TOKYO — A The old Apple laptop that sold poorly when it was launched in Japan a few years ago has subsequently achieved cult status, with fans paying up to $25,000 to upgrade and decorate their old machines. Released in 1997, the PowerBook 2400 was a small, lightweight subnotebook designed especially for the Japanese market, although it was later also sold in the United States.
At the time, the 2400 was praised for its power, size and good looks. It was small (weighing just 4.4 pounds), but it performed like larger, full-size laptops that weighed twice as much. And she looked good: fans liked her smooth black curves. But the machine cost $3,500, which discouraged many Japanese buyers.
Since then, the 2400 has become a fashion model. Used machines, if they can be found, cost more than $1,000. Even broken machines cost more than $800. In the United States they sell for between 200 and 300 dollars.
Fans go to great lengths to upgrade their machines with more memory and newer processors. And they’ll spend a small fortune decorating their laptops with colored or transparent cases, or with custom “Yuzen” designs, a style used on traditional Japanese kimonos.
“The 2,400 people are crazy,” said Nobuyuki Hayashi, a freelance writer for Japanese magazine Mac. “The Japanese tend to extend the life of their machines because they love them so much. Instead of buying a new machine, they want to extend the life of their machines.” of the old one. And people spend thousands of dollars to modify their machines.
To demonstrate that strange attachment to the machine, one of its most influential fans, Naritomo Mizutani, has created an entire site about the underside (that’s right, the underside) of the machine.
Mizutani argued that the 2400 was more beautiful because its entire casing had been carefully designed, not just the parts that most people see. To prove his point, he created a web page with photos of the bottom of the 2400, which he compared to the bottoms of about 100 other laptops, particularly Windows machines.
“I was trying to show that Apple was more beautiful because it used fewer screws, stickers and panels,” Hayashi said.
