Katheryn's Pain and Suffering
No time for useless filler. Let's get right to it.
Apple
Macintosh Classic - Honestly quite a nice machine. Watch out for leaky PRAM batteries and capacitors that you'll HAVE to replace now that the machine is over 30 years old. These also use SCSI hard drives, so replacing it is going to be a little difficult. BlueSCSI and ZuluSCSI are a couple of very nice options.
Macintosh SE/30 - Great machine, if you can get it to work. I haven't been able to get mine to work for over a year now. Even with new capacitors, and even an entirely new PCB. I'll probably need to replace more chips that the capacitors ravaged. Also, be prepared to spend lots of money to fix one.
Macintosh IIsi - I honestly like these, despite the fact they're the worst vintage macs to service because 9 times out of 10 your power supply will have leaked to a point of no return. Thankfully, I got lucky. Also, with enough patience and the right tools, you can upgrade the onboard RAM to 4MB. I wouldn't recommend doing this because Bank A (where the onboard RAM is) actually slows the system down since that entire bank is shared with the video controller. Also you can easily overclock this to 25MHz by replacing the 40MHz crystal with a 50MHz one.
Macintosh LC 475 - Very nice machine, one of the best pizza box macs ever. If not, the best. You can slap in a full 040 and overclock to 33MHz. It's honestly up there with other full 040 macs. Recapping required, and the stock power supply sucks, though.
PowerBook 500 series - These are honestly my favorite PowerBooks from this time period. Now these may not be the best to work with, but they feel like they're made with true love and care compared to the 5300 series which was just haphazardly put together in several respects. Good luck finding upgrades though.
Macintosh Performa 5200 - Brittle, but also considerably misunderstood. And mis-engineered. What Apple did was slap the PowerPC architecture onto a Quadra 630's system design and called it a day, sorta. The 6200 was like this too. Also did I mention the plastics on these get ridiculously brittle? One day I got real stupid and had one shipped to me. Unsurprisingly, it ended up in pieces. Also, from what I've heard, these aren't very reliable. They do seem great, though. At least the 5400 and 5500.
PowerBook 5300 series - Kind of a pain in the ass, especially when you take into account the fact these just suuuuuuck to work on. Brittle plastics, poorly performing hardware, fragile construction... the list goes on. I've had 2 of these in my possession at one point, would not recommend.
Macintosh Performa 6360 - Basically a 6400 with one less expansion slot because it's being used in the chassis of a 6200/Quadra 630 with a slightly revised power supply for 3.3V. They're nice machines. Recapping might be necessary very soon so I'd do it.
Power Macintosh 6400 - Somewhat limited but easily one of my favorite macs. Mine has 10/100 ethernet, a 300MHz G3 with 1MB of L2 cache, and a Radeon 7000. It runs very nicely. The systems can be somewhat buggy with upgrades, though, which also applies to the 6360.
Power Macintosh 7300 - Great machines. Sadly mine was not in good shape and it had to go. These usually have the 200MHz 604 which is middle-of-the-road for the platform. They would make incredible System 7 machines with OS 7.6.1, especially with a processor upgrade. The cases and the plastics inside of them sadly have a tendency to get brittle. Also, these will need recapping.
PowerBook G3 Wallstreet/PDQ - Lovely machines. You just need a working PRAM battery, good hinges, and a good optical drive. Sadly, it's not easy to find those components anymore, but if you can get yours to work completely, consider yourself lucky; the WS/PDQ's really need a good PRAM battery to function properly. Aside from that they're built rather well.
PowerBook G3 "Pismo" - I recently got one of these broken as of writing this so I don't have much to say, but they seem to be very promising machines. Honestly I think I like these more than the Wallstreet/PDQ because they seem more convenient to have.
PowerBook G4 (Aluminum) - I've had a few of these, and despite them being lap cookers, they're very nicely put together. The PRAM batteries in the DLSD do need to be removed since they are LiPo cells, much like you'd find in an old cellphone, and they can swell up. Also don't be alarmed if your keyboard suddenly smells a little funky, Apple used some weird adhesive to hold some of the parts down.
iMac G3 (tray-loading) - Self-explanatory if we're talking about how this machine was a technology renaissance. Honestly these are pretty easy to work with but the flybacks have issues on these, especially if you have a rev A model. Speaking of which, Rev B is the best. In fact, if you really wanted to run OS 8.1, you can run it no problem on Revisions B-D. No kidding. Also these are much sturdier than the slot-loading models.
iMac G3 (slot-loading) - I have a strong love-hate relationship with these. They suffer from the INNER BEZEL FRAME going brittle, weird optical drive issues, PAV board issues, the lack of any passive cooling as per Steve Jobs' somewhat damaging demands, speaker foam rot issues, and the fact LG was their ODM for this computer. But it's super iconic. I actually love the design of this computer, just not the internal design.
iMac G4 (all models) - They're very weird and I love them... until I have to work on one. These are pretty hellish to service. The whole computer requires the base to be secured to ensure it gets the cooling it needs, which makes testing rather tedious. Also the way everything is crammed in just makes me cringe.
