{"id":28761,"date":"2025-06-01T07:01:51","date_gmt":"2025-06-01T06:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=28761"},"modified":"2025-07-22T09:03:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T08:03:20","slug":"forty-one-years-on-the-pico-mac-nano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=28761","title":{"rendered":"Forty (one) years on – The pico-mac-nano and Chemdraw."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Last year I reminisced on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the Macintosh computer.[1]<\/a><\/span> Four decades of advances in technology now mean I can do a fair amount of computational quantum modelling on a recent Mac (one from 2022 with M1 processor), and since then they have only got even (~2 or 3 times) faster with the M4 processor. Many of the recent calculations done for these blogs have included at least one or two that were done on the Mac. So I was intrigued to find that a real working version of the original Mac<\/a> is about to be released for sale, but with a twist.\u00a0Its called the “Pico-mac-nano<\/a>” and from its name it is truly diminutive, being only\u00a06.2 cm high – half the height of a can of\u00a0cola – and with a 2″ LCD display.\u00a0It comes with a connector for a keyboard and mouse, although currently it\u00a0has no sound.<\/p>\n

Although that is not really its purpose, would it not be amazing if eg<\/em> Chemdraw could be installed, a program that is also now\u00a040 years old!\u00a0Happy anniversary\u00a0Chemdraw<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(Image from https:\/\/blog.1bitrainbow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Big-Brother-Mono-926×1024.jpg<\/a>)<\/p>\n

References<\/h2>\n
  1. H. Rzepa, \"The Macintosh computer at 40.\", 2024. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.59350\/f11dr-93t29<\/a>\n\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n<\/div> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Last year I reminisced on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the Macintosh computer. Four decades of advances in technology now mean I can do a fair amount of computational quantum modelling on a recent Mac (one from 2022 with M1 processor), and since then they have only got even (~2 or 3 times) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":5,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[565],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[2661],"class_list":["post-28761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical"],"yoast_head":"\nForty (one) years on - The pico-mac-nano and Chemdraw. - Henry Rzepa's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=28761\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Forty (one) years on - The pico-mac-nano and Chemdraw. - Henry Rzepa's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last year I reminisced on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the Macintosh computer. Four decades of advances in technology now mean I can do a fair amount of computational quantum modelling on a recent Mac (one from 2022 with M1 processor), and since then they have only got even (~2 or 3 times) […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=28761\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Henry Rzepa's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-06-01T06:01:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-07-22T08:03:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Henry Rzepa\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Henry Rzepa\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Forty (one) years on - The pico-mac-nano and Chemdraw. - Henry Rzepa's Blog","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=28761","og_locale":"en_GB","og_type":"article","og_title":"Forty (one) years on - The pico-mac-nano and Chemdraw. - Henry Rzepa's Blog","og_description":"Last year I reminisced on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the Macintosh computer. 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Apparently, some are still working. I thought I would give my own personal recollections of that period. In fact, the Mac reached UK stores via a dealership only in 1985. What brought it to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/IMG_0315-150x150.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/IMG_0315-150x150.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/IMG_0315-150x150.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/IMG_0315-150x150.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/IMG_0315-150x150.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2962,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=2962","url_meta":{"origin":28761,"position":1},"title":"Data-round-tripping: wherein the future?","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"December 7, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Moving (chemical) data around in a manner which allows its (automated) use in whichever context it finds itself must be a holy grail for all scientists and chemists. I posted earlier on the fragile nature of molecular diagrams making the journey between the editing program used to create them (say\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chemical IT"","block_context":{"text":"Chemical IT","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2874,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=2874","url_meta":{"origin":28761,"position":2},"title":"Data-round-tripping: moving chemical data around.","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"November 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"For those of us who were around in 1985, an important chemical IT innovation occurred. We could acquire a computer which could be used to draw chemical structures in one application, and via a mysterious and mostly invisible entity called the clipboard, paste it into a word processor (it was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chemical IT"","block_context":{"text":"Chemical IT","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12728,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=12728","url_meta":{"origin":28761,"position":3},"title":"Data nightmares: B40 and counting its \u03c0-electrons","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"July 19, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Whilst clusters of carbon atoms are well-known, my eye was caught by a recent article describing the detection of a cluster of boron atoms, B40 to be specific. My interest was in how the \u03c3 and \u03c0-electrons were partitioned. 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One major breakthrough in making such techniques generally available on less specialised equipment was achieved by\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=26767#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/8glv-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/8glv-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/8glv-150x150.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/8glv-150x150.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":14255,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=14255","url_meta":{"origin":28761,"position":5},"title":"Reproducibility in science: calculated kinetic isotope effects for the Baeyer-Villiger reaction.","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"July 1, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Recollect this earlier post on the topic of the Baeyer-Villiger reaction. In 1999 natural abundance kinetic isotope effects were reported and I set out to calculate the values predicted for a particular model constructed using Quantum mechanics. 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