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Mac users: Did you grow up with mac?

My families first comp was a 286 with Win 3.1. They used nothing but windows for the family machine and still do. I then went into graphic arts in high school in 1996 which was all Macs (performas, later replaced by the first beige G3's). I resisted OS 7.5 at first, but our teacher was not computer savvy at all and I volunteered to learn and help out. I then learned OS 7.5 and OS 8 better than Windows 3.1/95. It was so much easier to learn that I then wanted a Mac

After going to work in the summers I earned enough money for my first comp. I was finally convinced to go Mac when the iMac was released and purchased one in 1999. I am really glad my teacher was a technophobe, or else who knows what I would be using today :)
 
When I was around 3 years old, we had a Packard Bell and a Macintosh Classic at home. I used play around on both equally, but in elementary school they had macs in the computer lab, and I used to play those old games such as number munchers, lemmings, and kidpix.

Around middle school I started to get into shooter games so I ditched my Mac for a windows laptop for 3 years just because I wanted to play a lot of video games (although I recall playing Quake 3 on OS X). I switched back by the time I entered high school, and I've been using Macs ever since.
 
Grew up on Macs.

Macintosh Classic > Macintosh Performa > iBook G3 > iMac G5 > Mac Pro > MacBook Pro

There was a Windows 98 PC at home for a while.

My primary school (years 5-10) had a suite of Performas.
 
I grew up on Apple. In the home we had an Apple ][c, Performa, and PowerMac G4 quicksilver (for 10 years!). We had a blueberry iMac computer lab in grade school (old ones donated by the high school). I went to the afore mentioned high school and they used all eMacs (aging at that point) and various lcd iMacs (PPC and Intel). When I went to college I purchased a Black Macbook (2.16ghz Core2Duo). Just this year I replaced that with a 13" rMBP. I cheated for a bit and had built a Hackintosh in college as my primary.
 
Nein. I had Windows up until my last Dell Dimension 4300 running Windows XP Pro. That was the PC that made me finally switch to Mac in 2005. Had to reformat that thing every 3 months to combat constant spam and spyware and popups. Horrible experience. Got a 14" iBook G4 running Tiger and never looked back.
 
My first computer was a TRS-80 Model One. Then, a Commodore VIC-20, then a Commodore 128D. I didn't get my first Mac until the Plus in 1989.
 
arefbe said:
My first computer was a TRS-80 Model One. Then, a Commodore VIC-20, then a Commodore 128D. I didn't get my first Mac until the Plus in 1989.
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Dad was looking at the radio shack computers, but ended up getting the Coleco Adam for the family. That was later upgraded to the Commodore VIC-20. During all this, he had a series of pocket computers, mostly Casio. These were used to program stepper motor systems that he sold. My favorite of the Casios could be plugged into a printer that he used to output the program for the customer. The printer had 4 ballpoint pen cartridges in a gatling config. The pen moved horizonal while the paper moved up and down. Both motions were combined to move the pens (red, blue, green or black) around on the paper.

Around 87, we stepped up to the Mac II and never looked back. It was supposed to help with my school work - and did - but ended up defining my whole life. I spent many hours on local BBSs, then Prodigy, then AOL, then finally the Internet. My first job out of high school was sys admin at another high school. Installed Mac School on a Classic, then talked them into a Centris 610. Was printing out report cards and official transcripts right from my desk. From there I went into IT, running PowerMac servers and managing a small fleet of PowerBooks. These days, I run my business from the apple eco system. And try to model my operation (as small as it is) on the apple way.

So Macs from Systems 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and each version of X. Don't miss Font/DA Mover!
 
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I guess I'm one of the younguns as my first computer was a 386. I did spend some time on my neighbor's Sinclair with tapes and all before that. Got my 386SX machine in 1993. Been a staunch PC guy ever since. Had always gamed on the PC and built my own. None of that silly Xbox/PS business!

Around 2008 my coworker, who's a huge Apple fan, got me started on Macs. I didn't really use them much, mostly for fixing up. Finally sold my last gaming PC desktop last year. It was pretty fast and had dual Radeon graphics cards. If I learned about that bitcoin business a couple of years ago I might have been a little richer now! :)

Now my only and only PC is a Thinkpad that I'm thinking about selling off to start using my rMPB exclusively. Everything else in my room is Apple. Sometimes the disease takes a while to spread but when it does - run!
 
When I came to Canada in '97, my family got a PC running Windows 95 and a Toshiba laptop with Win95 as well. The PC had like a 13GB hard drive and I used to think that was way too much.

I remember when I was in elementary school, my friend and I spent a good 6-7 hours trying to put Windows98 on the laptop. My school had Macs but I always thought they were dumb because of the one button mice.

