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I think I can speak to this a bit since I run a hobby business[0] selling restored Mac mini G4s (originally from 2005) with a hacked version of Mac OS 9 on them
by WoodenChair 2y ago
I think I can speak to this a bit since I run a hobby business[0] selling restored Mac mini G4s (originally from 2005) with a hacked version of Mac OS 9 on them from Mac OS 9 Lives so that retro computer users (people still using production software for Mac OS 9) can have the fastest possible machine to run classic Mac OS. After selling more than 60 of them, my customers (from what I can tell) are largely in five categories:
- People doing this for their kids so the kids can use the software of their parent's youth (my own motivation that led me to fall into this [1])
- People doing this for work (still using old music production software for example)
- People doing this because they care about historical software (had a couple museum curators buy one)
- People who are tinkerers but want to tinker with software not hardware so they buy from me
- Retro gamers
In all of these cases I don't think it's really about feeling old or young. It's just about doing something that they perceive as better than they can achieve on a modern machine. And by "better" I mean better to them. Not objectively better. They just love those games from the 90s. Or they just think that the educational software back then was less addictive/better for their kids than the software today.
Sure, if we think about anything from our distant past it can make us feel old. But I think it's more that this hobby (or work) actually serves a purpose for these customers and they don't think along the old/young axis.
0: https://os9.shop https://os9.shop
1: https://x.com/davekopec/status/1780032912768770448 https://x.com/davekopec/status/1780032912768770448
- temp0826 2y agoWhat really makes me feel old is calling systems from 2005 retro :)
- hoistbypetard 2y agoYep! My family's first computer was 21 years old in 2005. (I remember scouring the classified ads in the newspaper each week with my dad in late 1987 to find the best computer deal we could. We wound up with an Apple //c from 1984.)
- lukan 2y agoThat got me as well. Retro is the 80s for me ..
- anonymousiam 2y agoMe too (70's and 80's). I've got a PDP11 clone from Obsolescence Guaranteed that I just love: https://obsolescence.dev/obsolescence-newsletter-dec-2024.html https://obsolescence.dev/obsolescence-newsletter-dec-2024.ht...
- JohnFen 2y ago2005 isn't retro. That's essentially yesterday. "Retro", to me anyway, measn any system from the 80s or earlier. Now excuse me, I need to go chase some whippersnappers off of my lawn.
- Cpoll 2y agoWas 80s stuff not "retro" in 2000? Because I remember feeling that it was.
- JohnFen 2y agoYes, it was, to a certain degree. The difference between machines in the 2000s and 1980s is much, much larger than the difference between machines now and machines in the 2000s, though, making the "retro" timeline nonlinear.
- markus_zhang 2y agoI kinda think everything before the century is retro. But I guess it's personal.
- leptons 2y agoThe Mac mini G4 isn't really "retro". Maybe it is to you, but I doubt you'll see any G4 minis at the Vintage Computer Faire.
- WoodenChair 2y agoIt's not really that the computer itself is retro, it's that people use it for retro computing because it's pretty much the fastest Mac you can get that can still run Mac OS 9 (1999). People then run games and apps from systems 1-9. So people buy this computer from 2005 to run an operating system from 1999 to run apps from 1984 to 1999.
- leptons 2y agoThe only Apple that is really "retro" is the Apple 1 or Apple II series. A mac is still a mac, even OS9.
- LarryMade2 2y agoYeah for me OS9 is pretty retro - Classic Mac OS was great with some awesome apps many of which didn't make it into OSX and using the classic emulator in OSX doesn't help the experience. The Mini is a great compact hardware platform to run them on. I have four minis that run various Mac OS generations.
- linguae 2y agoA thought dawned on me this morning when I was thinking about the Power Mac G5, which came out around the time I first started getting into Macs: over 20 years have elapsed since the release of the Power Mac G5 (and it's been almost 20 years since the release of the original Mac Mini). 20 years ago was the 20th anniversary of the original Macintosh 128K. The Macintosh 128K was decidedly retro back in 2004. Even though the curve of evolution between 2004 and 2024 is much flatter than the curve between 1984 and 2004, I still consider a 20 year-old computer retro, even if a Mac Mini G4 or a Power Mac G5 is much closer to contemporary Macs than a Macintosh 128K was to a Mac Mini G4.
- markus_zhang 2y agoThat's really nice. On a side note, do you happen to know where (other than Ebay) one can get reliable supply of 12-inch iBook G4 batteries?