Following up on the earlier post about the original Apple-1 computer put up for auction in the UK: the thing was just bought for $213,600 by Marco Boglione, a private collector . What does he get for spending all that cash? Simply put, it’s a piece of tech history, but if you want the longer answer, it’s one of the first real “personal computers” anyone could buy back in 1976, during a time when real computer enthusiasts had to weld their own motherboards together. Hand-built by Jobs and Wozniak out of a garage, this particular piece is only one of 200 Apple-1 computers ever built and is probably one of the most well-preserved of the lot. The Apple-1 came with the original box stamped with Apple’s original logo, as well as a pair of letters from Jobs and Wozniak.
Funny thing about tech. Unlike some other consumer passions like cars or guitars, they don’t really become any more expensive as the years go by. Case in point: a lot of car lovers would appreciate a vintage ’55 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing more than a new 2010 SL65, and any guitar collector would be willing to pay top dollar for a classic 50’s-era Gibson Les Paul if he got a chance. But the average tech geek would probably not be willing to trade an iPhone 4 for, say, a 1996 Motorola StarTAC (although the StarTAC’s apparently gaining status as a collector’s item, according to RetroBrick). But this bulky wooden monstrosity? It’s about to break that trend. This is an original Apple-1 computer—only one out of 200 ever built by Jobs and Wozniak and sold from out of Steve Jobs’ parents’ garage from back in ‘76—and it’s about to go on sale for 150,000 euros (around US$200K).
Despite the looks, this here is not a fancy new external optical drive. It’s actually a full PC—a “Mini PC,” actually—made by Shuttle, who specializes in making compact desktop PCs. Dubbed the XS35 series, this new line is listed as Shuttle’s smallest ever, with dimensions of 25.2 x 3.85 x 16.2cm, but can hold in everything you’d need to run a full desktop setup.
Entertainment and gaming desktops that come with built-in Blu-ray drive aren’t rare these days, but nettops—usually low-priced, low-power PCs that offer basic entertainment and productivity capabilities—traditionally never bothered with the high-end optical drive. Zotac just bucked the trend on their two new ZBOX Mini-PCs though; while they’re still powered by Intel Atom processors, they also come with a Blu-ray drive that turns them into full-blown (but still small) HD-playing Home Theater PCs.
After refreshing the top-end Mac Pro for the pros, Apple also updated the consumer iMac line for everyone else. They still look the same as the existing Core 2 Duo iMacs, but this new batch come with newer innards, replacing the Core 2 Duo processors with Intel’s newer Core i3 and i5 processors on the mainstream configurations and a quad-core, 2.93GHz Intel Core i7 CPU on the top-end.
