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 -- they had a Denver office in those days -- to see some new products that were being introduced.

While I was disappointed that they didn't show us an updated Newton (the MessagePad 110 would be introduced in March), I was intrigued by another device that was demonstrated -- the Apple QuickTake 100 digital camera. At the time, the only other small business / consumer digital cameras on the market were the Canon Ion, a device from Kodak (rebranded by Apple as the QuickTake 100), and the Logitech PhotoMan.

After the demo, we passed around the camera and took photos of each other, and then waited as the pictures were uploaded to a Mac. Considering that "digital photography" for us at that time meant taking a picture with a film camera, waiting for the film to be developed and prints made, and then scanning the pictures on an expensive and slow SCSI scanner, this seemed like the future. Of course, I remember comments from many of the people in attendance to the effect of "digital photography will never replace film photography."

Good news from our friends over at Joystiq -- they had the good fortune to speak with the folks over at LucasArts (who are currently working on reviving some of their old point-and-click library of games: Secret of Monkey Island is coming back to the Xbox Live Arcade, and other games, including the classic Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, are due to make their way to the PC's Steam service), and the subject of the iPhone came up. While we didn't get any really great news (like, say, a release date), we did get a vague answer in the affirmative: "On iPhone, you know Apple's policy that we can't talk about a release until it's ready to release. But it would make sense that we would do something like that if we were to go in that direction ... wink wink, nod, nod."

With a wink and a nod, it seems like a fairly safe bet that we can expect at least one or two iPhone ports of these old LucasArts titles in the future. The whole point-and-click genre (you can play a great little sample done by gaming genius Tim Schafer right over on his company's website) is experiencing a resurgence, and LucasArts is showing a lot of sudden loyalty to fan favorites like Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, and Grim Fandango, so there's never been a better time to send a port or two over towards the App Store.

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 U.S. $7499.00. It was delivered and set up by a concierge, and at the time it was pretty radical, at least in looks. It was a thin, upright design, with an 800x600 LCD screen, a TV Tuner, and a Bose Audio system with a sub-woofer and power supply that sat under your desk.

Only 12,000 were made, but many remained unsold. The price soon dropped to $3500.00 and in March of 1998 it was closed out at $1999.00. That outraged original owners, and Apple responded by giving them a new Apple laptop.

I was able to grab one of the TAMs at $1600.00 and at that price I thought at least it would make a nice music system and second computer. Unfortunately, the system developed a nasty audio buzz. I wasn't alone, and many of the units had to be returned for a fix.

Performance specs weren't too great. It was limited to 128 MB of RAM. Most of the internals were similar to the components of the then current PowerMac 5500 and 6500, although the TAM had a custom motherboard.

I added a processor upgrade sold by Newer Technology, which kicked the speed from 250 to 400 MHz. That helped, but the upgrade required a new back for the TAM that didn't enhance the slim profile.

Of course the TAM was a statement computer, not a howling fast desktop. Here is a link to the specs. Although Steve Jobs was said to have hated the TAM (he was in exile from Apple at the time) you can see some of the early evolution of the iMac in the design.

There are still quite a few of the TAMs out in the world, and there are some web sites dedicated to keeping the flame alive. You can't run OS X on them, so you had to max out at OS 8 or 9.

Jerry Seinfeld had one, and it could be seen on the set of his TV show in the final season.

I parted with mine long ago, but it was always a good conversation piece when people dropped by, and the 90's ultra-modern design doesn't look out of place at all today.

Thanks to Apple Matters for reminding us about the TAM.

Al Diblasi over at Alfred.TV keeps coming up with fun videos with old Apple or related devices as the centerpiece. In this latest 53-minute masterpiece on YouTube (below), Al boots up a 1991 68040-based NeXT Cube, and then shows off some of the built-in applications, an original brochure for the NeXT, a cool NeXT black turtleneck (Steve Jobs' influence, obviously), and a couple of versions of the NeXTstep OS and development environment.

For those of you who are new to the Mac world, NeXT was the company Steve Jobs founded after being kicked out of Apple. Originally, they produced both hardware, of which this NeXT Cube is a prime example, and software. NeXT was purchased by Apple in 1997, and the NeXTstep environment evolved into what we now know as Mac OS X and the Cocoa development suite. A NeXT computer used by Tim Berners-Lee was the world's first Web server.

Be sure to watch or at least skim through to the end of the video, where Al finds a couple more Apple gems in his brother's basement. You can follow Al's trips through retro computing on Twitter.

It comes with a few games to begin with, and there's also built in access to the Interactive Fiction Database, so you can grab as many text-based adventures as you'd like -- hours and hours of text-based good times. Whether you're an old hand at GET LAMP or new to the surprisingly vast world of IF, Frotz seems like a perfect portal to all the adventuring there is to find out there.

