Lego iMac G3 concept is unlikely to go anywhere, but it is very cute

Begging Apple to let another company make Macs for the first time since the '90s.

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[Mental Gear Reduction]

I didn't much care for the iMacs at the time, not least because of their pioneering of USB. Windows drivers for USB just weren't that good (and stayed kind of bad until, geeze, the early twenty-teens, maybe?), so that sort of tainted the idea of the machines as a whole to me.

But, damn, if I wasn't a bit nostalgic looking at that, anyway. Such a pleasant design, from a time with relatively few worries. I still wouldn't buy one, but at least this time I'd admire them if they were actually made.

 

[Mental Gear Reduction]

use it as if it were a travel mouse - toy car grip.

As I learned it, that's officially "claw grip", where your fingertips (mostly) and wrist (a little) are controlling the mouse, as opposed to 'palm grip', where your hand is actually resting on top, and the control comes almost all from the wrist.

Me, I find palm grip very uncomfortable. Claw grip forever, here.

 

[Mental Gear Reduction]

The ”toy car” come from that it is how you hold a toy car when driving it - held between thumb on one side of the mouse and two fingers on the other. Sounds like ”claw grip” is the same thing.

It's also called 'fingertip grip', but I think claw grip is the technical term.

Of course, the thought occurs: who gets to decide what's the technical term? I'm pretty sure that's what it's called, but I don't remember who had the authority to park that data in my head.

I always use claw grip. If I had to use a mouse with palm grip, I think my wrists would start hurting within hours.

 

[Mental Gear Reduction]

I hope not. It was an awful business decision. It was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the PC market worked.

Apple are much better off controlling the whole stack, and I would argue the end user experience is better for it as well.

Yeah, I was thinking about that. Microsoft didn't sell PCs, its health came from selling copies of the OS to everyone, so the stronger the ecosystem is, the more money they make.

With Apple, they'd be directly competing with their own customers, so the incentives are wrong. To the degree that third parties became prosperous, Apple would be selling fewer Macs. The better the ecosystem got, the worse Apple itself would do.

 

[Mental Gear Reduction]

I am so happy to not have to play around with discharging the anode cap of high-voltage CRTs (in case the automatic-discharge mechanisms failed)) any more. Apple issued a special tool; alternately you could use a screwdriver with an alligator-clip wire connected to a ground.

I worked in a computer store with a monitor repair guy, and I developed a very healthy fear of CRTs. I wouldn't get close to one unless I absolutely had to. Those things can sit unplugged for years, and still retain enough charge to kill you.