The 68k Macintosh 12-Step Program for Treatment

1. Acknowledge the presence of a Supreme Being.
   
2. Determine that these Macintosh models will never be made again.
   
3. Conclude that while too many is fine, fewer refined models is worse.
   
4. Assert that while many examples are being lost daily, there must be a reason for it.
   
5. Maintain a list of must-have models with the justification thereof. Example: Everybody should have a nice Compact. Because it was the first.
   
6. Search out every other Mac enthusiast and impress upon them the facts and reality they are missing.
   
7. Argue vehemently that System 6 has no equal. Especially not something compiled in assembly language.
   
8. Cast down the gauntlet. Throw out a rant about how just because your IIsi is 21 years old, doesn't mean it can do modern things. "Look! It's an email server. Painting, CAD, fully featured word processor, spreadsheet, games you don't have...." And, "Look! Does your MacBook Pro have a trackball? That's Old School before there was Old School. Passive Matrix display? Only if you had a PowerBook 150." And keep going on: "Mate, when I was your age, the IIfx came out flying with 40MHz. Did I say that thing cost nearly TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!? You guys are spoiled these days with your $250 ChromeBooks and $1000 desktops with quad-core i7 Yorkfield processors."
   
9. Look down at the picture* and mourn over the lost opportunities you missed. "It had a Diimo 50MHz accelerator in it!!!" or "It had that rare NuBus card that you certainly won't ever see again." Also use the picture to compare and contrast what you don't have, and what you should have, and what you COULD have had.
   
10. Weep profusely over the loss of HyperCard. Determine that a revolutionary concept like it won't be around for another 50 years. "Dude, no. The iPad does not count!" Argue that After Dark has no modern equivalent. "See? You still don't have Starry Night and Flying Toasters." And, "Man, seriously, when I was growing up, I used an Apple // with a custom expansion card that was used with some software we coded ourselves to drive the tire torture testing machine at Bridgestone**. Nowadays you guys program PLCs with StuxNet-infected Siemens software on Windows XP."
    
11. Commit to yourself that these are computers. They die and all will eventually be found in massive junkyards and landfills populated by cold-hearted unempthetic employees that have NO idea that the only reason the Classic was a flop was because it had no expansion slot and a 32-bit processor on a 16-bit bus. Besides when you die, you conclude, everything you have will be discarded by some government employee who only needs to move on as fast as possible. "Who'd ever collect these? Can't even use them anymore. Who likes black and white anyways? Guy must have been a psycho, or a troglodyte. No woman I know would ever like that guy." He then smashes the screen of the Color Classic II with a ball-peen hammer. "WTF? No one ever told me this job was dangerous! Who would have ever known that was a vacuum? They had some weird $@%^ back then. And WTF is a 'Road Apple'?"
    
12. Walk away sighing, murmuring that "they just will never get it. Nothing quite like a humble old PowerBook 180c in a meeting, or a classic Plus in a post-modernistic-failure home. Oh well -- just means more for me!"

*: Picture



**: Actually know the guy who did that.