Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh gallery
Submitted by macemx on Wed, 2010-02-03 11:28
Welcome to Mactivist's exclusive gallery of Mac'em X's own beloved Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM). This is possibly the most beautiful Mac you'll ever see, and one of the rarest; close-up photo galleries are hard to come by.
An apology: My photos didn't turn out as well as I hoped. I went for natural lighting, which is ideal for highlighting the TAM's unique color, but light availability didn't always cooperate. Add to that my limited photog skills, and the results really don't do the TAM justice. Still, I hope you'll get some sense of what a visually stunning machine this is.
Using this gallery: Click on a title to jump to that photo's page, or click on a photo to see a close-up without leaving the gallery page.
There are seven TAM gallery pages total.
This is the set-up, in-action TAM. (Not my photo; this one's from Wikimedia Commons.) |
The main unit - what the TAM User's Manual simply calls "the computer". It's a beauty - and if the rumor I've read is correct, it's one of the first designs that Jonathan Ives worked on for Apple. |
The other two pieces of the TAM trio: the custom keyboard and the bass unit. (Yes, that's bass, not base. You'll see why.) |
Unfortunately, I'm unable to offer an unboxing gallery. The only box piece I have with me is this one, which held the keyboard. Also in this photo are a few items included with the TAM: a CD case, a pen/pencil case, and a remote control. |
The keyboard inside its pizza-style box. The remote control and the pen case may have shipped inside it as well; I don't recall. |
A nice shot of the little goodies that ship with the TAM. Believe it or not, you're looking at a lot of leather there: a leather CD case, a leather pen case, and Italian leather palmrests on the keyboard. Yes, Apple made a point of noting the Italian pedigree there. The source of the other items' leather is unknown. (Steve was not with Apple then, so "slow employees" probably isn't it. : ) The remote is generic hard plastic. The pen and pencil have "rubberized" surfaces – more on that later. |
Another look at the beautiful keyboard. Note the "foot" poking out from behind, in the top right corner. The left and right feet swivel down to raise the back of the keyboard. Is it a good keyboard? People's likes vary, but I think most wouldn't be too happy with the TAM keyboard feel: somewhat "mushy", not "sharp" and "tactile". And as you can see, there's no 10-key pad; as with most laptops, lots of numerical input is a pain. (Even moreso here: there isn't even a "num lock" function to let regular keys operate as a 10-key pad.) The palms do feel pampered by all that Italian leather, though! |
Top-down view of the keyboard. Note that controls for screen, sound, etc., a staple of the modern Mac keyboard, aren't to be found on this 1997 Mac. The TAM placed those on the main computer unit instead. The top-right key is the power key. There are also power keys on the back of the computer unit and on the remote control. |
The keyboard from behind, with feet flipped down. The keyboard is built on old-style, proprietary Apple ADB connectors, not the USB used by modern computers. (No USB on the TAM!) There are two open connectors on the keyboard, one of which (on the right in this photo) is in use. In use by what? By the trackpad! That still leaves one open for a mouse, which you'll probably want. Not just any mouse; good luck finding something appropriately svelte and cool-looking. (Too bad Apple didn't design an artsy mouse for the TAM. Though if they had done so in 1997, it would have been single-button - in which case you might as well stick with the trackpad!) |
Yes, even the underside of a TAM keyboard is interesting. You can see how the trackpad's ADB cable runs from its plug in the rear, threads through a serpentine channel, and finally passes through a slot in the front of the keyboard. What's this all about? Apple wanted its TAM trackpad to be repositionable wherever you like, or even removable altogether. That sounds odd now, when every laptop computer has a fixed trackpad and no one complains about that. But this was 1997, and a trackpad was a pretty novel item then! I imagine that the TAM designers thought a fixed trackpad might not be welcomed by everyone. |
Those "channels" are interesting; I doubt you'll find the same in any other computer. The cable fits snugly in there – er, more or less, that is; it doesn't want to neatly "snap" in at all spots. And after you've played with it once, you'll want to leave it alone; pushing the cable into the the channel is a pretty clumsy process, not really a "plus" in the TAM experience. Still, something is needed to keep that cable from pooling in an ugly way beneath the keyboard, which would also prevent the keyboard from lying flat when its feet are turned up. Hence a channel. Why a channel on both left and right? It wouldn't seem necessary - except that you might have a preference for which side you'd like to attach the trackpad, in case you want to use it separated from the keyboard, and/or want to plug a mouse into a specific side. Hence two channels. Whew! A lot of work went into that keyboard underside. (And I wonder: Was it one of the last TAM parts designed? The clue is the modern, all-white Apple logo you see there, whereas the rest of the TAM sports the old rainbow logo. Does the keyboard underside intentionally point to the Apple logo transition that began shortly afterward?) |
What's that oddball square cut-out on the underside of the keyboard? Put a fingertip into the hole and pull outward... It's a "palmrest section" to fill the hole left by a detached trackpad! (It's upholstered in that famous Italian leather, of course.) |
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