181 replies to this topic

[turly]

The Mac II.  And Dark Castle / Beyond Dark Castle for the best Mac games :-)

[404 Not Found]

PowerMac G4 (Graphite and Up)

Reason #1: The Case, No Doubt, Possibly the easiest Computer to upgrade in history (in my opinion)
All you do is pull the ring, and everything you'd need is right there.

Reason #2: Huge Expandability, including up to 1.5GiB of RAM (which is more than enough for most things) and Dual 1.25GHz G4 Processors.

Reason #3: The Design still fits in most places, Even if it's Just next to a Dorm Fridge with the monitor on top. (Guilty!)

Reason #4: The G4 is a relatively powerful processor, mine is a 733mHz with 512MB of RAM, and boots up with OSX Tiger 10.4.11 in less than 25 Seconds.

Uh Oh, Cons!

Con #1: The PSU fried on mine (Graphite) and was a pretty big pain in the ass to replace.

Con #2: It seems it only accepts PC133 RAM, which is Outdated by now.

2nd Place for me is the Power Mac G3 B&W (The Case!)
3rd is the Mac Pro and iMac Intel (tie)
4th is the lampshade iMac G4, i have yet to find one in good condition that's for sale though.

[(MoC)]

At the end there will only be one laptop and desktop. They will rule victoriously and rock the ground like never before. Good things come to those who wait and read TUAW! lmao

[QuietOC]

gloria, on Mar 20 2007, 05:24 PM, said:

The expandability is ridicoulous.

I always thought the 12 DIMM slots in the Power Mac 9500 was pretty ridiculous. To think they only have 8 DIMM slots in the new Mac Pros! The case on the new Mac Pros is pretty neat, but I'd hardly call the Mac Pro very expandable.

I haven't really liked any of the Macs I've had to use. Generally they felt slow and unreliable. I liked the G3/G4 cases. My Intel iMac is neat for a simple machine, but  solely lacking in a few areas (memory amount/speed, very un-expandable.) Mac Pros just seem so illogical for most people.

OSX on generic hardware just might redeem the whole Apple experience for me. The whole software activation/DRM thing is getting pretty annoying (Microsoft, Adobe, Hollywood, etc).

[QckSlvrGuyInKC]

QuietOC, on Feb 15 2008, 09:14 PM, said:

I always thought the 12 DIMM slots in the Power Mac 9500 was pretty ridiculous. To think they only have 8 DIMM slots in the new Mac Pros! The case on the new Mac Pros is pretty neat, but I'd hardly call the Mac Pro very expandable.

I haven't really liked any of the Macs I've had to use. Generally they felt slow and unreliable. I liked the G3/G4 cases. My Intel iMac is neat for a simple machine, but  solely lacking in a few areas (memory amount/speed, very un-expandable.) Mac Pros just seem so illogical for most people.

OSX on generic hardware just might redeem the whole Apple experience for me. The whole software activation/DRM thing is getting pretty annoying (Microsoft, Adobe, Hollywood, etc).

It's not the 12 dimm slots that got me with the 9500 (and the 9600, for that matter), but how rediculously hard it was to get into the 9500 (and the 800/8000 series towers, for that matter). However, the 9500 (and 9600) were both extremely expandible and fast, being able to hold 1.5 GiB of RAM with 6 PCI slots and onboard SCSI. In fact, the 9600 was re-released after the original Beige G3 came out, simply because it had 6 PCI slots (still unmatched in Apple hardware) and could handle 1.5 GiB of RAM (it would take the Digital Audio G4 to match this capability).

[semi-fly]

The Macintosh LC, probably the first Apple macintosh I ever used. I still remember playing Oregon Trail, Word/Number Munchers ... all great educational games for the time.

[superstition]

semi-fly, on Feb 17 2008, 03:33 PM, said:

The Macintosh LC, probably the first Apple macintosh I ever used. I still remember playing Oregon Trail, Word/Number Munchers ... all great educational games for the time.

The LC, sadly, was purposely crippled. Not only did Apple go backward to the 68020 after having abandoned it, but it put the chip on a 16-bit bus and limited its RAM expansion. But, it was very popular nonetheless.

[(MoC)]

I miss the PPC generation. It used to be what made the difference between a mac and something else.

[Macdiehard]

  For the greatest hardware and software of them all, a bit of great history.

Breakthrough tech is measured by its world impact. And this was/is a tremendous impact.

The Mac OS X line of graphical operating systems, is the successor to the original Mac OS, which had been Apple's primary operating system since 1984. Unlike its predecessors, Mac OS X is a Unix-based operating system built on technology developed at NeXT through the second half of the 1980s until Apple purchased the company in early 1997.

The NeXT Computer and NeXTcube were high-end workstation computers developed, manufactured and sold by NeXT from 1988 until 1993. They ran the NeXTSTEP operating system. The NeXT Computer (often informally referred to as "the Cube") was released as a 1-foot (305 mm) die-cast magnesium cube.

