A Fortieth Anniversary Macintosh
Feb. 7th, 2024 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWhen rumours circulating for a while gained solidity and Apple began another great processor transition, my iMac was about five years old and the edges of its screen had turned sort of pink. The impression its backlight was wearing out was enough, combined with positive reports about the new “Apple silicon” chips elaborated upon from those in the “iDevices,” to raise thoughts of joining in the migration, just as I’d once moved from the 68030 to PowerPC and from the G4 to Intel. However, the thought I just sort of wanted to see that new hardware in person before putting money down had to face the thought I should refrain from anything so frivolous for public health reasons. A year later, the iMac itself made the processor transition and was repackaged in multiple colours to boot, but I still thought it would be healthiest to keep limiting “going out” to absolute necessities. When at last I worked up the resolve, or threw caution to the wind, to the point of stepping into an Apple Store, the iMac in particular wasn’t quite new any more. I kept waiting to see what would happen next, even though my own iMac had passed the point where new versions of macOS could be installed on it and the edges of its screen might have looked that much more worn.
At last, new rumours did start to circulate that the iMac wasn’t about to pass from the scene altogether just yet, and might even vault from the “M1” to a new “M3” chip. It also so happened that, trying to install one of the security upgrades still being provided for my existing hardware, my own iMac never quite finished booting up. I left it that way for over a day, resorting to the MacBook Pro I’d bought used with the thought it might eventually “run Intel (Windows-via-Wine) programs after that bridge was taken out of macOS” (although, being of the same era as my iMac, it couldn’t install new macOS versions either) and calling Apple support to get a last nudge towards doing what I’d already supposed would have to be done and wiping the internal drive to reinstall all my data from my Time Machine external drive. In the meantime, I had managed to watch a special Halloween-themed streaming presentation from Apple, scheduled in the evening of my time zone. The M3 was indeed introduced, but the emphasis on it in new MacBook Pros left me wondering if I, too, would have to move along at last to choosing some external monitor or another and hook it up to a portable as my central system. Then, though, the presentation did happen to mention an M3 iMac, sufficient enough for my own tastes.
For all of that, though, I did have the thought I could let other people be the “early adopters” of this latest chip and production run. Then, I wondered if, given thoughts of arranging to pick the computer up at an Apple Store neither near nor hours away from me and not have to worry about being around to sign for a delivery, it would still be healthier to wait until after the holidays when the mall might not be quite as crowded. At that point, I told myself that if I waited until the twenty-fourth of January, even if something as extravagant as “an iMac striped across the back in six colours” remained the stuff of fancy or third-party stickers I could tell myself I’d ordered a fortieth anniversary Macintosh.
As it turned out, being extravagant to the point of maxing out not just the memory but the storage that can’t be added to later (with the thought that I had the money saved and wouldn’t be using the computer to “make money and pay for upgrades,” anyway) didn’t delay delivery quite as long as the official estimate had said. Starting to open the carton, I was oddly amused by the impression the iMac was upside down inside it compared to the pictures on the outside. The experience of having had to reload everything into my previous iMac not that long ago might have offered its own strange reassurance about migrating to a new machine; in fact, everything loaded into my new blue iMac (it matches how I repainted the walls of my “study”) much faster than I’d thought it would take, even if I went straight on to letting an operating system upgrade install overnight.
Afterwards I did still feel my way into the new computer. The first extravagant thing I could think of testing its hardware with was, I have to admit, “text-to-image generation,” the sudden boom in which had got me thinking a bit more of “Apple silicon” performance over a year ago now. However, the distaste and uneasiness about the connotations of “exploiting the work of others and getting the details skewed anyway” that’s built up since then nudged me away from loading the software. I did at last think of a different program I’d heard about a while ago but in this case not pushed my old hardware to run. It promised to offer the chance to walk through recreations of four Apple Stores as they’d opened, going back to one of the first with “Flower Power” and “Blue Dalmatian” G3 iMacs. (I happened to notice that recreated store displayed third-party MP3 players, recreated at a moment with the iPod still a few months away from introduction.) I did also recompile a few command-line-launched programs I’ve tried out in recent months, and thought that process was peppier than it had been.
