the world was all monochromatic amber, green or grey till Apple ][
QuickTime (especially QTVR)
the superior dynamic media delivery technology offering navigable photorealistic panoramas, highest quality codecs, widest standards support- including interactive flash playback, advanced editing and streaming, etc
apple philosophy as expressed in marketing
from its earliest advertising inviting home users into a world of opportunities, through 1984, through Think Different, from print to web, yesterday to chiat-day into tomorrow...
never the dull beige box in ad copy or actual iron
The MacPlus was truly a great machine for the masses.
However, for a more contemporary assessment, I rate the following for personal reasons:
OS X & TiPB - both brought me back to computers after a seven year hiatus.
Perhaps, though Apple's greatest legacy is their recent focus on HCI ... both hardware and software are sculpted to work together seamlessly and elegantly. They do the whole box and dice and when they get it right, they do it unbelievably well!
Unfortunately, we had to endure the 4400. But you guys did too, it was called the 7220 to you. If not for the Apple logo on the case and the Mac OS running it, I would swear it was a PC. I believe it also had very expensive RAM and limited expandability. Why'd it make your list? Price/performance? Not the best design and not very forward thinking, but it was probably a fairly good value at the time.
I have to add a nomination for the ENTIRE PowerBook lineup with the exception of the 150, 190, 5300, and 1st revision Wallstreet 233. Apple has consistently shown that they make the best laptops in the world since 1991. I especially want to recognize the 500 series, the x400 series, and the G3 series. They hold their value so well today... a 540c today can still go for $100 or more, and a 1400 or 3400 can be up to $300. Kind of a pain if you want to buy one!
It was a transition product between the pre-G3 and G3 Macs. Apple didn't get it all right, but they had to make a first step somewhere in eliminating proprietory technologies.
Besides, I like the smaller desktop case over the "yo mama so fat" G3 Case. It didn't have an upgradable CPU, but it did have PCI slots. It used ATA, and was an experiment in Apple using components designed an built by others, integrated into a single Apple-branded product. Vertical intergration.
It wasn't crash-hot, but it was a first step. It had good price/performance in terms of raw specifications, made possible by the vertical nature of the product.
I'll say it again, it was a first step. Before the iMac, before the G3, there was the Power Mac 4400.
I see. Thanks for the clarification. I think there are a lot of Macs that people say were "bad" but really weren't - the Performa 630 for example. I had one for a while. People say it has a slow hard drive because it's early IDE or something. I just found it to be a competent 68k machine that is much better than an LC of some sort - even the 68LC040 is a pretty good chip compared to the 030.
I also have to vote for the clamshell iBook because it was the beginning of a new generation of consumer portables, both for Apple and for computers in general. Yeah, there were other consumer-oriented laptops before, but this one reached out and screamed "buy me, I'm fun!" I used one just a couple days ago for the first time, and I was really impressed by the build quality and the sturdiness. Much better than the new whitey iBooks, or any of the PowerBooks I've used (G3, G4, or otherwise).
Okay, what the hell, I counted them myself. Here's the tally, in the order they were mentioned:
PowerBook G4: 13
iPod: 14
MacDraw: 1
OS X: 13
Cinema display: 3
iBook: 11
iMac: 12
QuickTime: 3
FCP: 3
iTunes: 4
iMovie: 3
IIgs: 1
Macintosh 128k: 2
Cube: 4
IIfx: 2
PowerMac G4: 2
Plus: 5
Newton: 3
Cyberdog: 1
AppleScript: 2
PowerBook 2400c: 1
PowerMac 9600: 1
Lombard: 2
Superdrive (floppy): 1
IIe: 1
LaserWriter: 1
HyperCard: 3
The GUI: 1
G3 chip: 1
1984 ad: 1
iApps in general: 1
Pismo: 2
Apple II: 1
Apple Extended Kbd: 1
Performa 5400: 1
PowerMac 4400: 1
FireWire: 1
Blue G3: 1
Pro Kbd: 1
eMac: 1
Color monitor: 1
All PowerBooks: 1
PowerBook 500s: 1
PowerBook x400s: 1
PowerBook G3 Series: 1
So the iPod is the winner with 14 votes, beating the PowerBook G4 and OS X by just one.
What I find funny is that almost everyone nominated really current hardware, even though now is a time when Apple has really been behind the curve. We're more than a GHz behind, nearly 2 GHz in fact.
By contrast, not one person voted for the 6500/300, which was the first personal computer to break 300 MHz. No one voted for the Quadra 840av, the fastest 68k Mac ever. No one voted for the Kanga, and only a few voted for the G3 Series or the 3400, all of which were the fastest laptops in the world for their time.
