Jason Snell’s ‘20 Macs for 2020’ Project

Speaking of Jason Snell:

With this year marking the turn of decades (in some particularly disastrous ways, as it turns out), I decided to construct a list of the 20 most notable Macs in history. Over the next 20 weeks, I’ll post essays, podcasts, and videos about each of them, counting down to number one.

Now, note my choice of words there: notable. I’m not saying these are my favorite Macs — a bunch of them I only knew in passing and never used myself. I’m not saying these are the best Macs ever — a difficult thing to measure, since (with a few obvious exceptions) the best Macs made are the most recent ones, otherwise we’d all still be using G3 iMacs.

My ranking system is, to be blunt, arbitrary. I tried to make a list of notable Macs that I felt reflected Mac history over the last 36 years. I wanted to choose Macs that were popular, revolutionary, weird, or had an interesting story to tell. If I have learned anything from Joe Posnanski’s brilliant Baseball 100 project, one of the most popular things about this series will be arguments about my terrible rankings and my unforgivable omissions.

I was not just happy but downright delighted to speak with Jason about a few of these Macs. And, yes, I’m outraged over at least one omission.

★ Tuesday, 4 August 2020