New Permanent Exhibit with 323 of Apple’s Most Iconic Products to Open at MacPaw Headquarters This Year

MacPaw Space Apple Museum Credit: MacPaw
Text Size
- +

Toggle Dark Mode

There’s little doubt that Apple is a company that prefers to look forward rather than back. Despite its stories and very interesting history, Apple has never shown any interest at all in providing even a virtual museum of its many accomplishments over the years.

In fact, about the only time that we ever heard any Apple executives reminiscing over the past is in tribute to the company’s late and legendary co-founder Steve Jobs, where CEO Tim Cook regularly commemorates his former boss and mentor.

While there’s no doubt that homages to Steve Jobs are in an entirely different category than the history of Apple’s products, the fact that so much Apple memorabilia — from vintage computers to Apple sneakers — is in huge demand suggests that many Apple fans would love it if the company showcased its fascinating past.

Fortunately, even though Apple remains quiet on such matters, there are other groups of Apple enthusiasts who are more than willing to fill the void, and now software developer MacPaw has announced that a new Apple museum will be opening in Kyiv, Ukraine in the coming months.

MacPaw released the news today to commemorate International Museum Day, noting that Eastern Europe has a vibrant community of Apple fans and collectors of its products. One of the few big Apple products exhibitions that was previously open to the public, in Prague, had many of the items stolen earlier this year.

The new Apple Museum is actually an outgrowth of a smaller collection that MacPaw opened privately in its offices back in 2017, featuring several products obtained from Tekserve in New York. However, the development company has recently purchased a unique collection of additional Apple products from a private collector in Poland, bringing the total to 323 Apple products that will soon be on display to members of the public at MacPaw’s head office.

Some of the most notable items that will be featured in MacPaw’s Apple Museum include:

  1. An original Macintosh 128k, signed by Steve Wozniak.
  2. Apple’s first “portable” (or “luggable”) computer, the Mac Portable. Weighing in at 15.75 pounds, it also includes the signatures of the entire original development team.
  3. The legendary Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh. This originally sold for $7,499 in 1997 dollars and was delivered to customers in limos by black-tie Apple staff who also assisted with installation and setup.
  4. The iBook Clamshell, which was the first consumer-grade computer to sport Wi-Fi connectivity, thanks to Apple’s then-new AirPort networking cards.

The new permanent exhibition will feature many more classic and venerable products from the golden era of technology, and will be located in MacPaw Space, a new project by the company that plans to create a platform for creative people to exchange ideas and benefit from peer support to help their visions become a reality.

In addition to the Apple Museum, which the company hopes will provide inspiration for a whole new generation of designers and technology enthusiasts, MacPaw Space will host meetups, lectures, workshops, and other similar activities.

Since not every Apple fan can afford to make a pilgrimage to Ukraine just to see the collection of Apple’s trendsetting product history, MacPaw also plans to create a “digital format” version of the exhibition, not just as a reproduction of the physical tour, but a “full-blown online solution.”

MacPaw is a Ukrainian software company that’s best known for its Mac apps such as CleanMyMac, Setapp, Gemini, and ClearVPN. It boasts more than 30 million users worldwide across its entire product family, which, as it points out, means one in five Macs has at least one app on them made by MacPaw.

MacPaw Space is expected to open sometime later this year. The company hasn’t offered up a specific date just yet. The digital format of the exhibition is expected to launch around the same time as the exhibit opens for in-person visitors.

Sponsored
Social Sharing