Adam Rosen I am a vintage Mac collector in the Boston, MA, US area, and an Apple Certified Macintosh consultant doing business under the name Oakbog. I've been using Macs for over three decades and counting!
As the corporation with the largest market cap value in existence (as of this writing), Apple has amassed a vast amount of wealth. As a public corporation they have also generated significant wealth for their shareholders over the past decade. What has been less discussed is the value of old Apple equipment, but recent six figure sales of the seminal Apple 1 have begun to increase interest in other vintage computing products.
The BBC has just released How to Cash in on the Cult of Apple, an article dedicated to this topic. Their reporter interviewed a number of sources, including myself, about the values of old Apple gear and what is happening in that market in terms of investment opportunities. The short summary: this isn’t a market for quick-flips, but holding on to first edition products, original packaging and rare prototypes can pay off decades down the road.
Worth a read. Now if I only had an Apple 1 in my collection…
The Macintosh Portable was Apple’s first entry into the notebook market, but it’s high price ($6500) and hefty weight (15.8 pounds) were major obstacles to market success. Before the Luggable was replaced by the PowerBook a number of third party options appeared, including the Outbound Notebook. An early Mac clone produced under agreement with Apple, it required a genuine Macintosh ROM pulled from a working (sacrificial) Mac Plus or SE. But even with that extra cost the Outbound was nearly half the price of Apple’s offering ($3500), smaller, lighter (6.25 pounds) and faster.
The Notebook featured “swappable” hard drives, upgradeable processors (Motorola 68000 or 68030), standard desktop RAM, and camcorder style batteries (still available today). Rounding out the features were a microphone, speaker, headphone jack, two serial ports, an ADB port, and a SCSI port. Business and power users were pleased. And despite that kangaroo logo and down-under name, the company was actually located in Colorado, not Australia.
A unique feature of the Outbound was its pointing device, the TrackBar. Rather than a trackball or a trackpad, users slid a small bar left, right, forward and backward to move the cursor onscreen. Quite clever, I’m surprised this design wasn’t more widely used.
This Notebook required some effort to bring back to working order. That’s true for most vintage computers. It didn’t come with a power adapter, and requires one with rather uncommon specs: 22V, 1.27A. Every serious geek has a big box of spare AC adapters, but nothing in mine even came close to this. Fortunately the iRobot Roomba model 10556 power supply is a useable match – who knew? – and was easily found on eBay. (Thanks for the tip Matt!)
Once that hurdle was passed I discovered the hard drive was dead. Also not uncommon. The Outbound uses a 2.5-inch IDE hard drive, unlike the Mac Portable and PowerBooks which used SCSI drives. The drive is easily accessed by removing a side panel, but the bay which holds the drive is larger than the disk. This makes reinsertion challenging, as the drive pins can line up incorrectly with the holes on the connector if positioning isn’t correct. A few careful attempts brought success, but I’d use the term “swappable” loosely.
Using the system is interesting. The Outbound kangaroo logo is displayed as the startup chime sounds. Mine is running System 7.1 and utilizes two custom Control Panels (Notebook and TrackBar), and one Extension (Notebook Extension). The 9.7-inch “SuperTwist” LCD screen is nice and large, although the passive matrix display does display lots of ghosting. Adjusting brightness and contrast helps. The TrackBar generally works well, though I kept wanting to click on the bar directly rather than hitting the buttons on either side. The keyboard is serviceable, somewhat mushy. Not having palm rests – a feature introduced with the PowerBook – feels strange after all these years.
Like the Portable the Outbound has no power switch: pressing any key turns the system on. Maybe that seemed intuitive around 1990, but it doesn’t today! Without a power button you need to remove the power cord and battery if it locks up, however you can soft-reboot using CMD-OPT-ESC. Apple systems use CTRL-CMD-PWR for this function.
Sitting at a table I think Apple Macintosh Portable is the more pleasant machine to work on, with a better keyboard. The Outbound wins on weight and size hands down.
This Notebook model (2030S) uses the 68030 processor. Since the ROM came from a Mac Plus, that makes for a very interesting display when viewing About This Mac or system information in a utility like Mac Envy. It’s not everyday one sees a Mac Plus with 8MB of RAM, a 68030 processor and an ADB bus!
The Outbound was in many ways a better notebook than the Macintosh Portable, but the first PowerBooks appeared in 1991. These were sleeker, lighter, and less expensive (PowerBook 100). Unable to compete with the mothership, Outbound went out of business in 1992.
A big thank you to Kathleen Hepburn for her generous donation of the Outbound Notebook to the VMM. Your old friend has found a new life, and you won’t have to move it again!
