Alfred DiBlasi is at it again. A few months ago, he impressed us with the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh he found on ebay. What's impressive about that? It was still factory sealed. Never opened, never booted, never used. That's the kind of find that makes my beige, vintage heart flutter.

This time around, he's playing with a vintage Lisa in an exhaustive demonstration video. Before booting it up, he takes it apart and discusses the innards, piece by piece.

Next is the money shot as the computer boots up, and Alfred moves through the UI. It's a pretty cool demonstration of a nice piece of Apple history.

Thanks for sharing, Alfred. What's next?

Of our predictions about Macworld this year, the subnotebook likely topped the list for most mentioned, and though the name MacBook Air sounded strange to me when I first heard it (come to think of it, it still sounds weird, unless this is actually a product made out of hardened atmosphere), it looks like the evidence is mounting. Over the weekend, the name appeared in an Adium X usage log, and now we've got news that search engine ads and domain name lookups all point to Apple as the owner of macbookair.com (even if the site itself doesn't).

So is this the name of Apple's new subnotebook? Of course, we won't know for sure until Steve says it on stage, but while it's not, on the surface, Apple's best naming choice, it could work, in an "Airport" and "Air Tunes" kind of way. It could be worse-- the thing could be called the MacPod. Or the PodBook. Or the PodMac. Or the Lisa.

Update: macbookair.com isn't owned by Apple, but by some merry prankster. Let the speculation continue!

I never even realized such a thing existed, but apparently Hasbro (which now owns the Monopoly brand) had released a computer version of the famous real estate game, completely updated for 2007-- as in, there are Hybrid cars and RAZRs in the game (yeah, yeah, I'll get to that in a second), and luxury tax now costs you $150,000, instead of the quaint old $75. And it's now been released for the Mac-- you can pick it up for $20 over at Macgamestore, or grab the demo for free at Macgamefiles.

Gamespot users thought the PC version was pretty all right, so if you like the game a lot but don't always have the real opponents around to sit through the whole thing with you, this might be right up your alley.

But of course, what I'd like to see, in either virtual or realspace, is an actual Apple-branded edition of Monopoly-- the Newton and Lisa can be Mediterranean and Baltimore, and Park Place and Boardwalk get to be the iPhone and the iPod touch. You can have little Jobs and Woz figurines to move around the board (the shoe stays-- love the shoe), although I'm not sure what the railroads would be-- Apple keynotes at Mac conferences? Get on that, Hasbro!

[via IMG]

When we first got tipped this story (by RP-- thanks!), I was like "Oh boy, another guy who found a Newton on eBay and calls himself a Mac collector." But no, this guy is the real deal. He's got 100 Macs in his basement, including 30 Mac Classics and 18 original iMacs, as well as both a Lisa and a 20th Anniversary Macintosh. And these aren't just sitting around on shelves with cords all over the place-- oh no. These are set up just as Jobs would want them to be-- booted, running, cleanly placed, in an immaculate workspace, gently lit from above. If there's a Mac heaven, it's in this guy's basement in Missouri.

The guy, named Jeremy Mehrle, says he started buying them when he was single to fill the space in his house. I don't know if he charges admission, but if so, I'd pay.

Ted Hodges over at Low End Mac turned up this fascinating Lisa Emulator developed by Ray Arachelian. After obtaining a copy of the Lisa ROM and the Lisa OS, Hodges gave the emulator a spin. His post shows many great screen shots of the Lisa in action. I hadn't known that all Lisa applications were always-on. (There was no "Quit" in Lisa.) And the "tearing off stationary to create new documents" metaphor was pretty amazing, too. Also, I'd forgotten that the Lisa offered preemptive multitasking! There really are too many cool Lisa features to list here, so pop over and read his entire post.

[Via Digg]

In 1983, a sweaty businessman rode his bike to the office in the early morning. After ditching the bike and climbing the stairs, he clicked his computer's mouse, gazed contemplatively at the screen and answered an unexpected phone call with a smile. "Yeah," he said. "I'll be home for breakfast."

The actor was Kevin Costner (hey, he's a lefty!). The computer was an Apple Lisa and the message was simple: Buy a computer, and you'll become so obsessed with it that you'll arrive at work hours before everyone else and even your spouse will question your interest in the most mundane aspects of domestic life.

Ah, the information age. How lucky we are.

[Via MacSupport]

The Lisa was Steve Job's pet project until he switched to the Mac (oh, Steve, how mercurial you can be!). It was a revolutionary device that didn't sell well for the same old reasons: lack of software, and price.

However, Apple did try and sell a boatload of them (I mean, they wanted to make money). Charles Eicher has spent some time scanning in a Lisa marketing brochure so that we could all look back and ponder a world that might have been.

Lisa picture from The Mac Geek.

Flickr user brrm (I really like that user name for some reason) shows off his great collection of vintage Apple hardware. Check out the great Lisa II (in very nice condition), his collection of Powerbooks (180, 180c, 520c, 190, 100, 2400/180c, Pismo and 15" G4) doing the wave, Newton 2000 (with original iPod) and various compact Macs. Also noteworthy is his NeXT cube. No, it's not Apple hardware but it does have a place in Apple history. Plus, it's autographed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who used a NeXT cube to write the very first web server and browser. Cool.

Untitled  by brrm.

For the month of April, the theme for our Rig of the Day will be "Vintage Macs" in honor of Apple's anniversary. If you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr pool. Let's see your vintage Macs (Apples and Newtons, too)! We'll select an image every day to highlight.