Yes, you've read that right. The old
old Apple.
Disclaimer: I swear I'm not trying to troll, I just want to share my opinion and see if it resonates (which I doubt, but let me have a go at it).
Everybody is going on about how Apple is doomed, about how Ive and Cook are ruining Apple.
How they miss 2000s Apple. About how Apple was really great under Jobs.
Well,
me, I miss the old
old Apple. I miss beige Apple. I miss Sculley and Amelio-Apple.
I remember when I was a kid with no hair on my chest and my father brought home a spanking new LC.
I remember how it was a magical machine, how its shell was simple and sensible in a way that I've never seen since.
I remember when my father brought home a LaserWriter, I remember the first SCSI external CD-ROM drive.
The thing felt a bit like Star Trek.
Is it nostalgia? Of course it is. But it probably also isn't.
Allow me to continue.
A few years later my father then got a Powerbook Duo.
It went in and out of the dock which went "bzzz-click".
I was later handed it - sans the dock, which broke at some unspecified time.
I don't think I need to remind anyone of all the
bad things that were pre-Jobs Apple.
It has been written at length about those.
Let me say something about the
good things for a change.
Those were reassuring, practical, plastic beige or black machines., with that delightful embossed, colorful logo.
I liked them more than I like the current ultra thin thing going on.
Those were spreadsheet machines, not Facebook machines.
They were machines (with all their flaws) for people with an actual job.
For neon-lit offices, rather than Starbucks. 9-to-5, rather than 5-to-11PM.
Machines to go with a real car rather than a sweatshirt and an emo haircut.
Machines to go with an Omega Speedmaster rather than an Apple Watch.
I am now the age my father was when he bought the Powerbook.
I just bought a Thinkpad - the L series, the bulkiest variety; and a docking station to go with it.
After wiping the OS and installing GNOME it is a sufficiently close approximation of the Powerbook Duo.
It's no Powerbook, though, but then I'm not hip enough for a gold rMB.