Some animal lovers stuff a beloved pet when it dies. Mac fans convert dead machines into fish tanks.
Comedian Jay Leno has an iMac aquarium. Steve Jobs reportedly has a couple of them. Timothy Leary had a Mac aquarium, and so did Abbey Hoffman. Wall Street is positively swimming in them: For some reason, they're a favorite gift among stockbrokers and bankers.
Mac aquariums are as iconic as the Mac itself. Thousands reside in homes and schools across the world. Converting an old compact Mac into an aquarium is probably the obsolete machines' most common fate.
It started as a prank, but at least two companies have launched to make aquariums out of old Macs. What started as a joke has evolved into a cottage industry.
The early all-in-one Macs are perfectly suited for housing fish tanks. It's a relatively simple operation to replace the electronic innards with a specially shaped glass or Perspex tank that fits snugly inside the computer's case.
No can identify who made the first Mac aquarium, but Andy Inhatko, a veteran Mac columnist, seems to have kicked off the trend in 1992.
At the time, Inhatko wrote a popular Q&A column. Someone asked him the best way to upgrade a Mac 512K. He sarcastically suggested the best thing was to turn it into an aquarium. He received so much mail inquiring how to do it, he wrote up a 60-page plan and posted it. The document is still available on about 400 websites, according to Inhatko.
"The idea was kind of an old one," he said recently from his home in Boston. "But it's like asking who invented the wheel. It seems to be one of those ideas that a lot of people had simultaneously."
Inhatko thinks that someone on Apple's original Mac development team made one of the first Mac aquariums. Inhatko recalled plans being published in a developer publication in 1985. The design was overly complicated, calling for 13 or 14 different pieces of glass that had to precisely conform to the inside of case, he said.
"It's an extension of what makes the Mac so wonderful," said Inhatko. "They're very huggable, squeezable, lovable computers. When you take an old Mac and do something with it, it's a value-added upgrade. It keeps the iconic Mac design out there on shelves and in offices and schools."
However, the idea of making fish tanks out of the early Macs now fills him with horror.
"It's like the Antiques Road Show, when someone has a 17th century piece of furniture they've ripped out to make a TV stand," he said.
Carl Blake runs MacAquarium,
http://www.macaquarium.com ,a Web-based business headquartered in a warehouse in downtown Waterloo, Iowa.
Blake, 38, claims to have been making Mac aquariums since 1988. He sells between 35 and 50 every month, sending them all over the world: New Zealand, Great Britain, Singapore, Mexico -- even Chechnya. He sells ready-made "deluxe" models, as well as do-it-yourself kits.
The deluxe aquariums are made out of old compact Macs or iMacs. They sell for between $150 and $300 -- just add water and fish. The DIY kits run for $90 and up. They include an internal tank, which slots pump, filters, gravel and instructions into the customer's empty case.
Blake has made aquariums out of iMacs, the Color Classic, the Cube -- and even Harmon Kardon's bell jar-like subwoofer.
Blake's first aquarium was made out of an original Macintosh, the 128K. He kept two goldfish in it. They eventually grew so large their tails stuck out the top. He put them in a bigger tank. They died a week later.
"It started as a joke," he said. "My buddies laughed at me when I said it would make a good fish tank. I had a fish in it and they just laughed and laughed."
Blake has built aquariums for a number of celebrities -- Jay Leno and Timothy Leary, for example -- and every year he donates one to the Los Angeles symphony's charity auction. He once made 13 matching aquariums for a bar mitzvah in San Francisco.
"It's a good way to keep all these Macs from the dump," he said. "I hate to see them go away. We give them another 10 years of life on the shelf."
Like Blake, Jim Lower built his fair share of fish tanks out of old Macs. Lower registered the TechQuarium Internet domain a few years ago, with the idea of launching an aquarium business like Blake's, but the living he makes as a programmer is too good.
"I'm cursed with a good job," Lower said. "I could never make as much money as a I do now."
Like Blake, Lower has sold Mac aquariums all over the world. But he prefers to characterize his sideline as a hobby, in case the IRS ever asks.
"I guess I just had a little too much spare time," he said. "It's one of those things you do when you don't have a girlfriend."
Married now and living in Florida, Lower has also converted a lot of old Macs, including rare early models like the 128K and the Lisa.
"I've gotten thousands and thousands of e-mails from all over the world," he said. "Most are positive. Sometimes I get a nutcase complaining that I should be preserving rather than destroying these old Macs. Someone suggested I should use my head as an aquarium."
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