Monday, September 24, 2018

R.I.P., Charles W. Moore, a fine man who liked fine Macs

A farewell and au revoir to a great gentleman in making the most of your old Mac, Charles W. Moore, who passed away at his home in rural Canada on September 16 after a long illness. Mr Moore was an early fan of TenFourFox, even back in the old bad Firefox 4 beta days, and he really made his famous Pismo PowerBook G3 systems work hard for it. Charles definitely was of the same mind I think a lot of our readers here are: "Even after going on a decade and a half, I still find them [his Pismos] a pleasure to use within the context of what they’re still good at." I'm sure most of us will agree the same is true for any classic computer in general and particularly Power Macs as a whole given how underwhelming Apple's current Mac offerings are. While later on he upgraded to a 17" Big Al, and although I admire the Pismo my favourite Mac laptop to this day remains the wonderfully customizable PowerBook 1400 (with a G3/466, thank you very much, and still looking for a solar cover!), I can think of few people who bore the standard of the classic Mac as a useful productivity device for as long as he did. Even old tools can still be the right tools when given the right job to do.

Go with God.