so this is the first blog entry i'm posting to the site, i'm going to use this entry to ramble at great length about the various members of my apple mac collection. i've labeled it part 1 because i have a few more additions coming in the near future, all of them desktops, so in this post i'll be focusing primarily on the laptops in my collection.
junebook is the name of my ibook g3. the oldest member of my collection both in terms of vintage as well as when i acquired it. back in high school in 2012, i had a friend who happened to have this little thing lying around and was looking to get rid of it. i traded him a pair of speakers i had stolen from the school and wasn't using, arguably getting the better end of the deal i think. the speakers were kinda shitty anyways. at the time it was running mac OS X 10.3.9 panther, i tried to upgrade it to tiger but i didn't have any blank DVDs and i'm not even sure junebook has a DVD drive anyway? i mostly used it for the novelty of having a little mac i could play diablo ii on in high school, before leaving it hidden away somewhere for years.
years passed until i started fucking around with it again. i wiped the drive and installed ubuntu on it at some point, but by 2020 i'd changed my mind and tried to reinstall mac os on it. i spent a long time fucking around trying to get the graphics drivers to work in mac OS 9 so i could actually make use of its 1024x768 display resolution, while also setting it up to run mac OS X 10.2.4 jaguar. i'd later upgrade the jaguar installation to tiger (a recurring theme in junebook's history), and spent a lot of time programming C in xcode, but i still wasn't using it much.
by the end of 2020 i had effectively permanently switched to the mac platform from windows, replacing both my studio computer with an imac and my personal laptop with a new macbook air. i started getting much more of an interest in older macs as well, and broke junebook back out early 2021 to fuck around with some more. by that point i'd also picked up a white 2008 polycarbonate macbook and was beginning to grow my collection, and was slowly finding more of an actual use for the aging powerpc G3 machine. i think i've reinstalled the operating system on this computer half a dozen times since then, just experimenting with using OS 9, jaguar, tiger, and even panther as the primary operating system on it. it spent some time as kageroubook for a while as i'd decided to name all of my computers after touhou characters, but winter 2022 i renamed the whole collection after homestuck and deltarune characters.
today junebook is currently running mac OS X 10.4.11 tiger from the stock 20GB hard disk, with a 700MHz powerpc G3 processor and the max 640MB of RAM. it is a compact little machine, comfortable to sit with and type on, if a bit sluggish at times thanks to the RAM, the spinning hard disk, and the G3 processor. i mostly use it to play old powerpc mac games and use classic mac OS software, right now it's loaded up with older blizzard games as well as myst and riven. i also have older versions of final cut pro on it, but seeing as i don't really do anything with video i don't do much with them. within the week though i'll be breaking into it and replacing the hard disk with an SSD and possibly running OS 9, jaguar, and tiger on it? i plan to host a tiny library of mp3s on it for use with older ipods as well as using it as my primary OS 9 machine, but i'd still like to run both jaguar for speed and tiger for internet use.
terezibook is my powerbook g4. this is quite possibly my favorite mac to use apart from my daily driver. it's beautifully hefty with an impressively modern design, the screen looks nicer than honestly all of my other macs apart from my studio imac and my macbook air, and the keyboard is easily the best keyboard i've ever typed on. terezibook was a last minute pickup as i was quitting my job in 2021, initially coming with a 100GB hard disk and a dead battery. the battery on it is still dead, i'm looking to replace it so i can actually use it as a laptop, but i've since replaced the hard disk with a 240GB solid state drive. it also has a dead PRAM battery that i haven't bothered to replace, i probably should but i haven't found a replacement yet.
terezibook was previously known as reimubook when i first got it, running mac OS X 10.5.8 leopard for most of its life. currently i have it dual booting leopard and OS X 10.4.11 tiger. its primary usage is as my powerpc tech laptop. because it's formatted for apple partition map i'm able to use it to boot junebook off of over firewire in case i need to reinstall the operating system, plus it has enough storage to hold onto some of the more important files i need for junebook. i also use it to host the media library i use for my red 8GB ipod nano 2nd gen, a subset of my library on another computer.
the leopard install is the primary operating system on terezibook, it's the most recent and most capable of doing what i like to do with it, but i keep tiger around for classic mode and just because tiger looks stunning on its 15" display.
terezibook was actually the computer that i first beat diablo ii on, i've been a fan of the game ever since i was a child but i'd never gotten further than act 2 before summer 2021. i made it all the way up to act 3 on hell difficulty before deciding to shelve the character, but since i beat act 5 on normal and on nightmare i maintain i have actually beaten the game.
i'd like to replace the battery and the PRAM battery as well as increase the RAM, it currently only has 1GB of RAM despite having a maximum capacity of 1.5GB. the 1.67GHz powerpc G4 combined with the solid state drive provides a snappy experience in both leopard and especially in tiger. if i weren't so reliant on icloud drive for my writing i'd like to use it to write on just because the keyboard is so wonderful.
krisbook (formerly sanaebook) is the mac that really kickstarted my interest in collecting. originally picked up on a whim in january 2021, it very quickly became a secondary daily driver for me as well as the first of my "dream computers". i immediately replaced the hard drive with a 240GB SSD and reinstalled mac OS X 10.6.8 snow leopard on it, probably my favorite version of mac OS. i've had a fixation on this era of macs for years now, since it was my first real exposure to the mac as a platform.
