How Apple’s Cheap Camera Failed 

I was an apple dealer in the early mid 90s and sold the cowboy shit out of newtons and QuickTake cameras. I still have my old newton.

It’s actually amazing how far we have come with digital photography

Our family had gotten a Performa 550 in Novermber '93 when I was 7 and dad saw the Quicktake 100 the following year and got it for himself as a Christmas present. Later it became mine when he upgraded to a Panasonic. I remember taking it on our roadtrip to Disneyland and using my used Powerbook Duo 2300c I'd saved up for and bought myself, so I was able to download the pictures over that Din-8 Serial and use our Dial-up AOL from the hotels and we sent pictures to family and friends. That was so cutting edge for the time that some of them didn't understand and had to be convinced that we were still gone on vacation lol.

Useless, fun fact, I work in a TV broadcasting center for the US federal government. No idea why, but we have one of the Apple QuickTake cameras in our storage. Our tax dollars at one point paid for that 😂

This is the most inside-out looking shirt ever made.

I’m starting to think that maybe your favourite robot vacuum is just whichever one’s cheque cleared last.

I remember my Dad's work having one and me being allowed to, "get creative," one summer day with it, and basically the same period correct Mac. My teen self went wild. The edgy shooting angles. The overblown editing. The 90's asthetic was XTREME! When it was all said and done, I got to print out a handful of my creations (in black and white) on a LaserWriter. Thirty years later I realize my Dad was just trying to keep me out of his hair while he worked, and I enjoyed a summer day off from school. Still, it was fun, and a memory I keep with me. Edit: Basically, beside their graphic design person, I was the only other person who figured out all the hardware and software. I just learned it by fiddling around. I remember my Dad kind of being blown away by my, "tech savvy." Edit #2: I don't remember it being this slow... I'm sure it was, but this was so hi-tec!

To be fair I had a QuickTake 100, and it came with rechargeable batteries and an Apple branded AA Battery charger, so the fact it drank batteries wasn't that big a deal. Incidentally, I love how the Mac I'm on right now actually auto-corrected QuickTake to capitalise the T :D

My parents had a 2000ish version of a camera exactly like this, non-Apple but 32 pics, USB connected, and ran on AA. Honestly one of the best cameras made, the quality was incredible considering, and it was so much fun to just run around with as a kid and take pictures. I’m impressed with the changes made between this camera and that one, really makes our current accessibility to photography something to value.

Great video… but… whenever a young person does a nostalgic ‘olden days’ review, it’s always in contrast to today’s technology. Because you might not have been around, and definitely would not have been working and using this technology it’s understandable. I’m not criticizing or complaining… it would have been like me in the 1980s comparing an electric train to a steam train with my grandparents, so I get it. It’s normal. To understand what I mean, think what’s happening with AI at the moment. That’s what it was like seeing this for the first time in the 1990s... Magic. I was designing magazines, newspapers and books at the time and would have to drum or flatbed scan a print or 35mm slide to use it in my artwork files. This was after waiting 24 to 48 hours to get the film processed, collected and scanned. So being able to shorten that process was nothing short of amazing. The Apple Mac was the only computer that could be used for desktop publishing. It too was also magic… before using it I was using ink pens, grid board, wax machines, bromide machines, French curves and external type setters… laying out artwork for printers, all taking days and days to achieve. So the ‘wait time’ you endured for comedic relief (of course it’s funny now, I agree with you) was like using a Time Machine at the time… it was blazingly fast compared to what we had at the time. Of course today I’m using all the latest gear… seeing this through your eyes was great and reminded me of how far we have all come! Awesome.

11:53 Apple *Desktop* Bus, not *Display* Bus.

The QuickTake software works a LOT better on a PowerPC mac. In middle school we has one of these in our Digital Imaging class ( it was brand new and i can't believe the teacher actually let us run around the school with it). The computers we were using were PowerMac 6100s and they did things a lot faster that the one you are using.

I actually used one of these at work in 1996 to take pictures for our very early internal website.

