Apple at 50

50 years ago on the first of this month in a garage in California, the Apple Computer Company was founded by two Steves and a Ronald.¹ Since the internet was flooded throughout March with articles covering this momentous event and since I’m late to the party, I thought it would be a good opportunity to document some of the Apple items which have brought me joy over the years.²

There’s a fine line in this list between items which which would just be considered obsolete, and the more interesting category which we’d call “vintage”. Not all of it still works, but even the items which aren’t functional still make for great display pieces.³

And before we start, I’d argue Apple has four distinct “eras” as it were:

• The Classic Era: This is the time of legends and the birth of Apple Computer. It’s the era of such classics as the Apple II and the first Macintosh.
• The Wilderness Years: Steve Jobs had been turfed out, and Apple began to lose its way, shepherded by CEOs who really didn’t understand the company not its vision.
• Steve Jobs Mk.2 Era: Steve returns and a new era at Apple gives birth to the Intel Mac, the iPhone and the iPad.
• Tim Cook Era: Tim Cook takes the reigns and perfects the supply chain, but in the process manages to lose the magic which made Apple great.

In case you hadn’t guessed, my nostalgia lies mainly in the Steve Jobs Mk.2 Era, and the devices on display in this post mostly come from that period.

And of course there’s going to be a fun and completely meaningless tier list at the end.

iPhone 3G (8 GB)

A stone cold classic. The second generation of iPhone built on the original by introducing the App Store and reaching a wider audience by being available on more carriers.⁴

Unfortunately this specimen is no longer functional and won’t turn on. However, I suspect the culprit is likely to be the battery and I’m weighing up whether it’s worth going through the process of trying to replace it. The fact is, even if it did turn on, there’s probably not an awful lot which you could do with it. 3G support from carriers is on the way out (if not already deprecated), and I suspect the App Store would no longer work with such an old model.

It’s hard not to give this device a high rating. It may pail in comparison to today’s models, but coming a year after the original iPhone it fixed many of the first generation’s shortfalls whilst still being novel enough to capture the imagination.

Rating: A Tier

iPod Touch (Selection)

A collection of 3G and 4G iPod Touch devices here. They were like an iPhone, but without the ability to make phone calls and with features languishing a generation or two behind the flagship phone.

I’ve written about these brilliant little devices before, and I wish Apple still manufactured them. But I think as the iPhone range matured, there were more hand-me-downs available and you were just as well buying a second hand iPhone. Along with the iPad this kind of spelled the end of the iPod Touch range.

Rating: S Tier

iPod Dock

The unusual thing about this dock is how it came with a number of insertable plastic trays, which would fit the form of the device you were trying to dock. It seems wasteful by today’s standards, especially as I’ve long since lost all of these inserts. But it did ensure compatibility with a multitude of Apple devices which utilised the 30 pin dock connector of the time: Classic iPods, the iPod Touch, the iPhone.

And the dock had both a line out jack with a small amp, and an infra-red receiver. Which meant you could wire the dock up to some speakers and control your iPod from afar with a remote control. All in all, this made the iPod dock excellent value for money, and future proofed until Apple decided to switch to the Lightning adapter.

Rating: A Tier

Apple Remote

The first generation of the remote used to get thrown in with various Apple products. For example, Macs with an infra-red receiver and iPhone docks. As a result it wasn’t uncommon for Apple buyers to end up with a small collection of these cheap, plastic remote controls.

I’ve ended up with three of these, which if I’m honest I don’t know what to do with. They were a nice bonus in principle, but I have my doubts as to how much people actually used them.

Rating: E Tier

Marathon Trilogy

If you’ve not heard of the Marathon games,⁵ they were to the Mac as Doom was to the PC. In a way, it was the proving ground the team at Bungie Software used to hone their skills before going on to develop the sensation which was Halo. But the journey began here.

Although the three games were originally sold individually, Bungie later released them as a boxed set with an extra CD of community maps and mods, making this the definitive edition.

I’m glad to have retained the CD, but sadly the box itself is long gone, as is the booklet covering the game’s development and the exclusive stickers. Bungie also had the good sense to open source the entire thing, meaning you can download all three games for Mac, Windows or Linux, along with a selection of top notch third part scenarios. You can also find this boxed set digitally preserved on the Internet Archive.