The NeXT Computer achieved a degree of notability for being used by Tim Berners-Lee as the world's first web server, and also to write the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, firstly coded in HyperTalk, at CERN.

Check here

And, there was Hypercard, originally a free application program from Apple Computer, among the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web. It combined database capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable approach. Hypercard  was a huge hit almost instantly.

Hypercard included HyperTalk, a powerful and relatively easy to learn programming language, to manipulate data and the user interface. Users often used it as a programming system for Rapid Application Development of different kinds of applications, database and otherwise.

HyperCard had a significant impact on the web as it inspired the creation of both HTTP itself and JavaScript (through its influence on Tim Berners-Lee's colleague Robert Cailliau). It was also a key inspiration for ViolaWWW, an early web browser. Originally released with System Software 6 in 1987 it was finally withdrawn from sale in March 2004, although by then it had not been updated for many years. HyperCard runs natively only in Mac OS versions 9 or earlier, but it can still be used in Mac OS X's Classic mode or in the Basilisk II emulator.

More info

[sarahbau]

The Masked Muchacho, on Jan 10 2008, 06:31 PM, said:

Best mac in history was an Amiga 3000 with a 50mhz 68060 running system 6 with shape shifter. no real mac could touch it until the power macs arrived.  

Considering PowerMacs were shipping in March 1994, and the 68060 wasn't shipping until some time in 1994 (I don't know what month), it doesn't seem like it had a very long reign (<2.5 months if it was released January 1st).

QckSlvrGuyInKC, on Feb 16 2008, 11:39 PM, said:

the 9600 ... could handle 1.5 GiB of RAM (it would take the Digital Audio G4 to match this capability).

Actually, the PowerMac G4 AGP, two generations before the Digital Audio, could take 2GB (as well as the Gigabit Ethernet model after that). As far as PCI slots go, the older Macs really needed more than the current ones. Without USB or FireWire, there were limited ways to connect things. Many professional audio/video programs needed special PCI cards, which have now often been replaced with USB and FireWire.

[Running With Scissors]

iMac G3

[Shrimp]

Powermac G4. Why?

1. It has the only processor I know of that ranges from 350MHz-2GHz which is pretty good.
2. Even today, if you really wanted to you could upgrade it to be a fairly modern machine. (upgrade the processor to Dual 1.8GHz, Upgrade the graphics to an NVIDIA 7800 GT 256MB, upgrade the memory to 2GB, add a SATA card and upgrade the harddrive to 500GB, and add a superdrive, it could work.)
3. It was released in 1999, yet the architecture of the processor was even better than the later Intel Pentium 4s.

It's also the only machine I have from the 90s that I still use, the processor even stays cool enough where I could software-overclock it from 400MHz to 533MHz. I also added a flashed NVIDIA GeForce 6200 256MB card (got it real cheap), so I have QE/CI on it with Tiger. A 533MHz G4 is about equivalent to a 1GHz Pentium 4 (if they even have those), so as you can imagine it runs Tiger fairly good, apps like iTunes and Safari open instantly.

[Torqu3]

I thinks it's the MacBook Pro. Power and Portability.

[GeekofComputers]

For me the Powermac G5/Mac Pro and the Powerbook G4/MacBook Pro brought the Media people together and said this is the way we were going to make stuff and Apple made a very good move with the media APPS like final cut and Apeture and Logic express that got them media people spreading and bragging about their new Mac Pro or Power Mac for that matter and the people that made the films and scripts on The PowerBook G4s/MacBook Pro then consumers started giving apple letters,suggestions to build consumer products hence the MacBook and iMac and Mac mini. The iPod really started it off and the iPhone will continue the fanchise.

[Metuas]

The G4 family was a pretty awesome crowd of computers.  iMac, Cube, Power Mac, PowerBook (I love me some AlBook), and...well the iBooks are all kind of meh.  But the previously mentioned four are some of the hottest looking computers ever made.

[methamp]

iBook > *

[jesusfreak198989]

PowerBook G3 Wallstreet, running OS X 10.2.9. Graphics suck, but this is still the machine I take with me on trips, runs like a charm, and does the job i need to get done. And Starcraft, among others, runs fine .

[fatshitcat]

easy.

MacBook Pro

[Descalzo]

OSX was what made it so I couldn't hate Macs anymore.  I tried pretty hard, too.

The Titanium PowerBook is the first Mac I thought I might like to own (I have 2 of them now, hand-me-downs from friends who upgraded to newer Windows machines).  The screen was only .2 inches smaller than my MBP, and it's probably .2 inches thicker, but there's something about it...  It seems more portable than the MBP.  I thought the screen res on the DVI TiBooks was just about perfect.

The white iBook was the first Mac that I ever used and liked (I borrowed it from a lady at work for some summer classes).

The MBP was the first Mac that I ever had and liked from the start (It's not really mine, it belongs to the company.  So I can never quit!).

[Chris Mills]

Without a doubt the iMac G3.  

It brought Apple back into the mainstream consumer market with an understandable product.

If it hadn't been the success it was I doubt we'd have Apple in the way we know it today