I remember stumbling upon an old photo album in an SD card from an old digital camera. So excited and opened up only to find... something? Is it a bridge? I think that’s a face... everything is so pink?

2:56 that vintage macworld footage is amazing.

Ah…deep thoughts with Quinn at 21:00 lol. Great look at the QuickTake.

That's where the QuickTake name comes from on iOS's camera now!! Never knew this was a thing...

omg the bit waiting on PhotoFlash was gold

The responsiveness of old Mac OS UI seems like responsiveness of modern web sites to me. So much time passed, but we still have to wait.

Cool video, but the scanline on the CRT kills me, please set the shutter speed to match the refresh rate

ADB was Apple Desktop Bus. But I think this used serial not ADB. Nice video.

I think part of your issue with the software being slow is that, while adorable, the Color Classic was awful even compared to its contemporaries.

the fact that you messed up RS488 for AppleTalk and then called it ADB and then explained it with the words for the wrong ADB is the perfect representation of how crazy all the ports and things were on computers back then

My dad brought one of these home from work and I got to play with it for a few days. My overriding memory is that, even then, it seemed to take a very long time to do anything and shooting a picture in your room at night was a study in noise. But while sluggish and quite horrible in image quality, it was still pretty magical to take a picture and then be able to look at it on the ol' Powerbook a minute later.

EPS = Encapsulated PostScript.

19:15 -> Actually, you get your full 1000 Gigabytes of storage that you paid for, Windows just happens to display it in "Gibibytes", which leads to less capacity shown in absolute numbers. If Windows wanted to be precise they wouldn't display it as "GB" but instead as "GiB", but they just don't care.

As an Apple developer in the 90s, Apple gave us one of these to see what we could do with it. I took it to a family wedding, and it sort of blew people's minds - it was the first digital camera anyone had ever seen. However, there was no quick way to show people what you had taken, no way to share the images with them, no website you could publish them to, nothing you could really DO with it. So once the wow factor wore off, people were a bit nonplussed as to what it was for. (On the other hand, people were used to waiting for photographs, but in the end the generally unsharable images meant waiting indefinitely, and then forgetting all about it). That's the trouble with the future arriving piecemeal - you need a lot more of it in place to make it useful. It's no surprise it was a non-starter, it was just a bit too soon.

Love seeing this coverage of old Apple tech. For all their mistakes in the 90s in fairness the QuickTake was way ahead of its time.

You made a rather significant mistake in the beginning of the video when you said the QuickTake use the Apple Display Bus (ADB) to transfer pictures to the Mac. First, there was no such thing as the “Apple Display Bus”, though there was the “Apple Dekstop Bus (ADB)” which was used only for low-speed devices like Keyboards, Mice/tracballs, and other input devices. On the Mac, recognizable as 4-pin DIN connector. The port the QuickTake actually used on Macs was the Mac serial port which also used a DIN connector but it’s a Mini-DIN 8 pin connector carrying RS-422 signals. The Quadra AV and Powermacs had an updated serial port type knowns as GeoPort (and marked as such) that’s compatible with standard Mac RS-422 Serial port devices, but also supported special GeoPort modems that drew their power solely from the Mac via an additional 9th pin providing 5v DC. The Mac Serial port looks exactly the same as the Printer/AppleTalk port as they both where RS-422 serial ports and in fact they could be used interchangeably for Printers and Modems/serial devices despite being labeled Serial and Printer, with the exception of GeoPort modems which could only be used on GeoPort labeled Serial Port. It’s possible to use RS-232 (25-Pin serial D-Port) Serial devices on a classic Mac with RS-422, with the appropriate adaptor. This is why your QuickTake 150 could also be used with a PC with RS-232 adaptor kit for the QuickTake. Note: I see you sort of corrected yourself at the end but still QuickTake uses serial not AppleTalk though it’s the Printer Port doubles as an AppleTalk port.

Eufy sucks as a company btw.

