Mastodawn

Marsh Ray 17h ago

RE: https://mastodon.social/@marioguzman/116326493397767894

The Power Mac G3 was a thing of beauty. It was a fashionable and ground breaking design while being unapologetically a computer. It went so far beyond the aesthetics of PC cases of the time to address the functional requirement to be able to open it up and add things to it. This aspect was shared with earlier Power Mac towers but never so beautifully realized as in the Power Mac G3. A truly innovative design and product and a self assured early first step on Apple’s decades long run.

James Baker 🍁1d ago

@Gte Crikey, I loved mine. About a week after I brought it home, I came in after work and my then girlfriend immediately shouted "Don't worry, the computer is safe!" Why wouldn't it be, I wondered, until I went into the office room and saw water raining down from the apartment above… Fortunately we had a hutch over it to keep the weather out, such as it was…

Jack Wellborn 1d ago

@Gte @marioguzman My desire for a Power Mac G3 stemmed from my experience with the Power Macintosh 7100, which required a shocking amount of disassembly just to upgrade the RAM. The ease of G3’s door is why it made my most notable Macs list.

Side note: Someone once told me those desktop Power Macs had a cool hinging feature. It was certainly possibly dumbass teenage me missed it, but it turns out the hinge came with the 7500 (probably because the 7100 sucked so much.)

https://wormsandviruses.com/2020/08/my-three-most-notable-macs/#:~:text=Power%20Mac%20G3%20(Blue%20and%20White)

My Three Most Notable Macs – Worms and Viruses

Aaron Priven 17h ago

@jackwellborn @Gte @marioguzman my recollection is that the 7500 case was slightly better to work on than the Blue & White G3 case because it was easier to have the main board be stable on the bottom of the machine rather than moving on the door. But both were so much better than anything else around.

(I bought a used 8500 once after only working on 7500 type cases. So hard to open, such a disappointment.)

Ged Maheux 1d ago

@Gte @marioguzman i loved mine so so much.

Litha Soyizwapi 1d ago

@Gte I love mine. It still boots up in OS 9 and OS X. 😎

@Gte @marioguzman This was the first computer I bought for myself with my own money as I headed off to college. Absolutely loved that machine.

@Gte I was lucky enough to see it in person at the Macworld expo (I think?) in which it was released. Up until then I’d had a PowerMac 7100, which was such a pain to get inside of. I saw the entire side of the G3 just unfold with a latch and went straight home and ordered one. Amazing engineering.

K. Langoso 🇧🇷🔴🐷🇳🇬🏡😷1d ago

@Gte the iMac was absurdly cute.

This thing shouted “THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED”.

Michael Cook 1d ago

@Gte @marioguzman I was in PCs at the time. I waited *years* for some case manufacturers to copy the fold out idea, and they never did. At least not before I gave up on build your own.

I had already resigned myself to an ugly beige box thing. That wasn’t going to change.

Those machines amazed me.

@Gte @marioguzman also kind of crazy, it was replaced the G4 less than 9 months after intro. Computers really did move fast back then.

@Gte Smurf tower!

Anthony Sorace 1d ago

@Gte The first time I opened one blew my mind. A big “holy crap, of course, why aren’t all cases like this” moment.

Sven A. Schmidt 1d ago

@Gte @marioguzman That and the TiBook were the best

Dan Moren 1d ago

@Gte @marioguzman Mine’s in my closet. One of my favorite computers of all time!

Kit Paul 22h ago

@GteI I loved and admired the progression of form and materials from iBook G3 to iMac G3 and Power Mac G3 — and the bold way the all-black PowerBook G3 cut through the colorful and happy lineup like an untamed predator, while honoring the curvy, organic visual style of the entire range. What a show of absolute design mastery. What a tsunami in the world of boxy beige anonymous machines.

Ozzie D, NP-hard

@Kitone this really makes me want to go down to the cellar and caress my Pismo.

@Gte to this day they still make ATX boxes and NONE of them are this will designed.

I thought the “smurf” box looked dumb then and looks dumb now, but I’m flabbergasted by the fact that nobody took this design and ran with it.

Jason Martin 15h ago

@Gte @marioguzman That was a often-encountered objet d’art at the campus store and many computer labs at my university in the late-90s.

David Giffin 4h ago

@Gte @gruber @marioguzman I had one, loved it