Retro Mac Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Flickr Find: Grampa Mac Portable, meet the baby MacBook Air

by Michael Rose (Nov 1st, 2010)

It's hard to look at Patrick McCarron's snapshot of -- how many generations? Hard to count -- many generations of mobile computing development and 22 years of Macintoshes on the move without being a little bit awed. The Mac Portable, 1989's answer ...

Bloom County's Banana Jr 6000 lives on as a fantastic case mod

by Kelly Guimont (Oct 26th, 2010)

If you're too young to remember it, the Banana Jr 6000 was a thing of beauty that appeared in the comic strip Bloom County, which used to run in these things we called newspapers. (You can find out more about newspapers on Wikipedia and by asking ...

Rainbow MacBook decal is pretty colorful

by Kelly Guimont (Apr 3rd, 2010)

I apologize. This post would have gone up sooner but I was busy buying one of these! I have two stickers on my car, and they aren't really even stickers, they're static clings: TiVo, and an old style rainbow Apple logo. Yeah, I have stacks of ...

Found Footage: Apple designs in 3D

by Michael Grothaus (Mar 3rd, 2010)

Transparent House, a San Fransisco-based 3D design and visualization studio, has created this stunning video that showcases some of Apple's best designs over its 34-year history. Ground-breaking products from the Apple I in 1976 to the iPad in ...

Flickr Find: MacBook Generations

by Mike Schramm (Jan 12th, 2010)

Oh man. I'm tempted to just sit back and let you marvel at the beauty, history, innovation, and intelligence that is on display in the picture above, taken and posted by Robert Donovan on Flickr (and be sure to check out the alternate view, too -- ...

Commodore 64 1.2 released in the App Store with three new free games

by Mike Schramm (Dec 24th, 2009)

The creators of Commodore 64, that emulator app that eventually gained Apple's blessing, emailed to say that they have released a brand new version [iTunes link] with some brand new (old) C64 games to revisit. The gist of this one is that you can ...

Need to run Classic under Snow Leopard? SheepShaver can do that.

by Steven Sande (Oct 24th, 2009)

I'm beginning to think that some other writers on the Mac beat are reading my mind. About two weeks ago, one of my consulting clients was asking if there was any way that she'd be able to upgrade to Snow Leopard and still be able to run two ...

TUAW Review: StuffIt Deluxe 2010

by Steven Sande (Oct 3rd, 2009)

If there's one Mac application that has seemingly been around forever, it's StuffIt. This compression and archiving utility was the tool to use for compressing files years ago, and I'll still occasionally run into a .sit file extension when pulling ...

A fond look at a blast from the past: the Mac Portable

by Steven Sande (Sep 21st, 2009)

An email this morning from Harry McCracken at Technologizer.com pointed the way to a trip down memory lane. Harry was letting us know that Technologizer blogger Benj Edwards had written a 20th anniversary teardown post about the first truly mobile ...

Here's your chance to own Gene Roddenberry's Mac

by Steven Sande (Sep 17th, 2009)

Update: OK, we have to hand it to all of you -- you have successfully pointed out that this Mac's model number isn't consistent with a Mac Plus, but instead with a 128K original Mac. We took that key fact back to the auction house that is listing ...

A bit of [Big] Apple history: visiting Tekserve

by Michael Rose (Aug 29th, 2009)

It may have lost a bit of luster compared to the chrome, glass and steel of Apple's nearby retail stores (one within easy walking distance, in fact), but there's no denying the draw of New York City's original Apple emporium, the delightfully ...

Retro Apple: The QuickTake 100 digital camera

by Steven Sande (Jul 29th, 2009)

In 1994, I was working as the IT manager for a natural gas pipeline company (all Macs, of course), had long hair pulled back in a ponytail, and none of that hair was gray. In January of '94, I remember being invited down to Apple's Denver office -- ...

TUAW Retro Giveaway Part 1: Newtonian artifacts and the web in '96

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Apr 1st, 2009)

In the spirit of today's April Fool's/Apple birthday blasts from the past, we've got a giveaway prize pack that will remind us all of days gone by. [Yes, this is an actual giveaway, not a joke. -Ed.] Long before there was the iPhone, there was the ...

Remembering the TAM

by Mel Martin (Mar 20th, 2009)

Our friend Hadley Stern at Apple Matters reminds us that that on this day in 1997 the Twentieth Anniversary Mac (or TAM) was offered for sale to a mystified public. Originally slated to sell for about U.S. $9,000 it was reduced at introduction to ...

What every superhero needs: Watchmen black SE/30

by Michael Rose (Mar 6th, 2009)

Even though reviewers and early attendees have pointed out a slew of Apple references (including a snippet of the 1984 ad) in the Watchmen film, the one we've been waiting for most eagerly is the appearance of Adrian (Ozymandias) Veidt's sleek black ...

Apple: Welcome to the obsolete list, PowerBook G4

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Feb 4th, 2009)

Ars Technica reports that Apple will announce the latest additions to its list of vintage and obsolete machines on March 17. The list, initially reported through MacMerc, includes the following: The "vintage" machines are ones where service parts are ...