« Tower grows yet talle… | Home | In related news... »

Apple User terms

25 02 07 - 20:40 Not quite development, progress or code related but still interesting.

You might have noticed that Mac users tend to have something that could be termed as slang for various things.

The first one is that the codenames of machines are used to refer to them in the case of laptops, but this isn't done for desktops for some reason. This is most often used in the case of G3 laptops. Wallstreet, Wallstreet II, Lombard and Pismo are the commonly used terms.

The earlier 68k / PPC laptops had numbers, and the later ones have other names.

The first of the G4 PowerBooks are known as TiBooks because of their titanium case.

The early coloured iBooks were known as "clamshell" or "toilet seat" because of their (strange) shape.

The early Quadras were known as "pizza boxes" because they were about the right thickness.

A "Mac Tool" is a straightened out paperclip

Then there's the more recent ones:
ICBM stands for Intel Chip Based Mac. That seems to be second to "Macintel" or "Mactel"... which I don't need to explain.

A "Hackintosh" is a Mac put together with parts from more than one Mac model. Although, more recently it has come to mean a standard PC with OS X running on it.

There's also "Blackbook", which referrs to the black macbook to differentiate it from the white models. The term is never used to refer to the older black G3 laptops.

As for other hardware, the small round mouse that everyone loves to hate is known as the "hockey puck" and while some of you would like to use it as one, I don't actually mind it (but that's just a matter of personal opinion, don't flame me).

The AirPort base stations are referred to as UFOs (because they look like them), but not the new square 802.11n one.

The round power adaptors that you wind the cord onto are known as yo-yos, but don't try and use it as one - be careful not to break the cord internally. As it's molded plastic, the repair method involves a hacksaw, and a tube of araldite.

A "Road Apple" is one of the slightly less successful machines released. These often happen when Apple tries to release cheap machines for the education market. (list of them). They aren't incredibly bad, I've actually owned a few of them. They're just... annoying. Some of them are nice examples of how Apple gets ahead of it's time - the GeoPort back then is today's WinModem. We had them first :).

Moving back to the machines - the early CRT iMacs were referred to as "boat anchors" due to their heavy weight and the handle in the top. This is not a comment on their usefulness, however. And yes, you've probably heard of that video where the guy who'se complaining about Macs says "so you can tie a chain through it and use it as a boat anchor". Funny thing is, all the PC people who see it seem to be completely incapable of understanding that it's a parody (the "I edited this on a Mac" bit at the end gives it away...). Higher order intelligence lacking?

Getting even further off topic, people tend to call the Mac mini the "Mini-Mac"... but this is generally not accepted :)

The Compact Macs (early 128k/512k/Plus/Classic/SE) etc were known as "bricks" because they were near that aspect ratio, and quite cubic, as well as heavy (CRT monitor inbuilt). Or maybe it was because MacLogic (used mac shop that used to exist here in Adelaide) had a wall of them stacked up :).

I hear a lot that people say there's an alliance between the Mac and Linux users. I'd have to say it's true. But it's not because we like each other's platforms as well in all cases (I do like both OS X and Linux though). It's more because we're not using "that other OS" and liking the process of doing so :).

And it goes without a mention that only the longtime Mac users will know of things like the happy mac, the sad mac and Clarus the Dogcow. The Happy Mac was the icon that you first saw when you booted the machine, and sat in front of a checkerboard grey background. It indicated that all was well, until it got replaced with an Apple logo. There are hacks to restore it though.

The Happy Mac's evil twin, the Sad Mac told you that all was most certainly not well when you booted the machine (the power on self test failed), and there would be one or two rows of hexadecimal characters underneath it to tell you exactly what went wrong. It sat behind a sinister black background. If you were lucky, you'd also hear sounds too. You might hear four or eight chimes, the sound of bongo drums, the screech or brakes and a car crash or glass breaking, depending on which Mac you have. Now you just get a "prohibited" symbol or a kernel panic.

Clarus the Dogcow was a mythical creature (that makes the sound of " moof " )that lived in the page setup box, until she was replaced with the person that stands there today. It's a fairly esoteric piece of Mac lore. What happened? Various conspiracy theories have been suggested, one involving Microsoft. Yes, it's sad how an icon that appeared in the page setup dialog has a life story. It's not fan fiction though, it did actually originate within Apple. Here is the legendary TechNote 31 that discusses the dogcow. This was snuck in amongst a stack of technotes regarding the internals of and programming for the Mac released to developers. And here's the story of technote 31.

I think that's enough...

How many of these things have you heard of or seen?