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I miss the colored macs

roxics

roxics

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 4, 2013
307
143
All those iMacs and iBooks that came in different colors and translucent plastic. Even the crazy patterned versions. I miss those.

Back in the day when those were out I was young and poor and missed out on the fun. Today everything is aluminum. Which is cool (literally), I do like the whole glass/aluminum thing, but it's getting a little boring being our only choice for a decade. Apple has basically turned into IBM of old, but instead of beige boxes they're all satin aluminum.

Although the new macbook comes in space grey and gold, which is cool. So that's at least a positive move. It was also neat to see the 5C in plastic and a variety of colors. But I'd love to see a lower cost plastic iMac in a variety of colors again. Just for fun. Just for something different. Put some macbook air parts in it and a 19" screen and sell it for $799 or something.

It'll never happen but it would be fun. Just to have the option.

imac_lifesavers.jpg
 
roxics said:
All those iMacs and iBooks that came in different colors and translucent plastic. Even the crazy patterned versions. I miss those.

Back in the day when those were out I was young and poor and missed out on the fun. Today everything is aluminum. Which is cool (literally), I do like the whole glass/aluminum thing, but it's getting a little boring being our only choice for a decade. Apple has basically turned into IBM of old, but instead of beige boxes they're all satin aluminum.

Although the new macbook comes in space grey and gold, which is cool. So that's at least a positive move. It was also neat to see the 5C in plastic and a variety of colors. But I'd love to see a lower cost plastic iMac in a variety of colors again. Just for fun. Just for something different. Put some macbook air parts in it and a 19" screen and sell it for $799 or something.

It'll never happen but it would be fun. Just to have the option.

Image
Click to expand...

A 19" iMac? Never going to happen. Personally I like the aluminium and glass thing. Even the cases on my iPhone/iPad are clear or made to look like space grey to keep the image consistent.
As for a gold laptop, who would want that? Goldfinger?
 
Yes, but the flower iMac was an abomination.
imac_gallery_04.jpg

I think in moderation, the colored Macs were great, but apple kind of over did it imo
 
Of course it will never happen, but I hear what you're saying. It's a nice breathe of nostalgia seeing those colored iMacs. I was in high school when those came out and they were just amazing back then - they looked SO different, they were fast, they were "cool". Very cool machines for their time!
 
I have an iMac Graphite in my garage for iTunes. Still works great.
 
I always thought the orange one looked kind of funky, but I still liked it nonetheless.
 
I am going to get the space gray MacBook, put a rainbow Apple logo, get "MacBook" written in Apple Garamond, and then pair it up with this setup:

attachment.php


I was thinking of the gold, but I would rather have the 5S version of it and not the new shade they're using.

Yeah, those colors were cool. Use the same colors, but with the type of paint they're using now and it'd be nice. Better suited to the iPhones though.

Now thinking about it I want a Newton green iPhone 6+. There's a jailbreak tweak that you can use to make the screen green and black even. :eek: That'd be an awesome retroesque setup.
 
I lost the charger to it quite a while back, but sometimes I still open up my blueberry iBook G3 just to look at it. Those original iBooks were crazy-awesome. :D
 
Ah, those pictures bring back so many memories of childhood in elementary school.

I consider myself lucky to have grown up through the prime of the personal computing and internet revolutions, as well as have been exposed to Apple's 1998 metamorphosis and the PowerPC Golden Age... before iPhones, iPads, iWatches, and other nonsense.

The two computer labs in my elementary school each got 266mhz iMacs as did each classroom. For some reason this happened during the school year rather than over the summer. The teachers' iMacs with an external ZipDrive, hah. In the classroom everybody fought over getting to use the iMac vs. the older two computers, usually Apple Preformas and/or AIO PowerMac G3's. Some classrooms still had some LC II's hiding in the back with black and white screens! What color iMac your teacher got was all the talk of the playground for quite a while. My teacher had an Orange one.

My computer teacher, Mrs. Fienberg, had to create a seating chart for the computer lab because everyone was so picky over what color iMac they got it would turn into mayhem. Boys never ever wanted to get stuck with purple ones. I was lucky that year because I got a Green one, which was considered very cool. Certain colors were clearly better than others for reasons beyond aesthetics that only a 9 year old could understand.

