Silver Anniversary Macintosh (1977-2003)
"something wicked this way comes" clear as a calendar.
i mentioned this in <a href="http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=002689#000014"; target="_blank">Woz / MWSF</a> but perhaps worthy of a thread itself
without repeating comments, to summarize
in 1977 we got Apple II (Moon landing power at home)
in 1997 we got Spartacus (Twentieth Anniversary Mac)
in 2003 we get ??? (Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Mac)
rumoured appearance of both founding Steve's on stage at MWSF seems to suggest natural press frenzy over such an important anniversary
and from Jagwire to IBM 970 announcements, technological leadership seems to be returning in cupertino at both engineering and marketing
so what would they put into a Silver Jubilee Mac to set the tone for the next quarter century of innovation from infinite loop?
gotta be LCD 16x9 High Def - Cinema 23" minimum
gotta be monster sound well beyond iSub or JBL
gotta be worthy of design museum pedestal instantly
first consumer machine to address Terabytes of RAM?
so powerful it requires Export license
(yes, the g4 tried this slogan, as did ps2, but neither was perceived advanced enough to need it by the average joe unimpressed by statistics)
kills werewolves/vampires (shake demo editing buffy, etc)
"Silver Mac" needs to bake off vs. Cray, or an entire room of clustered pentiums to prove that it's in an entirely different league of power
** actually, if the rumoured Wolf cluster software goes beyond what the current Pooch does and allows your mac to "recruit" all older macs for rendering cycles, demonstrating it by connecting to every machine in the apple museum would be incredibly cool... imagine the woz effect as the new Silver Mac included .000001 Flops of contribution from a functioning Apple I in its protein-folding or alien-searching auto-distributing network results. Life extension for old computers would be huge news.
other suggested innovation touches for extra cachet?
i'll wager postcards with anybody that we will get a Silver Anniversary Mac special edition this year... no doubt in my mind.
what it will contain puzzles, though.
thoughts? odds? mockups?
i mentioned this in <a href="http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=002689#000014"; target="_blank">Woz / MWSF</a> but perhaps worthy of a thread itself
without repeating comments, to summarize
in 1977 we got Apple II (Moon landing power at home)
in 1997 we got Spartacus (Twentieth Anniversary Mac)
in 2003 we get ??? (Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Mac)
rumoured appearance of both founding Steve's on stage at MWSF seems to suggest natural press frenzy over such an important anniversary
and from Jagwire to IBM 970 announcements, technological leadership seems to be returning in cupertino at both engineering and marketing
so what would they put into a Silver Jubilee Mac to set the tone for the next quarter century of innovation from infinite loop?
gotta be LCD 16x9 High Def - Cinema 23" minimum
gotta be monster sound well beyond iSub or JBL
gotta be worthy of design museum pedestal instantly
first consumer machine to address Terabytes of RAM?
so powerful it requires Export license
(yes, the g4 tried this slogan, as did ps2, but neither was perceived advanced enough to need it by the average joe unimpressed by statistics)
kills werewolves/vampires (shake demo editing buffy, etc)
"Silver Mac" needs to bake off vs. Cray, or an entire room of clustered pentiums to prove that it's in an entirely different league of power
** actually, if the rumoured Wolf cluster software goes beyond what the current Pooch does and allows your mac to "recruit" all older macs for rendering cycles, demonstrating it by connecting to every machine in the apple museum would be incredibly cool... imagine the woz effect as the new Silver Mac included .000001 Flops of contribution from a functioning Apple I in its protein-folding or alien-searching auto-distributing network results. Life extension for old computers would be huge news.
other suggested innovation touches for extra cachet?
i'll wager postcards with anybody that we will get a Silver Anniversary Mac special edition this year... no doubt in my mind.
what it will contain puzzles, though.
thoughts? odds? mockups?
Comments
Apple needs to keep profits, not waste them on another form factor. I think the people vowing to slap down their cash on this sort of a system are the same people that swore they would buy the top secret cube before it was released. Has anyone forgot we are in a recession, and that all competing pc vendors offer 399 pc's?
1Ghz G4,1.2Ghz G4, 1.4Ghz G4, and 1.6Ghz 970 all dual of course.
The problem with the time prediction for the 970 release is that we don't really know how far along the chip is. I think it's obvious that apple would have a few test boxes by now if they planned on using the chip. I imagine apple will get the first batches when IBM begins production. We've all read that the PowerPC 970 would not be out until the second half of 03. Does this mean that apple couldn't get ahold of it early? I don't know.
The question is not if but when. I'm hoping that when is MWSF. I mean apple's got to surprise us sometime.
Maybe a 19inch wide screen imac with a 1.25GHz G4.
<a href="http://www.apple-history.com/history.html"; target="_blank">http://www.apple-history.com/history.html</a>;
2003 is not any special year in Apple history.
The 20th Anniversary Mac was 1 year late. It should have been intro'd in 96 but came out in 97. Thats 5 years ago, 6 years in 2003.
So this whole idea is pretty stupid. Sorry just my opinion. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
Sorry, i'm with Willoughby on this one.
