Some History: Mine and Apple's

In 1985, the same year I was born, a computer company called Apple made one of the first successful personal computers with a graphical user interface, and called it the Macintosh. It wasn't the first consumer machine with a GUI; Apple itself had made an earlier one, called 'Lisa', which had a almost inexpensive GUI. Almost was the operative word there; that computer was way too pricey and slow because of that interface. Most of the Lisa's were trashed after the Macintosh came out, just because the Mac was cheaper and better.

The Macintosh's all used Apple's own O(perating)S(ystem), which is, at this point, called 'MacOS'. This system continued to be updated and modified until recently, when the original line was terminated with 9.2, and a new system, OS X (pronounced oh-ess-ten, Apple quickly adds), was made based on UNIX. Strangely enough, shortly after OS X, Windows XP appeared with a similarly updated GUI (but based on Windows NT or ME or something). Hmmm...

The Macintosh I bought was the 500Mhz iMac with the CD-RW drive built-in, that cost $999. It came with OS 9.2 and OS X, and several unimpressive games, as well as a couple applications, and an optical mouse (brag, brag). It also has one of those weird ergonomic keyboards, with a clear plastic frame and black keys. Report from spring '03: The [7] key on the main part of the keyboard has vanished, and because they aren't mechanically activated, I will just have to live w/o it.

I have gotten a few applications. The coolest is 'Blender 3D', a neat 3D modeling program with an opaque I/O and no tutorial, but I also got the OS-X version of Angband. Angband is a Rouge-like game based on uMoria (Unix Moria). This game has itself spawned many subgames. I also have a OS 9.2 Playstation emulator, with which I have (nearly) beaten Dino Crisis 2 (Hints: To get large combos, run across a whole zone, dodging when the raptors jump at you, and pull out your shotgun and mow them down. Also, if you get the twin submacineguns for the female character (Regina?), then you can combo 15 of those water things over at Third Energy Reactor as you run down the walkway for 9000 points!). It runs well on Dino Crisis 2, but I cannot vouch for other games. It doesn't run in OS-X, only in 9.2.

More recently, my brother has gotten all his Blizzard Software games out, and since Blizzard always includes Mac versions on their CDs, I now can play Diablo and Starcraft. My GPA hasn't falled yet, but it might [Fallen, not falled. Bad sign (; ]. Early 2003: Have gotten several more freeware and shareware games. Am playing with NES and SNES emulators a lot.

Fall 2004 and the iBook G4

I now have a laptop. A laptop that has a CPU a generation newer and double the MHz of my iMac, that has a built-in CD-RW/DVD drive, and the latest OS. Guess which I use all the time.

Anyway, the iBook G4 is a superb machine. I don't do much that involves heavy processor power, but it runs smoothly most of the time, and it's far more portable than a iMac. I've played with using Photoshop on it, no problem, and I've watched movies a couple times. One of the idle fantasies I had when I bought it was that I'd write my first Novel on it, but anyone who knows me can tell you how that's going. Surprisingly, I haven't started gaming on this one; just more online comics. Then again, I've trailed off on the computer gaming since I've been at school, so that hardly applies. In short - I like the box, but I'm probably not going to do that much with it.

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