iMac G5 (pre-iSight) - If you get one of these you'll need to have some capacitors handy; these love to fail because of shitty caps. The cooling on these is also something that has tainted the computer's reputation, they just run real hot. Apple had quite the ambition to shove a G5 into a slim (for its time) all-in-one design, and it's clear that the effects of that were painfully obvious. Also do keep in mind Apple made the iMac G5's run the FSB at 1/3 of the CPU's clock compared to 1/2 on the G5 towers. Probably best they didn't have it run higher. I will say, these are much, MUCH easier to work on compared to the iSight models and the early Intel ones.
iMac G5 (iSight) and early polycarbonate Intel iMacs - These feel like a downgrade compared to the previous models, but cooling was slightly improved with this model. And by downgrade, I mean a downgrade in build quality and construction. These feel like they were quickly hacked together. Barely anything feels modular, and you'll immediately be greeted by shielding tape when you open the system. It's hard to put these back together in a way that is as close to its original construction as possible. If you work on one of these, be warned that it might not feel the same as it did before. If you really care about that, at least. I will say I am happy the early Intels started a trend of upgradeable CPUs in iMacs; the tray-loading G3 used modular cards, but if you wanted to go past the original spec, you'd have to look very deep, and potentially blow through lots of cash.
iMac (2007-2009 Aluminum) - These things are everywhere, but they're beautiful. Apple gave all models MXM slots, provided you didn't opt for low-end graphics options. The CPUs are still upgradeable and these feel MUCH nicer to work on compared to their predecessor model. It actually feels like Apple thought more about technicians with this model, because they didn't just do weird shit with shielding tape. It wasn't as good as say, the successor to this model... but it's definitely a step in the right direction. Also, these things seem to last forever.
iMac (2009-2011 Unibody) - These are ICONIC. Not to mention these are probably the most expandable iMacs Apple has ever built. With some extra work you can actually upgrade the video cards quite easily, and CPUs are pretty much the full desktop Intel ones from the time so you could have a 27" 2011 iMac with 32GB of RAM, an i7-2600/2700, a fast SATA SSD, and some crazy fast GPU that people could only dream of back in 2011, provided it's an MXM 3.0 card that is known to work. I do feel bad about potentially messing up the screens on these and the previous models, but I will say these are much better to work on than their successors and the early polycarbonate iMacs.
iMac (Thin Unibody) - I'm gonna say it. You needed to hold your screen down with tape. So did I. I really HATE the way Apple put these together. They are somewhat expandable, but the hardest part is making sure you don't fuck up the screen assembly. If you're experienced this shouldn't be an issue, but there is also a reason why no one likes to work on these. Even if you do get the right adhesive and everything, there's a non-zero chance you might wake up only to see that your screen fell off.
Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White) - This one is nice. The early ones did have issues with the ATA bus, but I don't have much to say in that regard since I own a Rev B. The plastics on these are not brittle, but fragile, so have caution when handling one. I do prefer the looks of the G4 towers over these, honestly.
Power Mac G4 (all models) - Putting this in as few sentences as I can. Sawtooths and PCIs are bulletproof. Gigabit and DA started having some issues with power supply failures thanks to ADC's dominance. QuickSilvers were slightly more reliable but the same can't be said for some of their CPU cards, particularly dual CPUs. MDD G4's were all affected by power supply issues that require complete recaps, and the early ones kinda suck in terms of reliability. The Cube is good if you give it a fan and a dual CPU, as well as upgrade the VRM.
Power Mac G5 (all models) - Great until you have a chipset fail on you out of nowhere (on some models this is common). Also the ones with water cooling, avoid at all costs. And if you do have one that still boots up, at least on dual 2.5 and 2.7's, replace the heatsinks with the air cooling versions immediately. Use good thermal paste especially on the faster ones! Also these will be very painful to service, so good luck. I own a working dual 2GHz 2003 model with some upgrades and it's a nice machine. I would be devastated on the day it dies.
Mac Pro (A1186) - Don't bother with the 2006 models unless you find one for free or something. They have a 32-bit EFI and your options for operating systems are limited outside of Windows 10 and various linux distributions. The 2008 models have really started to show their age recently, but they hold up better than the 2006 ones do thanks to the better CPUs these have. I should use my 2008 model more often, it's a nice machine.
MacBook (A1181) - These things are friggen' everywhere. And you know what? That's fine. Honestly I am not the biggest fan of these machines but I have a black one and I like it. The screens are kinda terrible, though. Other than that these are actually known to be more reliable than their Pro counterparts. However, the plastic construction has not aged well.
MacBook (12" 2015) - These aren't really MacBooks, they're just insulting. I had one for a little while and I did not like it. The thermal mod will improve performance but it also doesn't change the fact these are easily the worst Apple laptops I have ever used. And I'm sure you feel the same way if you've had one of these, they were TERRIBLE!
