10 Cult Macs Adored by Collectors
- 2008.05.13 - Tip Jar
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One of the things that sets Macs apart from other computers is their longevity. People don't just throw them away. Macs tend to soldier on long after their spec sheets say that they're "obsolete". This may explain another phenomenon almost unique to the Macintosh subset of the computing world: Mac collectors.
It's understandable when you think about it. Can you picture someone beaming with pride as they show their friend the Packard Bell 286 or Compaq Deskpro P-133 they just bought, saying "...and look! It still works!" as they turn it on and watch the BIOS screen flicker to hieroglyphic life?
Me neither.
Granted, not all Macs share the same reverence among collectors. Plenty of ill-fated LC II and Performa 630 machines have gone to the recyclers without a whimper. And yet lots of other, equally old Macintoshes still hold proud positions in basement offices and on extra desks all over the computing world.
Some Macs are sought by collectors for their historic significance. The first 128K machines bring collector's prices these days - if they're in collector's condition, of course. The "wicked fast" IIfx is another machine prized for its place in Mac history. A working Mac TV (above) is a feather in any Mac collector's cap, and no accumulation of milestone Macintoshes would be complete without a G3 WallStreet or an original Bondi blue iMac. Don't forget the TiBook, which pointed the way to the laptop form-factor of the future.
Then there are other machines, often
evolutionary dead ends in the history of Macintosh - sometimes even
outright Road Apples by the spec
sheet - that still spark high levels of interest even today. You see
them on
eBay, bringing five, ten, or a dozen bids; commanding prices well
beyond what some newer, more capable machines will fetch. These are the
Culty Macs, and some combination of styling, form factor, rarity, or
strange electronic charisma keeps them at the forefront of the Mac
collecting world.
The most obvious, of course, is the Twentieth Anniversary
Macintosh (TAM). Designed to be both collectible and a
technological tour de force from the start, its rarity guaranteed the
first, but its function-follows-form design shot the second goal in the
foot from day one. Everyone knows the story about how these supposedly
elite machines had to be fire-saled after a year of gathering dust in
the showroom, and how their vertical orientation made a choking-slow
CD-ROM a necessity. Their expandability is almost nil, and yet now they
rate collector's prices and almost never go unsold, save by the most
wildly optimistic sellers.
Incidentally, Low End Mac's Dan Knight is too modest to point out that his initial review mused that future computers would be influenced by the TAM - thin things with small footprints and built-in LCD screens.
Seen an iMac lately?
The SE/30 is another Mac whose success
almost two decades down the road couldn't be predicted by the spec
sheet alone. A 68030 system shoehorned into an SE case with its bitty monochrome
monitor? And yet untold numbers chortled away quietly for years as
self-contained servers. Their numbers guaranteed a healthy hot-rodding
industry. An SE/30 will still bring bids on eBay, while even early
Power Macs can be had for ten or twenty bucks plus actual shipping.
Speaking of
Culty all-in-ones, the spec sheet certainly can't explain the love for
the Color Classic.
A certified Road Apple with the
guts of the nearly reviled LC II placed into a Classic case, they are
the subject of some of the most radical
surgery performed on Macintoshes. G3 motherboards driving LCD
screens shoehorned in and nothing left of the original computer but the
box the circuitry came in.
Turn on a Color Classic for the first time, though, and it's hard not to feel the love. That teeny-tiny color Trinitron screen turns an otherwise normal all-in-one Mac into the cutest thing to ever go "Bong!" on startup. You just want to pat it on its little head; if mine had cheeks, I'd pinch them.
The
Cube. For a handful of years it felt like you couldn't watch
science fiction on the tube without seeing one. Hardly any
expandability, mediocre specs for the price, and yet these days you
could buy a couple of ex-server G4 towers for the cost of a Cube,
despite the former machines having it all over the latter in the
practicality department. Practical the Cube isn't, but when something
is so stylish, such a zen sculpture of a computer, concerns of
practicality have a way of going right out the window.
The machine on which I'm typing this
is another good example. The PowerBook 2400c is a PowerPC 'Book that
will bring prices equivalent to some of the early G3 laptops. If one
loves the Classic Mac OS, then the "Comet" is the lightest, smallest
PowerBook on which to run it; it would be a decade before Apple again
produced a notebook as compact. It's a solidly built and stylish little
machine that has held its cult following well. Like the Color Classic,
the 2400c was a huge hit in miniaturization-crazy Japan - and also like
the CC, it's not uncommon to find Comets souped up far beyond their
original specifications.
As long
as Apple continues to make computers, future generations of Macs will
become cult objects with future generations of collectors. I know that
I'm beginning to feel a strange longing for the futuristic, offbeat
contours of the G4 "iLamp", and
it's safe to say that the radical new MacBook Air has secured its niche
in tomorrow's collections.
The same "Flower Power" iMacs they couldn't give
away when they were new get snatched up quickly on eBay now, and heaven
help me but I find myself wanting one.
One thing this list shows, however, is that cult status can be hard
to predict when a machine is still fresh to the market. Commercial
successes sometimes wind up ignored, and sales flops may go on to enjoy
loyal followings on the low end. One user's trash becomes another's
treasure, and who can say what the Cult Mac of five years in the future
will be? 
Recent Digital Fossils Columns
- The Old Mac blues, 07.23. Intel Macs are tempting, but the Power Mac 7100 will be not one more iota obsolete tomorrow than it is today.
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- Master of Orion on the Mac, 07.01. The DOS version of this vintage game broke with Pentium or Windows 95, but the Mac version still runs very nicely in the Classic Mac OS.
- Run Linux on my Mac? No thanks, 06.24. Macs have a zen-like synergy of hardware, software, and operating system. Why would anyone want to give that up?
- More in the Digital Fossils index.
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