Some strange Macintosh computers

My favorite one that isn&#x27;t listed here is the Outbound Systems laptop: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Outbound_Systems" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Outbound_Systems</a> My parents got me one in elementary school in the early 90s to help with my learning disabilities. From what I recall they had ripped out the guts of an SE or SE-30 and turned it into a laptop. It ran on camcorder batteries. I&#x27;ve still got it in my basement but can&#x27;t get it to boot up at all.

I’m stunned that this list overlooks the brilliant PowerBook Duo and its Duo Dock, which mechanically injected and ejected the Duo like a VHS tape. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apple.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Duo_Dock" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apple.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Duo_Dock</a>

I’ve been enjoying the coverage over the last week of the 40th anniversary of the Mac. Lots of nostalgia to dig into if you grew up in 80s and 90s.<p>If you happen to enjoy the interesting history of the Mac and Apple, I highly recommend Jason Snell’s series “20 Macs for 2020”[1]. I just discovered it last year, but I’ve found it to be a really fascinating look at Apple and the computer industry through the lens of computers Apple released over the previous 36 years.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.relay.fm&#x2F;20macs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.relay.fm&#x2F;20macs</a>

<i>Revolution in The Valley</i> is a fun read on how the Macintosh was created, from the perspective of the engineering team, via the author Andy Hertzfeld who worked closely with Jobs but &#x27;most of the essays in the book are about the people that did the dirty work to make the Macintosh happen, their struggles, their sacrifices and their camaraderie&#x27;. Not much unlike any modern day team working to build something hard.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;40492.Revolution_in_The_Valley" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;40492.Revolution_in_The_...</a>

The hero of this story is <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lowendmac.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lowendmac.com&#x2F;</a> I used to read it weekly, not certain when I stopped, but it exists in my mental list of highly esteemed websites.<p>As an offering of a missed strange Mac not mentioned by other comments, the OWC ModBook. Starting in 2007 (maybe &#x27;08) OWC would make your MacBook into a tablet. This may stretch the definition of &quot;Strange Mac&quot; since it wasn&#x27;t an Apple product or a direct clone, but built in anticipation of the iPad the ModBooks digitizer was &quot;fully compatible with Apple Inkwell®, a Mac OS X Leopard feature that provides system-level handwriting and gesture recognition instantly to all Mac applications.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20080513175426&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;eshop.macsales.com&#x2F;Customized_Pages&#x2F;modbook&#x2F;modbook_info_p1.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20080513175426&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;eshop.macs...</a>

&gt; Power Macintosh G3 All-In-One<p>Everyone knows that as the Molar Mac. They look like a tooth and were used primarily in Education. They were a decent if not hideous machine.<p>I learned HTML and JavaScript on one in 1998-1999. We had the option to spend study hall in the computer lab and I took it every time. I would spend an hour every day working on my Geocities site. Those were the days.<p>I would frankly just love to find one in decent condition to have for the memories, the transparent top grille seems to always be busted up.

When you come across a strange Macintosh, make sure it&#x27;s not a creation of NanoRaptor, like this Apple 2e with Laserdisc drive: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bitbang.social&#x2F;@NanoRaptor&#x2F;111173459132307169" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bitbang.social&#x2F;@NanoRaptor&#x2F;111173459132307169</a>

The 2013 &quot;Trash Can&quot; Mac Pro has a special place in my heart. I bought one for $1000 at auction from a design firm upgrading to iMac Pros in 2017.<p>It has been my daily driver for the last 6+ years. Upgraded to 12 cores, 128GB RAM, 2TB SSD and an eGPU - it still works surprisingly well. 6 x 4K displays. With Sonoma, I have to apply patches to get it work. So I will finally retire it this year.<p>But it&#x27;s been the best $2k investment in computer hardware I&#x27;ve made in many years.

