Skip to Content

Free TUAW iPhone app -- try it now!
AOL Tech

apple-iie posts

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Cult of Mac, Odds and ends, Mac Pro, MacBook Air

Twitterers remember their first Mac

Reader Sam K. (thanks!) noticed the fun on Twitter -- lots of folks are sharing their memories of the first Mac they bought/used with the #firstmac hash tag, and boy is it fun reading through them.

The responses are all over the place, from the old ][e (technically my first computer ever at school, though the first one I actually owned at home was a Tandy Color Computer my Dad bought from one of his coworkers) and //c up to the old iMacs and even a few people who can only claim iPod as the first Apple product they used. The first Mac I actually owned was much later than my first steps into BASIC -- when I needed a laptop a few years ago, I picked up a 12" Powerbook G4 and have been straight OS X ever since.

It's great to read this stuff, because you can see just how Apple has shaped people's lives. I was amazed to hear all of the emotion in the calls to Steve on our talkcast last week, but looking at something like this Twitter feed (to put your own memories in, just mark a tweet with the #firstmac tag somewhere in there) really shows you how dedicated Apple's products have made the company's customers. These people have all bought a Mac, whether it was a Mac SE (errrr, a Mac Classic?) or a MacBook Air, and never looked back since. Very cool.

And while we're at it, is it possible that you're on Twitter and haven't yet started following us? If not, jump in and do so now!

Continue readingTwitterers remember their first Mac

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Cult of Mac, Odds and ends, Apple

30 years of Apple in three minutes


Megan's great roundup of Apple history from the other day wasn't enough nostalgia for you? It should have been -- wow there was a lot of old Apple stuff in there. But just in case your itch for the days of Apple yore isn't yet scratched, here's a great little video compilation of every Apple product from the last thirty years, squished into three minutes and set to Fiona Apple's cover of "Across the Universe."

The IIe! The PowerCD! The QuickTake! And even those early notebooks, which look so blocky today, were impressive in their time. Unfortunately, this video won't tell you much about what these products all were, but just the sight of some of these old units is enough to make the memories come flooding back for us old Apple fans. The iPhone and the iPod are so much hipper, it seems, compared to the units of Apple's past -- you think we'll ever look back with such nostalgia on the first touchscreens we got? A product like the Newton was so charming because it was so quirky, but the iPhone is sleek, popular, and impressive. Do you think future generations will look back at today's Apple products with the same fondness?

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Rumors, Apple, Mac mini

GeForce 9-Series motherboards maybe coming to the Mini

I think that at this point, the Mac mini has moved up into the ranks of the TRS-80 and the Apple IIe as one of my favorite computers of all time. Though it's been rumored dead more times than disco, it's still puttering along as the tiny little computer that could, racking up (we assume -- the mini doesn't carry with it any of the sparkle of the iPhone or the raw beauty of the MacBooks, and so Apple is relatively mum on info) enough sales to keep moving. And there might even be new life in store: Peter Cohen over at MacWorld suggests that after the recent MB and MBP updates, the mini is last in line to ditch the old Intel integrated motherboard design.

Sounds great to us. The mini's so under the radar that you wouldn't even expect Apple to announce an upgrade for it -- it just sort of slipped up to Core Duo 2 the last time it got upgraded, like a cute little baby bear following the family. And it's a versitile little cubby, too, from taking it out to sea to turning it into a Mac Pro mini.

What a great little computer. We hope that the Nvidia GeForce 9-series motherboards do find a home in there, and (more than anything else) that Apple sees fit to remember their roots and keep creative computing with the tinest Mac alive.

Tip of the Day

Holding the Command key (aka the Apple key) and pressing Tab will cycle through your open applications. It's easier to Cmd-Tab if you are Copy (Cmd-C) and Pasting (Cmd-V) to and from various applications.


Follow us on Twitter!
 TUAW [Cafepress]

Featured Galleries

DNC Macs
Macworld 2008 Keynote
Macworld 2008 Build-up
Google Earth for iPhone
Podcaster
Storyist 2.0
AT&T Navigator Road Test
Bento for iPhone 1.0
Scrabble for iPhone
Tom Bihn Checkpoint Flyer Briefcase
Apple Vanity Plates
Apple booth Macworld 07
WorldVoice Radio
Quickoffice for iPhone 1.1.1
Daylite 3.9 Review
DiscPainter
Mariner Calc for iPhone
2009CupertinoBus
Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
MLB.com At Bat 2009
Macworld Expo 2007 show floor

 

More Apple Analysis

AOL Radio TUAW on Stitcher