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Most advanced Mac ever?

mad jew

mad jew

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Apr 3, 2004
32,191
10
Adelaide, Australia
Hey, what does everyone think is the most advanced Mac (actual computer or OS) for its time. At what stage was Apple the furthest from the opposition? I don't think it's now, the G5 is not leaps and bounds ahead of PCs as some other Macs have been.

To start:
PowerMac 6500 300
OS6

BTW, this is not to be confused with a 'most influential Mac' thread. :p
 
mad jew said:
Hey, what does everyone think is the most advanced Mac (actual computer or OS) for its time. At what stage was Apple the furthest from the opposition? I don't think it's now, the G5 is not leaps and bounds ahead of PCs as some other Macs have been.

To start:
PowerMac 6500 300
OS6

BTW, this is not to be confused with a 'most influential Mac' thread. :p
Click to expand...

here are some of my fav's

Mac Mini - is my number 1 , Size and Price
OS X 10.0 - 10.3.8 - best OS i have ever used and it just does what i want it to.
PowerMac G5 - best looking machine ever and with the power to match
Newton - first for first these still have a cult following
 
well, derived from the PCMag list (not sure if that is what your "influential mac" comment was aimed towards), I would have to agree with the early PBs.

The PB 100 set the standard for notebook ergonomics and the Pb 500 has the first trackpad, stereo speakers, pc card slot, expansion bay and smart battery. Also very pretty for it's time.

The newton, is also an obvious choice imo.

As for os, can I say NEXT? does that count? Otherwise, I say os8.

I freely admit that I am not too knowledgeable about the early days of Apple, especially in regards to technical specs, my suggestions are just those that stick out in my head as ahead-of-the-curve.
 
liketom said:
here are some of my fav's

Mac Mini - is my number 1 , Size and Price
OS X 10.0 - 10.3.8 - best OS i have ever used and it just does what i want it to.
PowerMac G5 - best looking machine ever and with the power to match
Newton - first for first these still have a cult following
Click to expand...

Nice collection, but do you really think the mini is that far ahead of the opposition for price? How about some of the old stuff? With all the copying we accuse MS of doing, surely they've caught up a little (relatively speaking of course.)

Newton definitely deserves a mention too. :cool:
 
mad jew said:
Nice collection, but do you really think the mini is that far ahead of the opposition for price? How about some of the old stuff? With all the copying we accuse MS of doing, surely they've caught up a little (relatively speaking of course.)

Newton definitely deserves a mention too. :cool:
Click to expand...


Mini o yes - mini will do for apple what the ipod is doing right now for the music side - selling mac's is the number 1 priority

user base might even go above 10%

software wise apart from OS X , Final Cut Pro shuld get a mention as well , and i have to mention windows 95,98,NT,2000 and Xp without these i would be without a job and be unable to buy all my mac goodies (i support them when they go wrong)

ps . i'm gonna save my 500 post till later i thinks
 
I'd have to say the Powermac 8100. The original top-of-the line Powermac -- brought workstation quality graphics processing to a personal computer.
 
For it's time the Mac IIfx was probably a machine that was leaps and bounds above the rest of the Macs offered at the time.

Apple tossed a lot of tech into that machine, that really never made it into the mainstream machines that followed.

About the only other Mac that broke the mold big time was the Apple Network Server, which were the only Macs that didn't ship with or run an Apple OS.
 
I don't know about the early days (I am too young to remember!) but in recent years I'd say that Jaguar was the most advanced product for its time.
 
Hockey Puck mouse. It is decades ahead of the competion. :D

I think OS X gets my vote for OS. I use both XP and Panther daily and don't think Windows will ever catch up to Mac OS.

I also agree with others about the Newton. The concept was definitely ahead of its time but Apple could have pulled it off had they put their mind to it.

And lets not forget the Cube. I nice meshing of style and engineering.
 
The Performa 630 with CD-ROM became quite an awsome machine when OS 7.5 came out. Fast and with multimedia capacity only the high end Amigas could match at the time. (It was nice using 7.1 also, but a lot of things fell into place with 7.5(.5)). This was, quite coincidentally, also my first Mac... ;)

Also have to mention SJ's comeback babies: the first iMacs and OS X which literarly saved Apple from bankruptcy (H*ll, Microsoft had just invested $150M in Apple to avoid becoming a true monopoly), and lay the groundwork for the dept free highly sucsessful company they are today (although relativly small counting market share, they still makes lot of $$$).
 
