Bought My First Mac

I’m in the club! I feel so much cooler already.

Wait, what?! I have to have the latest, most expensive gadget with a half-eaten apple on it for everyone to like me? Too bad. I don’t think I’ll find the newest iPad at a garage sale for $5.

That’s right, I got this fancy iMac with 500 MHz of processing power, 128 MB of RAM, 28 GB of storage and a see-through case (plus an extra keyboard) for $5! It included OS X version 10.2.8 but software update hasn’t been run since July 7th, 2006! I also just realized that the CD drive doesn’t seem to work… but there was a copy of No Strings Attached by NSYNC stuck inside! I guess this thing IS from a while ago.

I wasn’t even expecting it to turn on but when I got it home and plugged it in it finally booted up and seems to work fine. The previous owners didn’t include an OS X boot CD or the administrator passwords for some reason… But after a little googling I figured out how to bypass the firmware password and change the admin passwords to something that I can remember. Setting up a Linux server last month really paid off as it taught me some of the basics of working with Unix based systems and the terminal.

It looks like it was wiped clean except for a copy of Microsoft Office and an Internet Explorer so old and ugly that it barely works. I can’t even get the apple site to load right in Safari so it doesn’t amount to much as far as function right now. It doesn’t have the specs to upgrade OS X very far, plus I don’t have any install discs. I’m going to try installing Lubuntu just to see if I can get some up-to-date software to work on it. Maybe I’ll use it as a media player in the studio. At worst, I’ll use it for parts.

It’s funny how cheesy it looks now, even though the gray is way less obnoxious than the brightly colored versions of the case. Was this considered cutting edge or the pinnacle of hardware design at some point? Will the current iPads look just as outdated after they have been around for a decade? Maybe when Quin graduates from high-school I’ll be able to find her a $5 iPad at a garage sale and we can laugh at the feeble technology of her youth.

If you’re interested and have a little extra cash, you can get a new version of the iMac that is a little more up-to-date.