I too miss the old days. I started with an Apple IIe in 1989 and then discovered the Mac Classic in 1991. Later that year I began to use an LC and loved it so much we got one for our own family. (My parents had wanted to replace the IIe by then anyways).
What I miss the most about older Macs is the troubleshooting. When I started kindergarten I became the de facto tech support guy at the school--our computer coordinator was only in one day per week so I was basically the in-house technician despite being six years old. Our school had all Macs and a few Apple IIs. The best part about troubleshooting old Macs is that you never have to use a horrid Unix command prompt. Sure, there are random error codes with the Sad Macs and system errors, but as long as you had a decoder or knew the most common types (such as 25 for out of memory) it was easy enough to work with. Older Macs were also a lot easier to work on inside since the components were larger, less smashed together (except in PowerBooks), and the slightest bit more "industry standard" compliant than they are today. Macs seemed to jump the shark when the Quadra 630 came out. That machine was awful to work on, especially when trying to put the bezel back on the computer. The late 1990s-early 2000s had some nice machines (the original iMac, the clamshell iBook, etc) but then OS X came out. At first I thought it would simply be a novelty like OS/2 was on the PC but it wound up taking over. Sure, it's more secure than Windows, but it's a pain to troubleshoot, isn't customizable like its predecessor (it's actually easier to customize Windows 3.1), and while the OS itself claims to be stable, I've had the Finder force quit on me at least once a month and deal with application crashes all the time. The worst part about it is that it's no more than a Unix shell and runs on top of a horrid command line scheme. Mac users were quick to extol their OS in the 1980s and 1990s for NOT being dependent on DOS! Now it runs on top of something that makes DOS look as simple as the alphabet! If there's any one machine that stands out in my mind since I started working with computers it would have to be the original iMac, mostly because of the shock of the computer not having a floppy drive, SCSI ports, serial ports, ADB ports, or a traditional beige case. The iBook is probably a close second, as I had been saving for a PowerBook since I was five and finally had enough to buy the clamshell iBook right before I turned 14. It also happened to come in orange, my favorite color. I still consider the tangerine iBook to be my favorite machine even with two newer Macs in the house. Sterling--whatever happened to Sun Remarketing? Did they go out of business as I have heard? If so, what happened to the inventory? As I recall they used to have a lot of old Apple parts and computers and were the business who upgraded Lisas to have 800K drives and compatibility with System 6. On May 19, 12:52 am, "Doug" <[email protected]> wrote: > I remember back before the Mac Plus. I taught at a high school where they > had several Apple IIE's that they would lend out on weekends and they also > had a couple of Apple II C's, a "portable" machine that I actually used to > write a novella on. It worked out to 250 one sided pages that I printed out > on a daisy wheel printer that was hooked to an Apple III at school. > Interesting times they were. > > Doug --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Vintage Macs group. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/vintage-macs?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