I’m in a fortunate position running the Vintage Mac Museum in that I get offered the chance to acquire lots of old Macintosh equipment. Many of these items I already have, or can’t accept due to space constraints (the bane of every collector). But every so often an email arrives which piques my interest:
I just got in what I believe to be a Macintosh IIcx prototype. It is in a standard IIcx case with no markings on the front except the colored Apple logo. It has an unusual motherboard with 36MB RAM. The machine boots and operates with a Quantum APS Hard Drive with OS 7.5.5 installed. The bottom of the back case where everything plugs in is labelled metal and there is a sticker on the back that says Property of Apple Computer. Are you interested in it?
Why yes, now that you ask. Yes. I am interested!
I picked up the system and it is indeed unusual. The case has moldings on the back indicating it was for a IIcx, and there is no model name silk-screened on the front. There is a metal strip on the back for the ports with a space marked E’NET; the IIcx did not have built-in ethernet, you needed to use a NuBus card.
Similarly odd was the CPU, marked Motorola PC68040RC-A. The 68040 wasn’t used in the Mac II series, those debuted with the Quadra models. And that’s a strange nomenclature, the chip is normally identified as MC68040. Turns out what we have is actually a prototype 68040 CPU, the prefix PC being used to designate pre-production engineering samples.
Well then, let’s review the evidence: a non-finished case, non-standard motherboard, prototype 68040 CPU, and a Property of Apple Computer sticker on the back. I think we’ve found a rather unique item here – A Wolf (Quadra) in Sheep’s (IIcx) Clothing.
However this may not be a Quadra prototype but rather a one-off custom creation. Upon further inspection I looked up the part number on the logic board, 820-0380-A, and it turns out to be a Quadra 650 logic board. That’s not a prototype part, and is newer than the first Quadra which was the model 700. Maybe this is some kind of Poor Man’s Quadra built by an Apple engineer with spare parts in the lab?
In any event it’s unusual, and makes a nice addition to the collection. The machine runs, though strangely the onboard AAUI ethernet port is not present and instead is supplemented by an Asante NuBus ethernet card. Sadly the Property of Apple Computer sticker was damaged before shipping and did not survive, but I have the photos from the previous owner. (Long story. Don’t ask.)
Who know what other strange beasts lurk in the bowels of Apple – or the garages of ex-Apple engineers…
Keeping old Macs running is the primary goal of most collectors, but sometimes that’s not possible or practical. Apple made millions upon millions of machines, which means there are lots of cases and parts lying around awaiting better fates than recycling. Why not repurpose that old Mac into something useful?
In 2002 Apple released the iconic iMac G4, featuring a groundbreaking flat panel display floating on a polished silver arm above a white half dome base – “Flat Out Cool” said Time on the occasion. Very quickly dubbed the “iLamp” due to its floating arm design, the iMac G4 always cried out for alternative uses once its primary computing days were over.
Enter Jake Harms. Taking inspiration from a discarded Macintosh and the original Macquarium, Harms has been making beautiful iMacAquariums for several years using G3 iMacs, and eClocks out of eMac disc drive covers. Once enough G4 iMacs started to pile up, he knew exactly what to do: give them new lives them as iLamps!
These lovely, whimsical lamps are part Mac collectible, part object d’art. Harms cleaned and polished the parts, flipped the base upside down, mounted the arm to the bottom plate, then attached a lamp harp, bulb socket and pull chain to the end where the dome sits. Both the iMac dome and baseplate have their original port markings, and the original (non-working) logic board is included. As an additional bonus, a USB power adapter for an iPhone or iPad is built into the base, just add your own cord.
To use iLamp: (1) plug it in, (2) turn in on. Let there be light. There is no step three.
Nice job Jake. The iLamp now sits on my office conference table, adorned with an eClock. It’s sure to be an entertaining and illuminating conversation piece for years.
In January 1984 Apple Computer released Macintosh. And we saw why 1984 wouldn’t be like 1984. Or at least Ridley Scott implied that in his groundbreaking commercial introducing the Mac.
Fast forward three decades, then add couple of greying hippies. Our old friends Ben & Jerry have just created a tasty new ice cream treat for stoners (as if there aren’t enough) called the BRRR-ito. It gets introduced on 4-20-15 (of course), and apparently we’ll see why 4.20 is exactly like 4.20.
This entertaining tribute to Ridley Scott’s classic commercial brings a big grin to my face. It works on so many levels – the facial expressions, reproduced look and feel, sexy babe running to the rescue, and of course the pothead puns. Hats off to you lads. Well done!
