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The appeal of old computers [1]

['Rob Beschizza']

Date: 2025-07-08

Anthony "decryption" Agius writes about Trying To Find Meaning In Owning An Old Mac. Following in the footsteps of his father's late-life interest in classic cars, he bought an SE/30 from 1989 and "hasn't been this excited about a computer for a long time."

I was starting kindergarten at the time, so I have no nostalgic connection to this computer. I didn't even have a Mac at home until 2003. That whole era of the classic Mac totally bypassed me at home with a 486 then a Pentium running flavours of Windows. For me, this old Mac is an exploration of an era of computing that inspired the computers I do have nostalgia for, like Windows 95 and Mac OS X. Kinda like how I enjoyed the band Silverchair, then looked into what inspired them – Nirvana and Pearl Jam – then what inspired them – Dinosaur Jr, R.E.M., Sonic Youth, and so on, that's resulted in the music taste I have now.

I have two versions of this impulse. First, the same game (old Mac!) but played on easy mode: the 17" iMac of the mid-2000s. My one is pictured above. These remain the most compact iMac Apple put out and with a little tinkering you can run 64-bit operating systems, including the exceedingly pleasant Snow Leopard. In photos that generation was an ugly duckling compared to the fabled luxo lamp design it replaced, but they're adorable in the flesh.

Second, though, is something I think qualifies as the same techiraeth as a millennial buying an SE/30: I want something that's just a little more primitive than the machines I first had as a child. For me, that's text and graphics in few colors and if you want any of it to move you better be patient. As decryption puts it, "random drives in an unpractical car."

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