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EVERYTHING I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT APPLE DEVICES
A giant Data Dump on Apple Computers starting with the Legacy Equipment to set the stage, going to the current X Silicon stuff...
Apple Computer started in 1976-1977 when talking head and "idea man" STeve Job and his pal engineer/designer/systems architect Steve Wozniak released their first computer simply called the "Apple Computer". It was more of a DIY hobbyist machine with no case. This was replaced by the "Apple II" line in 1979. The Apple II was the closest thing to a PC that Apple would make until 2005. Basically a user-upgradable, customizable, commercial desktop computer aimed at the consumer or "appliance computer" market as it was called at the time. Then in 1983 Steve Jobs named a product after his daughter to be the first commercial GUI based desktop from apple - the LISA. But it failed absymally due to it's high price....so the Lisa concept was re-engineered into what becae the Apple Macintosh. THAT is where the name comes from.

THe original series of Macintosh computers were Motorola 68000 based devices (using 68000, 68002, 68003, and 68004 CPUS - following a similiar path to the IBM compatible PC of the time with the 8088, 80286, 80386, and 80486 intel CPUs). These included the original Macintosh, Macintosh Plus, Macintosh II, Macintosh Classic, Macintosh SE, and they all ran a 68000 codebase version of "System Software" - the previous name of Mac OS or "OS" as it was called for awhile. This era runs from 1984 till about 1994. These used ADP Bus Slots, and are known as "old world Macs".

Next came the PowerPC series (1994-2005) - whicn included the PowerPC, PowerBook, original iMacs, and the "Power blah blah G something something" series. These machines ran on, ironically, an IBM PowerPC RISC chip, the same one IBM actually used in their RS/4000 series workstations (a UNIX Based workstation engineered by IBM used in the commercial CAD and Server environent, and starting around "System 7.5", and ending with the early "OSX" series OSes named after cats like Snow Leopard and Tiger.

In 2005, Apple made a controversial move to the "Intel Core 2" series CPUs, essentially, turning the Macintosh into a somewhat architecturally crippled PC. This swap ALSO lead to the dawn of what we call a "Hackintosh" (A regular PC running Mac OS through various hacks). I remember working at Boeing back in the late 2000s, we had a Dell OptiPlex GX620 running MacOS Snow Leopard IIRC in our I.T. department. Crazy sight to see. These machines are where Apple got popular again on the heels of two successful, non-computer (in the traditional sense at least) products: The iPod, and the iPhone. THose put Apple back on the map, and the now once failing company (especially in the 90's) was now taking off again, and with cult of personality Jobs back on the job (pun intended), it made Apple one of those companies like Amazon, Tesla, or even Microsoft with noisy talking heads that everyone aspires to be - the "Tech Bro" was born! This also meant that Apples could run Microsoft Windows Natively or Linux without special ports.

Starting around 2022, after Jobs passing, and Tim Cook (or Tim Apple as a certain mono likes to call him) took over, Apple made a move from the Intel Silicon to new "Apple" silicon, using their own SoC (System on a Chip) Processors that start with "A" and end in a number, starting with the A1 in 2020, and currently (2025) with A18 Pro and similiar. These are ARM based, and are teh same sort of CPU used in the portable devices as well from what I understand.

My Focus on Intel and Axx series Macs
With the rise in popularity of Apple in the 2000's and 2010s, and my tendency to take in just about anything with a CPU and make use of it (or find it a nice new home), and knowing some people mgiht be trying to "trade up" using an apple product so old but still so new that nobody wants to collect it, this is where I got interest in this. It seems for awhile, and even now really, Apples are seen EVERYWHERE, TV Shows, and the closer to Cupertino you go, the more people buy these machines and use them, and the more of them end up what I call "orphaned" - ie, unusable in Apple's Eyes, but usable in mine through the power of using Linux. That said, there are a lot fo special caveats to using an Apple computer as a daily driver post-support period and that's what I'm going to dump onto this page.