[via Joystiq]

As Brett noted in February, the long-in-development next installment of the classic Mac game Dark Castle has been expected "any day now" for years. Rent fans sing along with me: No Day But Today -- the release of Return To Dark Castle has finally happened, and you can buy the game at this moment from the SuperHappyFunFun site. Unfortunately, the planned level editor will not be included with this version of the game.

On the one hand, I'm very excited to revisit this diversion from my childhood; on the other, I wonder what my jaded offspring will make of the throwback fun of pitching rocks at bats and jumping off of ropes. $30 says they'll enjoy it as much as I did back in the day.

Full feature list after the break.

Thanks Mark!

Combining two of our little trends lately, retroware and eBay vintage, here's the motherload for any NeXT fan-- a complete (and boy do I mean complete) set of NeXT computer cube stuff on eBay.

Holy cow that's a lot of stuff-- he's a matching grayscale (!) display and speakers, all the cables, a spare motherboard, all the books and discs, and even the original sticker sheet. Who keeps the sticker sheet?!? The thing even still runs Omniweb (inside NeXTSTEP 3.3 patch 2), and he's got a screenshot of Google up and working.

So how much will it run you? Currently, the auction is at $710 with a business week left to go even higher, but seriously now-- how much is it worth to you to get a little piece (or in this case, a lot of pieces) of non-Apple Jobs?

Thanks, Richard! (who saw it on Boing Boing)

After we posted that neon Apple sign a little while back, reader Franco thought we'd get a kick out of this Apple flag for sale on eBay, and he was right. The best news is that right now, it's sitting pretty at only $10 (reserve not yet met, though) flying upwards-- what are you TUAW readers, rich?-- so you could own a little piece of Apple history for cheap.

As for dating it, the page says the 80s. No mention of Macintosh might put it before 1984, but that's just a guess-- Apple IIs were known as the first "personal computers" and those were made all the way up until the early 1990s. I really love those fonts, though, and of course the rainbow logo is a classic.

Hot on the heels of the Apple IIe-into-a-Linux-terminal tutorial we posted the other day, here's another mix of retro and modern-- Byte Cellar has hooked up an old Apple IIc (or //c if you spin that way) to work as a terminal to a Mac Mini. It's pretty neat-- sounds like they frankensteined the IIc's serial port to a USB connection, put ModemMGR on the IIc (which is three whole floppies), and now are using the old "luggable" as an IRC client, which is a perfect use for it, and, as Blake says, makes it feel "great to twiddle the //c's keys in a meaningful way every workday."

There's also a photo gallery of the whole setup, which shows the spliced cable, as well as the whole setup in all its glory (yeah the XP box mars it a bit, but no one's perfect). Very cool. Makes me wish I still had one of those old clunky Apple IIs, if only to run IRC as it's mean to be run-- with nothing but green text on a black screen.

[via Digg]

As he even points out, this isn't the first time this has been done, but Quag7 has written up a very detailed, simple, and often hilarious (I feel the same way about Michael Bay!) guide for converting that old Apple ][e you've got sitting around into a Linux serial terminal. In this case, he runs a serial connection between a modern (everything is relative here) Gentoo distro and the ][e using ADTPro as a go-between. Hook up ADTPro on both, get the serial hooked up and running on both, install a term program on the ][e and then make sure everything can talk to each other (at 9600 baud-- remember baud? Oh those were the days), and voila, you've got an Apple ][e that can run a Linux distro. Why would you want to do this? No idea.

But why else do we do this kind of crazy stuff (like hook an Apple ][e up to a game machine, or even an actual Mac)? We do this, my friends, because we can.

[via Waxy]

If you're of a certain age (which I am), you may fondly remember a little series of books called Choose Your Own Adventure. Right around the time a little game company called Infocom was really cranking out the interactive computer games, which I spent countless hours playing on my Apple ][, CYOA books were a regular staple at my house. Yeah, we'd all skip ahead to make sure we weren't about to wind up as ant food, but the books did a lot to foster reading across the country, long before Harry Potter was a gleam in Rowling's eye.

Anyway, Choose Your Own Adventure books are back! Sure, you can buy dead tree versions. But you can also buy iPod versions, which use the iPod's primitive hyperlinking in the Notes. And as astute reader Amy pointed out to us, there's a free sample iPod CYOA book, The Abominable Snowman, on their website. It's neat to see the old series faithfully reproduced, but even better knowing I can carry these around in my pocket (and read them to my kids).

Ok, this is  just cool. Flickr user obeyken had a great looking old radio hanging around and he thought, 'Why not make this into an amplifier and speakers for my iPod?' That's just what he did, and he posted pictures on Flickr charting his progress.

[via MAKE]

Sure, all these new Macs are great, but sometimes you just want your Mac to sound like System Seven. Luckily, Uneasysilence has heard your pleas and has made several 'retro' Mac alert sounds available on his blog. Wild Eep, Sosumi, ChuToy, Submarine (which is my favorite)... they are all there! Go get 'em and give your Intel Mac a little more soul.