I think it reflects a lot of loyalty on everyone's part to say that right now Apple is producing better hardware than they ever have before, despite the huge price-performance gap that Matsu always reminds us of. Then again, it might just be a misunderstanding. The Kanga was faster for its time than the GHz TiBook is now, but the TiBook blows it out of the water today. Maybe people weren't voting for the best Apple product of its time, just the best ever.
I do agree that the iPod is really, really, really good, regardless of the timeframe.
OpenDoc/CyberDog [the two would have brought a completely new face to computing ? a world where applications were not important]
QuickTime [the first multimedia software on which almost everything else related in Macintosh is based]
Mac OS [a standard in quality interface concept almost unmatched]
Mac OS X [made good on the 17 year old promise Apple never made public of a next generation OS]
HyperCard/AppleScript [a landmark in the creation of the internet almost know one knows about or understands and the language the common person could use to create with it]
MacDraw/MacPaint [showed the graphics potential of the Macintosh]
HARDWARE
Newton Message Pad [it created a market and the 2x00 series made good on all its promises]
Power Mac G4 Cube [proof Apple is still ahead of the expectations of the market and the industry]
Macintosh [what can I say about?]
iMac [hello again, nearly 15 years the Macintosh returns in all its glory]
PowerBook [not the first portable but the standard in the industry for features and quality]
PowerPC [RISC processors have been enhanced and refined due to AIM with good and bad but the technology is still some of the smallest, fastest, and coolest available]
Apple II [many of us are getting to be too young to remember it but the Apple II allowed for the world we live in today
ADB [15 years before USB Apple understood the importance and the concept]
I chose these because they are somewhat general, when getting specific it is too hard. A 9600 was an incredibly powerful and flexible computer, but it lacks the elegance of something like the Yosemite G3 and yet there are still things the Yosemite lacks according to this same thinking. I can go through nearly every product and demonstrate the philosophy and innovation of its design ? but my list is where it all comes from. Apple's list of innovations is a couple pages so we must try to neglect them here in order to stay the point. The iPod and the LaserWriter were the best products ever made in their areas but they were not the best products Apple ever made in a larger respect, then again, there is something about the iPod, I just don't know ...
The one innovation I will list outside of those included in the products above is desktop publishing, in many ways it created the computer industry and the home and creative markets we know today.
The UltraMac with the EncoSynitech C4-120 processor that will be released 2nd quarter 2009. Required a radically different style of programming languages to work at full speed, but nothing caught up speed-wise until 2019 when the patent on the chip technology wore off.
...not one person voted for the 6500/300, which was the first personal computer to break 300 MHz. No one voted for the Quadra 840av, the fastest 68k Mac ever. No one voted for the Kanga, and only a few voted for the G3 Series or the 3400, all of which were the fastest laptops in the world for their time.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Apple has produced many fantastic enclosures. The original Mac, 9600, 7200/7300/7500/7600 and all post-Steve Macs.
Apple has also produced some shockers. One of these is the 6400/6500 series. F'ing huge, with very little expansion. And it was HARD to expand. I've had to electrical tape up the hard disk ATA cable because 2 wires were sawn off by the sharp internal edges.
It also used a Performa motherboard, which were very ill-concieved. For a product to be voted "best ever", it needs to be great all round, OR be the start or something big (Mac OS X, 4400).
The 6500/300 was a bit faster, but neither of the above.
I'm just not familiar with the original G3 PowerBook (Kanga) or Quadra series.
True, a lot of the models I listed were the fastest but not necessarily very innovative or "the best." The 840av, for example, was really fast but that was about it. Otherwise it was basically a speed bump to the Quadra 800.
For venerability the PowerMac 7500/7600/7300 are some of the best - given the wide range of G3 and G4 upgrades available, it's still a viable machine. You can go for anything from a G3/250 to a G4/800.
EDIT: Okay I've voted about three or four times so that's enough for me!
Comments
<strong>Hi am just wondering witch Apple product you think is the best
I wuld go fore the Powerbook ore ipod
Hard to pick one, but TiBook, iMac, and the iApps are in the running. iTools (.Mac) was cool while it was free...
i want my happy mac icon back on start-up. i cant vote for jaguar because of that.
Newton 120
Pismo 400
iPod 5GB original
TiBook 1GHz/SD
And my vote for software:
OS X
Apple Data Detectors (+ AppleScript)
[ 11-27-2002: Message edited by: chromos ]</p>
Mac Plus (512k made it the first decent Mac)
Apple Extended Keyboard (an Apple invention)
Performa 5400/180 (Australia-only biatches!)
Power Mac 7220 (aka 4400, half-way to the G3)
Bondi Blue iMac (Rebooted the computer revolution)
FireWire (Take that, SCSI!)
Blue and White G3 (Case and motherboard concepts have lasted for 4 years)
Apple Pro Keyboard (Great design)
The Cube. The coolest computer. Ever.