Marathon is a game dear to my heart, and I spent many hours on my Macintosh LC 630 playing all of these games to death. And even now I keep coming back time and time again. This game inextricably linked with the story of the Apple Macintosh, and was the first game to settle the case the Mac could be a gaming machine.⁶

Rating: S Tier

Aperture

In the days before smartphones had decent cameras, there was still an even split between digital and analogue photography. If you went the digital route, you’d need software capable of processing those raw images from your DSLR camera into something more internet friendly.

On the Mac, the choice was between Adobe Lightroom or Apple’s Aperture. Back when I bought my first DSLR camera, I also picked up a copy of Aperture on CD. It came complete with a thick instruction manual, and I probably opened it just once to install the software, hence this version is in good condition.

Aperture was retired from Apple’s product line in 2014 in favour of the Photos app. These days, you’ll probably find people using Photomator to process their photos.

Rating: C Tier

iPod Nano 6G

The iPod Nano range was the iPod series with an identity crisis. Each generation was vastly different in appearance and functionality. But it’s the 6th generation of this device which is probably best known, and dare I say best loved.

Functionally, it was like a tiny iPod Touch with a touchscreen and similar looking UI (although it didn’t run iOS). It came with a clip so you could attach it to your clothing as you were out jogging, and it even had an FM radio receiver built in.

But the device truly found popularity when people realised it made for a pretty nice touchscreen watch. I also fell into this trend, and absolutely loved wearing this device on my wrist. In fact, I’d probably still be doing it if the Nano’s 6th generation wasn’t prone to defects and issues. The most annoying of these was the power button breaking, requiring a complete disassembly to fix. And from my experience, their protection against the elements was questionable, with one of mine succumbing to a summer thunderstorm.

I even own three of these devices,⁷ and they’ve all broken in various ways. It’s a disappointment coming from Apple, as it seems evident they cut a lot of corners when it came to the quality of this device. It’s sad one of their best loved devices was also one of their least reliable.

Rating: B Tier

iPod Shuffle 2G

The iPod Shuffle was founded on the premise of not needing a display to listen to your music. It succeeded by limiting you to playing your collection in a pseudo random order, akin to the iTunes app’s shuffle functionality.

This was a great little device if you were on a budget. It even had a clip to attach it to your belt or clothing, and it charged through the headphone jack which I think is quite clever.

Rating: C Tier

Mighty Mouse

Sharing its name with a 1940s’ cartoon character of the same name, Apple looked to put a spin⁸ on the classic mouse wheel by giving it an extra degree of freedom. But this tiny trackball was perhaps a bit awkward to use, and the rest of the mouse was average at best.

Rating: C Tier

Magic Mouse

The Magic Mouse is still alive and well. The version here took two AA batteries, but its newer USB C incarnation endured mockery for the fact it couldn’t be charged whist in use, and looked frankly ridiculous with a wire sticking out the bottom.

The choice of substituting a scroll wheel for a multi-touch surface was an interesting choice to allow both horizontal and vertical scrolling, and definitely a large improvement over the Mighty Mouse which came before. But at the end of the day I’d argue the mouse is too small, and ergonomically inferior to other wireless mice.

Rating: C Tier

AirPort Express 1G

This unassuming looking device was a jack of several trades. It was solid enough to provide wifi coverage to an entire house, and it was also portable. The Airport Express was a companion on my first visit to Japan, which – to my surprise – had very little free Wifi outside of Starbucks. Even the hotel I was staying at only had internet available via an ethernet port in the room, so it was straight forward to connect this router up and get my own private wifi signal.

It conveniently plugged directly into a power socket on the wall without the need for a cable, and as a bonus it had a USB port which could be used to hook up a printer.⁹ You could also set it to simply extend an existing wifi network into another part of the house. All the configuration was done via the Airport Utility app which would even run on an iPhone, so when you were away from your main machine you could still change the settings.

Versatile it was, but sadly it only supported the 2.4 GHz band which made it a laggard as newer devices began arriving with 5 GHz support. Also, Apple eventually stopped issuing firmware updates. But in its day, this small router was a marvellous and versatile beast, showcasing Apple’s innovation at its finest.