I bought my own desktop when I started highschool that ran on XP and in 2012 I got my first OSX machine - a MacBook air. I mainly use the Air now though I dual boot Win7 for certain applications. At work I use Win7/8.
 

No, unlike many here, I didn't grow up with any computers. I used old style type writers. Actually, I was already a university teacher in the early 1990s when I bought my first computer, a Windows 386 in 1994 (others have mentioned this). Indeed, I recall my awe when a colleague brought me into a room where he was conducting advanced linguistic research and showed me a desktop which had been allocated to his office with 1GB of memory (my 386 at the time had 80MB).

I was aware of Mac at the time but it was expensive, and more to the point, esoteric with systems that didn't seem to easily transfer to a world that was using Word at the time. I'm not a computer programmer; I merely wanted something I could use with ease (and interact with other networked computers, if need be).

A serious pitch was made to me when I started teaching at my country's oldest university in 1999, as some of my colleagues on the staff did use Apple (the computer labs on that campus had both, but mostly Windows); the fact that Apple had discarded floppy discs was a nuisance, so I held off.

In those years, I did switch to laptops; I haven't had a personal desktop since the 1990s. But I have had an Olivetti, a Sony, a Toshiba, before I moved to Apple, which wasn't something I had considered until I bought an iPod.

Actually, I am a poster child for the 'halo effect' of the iPod. I bought one in 2006, and was so impressed by the customer care (it was replaced without a problem when the HDD failed, still under warranty), as well as the product itself, that I began exploring Apple products with interest. for my birthday in 2008, I bought a MBP, and have had nothing but Apple since then, although every place and organisation I have worked for still uses Windows.
 
My first exposure to a computer was a Commodore64…Both at home and in my grade school’s computer lab. The school then upgraded to some model of pre-Macintosh Apple computer, at some point (don’t remember the model)....which is where I fell in love with Apple. We were still rocking the Commodore 64 at home, all through grade school. When I entered high school, I needed my own computer. I wanted a Mac. So, my mother bought me a Macintosh IIsi. My first exposure to PC’s was in high school where they only had PC's in the computer lab…which I hated. The PC’s seemed so finicky and primitive compared to the Mac’s of the day. But that was just the nature of Windows in the early to mid 90’s. Vastly inferior to the Mac OS and Mac hardware of the same era.

When I entered college, in the late 90’s, I was exposed to and used both modern Macs and PC’s. Classrooms and computer labs were typically outfitted with both and we used them for different reasons or interchangeably. Using both Macs and PC's in college, I could clearly see how superior Macs were to any Windows based PC. The only thing lacking in Macs was the extensive game library that Windows had. Otherwise, Macs were superior in every single way.

Though Windows has considerably improved in the last decade and Windows boxes are no longer universally ugly and boring boxes, Apple’s superiority still continues. Macs have gained in popularity. More games are available. You can use bootcamp or virtualization if you need Windows. So, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to use or buy a PC.

Even though I say that I will never buy a Windows based product (ever), I must admit that I did buy a few old Window’s based PC’s from companies that were going out of business…but I bought them only to get the LCD monitors that came with them. I also bought an old Silicon Graphics computer to play around with. I always wanted one since seeing Jurassic Park and saw a used one for sale in the early 2000’s. Otherwise, it’s only Apple for me!


ElectronGuru said:
I spent many hours on local BBSs, then Prodigy, then AOL, then finally the Internet.
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Hate to niggle but but BBS's, Prodigy, AOL, etc. were all a part of the internet. So, you were using the internet before you even realised it! Perhaps you're thinking of the world wide web? :)
 
Antares said:
Hate to niggle but but BBS's, Prodigy, AOL, etc. were all a part of the internet. So, you were using the internet before you even realised it! Perhaps you're thinking of the world wide web? :)
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You clearly didn't live the early 8 bit computer era. Early to mid 80s. Compuserve and AOL were the end product of the BBS era and had long lives before they connected to the internet.

Many early BBSes were little more than a single PC/Amiga/etc.. with a modem. If someone else was logged on, you could not connect.

B
 
balamw said:
You clearly didn't live the early 8 bit computer era. Early to mid 80s. Compuserve and AOL were the end product of the BBS era and had long lives before they connected to the internet.

Many early BBSes were little more than a single PC/Amiga/etc.. with a modem. If someone else was logged on, you could not connect.

B
Click to expand...

That's still the internet. If you use a modem, you are using the internet.
 