This was a huge oversight by Apple. It caused many arguments amongst 2nd and 3rd graders and their teachers. But besides that issue, Mac OS 8, AppleWorks/Claris Works, Turbo Math Facts, Sim Town, Mavis Beacon Typing, and The Oregon Trail ran so much smoother on the new iMacs. They did not have Glider installed though (best classic mac game ever!) The iMacs were great for surfing the "net" aka "the world wide web" using programs like Netscape Navigator or later Windows Explorer. Popular search engines like AskJeevesKids.com, Yahoolagins, and Alta Vista were utilized. I could log into my files by using the AppleShare by "going under the apple". We were assigned passwords in 1st grade. The theme of my specific computer class' passwords were "dog names". From first grade through the end of 8th grade my password remained "Oliver". Apparently Oliver is a dog's name?

The server in the school was a Blue & White PowerMac G3 400MHz. Shortly after the iMacs, they purchased two carts ~25 Orange and ~25 Blue Clamshell iBook G3's. The administrators had PowerBook G3's. They had airport! Most kids had to have a lesson on how to use a trackpad. I remember a few kids wondered why there wasn't one of those tracking nubs in the middle of the keyboard like IBM laptops still (might) have.

In middle school they got new iMac DV's and SE's and white iBook G3's. The G4's then came into the mix- eMacs, iMacs, and PowerBooks leaving the colors behind.

Actually while I was in elementary and middle school the computer labs at the high school in my town had Dual Processor PowerMac G4's 450's with 17" Apple ADC CRT's replaced a few years later with Dual 867Mhz Processor Quicksilver PowerMac G4's with Apple LCD studio displays. Back then, those were insanely powerful computers. By the time I got to high school they had switch to PC's and somehow I got stuck having to run photoshop and indesign on a painfully slow Pentium 4. Then I transferred to private school and had to buy a laptop so I got a super powerful brand new 1.33Ghz PowerBook G4 12".

I hate to say it but I think the colors are gone for good. Or at least a very long time. It's all about the brushed aluminum, glossy glass, and not colorful plastics.
 
Jessica Lares said:
I am going to get the space gray MacBook, put a rainbow Apple logo, get "MacBook" written in Apple Garamond, and then pair it up with this setup:

attachment.php
Click to expand...

Just curious-where might I find that theme/skin/whatever you want to call it?

Since I don't like the look of Yosemite, the best thing I can think of doing is making it look like OS 9 :)
 
I definitely prefer the mid 2000s white polycarbonate iMac/MacBook cases to subsequent aluminium designs, but I always thought that those CRT iMacs were ugly. Not sure if if was the colours used or the translucency.

The eMac, on the other hand, was a work of art.
 
mojolicious said:
I definitely prefer the mid 2000s white polycarbonate iMac/MacBook cases to subsequent aluminium designs, but I always thought that those CRT iMacs were ugly. Not sure if if was the colours used or the translucency.

The eMac, on the other hand, was a work of art.
Click to expand...

You're not the only one. Between the AppleIIc/GS, and the G4 series, Apple went a little goofy with their computer designs. I thought the multicolored CRT iMacs were kinda dumb looking, personally. They just seemed kinda cheap and overly trendy.

It wasn't until the Luxo Mac, the Power Mac, the Powerbook, and the cube that I started paying attention to them again.
 
Renzatic said:
You know what Apple computers looked like in my elementary school? I'll tell you. They looked like this:

Image

Though admittedly, this was in '86-'89 or so. Apple II's were old even then. My school wasn't exactly cutting edge on the technological front.

Either way. Sup, Junior? :p
Click to expand...

Haha! I remember the library in my town had things similar to that when I was little in the kids section. I certainly remember those floppy drives.

I think the LCII was as far back as I went that I actually remember using.
 
I still have and use two G3 iMacs, one blue and one graphite. Good for a lot of things still, but streaming video sucks.
 
roxics said:
All those iMacs and iBooks that came in different colors and translucent plastic. Even the crazy patterned versions. I miss those
Click to expand...

Thanks for saying this. Every time I look at the aluminum I think, why can't they sell those with anodized colors. Anodized colors are beautiful. I know there are some places you can send your Mac to - to have them anodize it but why can't Apple do this?
 
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