Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is auctioning off his old Apple iMac alongside an NFT (non-fungible token) of his first Wikipedia edit. Wales used the Strawberry iMac to create the initial version of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that launched on Jan. 15, 2001. While it was initially called Nupedia, the name was eventually changed to Wikipedia. More than twenty years later, it is the web's preeminent resource on almost everything under the sun. It has over 57 million articles in over 300 languages, including nearly 6.5 million in English alone.
The strawberry iMac that Wales used to create Wikipedia is a far cry from the ultra-powerful modern iMacs in terms of tech specs. It was part of Apple's iMac G3 lineup that was initially released in 1998 and continued to be sold until 2001 with updated hardware and design. While the original one only came in Bondi Blue, Apple added many color options in 1999, including Blueberry, Grape, Tangerine, Lime, and Strawberry. While it was cutting-edge back in the day, it is hopelessly inadequate for even the most basic of tasks circa 2021. The iMac is powered by a single-core PowerPC 750 processor clocked at between 266 and 400MHz and with barely 64KB of L1 cache and 512KB of backside level 2 cache. Per EveryMac, graphics duties were taken care of by the ATI Rage 128 VR 2D/3D (AGP 2X) GPU with up to 8MB of VRAM.
Alongside the Strawberry iMac, Wales is also selling an NFT based on his first edit of Wikipedia. The edit was a simple message — "Hello World" — written on the Wikipedia homepage after the site went live in January 2001. The NFT is written to the Ethereum blockchain and is similar in concept to earlier NFT sales by internet pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. While Berners-Lee sold off an NFT of the first web browser's source code for $5.4 million and donated the proceeds to charity, Dorsey auctioned off an NFT of his first-ever tweet for $2.9 million.
Other notable tech specs include up to 10GB of ATA hard drive and a slot-loading 4X DVD-ROM drive, which was an upgrade over the tray-loading machines from the previous generation. The display is a 15-inch CRT monitor with a 1024 x 768-pixel resolution. Unfortunately, it only offered up to 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet connectivity with no provision for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth but did come with a Harmon-Kardon-designed sound system. It is worth noting that these are the specs for the top-end G3/400 DV model, so lower-end variants, like the G3/350, for instance, offered relatively weaker specs for more affordable price tags.
Both the NFT and the iMac are being auctioned by Christie's. 'The Birth of Wikipedia' auction started on Dec. 3 and will end on Dec. 15. As for how much money it will take to grab a piece of internet history, the price for the Wikipedia edit will likely go up to millions if the earlier NFT auctions by Berners-Lee and Dorsey are anything to go by. As for the strawberry iMac, it has 40 bids in total, with the highest at $8,500.
Source: EveryMac, Christie's 1, 2
from ScreenRant - Feed https://ift.tt/3rMn1el
0 Comments