The Apple collector
Apple Computer enthusiast has quite a collection. He’s just bought the 100th one
By Agencies |
O’FALLON, MISSOURI: Step down the stark, white stairs into Jeremy Mehrle’s basement and meet his Apple computer collection. He’s got 99 computers. No, wait. Make that 100. He just got another last night, he said during a recent visit to his home about 55 km west of St. Louis.
Dozens of his Apple Macintosh computers are on display down here, a techie’s dream party pad. Mehrle, 29, appears to recognise that there’s an inherent, well, geekiness to his computer collection, but he’s got a sense of humor about it. His bar is made out of 30 Mac Classics arranged next to and on top of each other.
Guests can drink at the bar, “but no one ever does”, he noted. The basement is wired with 20-amp circuits. He doesn’t just display his computers, he runs them when guests come over. Classic screen savers, like flying toasters with wings, flutter across screens.
When friends stop by, they can play old-school games like ‘StarCraft’ on machines networked together. For special events, like New Year’s Eve, he’ll play videos on several monitors or set up strobe effects on multiple machines, creating a rave-like atmosphere.
“I think it’d make you more inclined to dance, even though I don’t dance, I guess,” he said. “I’ve never been to a rave, so I’m just basing that on ‘Alias’,” he joked, referring to the hip TV spy thriller.
Along one wall, he’s got every colour — or “flavour” —of iMac. While the first one, in ‘Bondi Blue’, sits alone, the other 12 are arranged in rows in the order they were released. They begin with the first colours, like ‘Blueberry’ and ‘Tangerine’, to the last of the bunch, known as ‘Snow’.
Another wall has nine iconic Macintoshes arranged in chronological order. The computers range from the original Macintosh with 128 kilobytes of memory to the 20th-anniversary Mac from 1997. Mehrle bought it on eBay and thinks he paid about $800 for it.
The online auction site has been a big help to Mehrle, once he began amassing a collection. He first got into the machines by using his dad’s IBM personal computer. From there, he started collecting computers in general, Commodores and Tandys, Ataris and IBMs. He was interested in how different ones worked and how they evolved.
Then he spotted an iMac G4, a computer with a rounded base and a swivel-head, flat-screen monitor. “As soon as I saw it, I was like, ‘I have to have this computer’,” he said. Mehrle hadn’t been a huge fan of Apple computers, but he became one. “The design, the user interface, the way it worked made sense,” he said.
Sometimes people donated their old computers to him, but he largely shopped for them on eBay. Some he has acquired for as little as $10, because as he points out, he for the most part buys them when they’re considered obsolete.
Dozens of his Apple Macintosh computers are on display down here, a techie’s dream party pad. Mehrle, 29, appears to recognise that there’s an inherent, well, geekiness to his computer collection, but he’s got a sense of humor about it. His bar is made out of 30 Mac Classics arranged next to and on top of each other.
Guests can drink at the bar, “but no one ever does”, he noted. The basement is wired with 20-amp circuits. He doesn’t just display his computers, he runs them when guests come over. Classic screen savers, like flying toasters with wings, flutter across screens.
When friends stop by, they can play old-school games like ‘StarCraft’ on machines networked together. For special events, like New Year’s Eve, he’ll play videos on several monitors or set up strobe effects on multiple machines, creating a rave-like atmosphere.
“I think it’d make you more inclined to dance, even though I don’t dance, I guess,” he said. “I’ve never been to a rave, so I’m just basing that on ‘Alias’,” he joked, referring to the hip TV spy thriller.
Along one wall, he’s got every colour — or “flavour” —of iMac. While the first one, in ‘Bondi Blue’, sits alone, the other 12 are arranged in rows in the order they were released. They begin with the first colours, like ‘Blueberry’ and ‘Tangerine’, to the last of the bunch, known as ‘Snow’.
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Another wall has nine iconic Macintoshes arranged in chronological order. The computers range from the original Macintosh with 128 kilobytes of memory to the 20th-anniversary Mac from 1997. Mehrle bought it on eBay and thinks he paid about $800 for it.
The online auction site has been a big help to Mehrle, once he began amassing a collection. He first got into the machines by using his dad’s IBM personal computer. From there, he started collecting computers in general, Commodores and Tandys, Ataris and IBMs. He was interested in how different ones worked and how they evolved.
Then he spotted an iMac G4, a computer with a rounded base and a swivel-head, flat-screen monitor. “As soon as I saw it, I was like, ‘I have to have this computer’,” he said. Mehrle hadn’t been a huge fan of Apple computers, but he became one. “The design, the user interface, the way it worked made sense,” he said.
Sometimes people donated their old computers to him, but he largely shopped for them on eBay. Some he has acquired for as little as $10, because as he points out, he for the most part buys them when they’re considered obsolete.
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