Enough To Make You Cry....

[Dronecatcher]

As the mighty Ian Dury once said....what a waste...

https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageApp...cs_and_imacs_going_out_for_disposal_you_have/

Note the trolley of C2D iMacs too...

 

[1042686]

Oh the humanity! Too bad they didn’t get CL’d or freecycled.

 

[CooperBox]

I'm sure you can hear me weeping from here......
Judging from the sheer number of Macs there, I presume it's in the US. Do we know where precisely?
If D.Trump had anything between his ears, he'd make trashing those a criminal act!
I'm sure there are several iMac G3 slot loading optical drives and IDE HD's there that I'd fight over.

 

[weckart]

I suppose most of those fall into the 'spares and repair' category. Especially now given their handling.

 

[AL1630]

That's a shame. I could use some of those case pieces to spruce up my iMac a bit.

 

[rafark]

Bye oldies.

 

[xtempo]

I have regretfully done this but now I am keeping my Macs until I die. I hate part with computers I've had fond memories of like my Compaq which was my first school computer but that one was showing its age... Does Apple have a museum? Or maybe we can all pull together some cash and save this and make a museum.

 

[AL1630]

They had a museum at 1 Infinite Loop in the 90s, but when Steve Jobs came back, he shut it down and gave all the things in it to Stanford.

There's some stuff about it here http://clarus.chez-alice.fr/c_applegarden.php

 

[xtempo]

So does Stanford have a museum? that is a crying shame. Apple should keep something about its past and present and future. Wonder if Stanford has a pippin.

 

[AL1630]

Stanford probably still has the stuff, but I don't know if they display it. If you're ever in the Czech Republic, someone set up a museum there. http://www.applemuseum.com/en/ A pippin would be super cool, especially if it was playable.

Edit: Never mind, apparently it's all stored in a hidden vault at Stanford. http://mashable.com/2011/12/29/apple-stanford-archive/#K2V.ugfD95qa

 

[xtempo]

they should have a museum. It would be nice and would be one of the top visited museums in the world. My school as a Anthropology Museum while small it does have a lot of interesting and historical pieces.

 

[benwild_33]

I never understand why people do this, the vast majority of that could be gone within a couple of weeks if it was put up for sale for very cheap prices/free.

 

[pl1984]

Stanford probably still has the stuff, but I don't know if they display it. If you're ever in the Czech Republic, someone set up a museum there. http://www.applemuseum.com/en/ A pippin would be super cool, especially if it was playable.

Edit: Never mind, apparently it's all stored in a hidden vault at Stanford. http://mashable.com/2011/12/29/apple-stanford-archive/#K2V.ugfD95qa

What is the point of having all this stuff if you're only going to keep it in boxes and away from the public? Why waste the space?

 

[weckart]

I never understand why people do this, the vast majority of that could be gone within a couple of weeks if it was put up for sale for very cheap prices/free.

Time is money.

 

[Hrududu]

Time is money.

Exactly. Time to list, photograph, store, and then try and organize meetings with people to collect it. It just ins't worth the few bucks to many people.

 

[1042686]

I totally get the time is money ideology. I mean productivity is invaluable but as a PPC mac enthusiast, all it would take is one person, one room, a crude inventory, a cash box, and a week end. $15 bucks a mac, 10 if you buy 4 or more, a craigslist/freecycle/facebarf ad and let her rip.

I seriously think you'd be done in a few hours at most.

 

[AL1630]

Yeah, between all the people here and on /r/vintageapple, we could probably clean all of it out in a couple days at most.

 

[weckart]

I totally get the time is money ideology. I mean productivity is invaluable but as a PPC mac enthusiast, all it would take is one person, one room, a crude inventory, a cash box, and a week end. $15 bucks a mac, 10 if you buy 4 or more, a craigslist/freecycle/facebarf ad and let her rip.

I seriously think you'd be done in a few hours at most.

I don't. Geography matters. Still wouldn't be a productive use of one paid staff member's time. There is just not enough money in it.

 

[AphoticD]

I don't. Geography matters. Still wouldn't be a productive use of one paid staff member's time. There is just not enough money in it.

In my opinion, it would be only slightly more work to list the whole lot as a bulk pickup on craigslist, gumtree, ebay, etc and let someone who is in the business of stripping/scrapping and rebuilding them for individual resell take the whole lot for $500 or something. I'm certain there are many businesses out there who take care of recycling/re-purposing e-waste in this way. There are no reasons for these machines to end up as landfill when many of them would be capable of repair for continued use.

