2001 is the shifting point for early adopters – dual booting Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, upgrading peripherals from ADB/SCSI to USB/Firewire, programs dropping older OS support, etc. One thing I saw reading back, was the beginning of an outline of what technology would look like ten years on.

Nowadays I take a lot of tech for granted, but the companies and protocols were all up in the air at one point. Take wireless- that is usually defined by the standard wireless networking, 802.11ac/g/n/b/a, or Bluetooth. But each were still getting their foot in the door in 2001. 

High speed internet? I remember thinking a T1 was the promised land, a T3 would be the most amazing thing ever, and it seemed like everyone on Hotline had an OC-12. Nowadays, I have higher speed Cable at home, and helped my own company shift away from dual T1 and dual 3M DSL link balanced connectivity to a solid Cogent pipe. But at my parents house, we didn’t get Cable until 2002- literally weeks after I left for college and sweet high-speed bliss.

I’ve discussed computing improvements a few times before, and how much it was a key factor in enjoying new releases. 2001 was a time when the 3D accelerator add-on card was transitioning from an add-on for intense gamers to a requirement for Quartz and coming standard on Macs. To this day, I enjoy the fight between nVidia and ATI (now AMD).

In terms of my own Macs, I have to say I’ve always leaned to ATI. The only nVidia card I’ve had in a Mac is the one in my MDD (but that’s a topic for another day!).

September’s issue on Best/Worst decisions by and around Apple is a fantastic read in an otherwise boring year of content, in my opinion. MacAddict is slowly becoming more “professional” and “modern” as Mac OS X arrives, and a throwback to the old days content is the exception and not the norm.

I think the MacAddict focused Best/Worsts were extremely interesting, and I agreed with almost all of them- except the best/worst issues. They choose an issue that I’m on record for thinking is one of the worst, being that it’s all interviews and “insights” versus the fun loving topics I enjoyed. Such as the one that won worst.

Oh yes, the PDFs! This year marks a drop below the 100MB mark. I have some suspicions as to why- a drop in page count, a drop in page complexity (colors and art make way for singular colors and white backgrounds), and much more whitespace. Oh well!

MacAddict-053-200101-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 121.7 MB
MacAddict-054-200102-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 116.1 MB
MacAddict-055-200103-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 110.7 MB
MacAddict-056-200104-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 104.3 MB
MacAddict-057-200105-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 106.7 MB
MacAddict-058-200106-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 95.6 MB
MacAddict-059-200107-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 99.2 MB
MacAddict-060-200108-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 88.3 MB
MacAddict-061-200109-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 92.4 MB
MacAddict-062-200110-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 94.5 MB
MacAddict-063-200111-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 95.5 MB
MacAddict-064-200112-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 92.3 MB