evolution of the species

On Monday night we took a step forward into the future, with the arrival of our new iMac G5. This monster of a machine is of course our “new arrival", previously discussed. So I've been reflecting back over the computers I have owned over the years—all Macs—and how far things have come. They're displayed above, so you have two choices: either just consider the pictorial history above, or to join us in geekiversity with the full story, click continue...

My first machine was a humble Mac Plus (1991), with a 50Mb hard drive that alone cost NZ$1,025.50, let alone the price of the machine itself. This machine had a 7.8Mhz 68000 processor. Apple managers instructed their engineers to make this machine capable of having 1Mb of RAM, considered more than anyone would ever need and almost twice the 640k that PCs were capable of using. Engineers lied to their managers and made it capable of addressing 4Mb in the future! Though it seems dated now, it was revolutionary when you consider that PCs were using the text-based DOS interface at the time—this is before Microsoft had cloned the Mac interface to make Windows. We still have this machine in storage, the insides stripped out to convert it into a fishtank, the Macquarium. The signatures of all the original Apple development team are embossed into the plastic on the inside of the case of this machine.

In I think my second year of university I upgraded this to a Powerbook 150 (1994), with a 33Mhz 68030 processor and a screen that displayed black, white, and four shades of grey. Even by the standards of the time it was already a hobbled, stripped-down consumer machine. My particular machine had endless hardware failures, all under extended warranty plans, and must have cost Apple thousands. It was so bad that they eventually took it back from me three years later in 1997, selling me a brand new (but just being discontinued, it transpired) Powerbook 1400cs/117.

The Powerbook 1400 was something! Colour screen. 603e PowerPC running at 117Mhz. This was the machine on which I properly got on the internet. (Though I'd been on the internet since a very early 1989, thanks to a family friend who was the manager of the Wellington City Council “Citynet” pioneer...) This was also the machine on which I wrote my doctoral dissertation. And by the time I finished that 421 page manuscript in 2000, it was groaning for relief.

The machines at the time just weren't worth upgrading to, though. I was saved in 2001 with the introduction of the new iBook (Dual USB) 500MHz G3 machines. I picked one of these up on my way through California that year, paying a good price but at a time when the exchange rate was the worst it had been for years, or has been since. Ouch. But what a great machine. Tiny, light, with a combo drive that played DVDs and burned CDs. With a hard drive upgrade from 10 to 40Gb and a new power supply and battery, it gave three and a half years of mostly excellent performance... The last year, however, cracks have started to appear—both literally in the (hard worn) case, a need for a RAM upgrade, and the final straw, the optical drive dying. It simply wasn't worth spending £250 on this upgrade/repair option.

It is a tribute to the iBook, though, and the good engineering of successive versions of OS X, that I think this is the first machine upgrade I've had where the old machine was still able to run the latest version of the operating system. The iBook is still running well under OS X 10.3. But it was time to move on. As with every other upgrade we've leapfrogged a generation of processors (having previously jumped the 68020, 68040, and the 604 PowerPC) with the recently-launched iMac G5. The 20 inch widescreen on this thing is amazing, and I'm looking forwarding to putting the DVD burner to use. This machine has 1000 times the RAM that my Mac Plus had when I first bought it!

The reason why I couldn't blog about the arrival on Monday was insurance. (Bronwyn didn't want me to write about this for some reason, so as a compromise I've decided I'll report that she said not to!) The bare facts of the matter are, we didn't have any. Period. Actually we haven't had any the entire time we've been here—and as a result, we've saved a small fortune. There were various reasons, complications with twitchy insurance companies and excessive quotes. Anyway, Nick and Hayley have had it but we haven't. Guess we got away with it. But part of the deal was, no iMac without insurance for the iMac at least. OK. Fair enough.

In a bizzare twist, however, it turned out the best way to ensure the iMac was to take out £30,000 (NZ$81,795.93) of insurance on our entire household contents—the minimum cover you can take on this policy. This particular company got around in a novel way what had seemed a stumbling block for us in the past too—that there was another couple living in the flat—they just put Nick and Hayley on the policy too. So we are now insured to the teeth (we don't have much stuff here) and Nick and Hayley are, I guess, double-insured. Strangely, as a “household good” that is not considered portable, the iMac doesn't even have to be listed on the policy. And while Apple's catchline is, “Where did the computer go?", from having picked one up I can tell you that it may be compact but it sure ain't portable! Did myself a back injury practically. But I think I'll keep it anyway...  : )