Vintage Apple Mac #M0001 prototype could smash records at auction

Date:
Thu, 03 Oct 2024 10:55:32 +0000

Description:
If you have a serious amount of money and love Apple tech, this could be the auction for you.

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If you're interested in vintage Apple technology and you have a lot of money sitting in your bank account we've got the perfect impulse buy for you: a very rare Apple Macintosh #M0001 prototype from 1983 is up for sale, and it could break records for a computer of this type.

The auction is running at Bonhams in New York (via New Atlas ) until October 23, and the Mac is estimated to fetch up to $120,000 (that's roughly 90,000 / AU$175,000). However, considering how rare it is, there's a chance it'll
smash through that price guide to become the most expensive Mac in history.

There are only a few of these #M0001 prototypes in existence, and another one fetched $150,075 (about 114,405 / AU$219,110) in 2019. These machines have
the nickname 'Twiggy' because they use 5.25-inch disk drives, rather than the 3.5-inch versions on the first Macs to launch in 1984.

The story goes that Steve Jobs ordered these pre-production units to be destroyed because of errors related to the drive, but this one has survived and if you've got enough in your life savings, maybe you could set it up in your home office. Sold as is The prototype computer runs prototype software (Image credit: Bonhams)

It's not just the design of the hardware that's special, it's the software too. The computer runs early and unfinished versions of Mac apps, with Steve Jobs himself popping up in certain dialog boxes to give the user
instructions.

That said, it's not clear whether or not this computer actually still works (the one from the previous auction definitely did) which might hurt its chances of fetching a record-breaking price. If you're going to spend a vast amount on this, probably best to check with Bothams first.

Similar prototypes were previously showcased at a special 30th anniversary of the Mac held in January, 2014, with a lot of meticulous effort required to
get them back to working order so it is possible to get them working again, even if it's not quite as easy to find spare parts for 1983 prototypes as it is for modern Macs.

The bundle comes with a prototype keyboard and a prototype mouse included,
and a whole 512KB of memory (yes, that's kilobytes). It's a genuine slice of Apple Mac history, marking the shift to graphical user interfaces, and modern operating systems. You might also like Apple just declared a bunch of its
Macs obsolete A variety of M4 Macs look to be on the way Apple drops strong hint about its Mac mini redesign



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/macs/vintage-apple-mac-m0001-prototype-cou ld-smash-records-at-auction


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