i remember being a child in 2008-09 and going to best buy and seeing the beautiful imacs on display in the apple section of the store. i would play with garageband on them, even though i had no idea what i was doing. ever since then i've sort of dreamed of an alternate universe where my family hadn't been as poor as we were and where we'd been able to afford an imac in 2007 instead of the shitty gateway windows vista PC my dad bought instead. my goal since last year especially has been to build up a desktop setup that i could have used in 2009 just to see what it would have been like (stay tuned for the next post for updates on this...). i ended up picking up this macbook primarily as an excuse to have a period appropriate machine to host the media library for my 6th gen ipod classic, but i fell much more deeply in love with it than i would have expected.
krisbook runs a 2.1GHz intel core 2 duo with 4GB of RAM and apart from a few more resource intensive websites and the fact that snow leopard can't run a lot of more modern software, you almost wouldn't even know it wasn't a modern laptop. it can handle basic computing tasks really well and it also works as a wonderful bridge machine between my 2020 macbook air and my older powerpc machines. aside from media library use i also spent some time using it as a youtube machine while my macbook air was occupied doing other tasks, something which it handled a lot better than you'd expect. the only issue i have with it is that the battery has gone completely shot as of a few months ago for some unknown reason. i'm hoping to replace it with a new battery soon in order to get more use out of it, but for now i've just been keeping it on the power adapter.
susiebook is, as of posting, the most recent addition to the collection. a 15" late 2008 macbook pro currently dual booting OS X 10.6.8 snow leopard and OS X 10.11.6 el capitan, susiebook has become my primary mac tech machine. with a 500GB hard disk, i mostly use it to store a collection of mac OS X installers for my various machines. it is also the current host of my ipod's music library, migrated from krisbook and rebuilt after krisbook's battery died. initially i had hoped it would be a secondary daily driver for me, since el capitan is capable of running both discord and tweetdeck, but there were a couple issues i hadn't really anticipated when i bought the thing. still, it does get plenty of use as a tech machine for restoring and maintaining my other macs. it's also conveniently capable of running plexamp, so i can access my plex server from it and play music back.
the first issue i noticed after acquiring susiebook was the display panel. while the machine was advertised to me as "good condition", it arrived in anything but good condition. the display panel had come detached from the screen and threatens to come off entirely every time i open the machine up. the second issue i noticed was some kind of GPU issue? when the machine is off the charger for more than 5 or 10 minutes or so, it has weird graphical issues that cause it to freeze up and crash, requiring a reboot.
these are the more pressing issues with it, but another significant issue i have with this machine is that i honestly don't think i really anticipated how poorly it would run el capitan. it certainly shows its age, which is a bit sad, but understandable. i believe it's the earliest macbook pro model that's capable of running el capitan, which makes el cap the very last version of macOS that can run on it. thankfully, it does handle snow leopard very well.
i think there's also an issue with the disc drive, at least when trying to burn discs, but i don't think there's anything too particularly off about it other than that, it certainly reads discs well.
all in all susiebook has been a great use, even in spite of these issues. i've used it to reinstall operating systems on all of my other macs aside from junebook. somehow despite not being formatted for apple partition map, terezibook is capable of booting off of the drive which came in really handy when i replaced terezibook's hard drive with an SSD. it's also come in handy when casually playing games on my macbook air connected to my TV, it allows me to use my living room TV while still having access to discord and twitter without having to resort to using my phone. the display, when it works, also looks absolutely stunning, even if i do prefer the display on terezibook.
vriskabook is my daily driver and has been the center of my digital life since the day i bought it. previously my daily driver had been a 2014 lenovo ideapad that was so awful it would routinely take upwards of 10-15 minutes just to open discord. for most of my life prior to 2020, i had gotten used to using my phone as the center of my digital life, doing all of my social media browsing, my internet browsing, music listening, video watching, even image editing entirely on my phone, simply because in the windows world i'd never really owned a computer that could really handle the modern internet.
in 2020, i decided i wanted to make the switch to macOS and leave the world of windows behind. i started by replacing my aging 2008 lenovo that i'd somehow managed to keep alive as a studio computer with a 2013 imac (more on that later), and the experience was positive enough for me that i decided to jump ship completely. i had planned to pick up an intel macbook pro, but having heard some of the reports coming out about the then-new M1 macbook air, i figured i'd take the plunge and become an early adopter of the new apple silicon-based mac platform.
it hasn't been without its ups and downs of course, being the very first apple silicon based mac it's both the worst of them and has been prone to all sorts of kinks that apple have since worked out. overall though, it's been a deeply positive experience having a computer i can carry wherever, use wherever, with stupidly long battery life, and enough horsepower to do just about everything i want to do with it without even breaking a sweat.
primarily i use vriskabook for accessing the internet, writing, and managing both of my musical projects (nameless mist and robin) typically in the form of managing their bandcamp pages, though i also listen back to works in progress (such as rough mixes, different mix versions, listening back to masters to approve them for release, etc) and take care of album art. i also use it to work on this very site, though i'd love to have a bigger screen when working on web development things. the keyboard is impeccable, though, only being beat by terezibook's beautiful aluminum keyboard.
the only complaints i have are ones that aren't really complaints, but it very much has to do with the pains of being an early adopter. i wish it had a little bit more power behind it, and i wish it were easier to run windows programs on via crossover, although for the most part the very few windows programs i do need to run work pretty fine. it struggles with some very powerful programs, and oddly enough i sometimes have weird slowdown issues in discord and tweetdeck of all things, but for the most part it is an ultra-powerful ultra-portable notebook with a 512GB SSD, 8GB of RAM, and 8 cores of custom apple silicon that is as close to perfect as i can currently get for a daily driver.
if you made it this far down the post, thanks for reading. in a couple weeks i'm hoping to post a part 2 to this where i look at the handful of desktop macs i've acquired. it won't be quite as interesting i don't think, and it'll be a smaller post, but i'm hoping to ramble about them a little.