PowerBook G3 Pismo (2x drive/battery bays, fast)
PowerBook G4 Ti Original (mmmm... Titanium)
Mac OS X. If Mohammad made an OS his wife, this would be it*
iPod (Best MP3 player ever)
eMac (Burns DVDs for less than $1500! Holy S***!)
17" iMac G4 (A REALLY top-end iMac)
iTunes 3 (Smart Playlists)
PowerBook G4 1GHz (Kickin' PC laptops into next year)
Barto
*If the mods find this offensive, I'm fine with you guys removing it. I'll personally remove it if a fatwa is issued against me.
[ 11-27-2002: Message edited by: Barto ]</p>
colour monitor <thanks woz>
the world was all monochromatic amber, green or grey till Apple ][
QuickTime (especially QTVR)
the superior dynamic media delivery technology offering navigable photorealistic panoramas, highest quality codecs, widest standards support- including interactive flash playback, advanced editing and streaming, etc
apple philosophy as expressed in marketing
from its earliest advertising inviting home users into a world of opportunities, through 1984, through Think Different, from print to web, yesterday to chiat-day into tomorrow...
never the dull beige box in ad copy or actual iron
definite props to hypercard though
The MacPlus was truly a great machine for the masses.
However, for a more contemporary assessment, I rate the following for personal reasons:
OS X & TiPB - both brought me back to computers after a seven year hiatus.
Perhaps, though Apple's greatest legacy is their recent focus on HCI ... both hardware and software are sculpted to work together seamlessly and elegantly. They do the whole box and dice and when they get it right, they do it unbelievably well!
[ 11-28-2002: Message edited by: Mac+ ]</p>
Sorry, just a catchy TISM song* which contains the words in your sig, Mac+
Barto
*What Nationality is Les Murray?
Hehe lol I don't mind your patriotism, but have to tell you that the 5400/180 was also available in Europe.
G-News
<strong>Less is more.... More or Less... Less is More... Lest We Forget...
Sorry, just a catchy TISM song* which contains the words in your sig, Mac+
Barto
*What Nationality is Les Murray?</strong><hr></blockquote>
I dont' know Barto - but I was once (ahem) "John Bonham's coke roadie"
geez - i can't work out how to spell that word in its abbreviated form without it looking like it refers to the drink... yech
<strong>
Hehe lol I don't mind your patriotism, but have to tell you that the 5400/180 was also available in Europe.
G-News</strong><hr></blockquote>
Oh well, at least the Americans didn't get it.
Barto
Will the last person out please turn off the enlightenment?
I have to add a nomination for the ENTIRE PowerBook lineup with the exception of the 150, 190, 5300, and 1st revision Wallstreet 233. Apple has consistently shown that they make the best laptops in the world since 1991. I especially want to recognize the 500 series, the x400 series, and the G3 series. They hold their value so well today... a 540c today can still go for $100 or more, and a 1400 or 3400 can be up to $300. Kind of a pain if you want to buy one!
Besides, I like the smaller desktop case over the "yo mama so fat" G3 Case. It didn't have an upgradable CPU, but it did have PCI slots. It used ATA, and was an experiment in Apple using components designed an built by others, integrated into a single Apple-branded product. Vertical intergration.
It wasn't crash-hot, but it was a first step. It had good price/performance in terms of raw specifications, made possible by the vertical nature of the product.
I'll say it again, it was a first step. Before the iMac, before the G3, there was the Power Mac 4400.
Barto
I also have to vote for the clamshell iBook because it was the beginning of a new generation of consumer portables, both for Apple and for computers in general. Yeah, there were other consumer-oriented laptops before, but this one reached out and screamed "buy me, I'm fun!" I used one just a couple days ago for the first time, and I was really impressed by the build quality and the sturdiness. Much better than the new whitey iBooks, or any of the PowerBooks I've used (G3, G4, or otherwise).
iMac 17" (lovely wide-screen)
PowerBook G4 1GHz SuperDrive (did I mention SuperDrive?)
iBook 12" 800MHz (I love really protable notebook)
Mac OS X Jagure
> Not really interested in PowerMac at the moment... I think I don't need such Power as the Power isn't really strong enough.
