Apple Macintosh

Apple produces some of the best computers in the world, and I am the satisfied owner of one, a PowerMac 6100/60, which I bought shortly after their introduction in March 1994 as a sort of birthday gift to myself. This allowed me to retire my venerable SE/30 (sadly, no longer functional due to analog board failure, I should fix that). The computer is perfect for my needs, which basically includes some writing and financial planning (ahh, Quicken), and an occasional game.

In spite of all the bad press Apple has been receiving I would still buy a Mac today. All is not perfect however. My current gripes with my machine should sound familiar:

• Monitor too small. I love the 14" Sony trinitron, but ever since my advisor got a 21" ViewSonic for his DEC Alpha, I have been having feelings of inadequacy. Actually, I would really just be happy if I could switch resolutions up from 640x480. The adapter I currently have apparently is confusing my Mac.
• Hard drive too small. You know, no one ever has enough hard drive space, but within a year of getting my machine, the 160 Meg hard drive it came with was considered laughable. A good 1 Gig external drive would help alot. Soon, soon, soon.
• Too little RAM. 8 Megs is adequate for playing around with, but now that I have graduated, I need more room to work with. Besides, you need at leat 16M to run Doom reliably ;-). Since DRAM prices have collapsed, the time is ripe for an upgrade. 2 16M Simms will soon be on their way.

On the bright side it sure beats owning a PC clone. ;-) Followers of the Macintosh Way should check out TidBITS, PowerPC News, MacWEEK, MacUSER, and MacWorld. The best place to find files for the Mac is at the Washington University Mac Archive which includes the sumex-aim info-mac and umich archives, and some older simtel stuff as well.

Linux, a Unix variant popular on PCs, is now available for the Macintosh, and will soon be coming to my little corner of the world. So there’s no longer a compelling reason not to consider buying a Mac.

Last modified: July 8th, 1996