It’s time to make the push to 100 issues for MacAddict, and to do so it’s time to get 2003 and 2004 out of the way. December 2004 brought issue 100 of MacAddict- an outstanding achievement for the scrappy magazine. There’s a lot to cover in 24 issues, but as noted in previous years, MacAddict is starting to get more prosumer- expect to see a lot of digital camera, video camera, scanner, and even tax software comparisons as we march to 100.

These 24 months brings about major product revisions and technologies, from Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, FireWire 800, and of course the G5 (leading to the impressive iMac G5 and the uniquely shaped PowerMac G5). Spoiler though- the promises to hit 3GHz on the PowerPC 970 G5 processor never arrived. Rumors of the PowerPC 970MP dual-core G5 started though…

Being a freshman/sophomore in college, I was busy and didn’t get to hit up these issues as they came, so I had a lot less exposure to cool tech and gadgets than before, but I still got to experience two amazing things- the first being the iTrip for my original iPod.

This device, when sat on my iPod, nestled snugly in my case, say perfectly in my car’s cup holder. I loved this guy- the engineering method to play MP3s to program it, the way you could use any FM channel, etc. made it easy to jam out. It helped that my CD player died and I could only receive FM radio until I upgraded the radio a few years ago (yes, even my vehicle is now considered Retro).

Oh yeah, Halo came out for the Mac. Remember Halo? Yeah, even though the hurt was still there about Halo’s success on the Xbox, playing it on the Mac felt oddly satisfying. I never got to play a lot of it, so I’m still clean of that Microsoft taint… right?

Given my commitment to my email address, I kept on with .Mac until they finally stopped charging for it. And you know what, I’m still not ready to leave Mac OS 9 behind forever!

In the span of time from 2002-2003 there were some releases of things that are far newer to me- StuffIt Deluxe 7 and the final Titanium PowerBook G4.

With StuffIt Deluxe 7, the product added the fourth major type of encryption that serves as my challenge to overcome with Kasper- StuffIt X. I’m still trying to make StuffIt 4-era archives be recoverable quickly. I’m still forever away from even thinking about making a .sitx recovery solution.

Also released and reviewed the 1GHz Titanium PowerBook G4- one of three Mac laptops that I own currently (previously discussed on Kasper: Speeds and Solutions). Nowadays it lives out it’s life happy as a Mac OS 9 Hotline Server (try connecting to bobkiwi.com from a Hotline client. It’s boring on the poor guy!)

As the most powerful last native Mac OS 9 laptop (and a lot less problematic that my MDD PowerMac), most of my nostalgia has a place on a device that was $3000 at launch, but I got for barely $200 (though the IDE SSD increased the price by almost that much! Need to go into the retro Mac setups up here someday!)

Again though, we hit issue 100. While my favorite retro Mac OS 9 machine was released this period, the retrospective issue brought up my old machine in the section dedicated to machines that almost killed Apple. The (in my mind!) awesome Performa 6320CD.

As my first Mac was a Performa 631CD, the Performa 6320CD was the fastest machine that kept my originals formfactor and card compatibility- that includes the FM Radio and TV tuner, expansion cards, and design. I apparently had some real Mac stinkers as a kid, but they were awesome to me.

Content-wise, a lot of the issues in this batch are a snooze. I enjoyed the first and last issue from 2004- the 20th anniversary issue for Apple with a Mac vs. PC showdown, and the MacAddict 100th issue special retrospective. However, one thing I saw made me a little sad- the staff was asked what it’d be like on issue 200. Spoilers- MacAddict didn’t make it past issue 125 before being rebooted to issue 1 of MacLife.

But you know what, MacLife is still around, and April 2013 wasn’t that long ago. Let’s see what the issue covered.

Hmm. Well maybe there’s an article on squashing bugs…

Uhh…….. Okay. Well MacAddict Editor-in-Chief Rik Myslewski wrote an article at least!

This post marks the switchover to MEGA. I’m interested in how it compares, so please grab the 24 super MEGA links below!

MacAddict-077-200301-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 99.1 MB
MacAddict-078-200302-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 97.5 MB
MacAddict-079-200303-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 95.4 MB
MacAddict-080-200304-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 95.9 MB
MacAddict-081-200305-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 95.9 MB
MacAddict-082-200306-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 96.1 MB
MacAddict-083-200307-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 95.6 MB
MacAddict-084-200308-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 96.6 MB
MacAddict-085-200309-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 95.4 MB
MacAddict-086-200310-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 92.2 MB
MacAddict-087-200311-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 91.2 MB
MacAddict-088-200312-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 93.3 MB
MacAddict-089-200401-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 90.9 MB
MacAddict-090-200402-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 92.3 MB
MacAddict-091-200403-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 92.8 MB
MacAddict-092-200404-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 81.5 MB
MacAddict-093-200405-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 96.2 MB
MacAddict-094-200406-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 97.2 MB
MacAddict-095-200407-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 89.0 MB
MacAddict-096-200408-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 89.3 MB
MacAddict-097-200409-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 89.2 MB
MacAddict-098-200410-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 91.5 MB
MacAddict-099-200411-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 76.3 MB
MacAddict-100-200412-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 80.2 MB