I’m still managing to think back to my now-previous iMac and how long it served me, longer than any of the multiple iMacs that preceded it. A part of me can suppose you’d have to go back to the days of the Apple II itself for computers people might have made use of for that many years, and that would have been a matter of adding expansion cards. Of course, when I do get to pondering for how long I might use this new iMac I can remind myself that perhaps the only way to claim true virtue is to run Linux, and that probably on a machine you’ve put together yourself in a tower case.
At last, new rumours did start to circulate that the iMac wasn’t about to pass from the scene altogether just yet, and might even vault from the “M1” to a new “M3” chip. It also so happened that, trying to install one of the security upgrades still being provided for my existing hardware, my own iMac never quite finished booting up. I left it that way for over a day, resorting to the MacBook Pro I’d bought used with the thought it might eventually “run Intel (Windows-via-Wine) programs after that bridge was taken out of macOS” (although, being of the same era as my iMac, it couldn’t install new macOS versions either) and calling Apple support to get a last nudge towards doing what I’d already supposed would have to be done and wiping the internal drive to reinstall all my data from my Time Machine external drive. In the meantime, I had managed to watch a special Halloween-themed streaming presentation from Apple, scheduled in the evening of my time zone. The M3 was indeed introduced, but the emphasis on it in new MacBook Pros left me wondering if I, too, would have to move along at last to choosing some external monitor or another and hook it up to a portable as my central system. Then, though, the presentation did happen to mention an M3 iMac, sufficient enough for my own tastes.
For all of that, though, I did have the thought I could let other people be the “early adopters” of this latest chip and production run. Then, I wondered if, given thoughts of arranging to pick the computer up at an Apple Store neither near nor hours away from me and not have to worry about being around to sign for a delivery, it would still be healthier to wait until after the holidays when the mall might not be quite as crowded. At that point, I told myself that if I waited until the twenty-fourth of January, even if something as extravagant as “an iMac striped across the back in six colours” remained the stuff of fancy or third-party stickers I could tell myself I’d ordered a fortieth anniversary Macintosh.
As it turned out, being extravagant to the point of maxing out not just the memory but the storage that can’t be added to later (with the thought that I had the money saved and wouldn’t be using the computer to “make money and pay for upgrades,” anyway) didn’t delay delivery quite as long as the official estimate had said. Starting to open the carton, I was oddly amused by the impression the iMac was upside down inside it compared to the pictures on the outside. The experience of having had to reload everything into my previous iMac not that long ago might have offered its own strange reassurance about migrating to a new machine; in fact, everything loaded into my new blue iMac (it matches how I repainted the walls of my “study”) much faster than I’d thought it would take, even if I went straight on to letting an operating system upgrade install overnight.
Afterwards I did still feel my way into the new computer. The first extravagant thing I could think of testing its hardware with was, I have to admit, “text-to-image generation,” the sudden boom in which had got me thinking a bit more of “Apple silicon” performance over a year ago now. However, the distaste and uneasiness about the connotations of “exploiting the work of others and getting the details skewed anyway” that’s built up since then nudged me away from loading the software. I did at last think of a different program I’d heard about a while ago but in this case not pushed my old hardware to run. It promised to offer the chance to walk through recreations of four Apple Stores as they’d opened, going back to one of the first with “Flower Power” and “Blue Dalmatian” G3 iMacs. (I happened to notice that recreated store displayed third-party MP3 players, recreated at a moment with the iPod still a few months away from introduction.) I did also recompile a few command-line-launched programs I’ve tried out in recent months, and thought that process was peppier than it had been.
I’m still managing to think back to my now-previous iMac and how long it served me, longer than any of the multiple iMacs that preceded it. A part of me can suppose you’d have to go back to the days of the Apple II itself for computers people might have made use of for that many years, and that would have been a matter of adding expansion cards. Of course, when I do get to pondering for how long I might use this new iMac I can remind myself that perhaps the only way to claim true virtue is to run Linux, and that probably on a machine you’ve put together yourself in a tower case.