Many companies come out with ridiculously high end products inorder to better sell the consumer products.
It is a statis thing. If apple came out with even half of what curiousuberb suggest, then Apple would gain huge press. Press enough that they would easily make up any loss on a machine that sells poorly.
yes it is too bad that they are one year late... they got away with it once, maybe they will try again.
one of the things I like about Apple is that they dream...
Sure it is frustrating sometimes when the dreams don't come true, but it is sure a hell of alot better then living in a mundane predicatable world.
Sadly, 01/22/04 is a Thursday which probably rules it out as a launch date that can be synced with a Macworld keynote by his Steveness, also does anyone know what the NFL post-season schedule is for the 2003 season
<strong>Apple Computer - April 1st, 1976
<a href="http://www.apple-history.com/history.html"; target="_blank">http://www.apple-history.com/history.html</a>;
2003 is not any special year in Apple history.
The 20th Anniversary Mac was 1 year late. It should have been intro'd in 96 but came out in 97. Thats 5 years ago, 6 years in 2003.
So this whole idea is pretty stupid. Sorry just my opinion. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
corporate formation was not the same as product delivery (and more than a few macs have been delayed in ship date)
Apple I shipped and company was founded in 1976, true.
The hardware that consumers "understood" had launched the personal computing revolution was probably the Apple II with colour monitor (late 77) and floppy disk drive (early 78).
Mine arrived Xmas 1977 complete with game paddles and a cassette tape drive. 360Kb Floppy arrived in 78 and 300 baud acoustic modem by 80.
The apple-history.com url you link also notes
[quote]<strong> Hobbyists did not take the Apple I very seriously, and Apple did not begin to take off until 1977, when the Apple II debuted at a local computer trade show. The first personal computer to come in a plastic case and include color graphics, the Apple II was an impressive machine. Orders for Apple machines were multiplied by several times after its introduction. And with the introduction in early '78 of the Apple Disk II, the most inexpensive, easy to use floppy drive ever (at the time), Apple sales further increased.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
so in terms of consumer impact Apple might consider that critical mass in the computer revolution effectively started at the end of 1977 or the start of 1978 (hence wiggle room)
Spartacus was indeed late to ship (as noted) and wasn't the first or last apple product to suffer such delays since. NDA prevents me from saying when, but it was previewed prior, so perhaps legitimate manufacturing challenges were to blame (vertical mount cd = bad)
and for the semantic nit pickers, it was called the "Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh" despite the fact that it was actually 20 years of Apple in "1997", Macs were 13. math is as clear to all of us then as now... take it up with marketing and the model year folk.
no surprise that deja vu hardware delays still
chap many a sensitive apple butt... hello moto
so despite all that, i'm _still_ betting that more people globally associate with a 25th than a 20th... two dimes or a quarter... which is more efficient coinage
and using the cusp of 77/78 as our consumer starting point (and regrettably cursing a too-predictable shipping delay that smacks of Spartacus) a Silver Jubilee Mac at MWSF sounds right to me
i'll admit a 2004 Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh is better mathematically and semantically... just don't want to wait that long.
[ 11-22-2002: Message edited by: curiousuburb ]</p>
<strong>
and using the cusp of 77/78 as our consumer starting point (and regrettably cursing a too-predictable shipping delay that smacks of Spartacus) a Silver Jubilee Mac at MWSF sounds right to me
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm so sure this won't happen that I'll bet you a fully loaded TiBook w/Superdrive.
Besides, Steve doesn't seem to care about such markers, if history is any indication.
I'd hope that if Apple does roll something like this out that it exemplifies the original goals of the Mac project. Apple can offer tricked-out high-end machines to people who need them at any time.
<a href="http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=002689;p=2#0000 46" target="_blank">ship dates are fuzzy, but such mules must exist</a>.
maybe the alleged delay has shifted the earliest stable ship date so that it becomes a de facto Twentieth Anniversary Mac (84)
what would you want in that?
wired magazine had some prototype 90's era designs in issue 5.12 (Dec 1997), from the Pomona, through a "Domesticated Mac" based on a Colour Classic with cabinet doors to the Spartacus. pages 140-141 if you're interested.
down the bottom of the page are sketches and a concept model (dated 1993) of a "Tizio" Mac with a flat panel lcd on pivoting arm.
hmmm, deja vu iMacFP.
i'll see if i can scan these pages by tuesday if nobody has copies already digital and handy (hint hint)
like the <a href="http://www.theapplecollection.com/design/macproto/proto01.shtml"; target="_blank">photos of many cool apple prototypes on these pages</a>
said page notes that the TAM project design team that delivered Spartacus had been at it since 1993, so the 20th anniversary concept had at least three to four years head start.
if there was a plan to do a 25th, it's probably been in the pipe for a similar length of time... and we have heard anecdotally that Steve was pissed not to have the jazzy rollout product he wanted for the last couple of expos, so there must be a box that still needs debugging... why not be optimistic and assume its a silver special?
edit: link to apple prototype images added
[ 11-22-2002: Message edited by: curiousuburb ]</p>