[MW Forums]

When Macworld editors first came up with the idea of celebrating Apple’s 30 years of existence by selecting an equal number of interesting, memorable, and just plain cool releases from the company, we worried that the tail end of our list would be populated by obscure products from yesteryear that few people remembered or ever really cared about. Those fears turned out to be baseless. more

[mdawson]

Boy, these items usher back some memories. While I did not own my first Mac until late 2000I could not afford a computer before then and I was not going to settle for anything less than a MacI have been along for the ride since the original Mac was introduced in 1984 and my high school received two of the new user-friendly PCs the second half of my sophomore year.
Not being able to afford a computer in the mid-1990s, I can remember having serious envy of anyone that had acquired the first Power Macs (#29). Apple had just gone through the first major paradigm shift for the Mac, unless one considers the addition of color a paradigm shift, and the Power Macs were the systems of envy. I always wanted a Mac, but that desire grew geometrically when the Power Macs were introduced. The ability to add a PC on a card for cross-platform compatibility made those machines even more desirable. Since then, Apple has consistently bent over backwards to keep Mac users compatible with their PC world; an action not returned by the Wintel camp where so much as disk interchangeability is still nonexistent.
The Power Mac G4 Cube (#26) was my first computer. Well actually it was my third, but I am not counting the TRS-80 Color Computer that I had in middle school and the Tandy Color Computer 2 that I was upgraded to in high school; I still have the CoCo 2, by the way. While it lacked the requisite expandability that I desired and ultimately needed, the Cubes demure size combined with a 22-inch Cinema Display (ADC) was a perfect fit in my confined space. My Cube has been since replaced with a gargantuan Power Mac G5, thus forcing me to forfeit my desk, but until it became painfully slow compared to the other machines I was using day-in and day-out, my reliable little Cube served me well for many years. Had it not been for financial matters, I would have upgraded the CPU and migrated to OS X before getting the G5.
Lastly, the Mac II (#25) was a dream machine in its day. My first exposure to the Mac II was my sophomore year in college when the University of Delaware acquired a few; ahh, the days before outright IT platform bias nearly forced all Macs out of sight. I spent many a day in the main computer lab in Smith Hall working on the Mac IIsI believe the university had IIx and later upgraded to Mac IIcxs and IIcisand bemoaning the DOS-based PCs elsewhere in the lab with their text-based monochrome user interfaces and 12-inch displays. I was working in user-friendly, 24-bit color high-resolution bliss while those that opted to use the IBM PS/2s had to remember cryptic Ctrl codes as I pointed and clicked, navigated their clunky 5.25-inch disks with DOS commands while I pointed and clicked, and were unable to (easily) add diagrams to their assignments while I pointed and clicked. Ironically, most people then, as they do now, opted to suffer through dealing with the PCs instead of using the Macs, getting their work done and moving on with life . (PC-weenies never learn. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif)

[verucabong]

Isn't it obvious #1 is going to be the iPod? Or is Maccentral perhaps going to pull a Spin magazine and be too cool for the room and pull something from left field like the Apple yo-yo power adapter and make it #1.
My 2 cents

[jmincey]

"Isn't it obvious #1 is going to be the iPod?"
Not to me. I should think number one will have to be either the first Apple computer of all, the Apple I (which started the ball rolling), or the first 128K Macintosh itself -- a truly groundbreaking product.
EDIT: Or perhaps even the Lisa -- how about that one?

[ckasper]

I hope the PM5200 made the list. How about the AIO G3, the heaviest mac ever made. Fingers are crossed and Im holding my breath!

[bynkii]

The brilliance of the Xserve RAID isn't that it lets you run big - arsed RAIDs on OS X. That's no big trick, I can point to quite a few RAIDs in that category that do the same thing, and have some features that the Xserve RAID wishes it had for the same general price point.
The brilliance of the Xserve RAID is that it not only did NOT require a Mac, but that it shipped as Windows Server/Linux certified, (and very recently, Solaris). Here's Apple shipping business-critical class storage that works just as well without a Mac in the building as it does hooked up to bunches. Apple not charging $1500 for the FC cards was another brilliant move, and I'll say that the Xserve RAID, FAR more than either the Xserve or the iPod is Apple's best way to get into places they wouldn't have a chance to get in otherwise.
In fact, prior to Mac OS X 10.4, you could use multiple Xserve RAID's in a SAN situation better with certain non Apple OS's, due to limitations in Mac OS X 10.3 WRT volume size.
That's the brilliance of the Xserve RAID more than anything else.

