Comment by bri3d

5 years ago

A coworker gave me one of these awhile ago, and I spent some time setting up OS X 10.4 and TenFourFox on it as well as OS9 and Classilla. It runs surprisingly well for the timeframe and specs - TenFourFox in particular was a ridiculously impressive porting effort to keep around.

These had pretty fun power adapters too - they were round and the laptop-side cord looped around the adapter itself. I miss the days of Apple adapters having built-in storage for the laptop-side cord - they seem to have dropped this functionality with the switch to USB-C.

The keyboards on every generation of Apple computer with under-keyboard memory were atrocious though - like truly amongst the worst keyboards of all time.

11 comments

bri3d

Reply
titzer  5 years ago

Both generations of magsafe adapters were by far superior to USB-C. I feel like both ends are pretty fragile now.

  • kalleboo  5 years ago

    With MagSafe I was replacing the adapter yearly. With USB-C, I bought third party USB-C cables that are braided and have (gasp) strain-relief, and they hold up great.

  • Reason077  5 years ago

    I don't find USB-C fragile at all. I don't think I've ever had a USB-C connector break and I've been using them for, what, about 5 years now?

    Of course, there's always the risk of tripping on a cable and sending a laptop or phone flying, which MagSafe mitigated. But the USB-C cable also disconnects at both ends which helps a bit. And I think we spend less time charging in general now days. Laptop batteries were pretty terrible back in 1999 compared to the all-day battery life of our modern M1 Macs :)

    • titzer  5 years ago

      I've broken at least one micro USB port and I've had a couple close calls with the Macbook USB-C power cable that the poor notebook's life flashed before my eyes.

      2 replies →

  • codesnik  5 years ago

    but now you can switch them. twice the longevity! just kidding, I recently wrapped both ends in shrinking tubes, seem to stop fraying (for now)

    • Reason077  5 years ago

      At least you only need to replace the cable now. Back in the day, you had to replace the entire adapter when the plug end inevitably started fraying.

nextos  5 years ago

I loved the keyboards from the first Intel MacBooks. In my opinion, even better that classic ThinkPads.

Great feedback, spring-like feel and good travel.