OT: Mac colors

[Clinton MacDonald]

Bill:

On Tuesday, November 4, 2003, at 02:27  PM, Longman, Bill wrote:
> Hey, this is more a question about all the colorful Macs. Why, when 
> most people post on this list, do they give the color of their > machine?

I know this stuff because I am a Mac Geek (with all the unhygienic 
habits that implies). There is no reason that anyone else should be 
expected to know it.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, Apple made a plethora of Macs, all with 
cryptic and non-descriptive names (Was a Mac Classic II different from 
a Performa 200? How did a Power Macintosh 5400 differ from a Performa 
5400?). When Steve Jobs returned to Apple with the purchase of NeXT 
around 1998, he (thankfully) put an end to the alphabet soup and 
instituted a newer, simplified naming scheme built around a newer, 
simplified product line. Now, Apple sold a professional line (PowerMac 
G3 or G4 and PowerBook G3 or G4) and a consumer line (iMac or iBook). 
(The eMacs and iPods fit in there, somewhere. :-) )

Unfortunately, within these simpler naming schemes, the actual products 
were updated and occasionally revamped entirely, yet kept the same 
names. To differentiate the products, users and Apple came up with 
ancillary names for the products. Therefore, a Bondi blue iMac refers 
to the very first all-in-one iMac that started it all. The various 
colors refer to iMac revisions and updates, the only outer 
manifestation of which was the candy-colored shell.

Similarly, the PowerMacs are differentiated by some distinguishing 
feature as color (the Blue & White PowerMac G3 was the first PowerMac 
to have a significant new case design that allowed it to be opened from 
the side with a drawbridge-like door (its predecessor was a "Beige G3" 
with a more traditional PC-like case design). The Blue & White G3 also 
marked the transition of the PowerMacs to the "New World" motherboards, 
which was a significant architectural change affecting how Macs boot at 
startup (New Worlds use yaboot with YDL, Old Worlds use BootX). As a 
visible indicator, all New World Macintoshes have built-in USB ports.

As others have noted, there are a few Web sites that keep track of this 
arcane lore for you. My favorite desktop application is Mactracker, 
which is also available for Windows:

<http://www.mactracker.ca/>

Best wishes,
Clint

-- 
Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:clint DOT macdonald AT sbcglobal DOT 
net>