How many families in low income households would benefit from a cheap older Mac instead of trying to afford a brand new one on the already bloated credit card? (Or getting roped into 2 year repayment plan)

 

[weckart]

There are fewer of those than you might think. Again, geography is the key and wherever these are located has decided that they either have no time or no potential takers for a quick disposal. My suspicion, however, is that these are marked for destruction because nobody is going to sit around and secure wipe the drives. Personal sellers might go to the effort of removing drives, companies count the minutes. Getting one out of an iMac is not 5 minutes work.

Low income families tend not in the main to look at Apple in my personal experience. There are plenty of cheap, newer PCs going begging any day of the week.

 

[pl1984]

There are fewer of those than you might think. Again, geography is the key and wherever these are located has decided that they either have no time or no potential takers for a quick disposal. My suspicion, however, is that these are marked for destruction because nobody is going to sit around and secure wipe the drives. Personal sellers might go to the effort of removing drives, companies count the minutes. Getting one out of an iMac is not 5 minutes work.

Low income families tend not in the main to look at Apple in my personal experience. There are plenty of cheap, newer PCs going begging any day of the week.

I agree with this, especially the part about wiping the hard drives. I've recently purchased three PowerBooks and every one of them had the personal information of the previous owner on the hard drive. Businesses don't want to deal with wiping hard disks and, unfortunately, the iMac makes it much more time consuming to pull a hard drive so the computer can be transferred to a new owner.

In addition, as someone who prefers to give away old computers, I've had a difficult time of it myself. People will say they want it and then expect me to drive across town to meet them halfway. Or say they'll stop by and never show. I can deal with the no shows because I don't deal with large quantities. I can see how giving away old computers can be more work than it's worth and a business wouldn't want to deal with it.

On the flip side what about these Ebay sellers I've been purchasing "as-is" systems from? Some seem to be in the business of buying large lots and selling them. I wonder if they're recyclers selling what they can (hopefully within contract).

Finally can the individuals who work at one of these recyclers grab any to take home? Might be a decent way to make a few bucks.

 

[weckart]

There is one other caveat with companies' disposal of obsolete computer equipment here. Where individual sellers may get away with 'sold as seen', companies are more liable to litigation should any of the equipment they dispose of cause any harm to the acquirer. Most of those shown in the OP's photo were CRT Macs with a lot of iffy electronics. Laptops are pretty safe as they are powered by low voltage DC, those old iMacs are potential fire hazards/implosive devices. CRT TVs are landfill material and those Macs are not far behind except to the odd collector and even then, those seem to be picky about the exact models they want.

I get that there are collectors here and there that are shedding tears over the waste but I remember not that long ago that you could not even give those iMac G3s away on eBay, let alone the more utilitarian eMacs that pretty much were intended for the educational market to start with. Nobody wants obsolete equipment running on low-rent screens that cost more to run than contemporary kit. Prices may have edged up somewhat today but usually only with shipping thrown in.

 

[bobesch]

they should have a museum. It would be nice and would be one of the top visited museums in the world. My school as a Anthropology Museum while small it does have a lot of interesting and historical pieces.

One may get hands on a lot of old Apple-hardware to have one own's "museum".
Or collect all the pictures and available doc for a virtual travel through Apple history.
For me the software-experience of the pre-OSX systems matters most. In most cases Museum do not offer that, I mean a running system with maxed out software to play with...
MacintoshGarden does a great job to preserve the old gems, but it's only the tip of the iceberg...
A lot of legacy stuff and companies just vanished without a trace.
Same happend to Palm/Handspring.
What a pity there's no conserving "library/archive" for the heritage of IT-development alike it is for books and literature ...
[doublepost=1515953202][/doublepost]

If you're ever in the Czech Republic, someone set up a museum there. http://www.applemuseum.com/en/

The museum looks great. - Well, I could contribute a few more colors to the Clamshell-section

 

[philgxxd]

[doublepost=1515953202][/doublepost]
The museum looks great. - Well, I could contribute a few more colors to the Clamshell-section

Did you pay the entrance ?

 

[bobesch]

Did you pay the entrance ?

Maybe I would - if I ever was in Prague ...