I bought a QuickTake 100 back in ‘94. It was a pretty cool device for the time, in that very brief window where camera makers got a little creative with the form factor instead of making them look just like film cameras. One convenient thing about it was it could be powered with the same AC adapter the PowerBook 1xx series used. The software also let you control the camera from a connected computer, with a duplicate of the camera’s UI on the monitor. I assume that would be useful in a setup where you were taking ID photos in an office or something.

Never would have guessed this was the first color digital camera. Really cool!

Brings back so many memories! Not that I could afford that camera, but I certainly lusted after them. And really just that whole era of computing. Slow as can be, but really amazing for its day!

wow you make me feel old, I remember using these at the time. Feel even older when people don't know or are confused about ADB, Localtalk, teleport (an EXCELLENT NAME) , EPS and maybe PDF (Printer Description Files!!) Anyway, make me happy and say "excellent" in every video, something makes me smile when you say that word (as an Englishman!) :-)

Thanks for reminding us of how much we used to wait for computers to do their stuff back in the day.

But... what did it fail exactly? Too slow? I miss the final conclusion talk. Poor program and Mac problems? Too much work? Poor quality? Well that was expected for early cameras.

Not a person who writes comments, but this video especially is just great in every possible way. Thanks for everything :) Greetings from Germany

My family had a Sony Mavica MVC-FD73 with the floppy drive storage. It took really nice photos for back then.

Dude this is a museum of a video 😂

I just love watching the struggles working with old software and hardware. awesome job!

I used one of these to do photo illustrations for FamilyPC magazine. Good times.

At my first corporate job around 97-98, they had one of these. I remember seeing it and thinking how amazing it was.

4:01 oh wow... that was a very good lead in to the sponsor. so good I watched the lead in 4 times! My only criticism is that your outfit changed.

You should add that you have an ad for a robot vacuum in the title. I think that's your main genre now lol

I remember we had these in my middle school computer lab.

Connecting it to a Color Classic Mac instead of a modern work-around was icing on the cake. So cool.

12:40 Ok, big factual error in this one, the sensor in the Apple QuickTake was nowhere near the size of an APS sensor. It had an 8mm lens giving the equivalent FOV of 50mm, which is a crop factor of 6.25x. That makes it a tiny 1/2.6" type sensor, only a little bigger than the smartphone sensor shown in the diagram. Edit: apparently it had a little area masked off around the edges, so it was probably a common 1/2.5” sensor using a 1/2.6" capture area.

Love the side-by-sides. Soon us vintage camera hunters will be praising QuickTake color. But in al seriousness it looked pretty good for 1996.

excellent video quinn. really enjoyed this one

You gave us your quick hot take on the QuickTake. This video has some high stakes!

The photography montage was really fun. The comparison shots were great, too!

How much ram is in that Color Classic? Also was 32-bit addressing enabled in settings? If not that may explain why it was so slow because it was having to swap everything to disk.

I was truly charmed by your small talk going from LOTR, to Harry Potter, to deep existential crisis 😂

In University I remember having time to make tea when opening SPSS

Hey buddy, after the latest iOS update, some iPhone shortcut automation you shared in your previous video seem to have stopped working for me. The new update must have changed something that broke compatibility. I found your previous shortcut video incredibly helpful, so I was wondering if you could make an updated video going over shortcuts and automations that are working properly with the latest update? Your guides are always so clear and easy to follow.

Such a great video that shows how amazing the progress in digital photography is. Can't believe how slow the whole process on the computer took 😂 Thanks for the effort you put into making this video man! 👍

@Snazzy Labs Hey man I ran into a bit of an issue after typing in a terminal command I got from one of your other videos, wondering if you might know the fix? in terminal, I typed in % defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0; defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -int 0 ;killall Dock in order to make the dock show/hide faster. I liked it but decided I liked the default transition animation better so decided to set it back to default. I set it to 0.5 as you suggested. What happens now is the mouse pointer will bein the dock area for a few seconds before appearing and the transition animation is gone. It now just appears instantly after 2-3 seconds rather than smoothly coming up from the bottom. Do you know how I could fix this? I restarted the laptop and its still doing it , and the sliding up animation is gone and takes a couple seconds to appear even at 0.1-0.5

For 1994 this is really good. Better than my first phone camera 10 years later

I bought one of these when they went on sale, I’d previously had a Logitech B&W camera that was even more of a toy. I only remember taking 2 photos, one of which I emailed to a friend and I was quite amazed at the ability to email a photo.

