What is it about typing on an old keyboard
that makes everything feel alright?
I am writing this on an Apple Graphite
clamshell iBook from... sometime between mid 1999 and late 2000. I could try
and find the exact year, but I'm not sure it'd be worth it. Suffice to say it's
an old machine, but it still runs just fine for what it is.
It's not super capable by modern standards
- it has wifi, but can't talk to a modern network. It has a browser, but it
can't handle modern encryption. It's got an optical drive, but no burner, and
can only handle CDs. It has USB, but it's 1.1 and slow enough to make any large
files take forever. The monitor is color, but it's limited to a low resolution.
Text looks great, but graphics? Eh.
But the keyboard! It's a bit small compared
to a modern laptop keyboard, but it's nice and springy. The keys have a nice
curve to them, they have a decent amount of travel, and it's genuinely
comfortable to type on. It's a wonder that Apple made such a damn good laptop
keyboard and have managed to totally screw it up in the intervening two
decades.
So... Why bother? Why spend any time,
money, or effort rebuilding such a useless machine? What's the point?
Because it's fun. Taking something that, at
best, is e-waste, and giving it a second life is a fairly relaxing way to spend
time. Once fixed, it can be used to play old games and other antiquated
software. See, this little guy was made before Apple transitioned to x86
processors, so it still runs on the old IBM Power PC (PPC) architecture, and
supports OS 9 and below. Which also means it runs a whole host of the even older
software written for the original 68k Motorola architecture.
But it's also recent enough that it can run
Mac OS X - so it can handle some of the newer software as well. Outside of
something like a G4 PowerMac - which is significantly more powerful, but also
significantly less portable - it's a damn near perfect machine for old Mac
software hobbyists.
One somewhat practical silver lining can be
found in it's limitations: It makes a perfect distraction free writing tool.
Because the keyboard is so nice, it makes writing a breeze. Because it can't be
connected to the internet easily, can't playback movies, modern games, or do
anything else without some effort and forethought, it makes focusing on the
task of writing - and only the task of writing - much easier for those of us
who find themselves easily distracted. Sure, you may not get all the bells and
whistles of modern word processing software, but the built in TextEdit does a
good enough job for first drafts. It saves everything in the near universally
supported RTF format (or just plain text), supports simple layout and
formatting, and even has a fairly competent spell check built in.
Beyond all that, this was the sort of
computer I wanted to own back in the early 2000's, and could never afford. As
far as midlife crises go, spending a few bucks on an old laptop, getting it up
and running, and toying around with old Star Trek games isn't really that bad.
