What was your first mac and what life changing experience did it bring you?

[carbonmotion]

What was your first mac and what life changing experience did it bring you?

[AhmedFaisal]

With good old OS 9. I hated everything about it. When I bought it I thought I just pissed 2.500 grand down the drain. OS 9 sucked ass compared to W2k. It was unstable as hell and slow as hell and no DivX nothing. Barely used the notebook until OS 10.1 came out and slowly OS X native software started trickling in. Now with Panther and a 900MHz CPU upgrade and finally all my software (Office, MacVector, Photoshop, Illustrator and expecially DivX!!!) being native and working I love it and sold my Wintel box and am planning to buy a PowerMac. So if anything was lifechanging it was OS X, making the Mac finally usable for me.
Cheers,

Ahmed

[iMeowbot]

First one I got to use much was the original 128K model. The only lifelong scar is an involuntary cringe any time the sound of tiny motors and gears is present.

[Savage Henry]

iMac G3 Ruby

It gave me my first hernia as I challenged a mate I could throw it ten feet in the air and catch it.


Actually that's not strictly true, but it did turn me into a God in the eyes of some people. Sure, these people spent most of their time sat on benches at the bus depot, but I think they enjoyed my company, which is more or less the same thing.

[HexMonkey]

My first mac was a 2nd hand Quadra 700. Before that I had been using my family's Quadra 610, and didn't really know much about computers apart from navigating Finder and running simple applications (I was quite young at the time).
Once I had my own computer, I had the opportunity to experiment. Changing settings, installing software, things like that. Instantly my knowledge of computers was growing exponentially, and before I knew it, I was writing software, and had decided that computing was what I wanted to do in the future. This learning would have never have happened without my own computer, so I guess that was my life changing experience.

[g30ffr3y]

my 933mhz quicksilver in may of 2002... i wanted one soooo bad but never thought i could afford it... needless to say... seven months later i bought my tibook... what a pair... money in the bank is nothing compared to an apple on your desk/lap... mac for life baby!!!

[Opteron]

Either the "Apple eII" or "Mac Plus," no real life changing expirence, was only 6 years old.

[Panopticon]

Mac LC II (a.k.a. Foster Farms)... big ol' 40 MB HDD. Good little machine.

That was the first for me, and when I had it, MS Flight Sim v3 was the bomb.

Anyhow, after that there was a 486DX 2/66, a P200MMX, and then back to the Macs with a G3 450 B&W - loaded w/SCSI, etc.

Now, I'm set up with a 1.25 Powerbook... so long as Macs keep going like they are, I'll always have one on hand.

Every Mac I've owned has 'out worked' any PC I've had. Both the LCII and the B&W 450 continued to be very useful past the four year mark.

Macs Rule.

[MacFan26]

My first was a IISi, I loved that machine! It lasted for a long time, and was definitely life changing because without it, I probably wouldn't have become such a computer nerd, and thus, a computer science major.

[jefhatfield]

Originally posted by carbonmotion
What was your first mac and what life changing experience did it bring you?

my first mac was an apple II, before the mac, and though it was cool it did not change my life...i was already a nerd when i was in school and being a nerd/geek was way out of fashion in the 70s so i didn't want to make it worse by getting too into computer

when i did get into the mac, it was many years later and by then it was just fine for anybody to be into computers and i got to use the mac in my graduating semester in college...before then, i did all my papers long hand or typewritten using liquid paper...what a pain...if i had only gotten into computer earlier, i could have saved countless hours of editing essays

for those of you who are too young to remember, liquid paper was a white paint-like liquid for correcting typing errors and was a necessary tool in any student's backpack in school from junior high onwards...of course, many used it to do little graffiti things in class when the teacher was not watching...some idiots liked to sniff the stuff to get a high...some people got bored and painted their fingernails with it

[Thom_Edwards]

a quadra 650 was my first mac (that was purchased by me), and it changed my life by introducing a great amount of debt

[clcnyc]

My first Mac, actually my first computer of my very own was in the fall of '99 with a blueberry iMac, OS 8.6. I thought it was the coolest thing on earth, even though I had AOL and dial up at the time....imagine! By my second month I had spent so much time learning, uncovering, and discovering new and interesting things about my Mac that my eyes had shrunk into little red dots and I kept hearing the Mac startup tone in my dreams. Life changing? I'm not sure about that, but it did bring me into the technology realm and made me realize I am much more of a techie geek than I ever imagined!

[springerj]

I had only used CP/M computers before. I'd heard about the Mac and thought myself "above" that silly graphic interface. Then I walked into a computer store in Boise Idaho in late 1985 and was just blown away. I took it home. $3000 with an imagewriter printer. I put it on the dining room table and turned it on. It went "bing" and then the smiling face came up, and it changed me forever in that one moment. I'm the worst mac fanatic you'll ever meet, and I'm the main tech guy at the place I work, supporting pcs all day long. (But I'm getting converts!) I've had so many macs now I can't count them. Plus; IIsi, LC, 660AV, 7500, 8100, iMac (first day of shipment), ibook, flat-screen iMac, and my latest a G4 powerbook. I still have a 512K that works, with System 1.1. The OS, MacWrite, and MacPaint on a single 400K floppy disk. Boots in about 3 seconds. Still goes "bing"; still has a smiling mac; still gives me tingles.

[DVW86]

500 MHz G3 indigo iMac. I still have it and it still gets a daily workout. How did it change my life? Well after that I went from being an average PC user to a computer nut. The mac has made it easy and fun to learn things like TCP/IP, SQL, and FTP. These are things that I NEVER would have learned if i stuck with PC's. I have to admit that OS X (which I upgraded to later) is to thank for most of my knowledge, but it was the cool and space saving design of the iMac that made me first look at Apple's computers.

[MrMacMan]

My first computer was my Bondi blue iMac.

It was easy to use, I liked it, I had games, it was fun to work with...

I loved it.

[G5orbust]

My first computer (personal, not family): Blueberry iMac 333.

What life changing experience did it give me? The Internet.

[kiwi_the_iwik]

Hmm - first MAC?

Mac 512KE w/2 x 800K drives...

It taught me how to fly, type, draw, play, process, correlate, calculate, plot, program, endeavour and dream...

A great precursor to the others I've owned:

LCII - 8MB/80MB
Performa 5260 - 32MB/2GB
G4 Cube - 768MB/120GB

[JamesDPS]

Original Macintosh II. Playing Myst on that machine (as a child) totally blew my mind and started a love affair with Macs and gaming. As a result, years down the road, I use Macs in all of my professional and educational efforts, from writing concert music at school to film scoring. And maybe it's not coincidence that I want to make music for games (the music in Myst was great). So my family's first mac really truly changed my life.