Computers & Apple

I grew up in a school that ran on Apple. HyperCard found me in fifth grade and opened everything else: ResEdit, Photoshop, my first programming languages, modifying the MacOS interface, building my own icons. I learned that the computer was something you could take apart and remake. We used Macs at school, and I was lucky enough to take work home with me to keep polishing and learning. Every machine since, in order.

The Performa 550 was the family version of the all-in-one LC 550, a 33 MHz 68030 behind a built-in 14 inch Trinitron, sold with ClarisWorks in the box. Its education twin filled school labs, which is why so many kids of that era learned HyperCard on this exact shape. One plug, one machine, everything included.

The beige Power Macintosh G3 minitower arrived in November 1997, built around the new PowerPC G3 chip that outran Macs costing far more. It was the machine of the early Jobs return, shipped while the Think Different ads were airing. It was also the last beige Mac Apple ever made, replaced in January 1999 by the Blue and White tower.

The Wallstreet PowerBook G3 shipped in May 1998 in a curved black case with a white Apple logo on the lid, a shape unlike any PowerBook before it. The base model paired a 233 MHz G3 with a 12.1 inch screen, the affordable end of a line that scaled up to 14.1 inches. Its two hot-swappable expansion bays let you trade the CD drive for a second battery without shutting down.

The clamshell iBook was the consumer laptop as toy, a curved polycarbonate shell with a built-in carrying handle and Wi-Fi via AirPort before anyone else shipped it. The Special Edition FireWire ran a 466 MHz G3 in graphite instead of the fruit colors, and its FireWire port and video-out made editing digital video in iMovie possible. Nothing Apple has made since looks anything like it.

In May 2001 Apple replaced the clamshell with the white dual-USB iBook, quickly nicknamed the IceBook for its frosted look, clear plastic painted white from the inside. The launch model ran a 500 MHz G3 and packed a 1024 by 768 screen into a 12 inch consumer laptop at 4.9 pounds, 35 percent thinner than the machine it replaced. Its white polycarbonate design carried Apple’s laptop line all the way to the MacBook five years later.

The second-generation iPod arrived in July 2002 with the touch wheel, replacing the mechanical scroll wheel of the original with a solid-state surface that read your thumb. It came in 10 and 20 GB sizes, a thousand songs and more behind a stainless back that scratched if you looked at it. It was also the first iPod to work with Windows, the moment the white earbuds started showing up everywhere.

The Mirrored Drive Doors G4 of August 2002 was the last of the G4 towers, dual processors at every price point behind two polished drive-bay doors. Its fans earned it the nickname Wind Tunnel, loud enough that Apple shipped a firmware fix and offered quieter power supplies. It was the last Mac that could boot natively into OS 9, which kept it in print shops and studios for years.

Announced in January 2003, the 12 inch PowerBook G4 was the smallest notebook Apple had ever made, an 867 MHz G4 in an aluminum body weighing 4.6 pounds. It brought desktop-class graphics, Bluetooth, and 802.11g to a laptop with a footprint under 94 square inches. Its size and metal build made it the sentimental ancestor of every small aluminum Apple laptop since.

The MacBook of May 2006 carried Apple’s laptops across the Intel transition, replacing both the iBook and the 12 inch PowerBook. Its polycarbonate case had a sunken keyboard, a magnetic latch, a built-in iSight camera, and the MagSafe connector that saved countless machines from tripped cords. The black model cost two hundred dollars more for the color alone. Worth it.

The MacBook Pro has run continuously since January 2006, from the first Intel aluminum models through the unibody years to today’s Apple silicon machines. The current daily machine is quieter, faster, and longer-lived than any tower in this list. Every machine above it points here: the aluminum from the 12 inch PowerBook, the power from the towers, the always-with-you habit from the iBooks.