How long did the software take to load in the end?

That PhotoFlash launch reminds me of how Stronghold used to launch on the family PC back in the day. It took literally 5 minutes to load into the game and the opening cinematic performed in seconds per frame - but the game itself ran pretty smoothly.

My dad was an amateur photographer back in the 80/90s and he would spend a weekend all day working on his Macintosh with photo editing. Yeah it was slow but in the day that was fast and is why the media companies bought Macintoshes.

I wonder why they bothered making a color camera when the intended use case was for pictures to go in B&W publications?

I love that just spent almost 30 minutes of my day watching a video on a product I will never own or see in person. It's impressive to see the camera improvements from where we started with that Kodak & the Sony to the QuickTake and I loved the comparison to the current gen iPhone. Also side note that load time was crazyyyyy. Would be interested to know the volume change between the original Kodak cam to something like the iPhones cam, must be like x10000 times smaller and to answer your question; no, I haven't watched Lord of the Rings too..

Brilliant video. Had no idea this was a thing. Great stuff.

Great review, thanks !!! I have a QT100 as collectible, but sometime still using the QT200 because it is more usable with the screen and memory card (a 2MB smartmedia that I read on an iBook Clamshell/O9 with USB CameraMate Reader).

I was gifted a used QuickTake 100 as I was heading off to college in 1997. It came in handy a couple of times for putting together storyboards for my video production classes. In 2000, I used it to create an ObjectVR of my truck. Cutting-edge stuff for back then.

Around 1999ish, at my primary school (Australian equivalent of elementary) when I was in year 3, every Thursday we would go over to the high school for computer class. In there was a room that had lots of strange looking computers that looked very different to the one that was at home, and indeed in class. They all had a coloured little apple on them, and said "Macintosh". I remember looking in there one day, and there was a shelf with about 6 boxes on them that were all sealed, except for one. They were all Quick take cameras, brand new and unopened! I looked at it thinking it looked so cool, but never got to try it. The sad thing was, the high school closed and I subsequently learned that they all sat in that room for nearly 2 decades, and only recently all just got thrown away....

Great review, and funny. Never really appreciated how slow computers were back then, and how easy it is to capture and use a photo today!

I remember I lusted for this camera back then along with everything mac back then like the Quadra and Color classic, LCIII, etc etc... Good time to be alive, apple was on a roll.

That's not as bad quality as I was expecting. That thing was hitting some of those shots pretty well!

I remember on one of the "OG" Photoshop programs that on a Mac G3, in like 1997' that there was an option to run additional virtual memory. Not sure what specific advantage there was in turning up the VRam... but, it I'm almost wondering if that is necessary to rotate an image?

I have a QuickTake 100 and 150, I bought my 100 at VCF Midwest for like $20 and after I located the software I discovered it suffers from a major problem with these cameras where all the photos appear green. I was bummed until I found a 150 for like $40 locally which was crazy. I scooped it up and it takes perfect photos and had a bunch of photos from the 90s on it. I pull my photos off with my Macintosh IIci

Back in 1994-1995, my high school offered a "Multimedia" computer class. It was mainly an Apple HyperCard class fueled by the extreme popularity of the Myst game. In this class, we had the ability to check out and take home a QuickTake 100. I remember thinking that the camera was neat, but way too expensive considering the poor user experience and image quality. At the time, I honestly didn't think digital photography had any real future. Guess I was wrong!

thanks for this. reminded me I still have a stack of QuickTake 100 images from 1994 that needed processing so I could import them into Photos!

Ah the Color Classic! That brought back some fond memories! I did try out a QuickTake 100 around y2k or so, but it ate batteries at a ferocious rate, and all for 640x480. It was a neat idea, and Apple’s industrial design was excellent, but I think it was hobbled by available technology of the day.

