Ah I should have better clarified what I meant. Early Intel systems are generally cheaper than PPCs on US eBay, but of course that's not the case everywhere. My local pawnshops and thrift stores almost never get Intel systems in. I did see a 2013 iMac at a pawnshop near the beginning of the year for a good price but someone else got it before I could.
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Favorite PowerPC Mac for it's aesthetics?
- Thread starter timidpimpin
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I'm surprised there is so little love for the beige Power Macintosh. I do like the some of the colored acrylic models. They just don't hold the same place in my heart. To me the Macintosh II, Centris and Quadra lines are what computers should look like. Which is why I like the NuBUS Power Macintosh. Yes, they were beige but Apple's models still stuck out from IBM Clones. They took care with aesthetics.
Of all the models. I feel the Power Macintosh 6100 paired with an Apple Audiovision 14 display is the most striking model. Although only if you paired the two. This is just for appearances sake. As far as technical aspects go I did not want a 6100 because it had so few expansion slots and the AV display was too small and low res. At the time I opted for a Power Macintosh 7100 66/AV and a 17" Sony Trinitron display.
Although to finish the look. I'd take the 6100 with an Apple Adjustable Keyboard. Not the Apple Design Keyboard pictured.
My second favorite would have to be a Power Macintosh 7100 with an Apple Multiple Scan 17 display. This really needs an Apple Plain Talk Microphone sitting on top of the display.
My most wanted model was the Workgroup Server 9150. Because of all the expansion options. But it was way out of my league. If they kept the Quadra 900/950 case. It would be my top pick appearance wise. But Apple ruined the looks with the change in grill design and adding lower drive bay.
Of all the models. I feel the Power Macintosh 6100 paired with an Apple Audiovision 14 display is the most striking model. Although only if you paired the two. This is just for appearances sake. As far as technical aspects go I did not want a 6100 because it had so few expansion slots and the AV display was too small and low res. At the time I opted for a Power Macintosh 7100 66/AV and a 17" Sony Trinitron display.
Although to finish the look. I'd take the 6100 with an Apple Adjustable Keyboard. Not the Apple Design Keyboard pictured.
My second favorite would have to be a Power Macintosh 7100 with an Apple Multiple Scan 17 display. This really needs an Apple Plain Talk Microphone sitting on top of the display.
My most wanted model was the Workgroup Server 9150. Because of all the expansion options. But it was way out of my league. If they kept the Quadra 900/950 case. It would be my top pick appearance wise. But Apple ruined the looks with the change in grill design and adding lower drive bay.
I've always wanted a 9600. Used to have a 6500 and for a time my old 7100 was being used as an Applescript server.
That said, none of these models ever rose to be a favorite for me. By the time I got serious with Macs it was the G4 era, and having had to work on a 9500 beige Mac when the G3 B&W had just launched I wasn't too keen on them.
I did however love the old Mac IIs. I have a IIci in my garage with 16mb ram and a 40mb hard drive. Pretty damn expensive in 1989. The IIvx is another favorite. But the penultimate there for me is the actual Mac II. My instructor had one in 1994 with a dual monitor setup. I can't imagine how expensive that was back then.
I started with the IIvx. Coming from DOS 6 and Windows 3.1. I was blown away by how much better System 7 was. That's when I became focused on the Mac. Later I did a Centris 650 motherboard swap on the IIvx and replaced it with the 7100. I also had a IIcx it was dirt cheap when I bought it and was mainly to tide me over while waiting for payment to clear when I sold the 7100.
Later, I had the Performa 6400/180 which looked like the Power Macintosh 6500. I don't know if you are aware. The IR receiver used on those models used the same codes as a Sony WEGA TV. It drove me nuts. Every time I turned on the TV my computer would boot. I don't recall if it also made it shutdown.
If that Mac II was bought new at release and those monitors were 13" color. It would have cost about $10,000 for a base setup. Anything like RAM, HDD, Scanner, Laser Printer, Tape Backups, &c could quickly push it into the $20,000 to $30,000 range.
Is it bad I love the Mac Mini? Sure the design isn’t anything to sneeze at, but we hadn’t seen computers be that small before. And if they were, generally they sucked.
apple network server. i always thought they looked kinda cool
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Yes. I felt exactly the same. The beige Macs stood out among all of the Dell, Compaq, Acer, etc towers at the time. The Mac felt solid. The plastics were quality. They had the right weight, colour (shade?), balance and texture. The beige PowerPC Mac never felt tacky or cheap and the boxy shape of the Power Macintosh and Performas all had one thing in common, they all used curves to highlight their design. Sometimes it was very minor like the impressions of the speaker grill or curved embossing of the power button and sometimes they went all out with rounded edges, curved bezels and even curvy little legs.
I loved my Power Macintosh 7100/66. It was the first Mac I owned and I appreciated its design, right down to the chime. I would make it a semi-regular event to open it up, clear the dust and study the internal components. I would then put it all back together and appreciate the look and feel of that solid little box, give it all a wipe down and power it back up again.
Within the boundaries of beige, Apple made it look stylish, sleek and occasionally even sexy. The introduction of the iMac invited the curves in a major way and the whole industry which followed behind Apple all took this open invitation and went crazy on curved, coloured and translucent plastic designs.. (not to mention the pinstripes!)
Apple sure had fun with design and shook things up in a great way. The modern Macs are still sleek and very well designed, possibly even beautiful, but they just seem to lack the heart that the pre-Intel Mac embodied.
When I was little, my dad had both a 6100 and 7100, so those are quite nostalgic for me. One of my favorite beige Macs though is the Quadra 700. It's so simple and compact. I think it looks great.
When I was little, my dad had both a 6100 and 7100, so those are quite nostalgic for me. One of my favorite beige Macs though is the Quadra 700. It's so simple and compact. I think it looks great.
Plus it was in Jurassic Park.
The 9600 and 8600 (same case) are the best looking beige Macs IMO. People think the B&W G3 was the first PowerMac with an opening side panel, but it was actually the 9600/8600 case three years earlier in 1996.
Weirdly enough my favorite is the eMac. I always thought it looked very futuristic, like some kind of spaceship console lol.
The pre/post Intel transition marks a clear line in the sand, but the 'Intel aesthetic' was already well underway with the G5, aluminium G4 and aluminium ACDs. Apple's most playful designs weren't so much during the PPC period generally, but specifically around 2000, during their 'acrylic period'. Though I agree that even their beige ('platinum') boxes had a sense of style that set them apart from PCs.
Modern Macs are objectively better designed / constructed (thermal throttling and lack of ports notwithstanding), but perhaps inevitably computer design has entered a phase of gradual refinement. In the early 2000's you never knew what the hell Steve would reveal when the covers came off; now it's usually a slight tweak of the previous model.
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