Apple's 'Twiggy Mac' comes back to life

CNET 12.09.2013 13:36  Steve Wozniak surrounded by Larry Kenyon, Randy Wiggington, Ed Ruder, Terry Oyama, Andy Hertzfeld, Ron Nicholson, Jerry Manock, Dan Kottke and Gabreal Franklin, host of the event and former president of Mac software company Encore Systems. MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- It was almost 30 years ago that the Macintosh made its auspicious debut. On January 24, 1984, a 29-year-old on stage, slipped a 3.5-inch floppy drive into the disk drive, and with the "Chariots of Fire" theme playing, showed the cheering crowd why 1984 wouldn't be like "1984." But less than six months before its debut, the Mac had a serious problem. The computer that Jobs hoped would change the world was using a 5.25-inch floppy-disk drive that proved to be error-prone and unreliable. The so-called "Twiggy" drive, allegedly named the famous and very thin 1960s fashion model, was also used in the Lisa, the precursor to the Mac, which had just shipped in June of 1983. But unlike the Mac, the Lisa wasn't solely reliant on the floppy drive. The $10,000 workstation computer came with a 5MB hard disk. The "Twiggy Mac" was doomed to an indefinite delay unless a solution was found. The Twiggy Mac is now a collectors' item, like a rare coin. (Cr...