Filed under: Hardware, Cult of Mac, Rig of the Week
Rig of the Day: TAM
Oh, how I want one of these. The TAM was created in 1997 to celebrate Apple's 20th anniversary, and today it stands as a desirable collectible for Mac addicts and tech geeks in general. They aren't the most powerful machines in the world (a 250 MHz 603e processor just screams inside that grey shell), but it sure would look cool in the living room.
"TAM" posted by soyburger.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Douglas F Shearer said 6:18PM on 8-15-2006
That's funny, I saw one of these on ebay today when looking at powermacs...
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Twentieth-Anniversary-Macintosh_W0QQitemZ250015468437QQihZ015QQcategoryZ51046QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Only £310, almost a Dual 1Ghz G4 Powermac!
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Dan said 7:16PM on 8-15-2006
The guys gut a whole mess of macs all over his basement, with an Apple II Bar and a wall of CRT iMacs. Definitley check out his Flickr.
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Aaron Priven said 7:35PM on 8-15-2006
And only seven years later, they came out with a machine that did this form factor right.
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Peter Payne said 8:17PM on 8-15-2006
Got one. It's nice, esp. with a bigger hard drive, think I put a 40 gb in mine (it's, er, SCSI still, so that makes things challenging to say the least) and wireless card (801.11b, whee). It's good for iTunes and nothing else, but sadly, Apple never hooked the remote up to iTunes, so it doesn't really work that well. The sound is nice, although so would a Mac Mini with Bose speakers. But it's the only old, old Mac worth owning.
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Murray said 10:20PM on 8-15-2006
I also saw one on eBay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Twentieth-20th-Anniversary-Macintosh-TAM-In-Box_W0QQitemZ140016883819QQihZ004QQcategoryZ51046QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
$999 plus shipping.
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Panzarino said 8:03AM on 8-16-2006
I got one of those too :D
Its been upgraded a lot. USB, Firewire, 10GB hd, G3 500mhz. Its a great mac to use, pity it doesn't run OS X.
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pedro said 9:15AM on 8-16-2006
The 20th anniversary mac also has one of the best startup chimes of any mac. Very spacey and cool!
If you download the excellent app Mac Tracker, you can listen to it.
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Dean said 9:54AM on 8-16-2006
I think that was the same computer they had in the sitcom Seinfeild. It was always in the back corner near the window.
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fishpatrol said 10:48AM on 8-16-2006
Seinfeld had a long string of Macs in the corner of Jerry's apartment.
A TAM might be cool if you could wedge a Mac Mini inside it, but as it is, this would be about as useful as keeping your bicycle from junior high in the middle of the garage. I'm not saying you couldn't still ride it if you wanted to. But wouldn't you rather ride a bike that's the proper size, or, I dunno, a motorcycle? I'm not saying the machine's completely useless; I've got nothing against the 603e. It sure isn't useful enough to put in the living room (plus spousal acceptance factor = nil).
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Scott said 10:50AM on 8-16-2006
The TAM was cool. If it wasn't for the high price that it originally sold for I think it might have actually taken off. It is interesting to see the technology that went into it way ahead of its time that has shown up on computers we own today. The owner of this should upload it to MacBattle.com and see how it does against the rest.
http://www.macbattle.com
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mrtotes said 7:55PM on 8-17-2006
So where's the TAM - 30th Anniversary Mac? Not even a special iPod???
Come on Apple - lazy!
It wouldn't have taken much design work to build a 30inch iMac (dual drives?)
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