[switchtoamac]

I'd have to say the iPod and the magnitude in which it has changed people's lives. Apple was keen to identify how people's lives would be impacted by the ability to leagally purchase music allowing consumers to take it with them whenever and where ever.
The iPod has also had an impact on the business community that spans several verticals. For example, accessory makers to people who write custom software for the iPod. The iPod has also penetrated the education and medical sectors. The iPod accessory market is now a multi-billion dollar industry. Just take a look at recent electronic shows, iPod integration is everywhere. The same can be said for the automobile industry. More and more manufacturers are building iPod integration into their vehicles.
The iPod has transformed Apple into a company that is now a fabric of the world. Go anywhere and people know what an iPod is. The iPod has also helped Mac sales as a result of the "Halo Effect". Thanks to the iPod, the popularity of Apple has increased which in turn has fueled Mac sales allowing Apple to increase it's marketshare, especially in the last few years.
I expect this trend to continue. With the need and demand from consumers to have the ability to download movies, Apple will capitalize on it's popularity and marketshare of legal downloads. Thanks to Apple and the iPod, the business of legal distribution is possible and viable.
My vote is for the iPod and iTunes.

[stniuk]

No1 has got to be OS X, The imac saved Apple for sure but OS X, and it's descendants will take Apple through the next century.

[Adwiz]

I would agree with switchtoamac that the iPod deserves No. 1 spot on the list. While the original 128K Mac did change computing as we know it, the change was not nearly as dramatic as the impact of the iPod. The iPod has revolutionized technology far beyond music itself; it has made people rethink how they use digital devices. The iPod's presence is making a difference in how products of all kinds are designed and how they work, from Automobile interfaces to entertainment systems to cameras.

[Ronald_Schoedel]

How about the bondi blue gum-drop iMac? It is still one of my favorite Macs of all time, and it ushered in a worldwide craze of everything in translucent fruit colors. Even today browsing through any catalog or walking the aisles of any department store, we see home decor, applicances, and more in cool translucent blueberry, tangerine, strawberry, grape, and lime. This cultural phenomenon--taking the mundane, like a toaster or a fridge, and adding a splash of color--is directly attributable to Steve Jobs's and Apple's chance they took with the bondi blue iMac.
Ronald Schoedel
Ronald Schoedel's .Mac Homepage

[Jim Dalrymple]

In reply to:

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be too cool for the room and pull something from left field like the Apple yo-yo power adapter and make it #1.

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That and the hockey puck mouse /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[ltjimbob]

I knew some advertising folks back in the dark days of the 90s. They said if Apple goes down, they would buy as many Macs as they could find so they could keep on using ColorSync. They told me they had never had a PC that could match the colors like a Mac could. If Apple didn't have Colorsync, they may not have survived some of the rough times.
I'm not in print, I'm in video but it does seem a whole lot easy to match colors on a Mac than on a PC. (Of course, some people are just too picky - there are just some colors you can't have in video that you have in print. Bright red is not a friend of NTSC!) /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[acoustimac]

I've been using Mac's since the beginning and there are a few powerful moments along the way. My first experience with a Mac (the Mac Plus) changed my life quite literally. Those early machines have to get some votes.
Second, the venerable Mac II. This machine provided the horsepower to actually run a network. We used to run a complete lab of harddrive-less Mac Pluses from a single Mac II server using AppleTalk (which should also get votes).
Third, the transition to PowerPC chips. Instant horsepower upgrades. Made video editing possible on a Mac.
Fourth, OSX...gave the Mac a modern operating system yet to be matched.
Finally, the Apple IIe. This system was the standard bearer in our country's educational system. OK, so its not a Mac, but Mac wouldn't have existed if the IIe hadn't got the ball rolling and provided a market. I remember purchasing (5 1/4 floppy disks) MECC's entire library of educational software for our school district. It was cheap, powerful, and changed student's lives. The IIe brought the beginning of educational software development.

[blecch]

In reply to:

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The Mac II paved the way for every expandable pro-level Mac to follow until Apple ultimately replaced NuBus with the more industry-standard PCI expansion slot in the mid-1990s.

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Peter, I am afraid that people may get the idea that Apple was just being perverse in going with NuBus. Actually, at the time (1986-87) the "industry standard" alternative was ISA, which was inferior from both a performance (narrow bus, slow speed) and usability (no plug and play) perspective. NuBus was a 32-bit bus, and scaled from 10 MHz in the Mac II to up to 25 MHz (I believe) in the Quadras and early Power Macs. It also supported ROM-based drivers for plug and play operation and booting (!) Some interesting NuBus cards included memory cards (to get over the Mac II memory limit, or to act as a huge RAM disk), PC emulation cards (a PC on a NuBus card, for DOS emulation), serial port cards (for hooking a bunch of terminals up to a Mac II running Apple's A/UX UNIX operating system) and one of the first accelerated 24-bit graphics cards, the 8/24 GC card, introduced with the Mac IIfx. Oh yeah, and new "Ethertalk" cards for faster AppleTalk (and TCP/IP) networking. ;-)
IBM introduced Micro Channel (MCA) with its PS/2 line in 1987 to fix some of the problems with ISA, but it never caught on. Instead, IBM's competitors developed EISA in 1988.
PCI wasn't released as a connection standard until 1993, so it wasn't ready for the original 1994 Power Macintosh (x100 series) line (also Apple wanted to ease the transition for users and card developers), but Apple was already collaborating with intel for a PCI transition, which it rolled out with the second-generation Power Macs (x500 series) in 1995.