Introduced in 1997, the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM) was to be a showcase for Apple technology and industrial design. The design is cutting edge - very slim, very user friendly and it takes up little desk space. The round item is the subwoofer/power supply, and it sits on the floor under the desk.
The keyboard is a special unit using parts from the PowerBook 3400 series. The CD-ROM drive sits vertically, and because of this, it only runs at 4x speeds. The screen is a 12.1" active matrix LCD with a more powerful backlight than the PowerBooks. The sound system is very nice. Designed by Bose especially for the TAM, it consists of the subwoofer, two satellite speakers in the main unit, and special circuitry for sound imaging. It sounds excellent for the size, especially with audio CDs. The logic board is a modified version of the Power Mac 6400/6500 series called Alchemy. The CPU is a 603ev running at 250 MHz, with a system bus speed of 50 MHz and 256K L2 cache. Expansion is limited to two RAM slots, one 7" PCI slot, and a CSII slot for Ethernet and modem cards. The TAM's rear panel is too small to fit an expansion card under it. To solve that problems, the designers did two things: first, they set the cards at a 90 degree angle to the slot with special adapter cards, and second, they supplied s larger rear panel (see below) called a "backpack".
All the bells and whistles are included as well: FM radio tuner, Cable TV tuner, ports to attach a VCR or camcorder, and IR remote control, hands-free telephone, telephone answering machine, FAX machine software, 33.6 Kps Geoport telecomm adapter, and removable trackpad. Also included are a nice, complete owner's manual, leather CD holder for the system disks, leather holster for a matching pen/pencil set, and all of the needed I/O cables and adaptors. Originally, the TAM was special ordered, and someone set it up for you, however, as the price dropped, this concierge service was dropped. As time continued, Apple had a real hard time selling off the remaining stock - the machine was just not powerful enough to warrant the high prices, which started at $9000, then dropped to $7500, to $4000, then to $2000.
After Apple sacrificed the TAMs remaining, they broke the molds. A good thing for collectors, but there are very few spare parts for these machines.
The real question most people has is how is it actually living with this modern sculpture? I *really* like this machine, and truly feel Apple could sell lower-cost machines using this design language in good numbers. Steven Jobs is claimed to hate the TAM because "it represents everything that is wrong with Apple" at the time it came out. I will admit that this machine was definite heavily influenced by the designers and the "high art" they represent, but usability is high, and the visual impact is stunning. I have never had a reaction to the machine anything short of stunned stares. If you think it looks cool in the picts, see one in real life - you will not believe it. (One thing that does not show in the picts is the size of the main unit. Although it is very thin, it is 16.5" wide, and 17.5" high - much bigger than one would expect.) The 4x CD-ROM is not as slow as is sounds because it is SCSI and not EIDE as in newer machines.
So, complaints: very few, actually. The LCD screen is very bright, and very sharp, but the contrast changes as your angle of viewing changes. Rather annoying of you lean back in your chair to relax as you read something on the screen (it must be noted that this is a limitation of the LCD technology, and not Apple's fault). I have a little scratch on my keyboard, and wanted a spare to preserve the value of the machine. Spares are not readily available through Apple, and if you find one it is *very* expensive. Other spare parts are hard to get unless it is a part used on another Mac. For example, the actual raw keyboard is from a PowerBook 3400, so it is easy to get, but the leather palm rests and surrounding plastic are not. The machine has two cooling fans, but one only turns on as needed (mine has never gone on), and they are rather loud due to the "flower" treatment used to hide them. People have removed the "flower" to quiet it down, but I did not want an ugly fan showing. Also, putting on backpack helps. I will just suffer for now. I have read reports of people having sound issues (screeching static from the speakers), uneven screen lighting, and problems with CSII cards - I have not experienced any of these, but it appears the sound system issue is quite real. Apple's fix is to replaced the subwoofer. It appears that there is a grounding issue in the subwoofer and they have a fix for it (of course most TAMs are still underwarranty).
Over all, I am very happy, and love it - I would recommend one to anyone wanting something different.
The above machine is stock, with the exception of 128MB RAM.
|
TAM front view. |
TAM side view showing the small back panel. |
|
TAM with small back panel. |
TAM with "backpack" on. |
|
Side view of TAM with "backpack".
|
TAM with rear panel removed.
|
|
TAM keyboard. |
Underside of TAM keyboard. The square in the lower right is a leather square that fills in the gap left by the trackpad when it is removed. |
|
The subwoofer/power supply.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Leather CD-ROM case, pen, pencil and case. |
Closeup of the TAM matching pen/pencil. |
|
Everything is boxed in its own little spot. |
Even the box had special graphics. |
Please note: All photographs and info are copyright 1996 Justin Mayrand - if you would like to copy items, e-mail me with which one and what you would like to do with it, I should be back to you in 24 hours. Thanks!
Underside of the subwoofer. A thick cable
attaches this to the main unit. There is also a knob here to
adjust the bass output.