I got my hands on a Handycam back in 1998-99, and included with the packaging was a brochure for a Mavica. It was a chunky, square unit with a floppy disk as storage drive. I guess they never stopped using magnetic disks, even when they switched to truly digital sensors.

Looking forward to watching this, as a pro photographer I don’t use my canon 5d mark iv much anymore and use my 15 pro max

Honestly don’t think the QuickTake photos look that bad…

The camera I didn't knew it exists. Its nice to learn a bit of tech history and its especially nice to see old computers, and even more old Apple ones since I'm not familiar with them and they are kind of cool.

I didn’t expect to get a random street photography video in the middle of a snazzy labs vid. Even got the music right lol

Surprisingly good photos, considering the age and how early in the digital age it was made. Still, also a reminder of how incredibly far digital photography and computers have come.

I’d say a color classic was not the best Mac of the period to use. The CPU and Ram were severely limited by the LC lineage of the platform. Your best bet would be to use an Apple Mac IIsi or even a Quadra 605. Those are all so much faster then the color classic

damn, I always like how ccd sensors look.

Such a fun era. My first digital picture taken of me was with a 100.

8:50 that looks like some device for shooting closer things, like a close up portrait or something Magnifying lens: macro Flash diffuser: eats up quite a bit of power but softens the light at close distance Viewfinder line thing: tells you to offset your composition at said distance

Question: Do you like the "look" of the QuickTake 150, as a throwback vintage type filter?

Actually surprised by how little noise there is in the photos, big sensors were big sensors even back in the day I guess.

it really is fun seeing u play with retro tech. u can't deny it, such old trinkets "while being very primitive" had and still have their charm. i wouldn't buy anything like that anytime, but i'll definitely enjoy a throwback review

Cloning hurt Apple, but only because Apple were building crap Macs - they refused to make Macs expandable, upgradable, and halfway affordable. Meanwhile cloners built multiprocessing Macs with ZIF sockets, loads of PCI slots, smaller and larger form factors, and higher clock speeds. Had I not picked up a cheap UMAX in 1998 and upgraded the heck out of it, I would have likely ditched Apple altogether by the Millennium. Clones kept the Mac OS platform alive just long enough for Steve to pull the OS licences ahead of launching the Bondi Blue iMac.

Man the new history vids are fire!

Love that you had to use the old Mac 😂 the pictures turned out really incredibly. Bet you could mod that to make a really slick, high quality camera

Those photos of Canadian Jack Black were pretty good though.

I remember playing with this thing back at school when it was bleeding edge and I remember thinking how cool it was, how far we have come from the .3 megapixel sensor.

There was a theme that was fusing all of the different parts together: the digital hub. Since the late 80s (1987 to be exact) Apple tried to fuse different media into a single ecosystem. Just watch the "Knowledge Navigator" demonstration to understand the goals. Steve Jobs took up the shards that were left of that idea and reconstructed that central hub-like system. Apple lost sight because the technology wasn't as advanced as the executives had thought or better: had wished. By cutting everything back to a cleaner starting point instead of trying to archive all at once, Steve Jobs was successful to later finally archive the vision of a single screen-driven device to replace all other information devices. In the 80s and 90s no-one would have thought that the mobile phone would be that central device, even though the signs were in plain sight (hindsight is 20/20, though). Simply said: In the 80s and 90s Apple would release a product with 20 innovative features of which only a hand full were actually fully working while the others had major flaws. Steve changed that and demanded that every released feature _should_ work 100% (with mixed results) even if it meant to leave out innovative functions to a later release.

imagine Vpro review in 30 years

I had one! Loved it! I think in high resolution mode I could take 16 pictures! Was so cool. Sadly, they used some weird proprietary quicktime codec and now I can't see any of my old pictures! Do any of you guys know how to get them open in this day and age?

What brand was that flannel/utility shirt?

With a camera like that, use Eneloop or Recyko batteries. It'll probably work about ten times as long on those. Really helps.

Hey, snazzy, you need to credit creative commons pictures, i noticed that you used the picture from wikipedia that is CC licenced