Rating: S Tier

AirPort Extreme

Let’s be honest, this router looked like the bright and shiny brother of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And inside, it was no less impressive. This particular model was a reliable router for many years, also supported external storage and could do Time Machine backups, albeit with some stability issues for a while.

Even when Apple stopped updating its firmware and I decided to buy a more conventional router, it still soldiered on providing Time Machine support for all the Macs in our household.

But sadly, even that final function must come to an end as Apple are retiring AFP soon, which is the only filesharing protocol supported by the AirPort extreme.¹⁰

Rating: A Tier

MacBook (Early 2008)

Another lovely device I’ve also written about before, this one is a little the worse for wear having had its battery removed and manifesting a gap between the keyboard layer and the chassis. This Intel device is still perfectly usable however, humming away with an installation of Snow Leopard and prone to bouts of Escape Velocity.

I do wish I also owned the older Power PC variant so I could run classic macOS, but this Intel incarnation does just fine.

Rating: B Tier

MacBook Pro (Mid 2009)

This rugged Intel MacBook Pro was a daily driver for many years. It still boots up, but I’ve not tested the battery or the hard drive. It eventually suffered the fate which lies in store for all Apple devices, which is the day Apple stop providing security updates. Otherwise I’d probably still be using it.

They don’t make ’em like this any more.

Rating: S Tier

Mac Mini (2012)

Back in 2012, I was working for a company which refused to issue Macs for anyone who wasn’t sufficiently important enough, so most people in the organisation got an IBM Thinkpad with either Windows or Ubuntu depending on your role.

Thankfully, they weren’t too picky about which machines people did work on, a policy which would no doubt horrify most IT departments today. So I decided to buy myself a bottom-of-the-range Mac Mini which became my office machine.

And since then,¹¹ it’s lived on as a server of various guises over the years. Recently the internal hard drive was failing, so I replaced it with an SSD drive and installed Ubuntu Server. It’s now happily living its third life as a Plex server, amongst other things.

I suspect even when I’m dead, this Mac Mini will still be going strong.

Rating: A Tier

Boxes

It’s rumoured Apple had an entire division dedicated to designing the boxes their devices came in, hoping to attain the perfect unboxing experience. Whether apocryphal or not, there can be no doubt these boxes have been a core part of the Apple experience over the years.

Now, what to do with all those boxes?

Rating: B Tier

LC 630

I’m stretching the definition of my collection a little here, because this behemoth is surely the oldest Apple device I own, dating from 1994. It was the device which carried me through my GCSEs, but unfortunately instead of being with me here in Montreal, it’s residing in a London loft¹².

It is complete with monitor and keyboard, but it hasn’t been switched on in a worryingly long time. That anxiety comes from the fact these machines were known for their leaky capacitors, so if by some chance I get the opportunity to properly take a look then I’m expecting the worst to be honest.

And even if it’s possible to do a restoration, there’s also the issue of shipping it over to Canada.¹³

Rating: B Tier

Apple Stickers

I think every flat I’ve moved into which came with a fridge has had an Apple sticker on it. Which is a testimony as to how many of these pointless stickers there were in the wild during Apple’s heyday.

Rating: F Tier

Apple Earphones

I didn’t have a pair of the classic earphones to photograph, but we’ve all seen those iconic iPod adverts. I reckoned when they first appeared, people wearing them in public were just marking themselves out as a target for mugging, since iPods were luxury items at the start.

I think whilst those earphones were ubiquitous and provided free advertising, they weren’t very good.

Rating: D Tier

Tier List

Every device tells a story, but every device also has a letter between “A” and “F” inclusive. And some even have an “S”.

Meditations on a Contemporary Apple

What I’ve realised compiling this list is the Apple of today really isn’t the same company whose products used to bring me so much joy.

I miss the Apple who’s CEO didn’t indulge fascists and respected user privacy. I miss the Apple that cared about quality control, who respected their development community as one of their most vital resources. I miss the Apple who could make autocorrect work. I miss the Apple who were always one generation of innovation ahead of everyone else.

That Apple is gone, but we can still look back and remember when they were good.