That feeling persists when you switch it on. The switch itself–easy to locate by touch, not least because it’s directly above where the power lead plugs in–is not just an intensely satisfying shape but makes the most pleasing, positive, unmistakable thunk when you flick it. When you do, you get that reassuring beep and then a businesslike whir as it boots; it feels like you’ve woken something up. The cathode ray tube sleepily warms up, and before long, you’re greeted with the happy Mac icon. I do mean greeted’ too. It’s a little pathetic, but our hard-wiring and cultural conditioning means that when I see a pattern of pixels making up a crude face, at some level, I parse it as a person and get that little tickle of recognition and fellow-feeling. Hello, little Mac! What shall we do today?And that screen! That dinky, sharp, perfect little screen! There’s something fundamentally honest and pure about a 1-bit, black and white display, and the crispness of the pixels is a genuine delight even in these days of pixels so tiny we can’t actually see them. The low resolution itself of the display means that each pixel on the screen is sharp, unlike with the fuzziness of the higher-resolution, color CRTs that were to follow. I’ll never stop loving the 1-bit interface design of these early Macs or the tricks its designers pulled to imply drop-shadows and shades of grey.
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It’s clean and spare and elegant, but despite having to cram everything into what by today’s standards is a minuscule screen, it still has bags of personality and charm. Witness, for example, how the rounded edges of the UI echo the rounded edges of the bezel surrounding it. So yes, I completely adore the Classic form factor. It’s such a captivating, self-contained bundle of happiness. So compact, so totable. I want to tousle its hair and pinch its cheeks and call it slugger.
Counter-intuitively, despite its bulkiness and old-fashionedness, it actually feels smaller than modern Macs, and not just because of its diminutive 9-inch screen. Its small footprint means that a Classic plopped onto a desk both look neat and discreet and also didn’t dominate and demand attention in the way that even the smallest of the modern iMacs–its direct descendants–do. The original Classic was criticized for its low power and lack of expandability (and where have we heard that recently?), criticisms the Classic II largely answered, but it’s the Classic and Classic II’s external aesthetic that I love so much. It was the first vintage Mac I ever bought, and it will always have a special place in my heart. Which Mac holds that place