what's vintage? was Re: Latest addition: A bondi-blue iMac

Chuck Guzis cclist at sydex.com
Sat Jul 2 11:32:36 CDT 2016


On 07/02/2016 08:57 AM, william degnan wrote:

> Couldn't have said this better myself.  Absolutely agree.  I very
> much understand that the majority sees "vintage computing" to mean
> more than the sum of the dictionary's definition, but doing so does
> not adapt well over time.  If a person writes instead 8-bit vintage
> computing, 60's mini vintage computing, Apple vintage computing, and
> so on would be more correct...In short if one adds a modifier before
> "vintage computing" a lot of the clarification problems go away.

In my lifetime, I've seen the word "vintage" go from the conventional
use of "pertaining to wine produced from a specific year's harvest of
grapes" to "something old, but of unspecified age".  After all, the
"vin-" in the word indicates the wine connection.

One can have a vintage 2015 Bordeaux, but apparently not a vintage
computer of the same age.

Like Humpty-Dumpty's "impenetrability", it can mean whatever we want it
to mean, I suppose.

--Chuck



More information about the cctalk mailing list