PowerBook G4: 13
iPod: 14
MacDraw: 1
OS X: 13
Cinema display: 3
iBook: 11
iMac: 12
QuickTime: 3
FCP: 3
iTunes: 4
iMovie: 3
IIgs: 1
Macintosh 128k: 2
Cube: 4
IIfx: 2
PowerMac G4: 2
Plus: 5
Newton: 3
Cyberdog: 1
AppleScript: 2
PowerBook 2400c: 1
PowerMac 9600: 1
Lombard: 2
Superdrive (floppy): 1
IIe: 1
LaserWriter: 1
HyperCard: 3
The GUI: 1
G3 chip: 1
1984 ad: 1
iApps in general: 1
Pismo: 2
Apple II: 1
Apple Extended Kbd: 1
Performa 5400: 1
PowerMac 4400: 1
FireWire: 1
Blue G3: 1
Pro Kbd: 1
eMac: 1
Color monitor: 1
All PowerBooks: 1
PowerBook 500s: 1
PowerBook x400s: 1
PowerBook G3 Series: 1
So the iPod is the winner with 14 votes, beating the PowerBook G4 and OS X by just one.
What I find funny is that almost everyone nominated really current hardware, even though now is a time when Apple has really been behind the curve. We're more than a GHz behind, nearly 2 GHz in fact.
By contrast, not one person voted for the 6500/300, which was the first personal computer to break 300 MHz. No one voted for the Quadra 840av, the fastest 68k Mac ever. No one voted for the Kanga, and only a few voted for the G3 Series or the 3400, all of which were the fastest laptops in the world for their time.
I think it reflects a lot of loyalty on everyone's part to say that right now Apple is producing better hardware than they ever have before, despite the huge price-performance gap that Matsu always reminds us of. Then again, it might just be a misunderstanding. The Kanga was faster for its time than the GHz TiBook is now, but the TiBook blows it out of the water today. Maybe people weren't voting for the best Apple product of its time, just the best ever.
I do agree that the iPod is really, really, really good, regardless of the timeframe.
OpenDoc/CyberDog [the two would have brought a completely new face to computing ? a world where applications were not important]
QuickTime [the first multimedia software on which almost everything else related in Macintosh is based]
Mac OS [a standard in quality interface concept almost unmatched]
Mac OS X [made good on the 17 year old promise Apple never made public of a next generation OS]
HyperCard/AppleScript [a landmark in the creation of the internet almost know one knows about or understands and the language the common person could use to create with it]
MacDraw/MacPaint [showed the graphics potential of the Macintosh]
HARDWARE
Newton Message Pad [it created a market and the 2x00 series made good on all its promises]
Power Mac G4 Cube [proof Apple is still ahead of the expectations of the market and the industry]
Macintosh [what can I say about?]
iMac [hello again, nearly 15 years the Macintosh returns in all its glory]
PowerBook [not the first portable but the standard in the industry for features and quality]
PowerPC [RISC processors have been enhanced and refined due to AIM with good and bad but the technology is still some of the smallest, fastest, and coolest available]
Apple II [many of us are getting to be too young to remember it but the Apple II allowed for the world we live in today
ADB [15 years before USB Apple understood the importance and the concept]
I chose these because they are somewhat general, when getting specific it is too hard. A 9600 was an incredibly powerful and flexible computer, but it lacks the elegance of something like the Yosemite G3 and yet there are still things the Yosemite lacks according to this same thinking. I can go through nearly every product and demonstrate the philosophy and innovation of its design ? but my list is where it all comes from. Apple's list of innovations is a couple pages so we must try to neglect them here in order to stay the point. The iPod and the LaserWriter were the best products ever made in their areas but they were not the best products Apple ever made in a larger respect, then again, there is something about the iPod, I just don't know ...
The one innovation I will list outside of those included in the products above is desktop publishing, in many ways it created the computer industry and the home and creative markets we know today.
<img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
<strong>
...not one person voted for the 6500/300, which was the first personal computer to break 300 MHz. No one voted for the Quadra 840av, the fastest 68k Mac ever. No one voted for the Kanga, and only a few voted for the G3 Series or the 3400, all of which were the fastest laptops in the world for their time.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Apple has produced many fantastic enclosures. The original Mac, 9600, 7200/7300/7500/7600 and all post-Steve Macs.
Apple has also produced some shockers. One of these is the 6400/6500 series. F'ing huge, with very little expansion. And it was HARD to expand. I've had to electrical tape up the hard disk ATA cable because 2 wires were sawn off by the sharp internal edges.
It also used a Performa motherboard, which were very ill-concieved. For a product to be voted "best ever", it needs to be great all round, OR be the start or something big (Mac OS X, 4400).
The 6500/300 was a bit faster, but neither of the above.
I'm just not familiar with the original G3 PowerBook (Kanga) or Quadra series.
Barto
[ 12-03-2002: Message edited by: Barto ]</p>
For venerability the PowerMac 7500/7600/7300 are some of the best - given the wide range of G3 and G4 upgrades available, it's still a viable machine. You can go for anything from a G3/250 to a G4/800.
EDIT: Okay I've voted about three or four times so that's enough for me!
[ 12-03-2002: Message edited by: Luca Rescigno ]</p>