --
    "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
  8. Re:There is no article... by OttoM · · Score: 3, Funny
    That is easy to fix:

    According to this article.....

  9. Confused by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I thought the Epoch was the flying time machine thingy from Crono Trigger.

  10. Re:Mac OS 9.2.2 seems to be OK by SYFer · · Score: 2, Funny

    When/if you get back inside, you may may want to zap the PRAM.

    --
    "...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
  11. Re:Hardware clock by kitzilla · · Score: 4, Funny

    > Little know fact (or widely known) almost all Macs will reset to January 1, 1969 if the batter is removed.

    Removing the batter from most apples will completely ruin the pie. So a reset would seem appropriate.

    --
    This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
  12. Ha! by NanoGator · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ha! Us Windows users don't have this problem. Microsoft won't let us use a Windows OS that old! *SmUG*

    --
    "Derp de derp."
  13. I've one-upped you! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I set the epoch of my homemade OS to Februtember 84th, 54.3 BC.

  14. Re:Picking Epochs by keeboo · · Score: 1, Funny

    Why is the sky blue? Why has a week 7 days? Why some people drink Cherry Coke?
    Why? Why? Why?

    Oh, kid... Just accept things the way they are.

  15. Re:Dear Apple, by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    "I am a homosexual. I bought an Apple computer because of its well earned reputation for being "the" gay computer."

    Okay, the whole 'Mac users are gay' troll is very stale now. Here's something a little fresher:

    "I heard that OSX is based on eunichs!"

    (man I hope the mod dudes are in good humor today.)

  16. more than that... by netsrek · · Score: 4, Funny

    I seem to remember being amazed at just how many damn dates there were... and being even more amazed that people knew them...

    nothing compared to that guy who came up with the internationalisation bug/easter egg that took three minutes just to describe....

    I thought WWDC was full of nerds, but then Stump the Experts was like concentrated nerd juice...

    --

    i don't read slashdot anymore.
  17. Good question! by axxackall · · Score: 5, Funny

    I agree all those epochs are too random, including the birthday of Jesus Christ. IMHO the only meaningful and universal epoch is a time of the Big Bang. All time should be count from that.

    --

    Less is more !
  18. Re:Fixed long ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Cool," you say. Then you ask, "But 29,940 AD? Who cares about that?"

    As with many things, the answer should be obvious: time travelers. While the mainstream press seems to have, once again, missed a great Apple story, it can no longer be kept secret: the Macintosh is the preferred computer of time travelers everywhere. Or everywhen. Or at least everywhen across a span of sixty millennia.

  19. Re:Picking Epochs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    What's the significance of 1/1/1970? Was that when Linus Torvalds was born or something?

  20. Related Comic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny
  21. One of the weirdest stories ever... by tuxedobob · · Score: 4, Funny
    1. There is no article.
    2. The story is cool anyway.
    3. Most of the comments (in my threshold, 1+, anyway) are actually funny.
    4. Pudge posted this on time. This means that either he a) lives in PST and spent midnight posting this, or b) lives elsewhere and stayed up so he could post this.
  22. Re:Homework question for geeks by jaxdahl · · Score: 3, Funny

    Latest scientific estimate of age of universe from WMAP data: 13.7 billion years +/- 200 million years
    Assume 13.9 as worst case.
    Assume 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46.5 seconds for a 'year' -- the time it takes for the Earth to go around the Sun once -- ignore the 'slowdown' (which hasn't happened in 5 years anyway) alluded to in an earlier article. (no real need to be so exact though -- 31,560,000 seconds would work fine)

    ((365*24+5)*60+48)*60+46.5 = 31556926.5 seconds in the 'year'

    13.9x10^9 * 3.156*10^7 = 4.38684*10^17 seconds

    2^32=4,294,967,296
    2^64=18,446,744,073,709,551, 616 ~= 1.845*10^18 -- quite enough for the current age of the universe and 3 more of the same length tacked on.

    If you really need to skimp on the bit length, we could suffice with 59 bits, which would give us:
    2^59=576,460,752,303,423,488 ~= 5.76*10^17 -- at least 100 quadrillion years to spare before the Y-576trillion-K bug rears its ugly head.

  23. Re:Ugh. by Red_Winestain · · Score: 4, Funny
    Well, there hasn't been a leap second since 1999. There won't be one this year. Has the planet finally caught up with Unix?

    Reference

  24. Re:Ugh. by IM6100 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Now, that would be cool. Defining seconds to be some arbitrary length that can change every year. I'll get out my rattail file and start trimming the thickness on the quartz crystals in all my gear!

    --
    A Good Intro to NetBS
  25. Re:20 years of Macintosh by DrDNA · · Score: 2, Funny

    So I suppose the release of the Twentieth Anniversary Mac in 1997 was due to some bug in the OS?

    Yes, I know it was the twentieth anniversary of Apple, the company, but isn't the name a little ambiguous?

  26. Re:Dear Apple, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    "They" is a pronoun denoting "more than one person", not "at least one person".

    "The original poster" denotes "exactly one person".

    Yeah, I know, it's fashionable to foul up grammar these days because it's "uncool" to discriminate against females by using the default "he".

    It's also fashionable to be a Mac zealot, but everybody still knows those zealots are still feebs having no technical skills. A good word for this situation is "poseur" which has no gender issues at all.