Episodes
Published 03/26/21
Stephen Hackett joins Jason to wrap up the series and discuss all the Macs that didn't make the list.
Published 03/26/21
From November 20, 2020: Titanium PowerBook G4, MacBook Air, the original Macintosh, PowerBook 140/170, and iMac G3.
Published 03/19/21
From August 31, 2020: The Macintosh Portable, Power Computing clones, iMac G4, Power Mac G4 Cube, iBook, Macintosh SE/30, and laying out pages at college newspapers.
Published 03/12/21
An interview from June 12, 2020 covering the first nine entries in the series.
Published 03/05/21
From November 20, 2020: Titanium PowerBook G4, MacBook Air, the original Macintosh, PowerBook 140/170, iMac G3, and to his great dismay, John learns Jason's final rankings.
Published 02/19/21
John Siracusa discusses six more old Macs for the 20 Macs for 2020 Project.
Published 02/19/21
Two interviews with John Siracusa used for the 20 Macs for 2020 podcast, discussing the first nine entries in the series.
Published 02/12/21
It was the late 90s and Apple was on the ropes. Steve Jobs knew the company needed a lifeline, fast. And 10 months after Jobs took back control of the company, he announced the product that would fund Apple's resurgence and change its future forever.
Published 12/31/20
After the failure of the Macintosh Portable, Apple took a different approach to designing a laptop. The result helped tip the balance of power between humans and computers.
Published 12/24/20
The first Mac followed in the Lisa's footsteps and had a lot of limitations--but it changed the course of the computer industry forever.
Published 12/18/20
Apple's first attempt at the ultimate thin and light laptop was overpriced and underpowered. The second attempt resulted in the definitive Mac of the 2010s.
Published 12/11/20
Apple's first metallic silver laptop set the company on a path that it's been on for two decades and counting, but it also proved that the company still had a lot to learn.
Published 12/04/20
What's the best Mac of all time? It's an impossible question to answer. Yet three well-known Mac commentators all have the same answer.
Published 11/20/20
After a lot of speculation, Steve Jobs finally filled in the Mac's fourth product quadrant with a consumer laptop that was one of a kind. But what's a "consumer laptop," really?
Published 11/13/20
There may have never been a Mac more aligned with Steve Jobs's personal quirks than the Power Mac G4 Cube. It was a spectacular failure.
Published 11/06/20
One of Apple's greatest design triumphs was meant to set the company up for the next decade. Instead, it became a false start--and a rejected design direction ended up being more functional, if less inspirational.
Published 10/30/20
For a couple of years in the mid-90s, the Mac market was enthralled by a clonemaker with great deals and riotous marketing.
Published 10/23/20
Thank goodness there are second chances, because Apple's first attempt to make a portable Macintosh was as inauspicious at it gets.
Published 10/09/20
In an era where Apple liked to show concepts from its design lab in public, one weird Mac prototype somehow became a real product, and was unveiled at the end of the worst Apple keynote in history.
Published 10/02/20
You know about the Macintosh, but do you know about the sequel? The Macintosh II was huge--literally. But its compact successors might be the pinnacle of late 80s/early 90s Apple design.
Published 09/25/20
The popularity of the iPod led Apple to create a Mac designed specifically to tempt people to switch from Windows. It didn't go as planned, but the result was a Mac model that's been with us for fifteen years and counting.
Published 09/18/20
One of the most important developments in the history of the Mac was not created in Cupertino, but by a Mac clonemaker in a tiny town in Georgia.
Published 09/11/20
Professionals were dragged out of their beige towers by an iMac-inspired Power Mac that featured a drop-down door, big plastic handles, and a raft of new technologies.
Published 09/04/20
Apple follows up its groundbreaking original PowerBooks with a new set of laptops that ushered in perhaps the ugliest period in Apple laptop history.
Published 08/28/20