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
Also have to mention SJ's comeback babies: the first iMacs and OS X which literarly saved Apple from bankruptcy (H*ll, Microsoft had just invested $150M in Apple to avoid becoming a true monopoly), and lay the groundwork for the dept free highly sucsessful company they are today (although relativly small counting market share, they still makes lot of $$$).
Click to expand...

Yeah, I wish I had bought some Apple stock back when they were down to $11 a share (may have gone lower than that even, that's just a number I remember).

As far as "Most Advanced Mac" goes... I'd have to say the Original Mac. It was totally different than anything anybody else was offering. It had:

- a mouse driven user interface

- an intuitive and consistent user interface, where applications all behaved in a similar manner (as in, there were always File and Edit menus with copy/paste - and you could copy/paste between applications)

- elegant physical design

- 3.5" disk drives standard (most PC's were using 5.25")

- great apps like MacPaint and MacWrite

I'm sure there is much more, but that's all I can think of at the moment... and I have to go. :eek:
 
i felt that the TiBook pushed apple ahead of the competition - at the time you could never see such a thin laptop and widescreen was just nonexistant!

The superdrive was quite clever but wasnt really ahead of the competition.

The Optical mouse technology was adopted by apple really early on ;)

As for the OS - clearly OS X. People were shocked when it first came out how far ahead of windows it was and it'll remain futher ahead for a long time to come!
 
I personnaly thought ITMS was the biggest thing Apple has released, and the original iMac was a huge change in design....... and ofcourse OSX
 
Don't forget of course the Apple II. It almost literally invented the field of personal computing, by making it possible to have a computer on anyone's desk.It took IBM 5 years to crank out a competitor. Obviously the Apple II has been supersceded by faster, more powerful computers, but the Apple II leapfrogged every other computer out there, and started an industry!
 
Aaon said:
Don't forget of course the Apple II. It almost literally invented the field of personal computing, by making it possible to have a computer on anyone's desk.It took IBM 5 years to crank out a competitor. Obviously the Apple II has been supersceded by faster, more powerful computers, but the Apple II leapfrogged every other computer out there, and started an industry!
Click to expand...

I agree mostly, but as far as making it possible for everyone to have a computer on their desk... some would say the same about the Atari 400/800 computers or the Commodore 64. I can think of far more people that had an Atari or Commodore at home than I can of people with Apple II's.

Besides, the thread is titled "Most advanced Mac ever"... and the Apple II was not a Mac. :D
 
My vote for the most advanced Mac ever, would be the Mac that hasn't been produced yet. So Tiger and Cell processor would be in the running for that honor.
 
wdlove said:
My vote for the most advanced Mac ever, would be the Mac that hasn't been produced yet. So Tiger and Cell processor would be in the running for that honor.
Click to expand...
i'm thinking what sort of speeds these things run at ?4ghz + is what they say but how much quicker will that make the Mac work ? just think of a 2 hour long final cut pro video being exported in a matter of minutes ??? crazy

will there come a time when the mac has like dual 10ghz chips! and OS 10.4 was like system 7 lol and that thing called microsoft was just a distant memory ;)
 
wdlove said:
My vote for the most advanced Mac ever, would be the Mac that hasn't been produced yet. So Tiger and Cell processor would be in the running for that honor.
Click to expand...

For the time we will see Cell processors we will start speculating about the next Kitty cat OS ...

as for a nice mac, the original iMac, the 1984 mac, cube, newton and do not forget the G5 "Fastest personal computer in the world" ;)
 
I'd have to say the Quadra 950. With it's Motorola 68040 processor running at 33 MHz, maximum RAM of 256 MB, maximum onboard VRAM of 2 MB, 5 Nubus slots, 1 processor direct slot, two SCSI buses, built-in ethernet and room for up to 4 internal drives it didn't have an equal in the desktop market. In fact the systems that matched it's performance at the time were workstation class systems from Silicon Graphics (like the IRIS Indigo*), Sun Microsystems and NeXT Computer.

And when outfitted with A/UX 3.0, it was able to compete in the workstation market.

At the time (1992) this system was outside the range of most Mac users. The based Quadra 950 started at around $8,800, and maxing out the RAM would have doubled that price. Adding A/UX to the system would have added another $1,200.




*At this point in time Silicon Graphics was making a push into the desktop publishing market with their MOM (Move Over Mac) initiative. The IRIS Indigo was about the same speed as the Quadra 950 and priced about the same (about $10,000 for the base system). What it didn't have was the expandability. It had a maximum of 96 MB of RAM, two expansion slots, a replaceable graphics board (optional 24 bit graphics or 24 bit graphics with 4 geometry engines) and room for three drives.
 
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