The picture attached to the post was taken in September 2003 when Apple first shipped its G5 super computer for the desktop.
The picture is System X, the first first large cluster of Apple’s computers.
By the winter of 2003 it would be ranked near the top of the world’s super computers for a short time. This was perhaps close to the high point for Apple’s involvement in super computers.
The G5 desktop version of System X became a bookend pretty quickly in the winter of 2003 because of non-ECC memory. I intervened at the behest of people from Va. Tech and Apple which had just prepared an on campus video of System X for Steve Jobs to use in the January 2004 MacWorld agreed to take back the G5s desktops and replace them with G5 powered Xserves later that year.
My efforts to help Va. Tech might have been the straw that cost me my job.
You can read more in an excerpt from my book, The Pomme Compay, at Huffington Post.
My article on Apple’s New MacPro, Coming To A Theater Near You: Apple’s Last Gasp At A Pro Computer, is available at ReadWrite.
Our technological infirmity 