A pretty run of the mill Mac with an strange feature was the Powerbook 1400 and its &quot;BookCover.&quot; The BookCover was a section of the lid that could be replaced with clear plastic to display something thin underneath, such as art. Apparently a photovoltaic BookCover was offered by Keep It Simple Systems.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macworld.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;224852&#x2F;three-cheers-for-the-delightfully-personal-powerbook-1400-with-bookcover.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macworld.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;224852&#x2F;three-cheers-for-the...</a><p>Picture of PV BookCover: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.flickr.com&#x2F;photos&#x2F;21647187@N04&#x2F;4712178648&#x2F;in&#x2F;photostream&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.flickr.com&#x2F;photos&#x2F;21647187@N04&#x2F;4712178648&#x2F;in&#x2F;pho...</a>

I own three of these (!), the TAM, the Cube, and the Mac XL.<p>They all look good on the shelf, but the TAM is actually still occasionally useful for running Classic MacOS software. It can boot Systems 7 through 9, although even with the G3 accelerator I fitted to it, it can&#x27;t boot OS X, because it boots using the original CPU and than an extension switches control to the G3. OS X must boot from a G3.

&gt; The Lisa line predated the Macintosh by one year, launching in 1983 for a pricey $9,995 (about $31,348 today, adjusted)<p>Imagine being one of the few customers of the Lisa, paying 10K USD for the best personal computer in the world, then the next year it&#x27;s already deprecated.<p>&gt; A curious tidbit: Lisas running MacWorks XL originally inspired the term &quot;hackintosh.&quot;<p>I probably would have gone this route, to attempt changing horses mid-stream. Although, according to Wikipedia, the term &quot;Hackintoshing&quot; began as a result of Apple&#x27;s 2005 transition to Intel&#x27;s x86-64 processors. With the new ARM-based processors, I&#x27;ve heard this proud tradition of hacking the Macintosh is nearing its end.

I will never forget that day when I was 12 and tried the first Mac in a computer store.<p>Complete and total awe. Having only used Commodore 64&#x27;s prior, I could not even believe it existed, and yet it screamed &quot;THIS IS THE FUTURE&quot;.

The cube was so pretty. Still holds up.

I was surprised that there was not more mention of the clones of the mid 1990s. The Pioneer clone mentioned in the article sure is an interesting curiosity, but clone brands like Motorola (Starmax) and Power Computing were much more widely available. My brother had a really generic looking beige tower that was a 68040 Mac, from one of those brands. They were equivalent to a mid-to-high-end Performa, but significantly more affordable. I would love to hear more stories of folks who owned one of those. The clone era was short lived, IIRC once they became too successful Apple ceased the licensing program and that was the end of that.<p>Here&#x27;s a Starmax ad from 1997: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;MacWorld9710October1997&#x2F;page&#x2F;n7&#x2F;mode&#x2F;2up" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;MacWorld9710October1997&#x2F;page&#x2F;n7&#x2F;...</a>

Previously:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39125016">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39125016</a> | 2 days ago | 11 comments<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39116705">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39116705</a> | 2 days ago | 10 comments

I remember seeing a Macintosh TV on display at Best Buy, I had not idea they were only available for such a short period. Though I&#x27;m pretty sure I had a catalog (as a kid) that featured it, so maybe it looms unusually large in my mind. It was probably this issue (which has it): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vintageapple.org&#x2F;catalogs&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;The_Apple_Catalog_Fall_1993.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vintageapple.org&#x2F;catalogs&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;The_Apple_Catalog_Fall...</a>.

They didn&#x27;t mention the Pippin!

I really want a Mac classic using the latest tech today. It would be simply just a fun computer you’d keep in the corner of the office.

I remember the macintosh portable had a terrible screen refresh rate. You would see multiple pointers every time you moved it.

I remember reading about the 20th anniversary Mac and wishing I had the kind of disposable income where buying one would make sense. Yeah, it was overpriced but it did look seriously cool and they would send a concierge to your home or office to set it up for you!

These all demonstrate how vital Steve Jobs was to Apple. All they could do is repackage the same thing over and over -- so many different form factors of the same thing.<p>Even the OS. Copland went around in circles and never landed.

In the part about the Mac Portable it says &quot;if you&#x27;re feeling financial&quot;. Is this a typo or do you think this might have been written in part by an LLM?<p>This usage seems... wrong.

The &quot;Molar Mac&quot; is truly a thing to behold. Come to think of it, I would kill for a all-in-one PC with all of the creature comforts of a standard ATX motherboard...

Some Macs I’ve owned or used that were unique design:<p>- 20th Anniversary Mac<p>- Apple TV (it was an LC 575 with tuner card and black)<p>- The molar G3 Mac for schools<p>- The eMate 300 (even though that ran Newton)