Adam Rosen’s Vintage Mac Museum
Adam Rosen’s collection of vintage Macs doesn’t make
him a hoarder, but he acknowledges that it doesn’t
make him an obvious choice for a husband, either. In
Rosen’s Boston home, you’ll find a love story nonetheless.
The rooms are like shrines to a high school sweetheart
who matured and grew more sophisticated with time.
Like other Apple collectors, Rosen gives sanctuary to the
obsolete machines because he believes someone has to.
Rosen’s Vintage Mac Museum began in the corner
of his kitchen and has now taken over two bedrooms,
part of his living room and home office, and the attic.
Due to lack of space, it is limited to just Macs — and
only those significant to computing history’s timeline.
Absent is any mention of the Macintosh Performa
series because, in Rosen’s words, “They sucked.”
A Sense of Identity
“This is our generation’s version of collecting vintage
cars,” said the 50-year-old. “The car for so many people
was the center of American life. You souped it up and
it defined you. You are preserving that part of your
identity. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, the
importance of collecting. In a way, it’s nice when Apple
is done with a product because then it belongs to us.”
Rosen, who runs a Boston-based tech consultancy
called Oakbog, was a high school senior when he saw
Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl ad that introduced the
Mac. He was captivated, but it would be a year before
he could work on one himself as an undergraduate at
MIT. His lab partner in physics had a Mac, and on it they
could not only write reports and papers but also design
graphs and charts for various projects.
He has used Macs ever since. It was only during
the 1990s, when Apple was struggling to stay afloat after
Steve Jobs’s ousting, that Rosen considered switching.
But he stuck with Apple through those lean years, and
Jobs eventually returned to restore the Apple brand.
Unintentional Mac Museum
Sometime in 2001, Rosen’s collection began unintention-
ally when he noticed people were throwing away their old
Macs. He started going to the famous tech flea market at
MIT to buy cheap machines. Pretty soon, he had 10 Macs
piled in a corner of his kitchen. A collection had begun,
and he already had run out of space.
At the 2004 Macworld in Boston, a vendor asked
Rosen to exhibit his old machines, and the Vintage Mac
Museum was born. The collection exists mostly online,
though he is known to give enthusiasts a private tour of
his home collection.
“My goal was not to collect everything and be
comprehensive,” said Rosen, who has contributed to the
Cult of Mac
blog. “You need a warehouse for that. I lived
this. I started with Macs and use them to this day. I try to
represent the best models over time, what was the flag-
ship model or the most important of its day. I refuse to
collect Performas. I hated them. They did not represent
the best of Macs.”
Rosen has acquired many pieces from people who
could not bear to just throw out their old machines. They
knew he would give their beloved Macs a good home.
But he turns down about 80 percent of what is offered.
The Vintage Mac Museum holds about 100 work-
ing machines, along with all the software from their time.
Another 100 computers get used for parts to keep the
working machines operational. Rosen’s Macs run every
Apple operating system that existed, and occasionally
he gets contacted by a lawyer representing Apple in
a patent dispute. Rosen is quick to point out that the
company wouldn’t need to do this if Apple had its own
archive or reference museum.
100
101
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.