With 2015 fast approaching, let’s step back and get 2005 out of the way. It’s a crazy time, and the end of the line in so many ways. Mac OS X 10.4, Tiger, gets released. The last PowerMacs, PowerBooks, and iBooks are released. The first Mac Mini is unveiled – as is the first “iTunes Phone”. The Intel announcement hits us hard right where we knew it would- that PowerBook G5 was not coming “next Tuesday”, that the world had to prepare for another migration… to Intel, quite possibly the most evil of arch-enemies for a faithful fanboy.
One thing I’d note today is the G4 (and also G3) third party upgrade market. Seeing an OWC ad for these really reminded me of this time period- I have consistently processor upgraded my Macs, either with overclocks or first-party processor swaps, to real third-party offerings. From Beige and Blue & White G3s to my last official PowerPC Mac that wasn’t bought to be retro- the trusty Quicksilver- all models had some sort of processor upgrade. I recall the increase speed boost going from 800MHz to dual 2.0GHz G4s from GigaDesigns- night and day.
Though I will note that years later, when I got a Mirror Drive Door G4, I found a rare Sonnet 1.8GHz dual G4 upgrade card and man, was it terribly unstable in Mac OS 9. A real bummer.
The iPod and the march to iPhone continues this year. I enjoyed the “How to use your iPod as a PDA” article, as it covered odd uses of the iPod- like keeping notes on hand or even offering translator services via a mini “app”. Such an “app” helped me make it through Japanese in college.
But of course, the Motorola ROKR, the “iTunes Phone” was unveiled this year. And what a stinker. Can you believe that Apple changed everything we knew about phones about 18 months later?
Even the funny artwork for using your flip phone on your Mac was more Apple-like than the ROKR (and a lot more like the most popular phone at that time- the RAZR)
Find MacAddict 2005 PDFs below!
MacAddict-101-200501-BobKiwi-v1.pdf
MacAddict-102-200502-BobKiwi-v1.pdf
MacAddict-103-200503-BobKiwi-v1.pdf
MacAddict-104-200504-BobKiwi-v1.pdf
MacAddict-105-200505-BobKiwi-v1.pdf
MacAddict-106-200506-BobKiwi-v1.pdf
MacAddict-107-200507-BobKiwi-v1.pdf
MacAddict-108-200508-BobKiwi-v1.pdf
MacAddict-109-200509-BobKiwi-v1.pdf
MacAddict-110-200510-BobKiwi-v1.pdf
MacAddict-111-200511-BobKiwi-v1.pdf
MacAddict-112-200512-BobKiwi-v1.pdf
Thanks for yet another blast down memory lane, Bob! I still fondly recall my first Sonnet Tech experience: their PDS accelerator board that put an 040 chip in an 030 LC-style Mac, and also added an extra *20 MB* of RAM capacity!
er, Greg :}
Either name works fine, I mean I can’t complain, I tag the files as BobKiwi :3
Hah, that must have been an interesting upgrade. I’ve had a few PDS upgrade boards, someday I’ll get around to trying to unlock the secrets of an odd mystery Mac I have from that era that is stuffed with expansion cards.
I do wish that we could use modern technology and processes to create new upgrade cards. While I’m no engineer, I’d have to imagine the process node improvements could create faster chips with less heat problems. Until a Mac OS 9 emulator reaches real parity with a physical machine, there’s a hard cap on how much can be done.
That’s actually intriguing — all the PDS and NuBUS stuff was pretty well documented by Sonnet and Sun Remarketing back in the day; you could probably get a modern 68k processor on a bread board now and make it more efficient. Not to mention do some simple swaps like flash drive for HD20 etc… memory addressing would be the trickiest bit.
You are a mensch for putting all of this together! This is everything nostalgia should be. If only the forums hadn’t died too…
May I ask what scanner you’ve been using for this project? Mac Addict covers had a lot of fluorescent colors which don’t come in very well on some scanners, but the color accuracy of your scans are very good.
That’s a great question, let me type up something and I’ll make a post out of it. I get the question a lot and hope to help others with what I’ve learned!