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> Apple gets a special pass because it's pretty much the Louis Vuitton of electronics. Based on my observations, in the 90s and early 00s before Apple had beco

> Apple gets a special pass because it's pretty much the Louis Vuitton of electronics. Based on my observations, in the 90s and early 00s before Apple had become more of a lifestyle/fashion-oriented brand, in Japan there was a small but enthusiastic fanbase. There were a few models of Mac that were sold only or mostly in Japan, and when I was roaming the web in search of Mac software and tweaks back in the late 90s I remember encountering Japanese websites at a greater frequency than I did non-English sites of any other language (if I recall, French was the runner-up). That said I've not had much of this corroborated by anybody who lived in Japan during that timespan so I don't have a full picture. When I lived there in the early 10s I did see a number of old (10+ years) Macs in use in places like reception desks though.

bitwize 4y ago
My observations are based on when I went in 2011, by which point Apple was beginning to establish itself as a fashion brand. Apple computers did attract a small enthusiastic user base in Japan before it became a fashion brand -- and again, the traces of this are visible in anime as well! In Pretty Samy, the OS Tenchi and his friends prefer is called "Pineapple Mach 8", in reference to Mac OS 8. In the psychological thriller Perfect Blue, main character Mima is seen being shown how to use a Mac to get online by her manager, Rumi. And my favorite example: one of the books seen on Noriko's shelf in the first episode of Gunbuster is called "Wozniak talks about the Mac". The Amiga, by contrast, was almost invisible to the Japanese as far as I can tell. One exception was Fumito Ueda, an Amiga fan who would go on to develop games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus for Sony. Perhaps that is why his games have that haunting aesthetic quality, similar to Amiga favorites like Another World and Shadow of the Beast.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  For Apple-adjacent references in anime, Serial Experiments Lain is hard to beat. It's full of them. Among other things, Lain's computer looks a lot like a Twentieth Anniversary Mac, her classmate has a CRT iMac lookalike, and most computers in the show's universe run Copland OS (named after Apple's canceled Classic Mac OS rewrite). There's a nice 90s-web-style page outlaying the many references here: https://www.cjas.org/~leng/apple-lain.htm https://www.cjas.org/~leng/apple-lain.htm
  - bitwize 4y ago
    I forgot to mention Lain! Yeah, it's got more Apple (and NeXT and Be) references than any of them.
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bitwize 4y ago

My observations are based on when I went in 2011, by which point Apple was beginning to establish itself as a fashion brand. Apple computers did attract a small enthusiastic user base in Japan before it became a fashion brand -- and again, the traces of this are visible in anime as well! In Pretty Samy, the OS Tenchi and his friends prefer is called "Pineapple Mach 8", in reference to Mac OS 8. In the psychological thriller Perfect Blue, main character Mima is seen being shown how to use a Mac to get online by her manager, Rumi. And my favorite example: one of the books seen on Noriko's shelf in the first episode of Gunbuster is called "Wozniak talks about the Mac". The Amiga, by contrast, was almost invisible to the Japanese as far as I can tell. One exception was Fumito Ueda, an Amiga fan who would go on to develop games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus for Sony. Perhaps that is why his games have that haunting aesthetic quality, similar to Amiga favorites like Another World and Shadow of the Beast.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
For Apple-adjacent references in anime, Serial Experiments Lain is hard to beat. It's full of them. Among other things, Lain's computer looks a lot like a Twentieth Anniversary Mac, her classmate has a CRT iMac lookalike, and most computers in the show's universe run Copland OS (named after Apple's canceled Classic Mac OS rewrite). There's a nice 90s-web-style page outlaying the many references here: https://www.cjas.org/~leng/apple-lain.htm https://www.cjas.org/~leng/apple-lain.htm
- bitwize 4y ago
  I forgot to mention Lain! Yeah, it's got more Apple (and NeXT and Be) references than any of them.

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