One of the things that I’ve found myself doing over the years is collecting old Apple Computers. I have always enjoyed them, having grown up on several different ones over the years. They have always had a very unique aesthetic to them and there are specific designs that are highly desirable and/or collectible for many people. In addition a lot of the older merchandise, such as posters (Specifically the “Think Different” education posters), pins, shirts, etc. are prized as well. So it was both an outgrowth of having some money from my jobs, being in the right place to purchase them relatively cheap, and gradually getting older. I said I’d update this at some point so here it is.
My most loved and cherished machine now sadly gathers dust. It’s of course my Powerbook G4 Titanium 800. It was originally part of a gift from my grandfather and at my persistence and insistence from me, my dad eventually purchased it in 2002 so it is now a full 11 years old. It’s seen me through the last year of high school and several years of college but time has marched on and sadly it has not been good to it. It was plenty fast then but nowadays, it’s just simply outclassed, like most PowerPC Macs are. However, it still remains the most beautiful laptop ever made. If you think about the era of when it was developed, we had these huge monolithic things that people lugged around with them and called them notebooks. Even Apple was slightly guilty of that, but then they came out with the Titanium. Like Concorde and the McLaren F1, it was designed without compromise. One inch thin. 5.3 pounds. And the piece de resistance was a widescreen 15.2 inch display, which to recent memory was the first for a notebook. Even 11 years on, it wouldn’t look out of place on a store shelf. Heck we now have “ultrabooks” that emulate that same philosophy (except they lack optical drives which the Powerbook did not). I mean, just look at it:
Still don’t believe me? Listen to the collective gasps at MacWorld:
It is simply one of the best.