So today was another Apple Event. The iWatch – err, Apple Watch – was finally introduced, along with the 12-inch Retina MacBook and a host of speed bumps. But one small item escaped media attention: the 13-inch MacBook Pro (non-Retina) is still available for purchase, six years after it’s introduction!
The Unibody form factor debuted in 2008 with the first aluminum MacBook, which replaced the black and white plastic MacBooks. It lasted one generation and did not include FireWire. Soon thereafter Apple moved the Unibody enclosure to the MacBook Pro line, added back the FireWire port, and came out with 13-, 15- and 17-inch versions. These Core 2 Duo based laptops were the last Apple portables to sport optical CD/DVD drives, and removable back panels allow for easy upgrades to the hard drive, RAM and battery.
An easy-to-service Apple laptop? Clearly this kind of user-friendly design could not be allowed to remain. The 17-inch monster was the first to go, discontinued after the 2011 model. The 15-inch version lasted a year longer, finally retired in 2012 in favor of the Retina MacBook Pro. Retina models have beautiful high-resolution screens and zippy SSDs, but they do not have interchangeable RAM or disk storage, and their batteries are glued in place – not the most serviceable of designs for vintage computing fans.
Meanwhile the 13-inch MacBook Pro remained for sale. The 13-inch Retina version debuted in 2012, with two Thunderbolt ports, long battery life and a speedy SSD. Old reliable remained. By the time Lion and Mountain Lion became mainstream, it was clear hard drives were not optimal any longer for OS X – the phrase “dog shit slow” comes to mind. Lots and lots of beachballs. But people bought it anyway.
Apple is all about smaller and lighter. Today’s 12-inch MacBook is 2.2 pounds, yet the 13″ non-retina MBPro is a backbreaking 4.5 pounds! A CD/DVD drive? So last decade. Why is this system still selling?
We’ve seen this phenomenon before. In 2003, the PowerMac G4 MDD was upgraded to the FireWire 800 version, which only booted into Mac OS X. Due to user demand for machines that still booted into Mac OS 9, Apple brought back the older dual-boot FireWire 400 version a few months later when the PowerMac G5 was released. This was an online-only purchase, virtually buried on the Apple Store website, yet for almost the next year this model was consistently one of the best selling Mac models. It was repeatedly reported in the company’s quarterly results. Customers knew what they wanted, and Apple was forced to keep selling a model they wanted to retire.
Similarly the Mac mini was virtually an afterthought for Apple. For many years people had asked the company when would they release a sub-$500 Mac. In 2005 they finally did, with the smallest computer they could get away with and an entry price of $499. It was hard to service and the under $500 price didn’t last, but the model sure did. The mini has long been one of Apple’s best selling models, despite a much lower profit margin than those lovely iMacs and Mac Pros. It does the job, is inexpensive and (until the 2014 model) supported upgradeable RAM and hard drives.
The 13-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro is another such model. It may not be a powerhouse, but at $1099 it’s a good value and fully upgradeable. It has Thunderbolt, USB 3, FireWire 800, Ethernet, miniDisplayPort, an SD-card reader – so many ports! Want better performance? Replace the hard drive with an SSD, you’ll be thrilled. It’s easy to add more RAM or replace the battery. For the extra burden of a few more pounds to carry, this system has a far longer service life than the current non-upgradeable, battery-glued-in-place models.
Perhaps Apple customers are smarter than we think after all.
As a public corporation they have also generated significant wealth for their shareholders over the past decade. What has been less discussed is the value of old Apple equipment, but recent six figure sales of the seminal Apple 1 have begun to increase interest in other vintage computing products.
Using the system is interesting. The Outbound kangaroo logo is displayed as the startup chime sounds. Mine is running System 7.1 and utilizes two custom Control Panels (Notebook and TrackBar), and one Extension (Notebook Extension). The 9.7-inch “SuperTwist” LCD screen is nice and large, although the passive matrix display does display lots of ghosting. Adjusting brightness and contrast helps. The TrackBar generally works well, though I kept wanting to click on the bar directly rather than hitting the buttons on either side. The keyboard is serviceable, somewhat mushy. 
Not having palm rests – a feature introduced with the PowerBook – feels strange after all these years.
The 
We’ve seen this phenomenon before. In 2003, the PowerMac G4 MDD was upgraded to the FireWire 800 version, which only booted into Mac OS X. Due to user demand for machines that still booted into Mac OS 9, Apple brought back the older dual-boot FireWire 400 version a few months later when the PowerMac G5 was released. This was an online-only purchase, virtually buried on the Apple Store website, yet for almost the next year this model was consistently one of the best selling Mac models. It was repeatedly reported in the company’s quarterly results. Customers knew what they wanted, and Apple was forced to keep selling a model they wanted to retire.