“A rare, never-used and still-in-box Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, designed by present-day Apple design head Jonathan Ive, has turned up on Ebay for auction,” Electronisa reports.
“The unit is one of the 11,601 machines sold to customers outside Apple,” Electronisa reports. “The four smaller accessory boxes have been opened for inspection, but all components are still in their original packaging.”
Electronisa reports, “Originally introduced in 1997 at a cost of $7,500, the computer exemplified the concepts and philosophy that would dominate Apple’s future design aesthetic under returning CEO Steve Jobs… As of early Monday morning, only a couple of dozen people had viewed the auction, and the bidding price (with no minimum set) was $28.13.””
Read more in the full article here.
The eBay listing (price stands at US$860 as of last check) is here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
A 20th anniv Mac box opening video is on YouTube. The machine fired up as if it were still 1997! No problem.
The guy selling needs to learn how to post better pictures of what he’s selling
I seem to remember one on Jerry Seinfeld’s desk for awhile.
I’m amazed people would buy old technology and pay so much for it. I’d understand if it was 100 years old and still new in the box like a real antique, but seriously!
I wanted one of those badly when I saw them for sale in the day though. I can see the draw of owning one now. Of course, having one new in the box would keep it that way as an investment and I couldn’t play with it 🙁
Steve would laugh at whoever buys this dinosaur.
Agreed. Strange world we live in…strange world.
Considering that as of 10:40 PDT it is selling for $1525 you could have a new modern MacBook for that price..
Barely three hours later, the current bid is now sitting at $3,600. THIRTY-SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. For the bid price, one could now buy a nice new MacBook, an iPad, an iPhone, and have money left over a nice night out on the town.
What will be interesting is seeing where it finally lands. If it’s gone from $5 to $3600 in less than 24 hours, where will it be almost a week from now?
What’s also amazing is that a very nice known-working one, with the original accessories and box just sold recently for about a grand. Someone’s going to pay thousands just have one in a sealed carton. WTF?
Early flat screen iMac. The first Magic Trackpad. Ten years before that, Jobs is at NeXT demoing what would become OSX. And there has barely been an innovation in the way computing looks and works since, certainly not from any other company. Even the iPad is an offspring of this. Geniuses. Both of them.
Remember though, the TAM was Gil Amelio’s brainchild. It was released prior to Steve’s return.
And yes, I did want one when it came out. If nothing else, just for the sound system!
It would be fun to have it, but as I recall, the last OS this machine would run is Mac OS 8.
-jcr
Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I still like OS 7.x the most.
8.6 gets my vote.
Actually it would run OS 9.1. Check out the specs on this link. Its actually a pretty decent website for checking out old Mac tech.
http://lowendmac.com/ppc/20th-anniversary-macintosh.html
LOL..packing label says “Assembled in the U.S.A.”. That WAS a long time ago..
“Originally introduced in 1997 at a cost of $7,500, the computer exemplified the concepts and philosophy that would dominate Apple’s future design aesthetic under returning CEO Steve Jobs
$7500? Sounds more like the concepts that screwed Apple up in the ’80s.
The initial price wasn’t that far out of line, once you consider that it was never intended to be a mainstream product but a showcase for Apple’s design group.
I ended up getting one for free from a friend at work (I recall he got it from an third-party Apple store that was going out of business several years before). It all worked perfectly, but since I didn’t need it for work, I upgraded the OS and software as far as possible at the time and gave it to a friend who couldn’t afford much of anything in a decent computer. It’s still going last I heard.
It had better than decent sound for playing music, what with the (Bose-designed, iIRC) subwoofer that came with it.
Hey! Jonny has hair! 🙂
(jealous)
Can’t wait to see what it sells for, still have mine but sorry to say the original box is gone.
The twentieth anniversary Mac is flat, monolithic and a clumsy conglomeration of pseudo-industrial design elements that lack the all important air of class. I doubt Jonny-boy is proud of it today. Beyond the texture and color, it doesn’t give the impression all the parts belong together.
I’ll bet it has a dead PRAM battery, and that it’s not so easy to replace.
It looked cool (a nice design exercise), but even it in its day, it was not that great of a computer. Its screen was something like 800×600 resolution and its processor was a PowerPC 603 (used in Apple’s laptops of that time) and not a 604 (used in Power Macs). It was basically a PowerBook made into a desktop computer; it even had a keyboard with an integrated trackpad.
It was well worth $2000 when it went on fire sale, but for the original $7500, it should have been more. Or they should have made a mass-market version (without the fancy leather-palmrest keyboard or sub-woofer) and sold it for about $2000 (or whatever a similarly spec’ed PowerBook sold for at that time).
If I had 10,000 I would bid that today. No doubt it will sell for more.
J Ive was proud and worked his full potential on this machine. It was just way ahead of its time, as the OS and internals was not quite up to speed. If he designed and released a new anniversary SuperMac, with current hardware tech and OS capabilities, it will blow everyones mind!
It’s up to $4,050 now!
20 Years!
Awesome!!
I LOVE Macs!
Only difference between the TAM I have and this one is the “In Original Box”. I’ll take $2,000 for mine…still works and watch TV on it all the time in my basement!