I grew up in a very Windows-centric environment, I got my first computer when I was 5 - it ran Windows 3.1, I upgraded to 95, 98, and I bought my first laptop in high school (XP). The school I went to was near an IBM factory so all Windows there, After that I had a couple HP and Lenovo Windows 7 Machines which were crap, and I had to replace them every 6 months. I got fed up with that. So after a year in college I bought my first MacBook Pro (2011), it is still running great today, I have never looked back. A couple months ago I bought my second MBP (rMBP '13). I will never buy a Windows machine again.
 
Antares said:
That's still the internet. If you use a modem, you are using the internet.
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I'm afraid, you don't know what you're talking about.

Back in the old days, minicomputers like the PDP-8 and PDP-11 had the capability of interfacing with several dumb terminals at once. These terminals were connected to the main computer via serial RS-232 connections. At the very basic level a pair of modems and a telephone line can be used to replace that serial cable and allow the two devices being connected to not be co-located.

Unix based OSes (such as OS X) preserve this terminal behavior. You can even control your Mac over a serial console. http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/~mdille3/doc/mac_osx_serial_console.html

This has absolutely nothing to do with the internet.

To qualify as "the internet" there must at least be Internet Protocol (a.k.a. the "IP" part of TCP/IP) involved, and that wasn't in the cards back in the days when a high speed modem was 300 baud.

I repeat. You must not have lived it.

For the record: Wikipedia puts the first commercial Internet Service Provider as being founded in 1989. While the internet existed before then, and many of us were already connected to it through academic or industrial connections. You couldn't just buy access from your home modem until then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_(internet_service_provider)

The World is an Internet service provider originally headquartered in Brookline, Massachusetts. It was the first dial-up service provider that offered direct access of the Internet to the general public, doing so since 1989. Prior to that time, Internet access had been limited to academic and scientific researchers, some corporations and the military. Previous dial-up providers had only offered access to proprietary systems, such as CompuServe, and to bulletin board systems, such as The WELL and local BBSs.

Many government and university installations blocked, threatened to block, or attempted to shut-down The World's Internet connection until Software Tool & Die was eventually granted permission by the National Science Foundation to provide public Internet access on "an experimental basis."
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The bolded part, represented the nature of the dial-up world from the late 70s to 1989.

CompuServe existed for a full 20 years before it connected to the internet. Read if you don't believe me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe

B
 
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balamw said:
I'm afraid, you don't know what you're talking about.
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Actually, I do know what I'm talking about. However, thank you for the detailed info which does back up your point. This is just semantics on what we consider the "internet." I just don’t know if the official (whatever that may mean) definition of the internet has changed since my initial understanding of it in the 90’s or if this is just a different way of describing the same thing. If the definition has changed, I somehow completely missed it. I’m coming from the 90’s definition of the internet which included BBS’s and e-mail in addition to the web as separate components of the internet. IP addresses allowed for the internet, as we have it, today…an addressing system which no longer requires you to dial directly into mainframes or other computers to send and receive data. Under the older definition, dialing directly into the information systems, including using BBS’s, etc would be considered “using the internet.” It’s just a different kind of internet than our “modern internet.”

Look at it this way: In the future, if we adopt a different protocol or system of connecting to other computers to get and share information, would that not still be considered “using the internet?” i.e. if we use something different than TCP/IP, would we have to come up with a different name than, “internet,” even though we are doing the same thing on the surface (ignoring the underlying structure of how it works)?

Your info and links show that there are some differences from the definition of the internet in publications from the 90’s and what I was also taught in that same era as compared to how some people/publications define it, today. So, in a way, both you and I are correct.

However, my initial point was that the world wide web does not equal the internet, it is merely one component of the internet. The internet is more than just the world wide web.
 
Antares said:
Actually, I do know what I'm talking about. However, thank you for the detailed info which does back up your point. This is just semantics on what we consider the "internet." I just don’t know if the official (whatever that may mean) definition of the internet has changed since my initial understanding of it in the 90’s or if this is just a different way of describing the same thing. If the definition has changed, I somehow completely missed it. I’m coming from the 90’s definition of the internet which included BBS’s and e-mail in addition to the web as separate components of the internet. IP addresses allowed for the internet, as we have it, today…an addressing system which no longer requires you to dial directly into mainframes or other computers to send and receive data. Under the older definition, dialing directly into the information systems, including using BBS’s, etc would be considered “using the internet.” It’s just a different kind of internet than our “modern internet.”

Look at it this way: In the future, if we adopt a different protocol or system of connecting to other computers to get and share information, would that not still be considered “using the internet?” i.e. if we use something different than TCP/IP, would we have to come up with a different name than, “internet,” even though we are doing the same thing on the surface (ignoring the underlying structure of how it works)?

Your info and links show that there are some differences from the definition of the internet in publications from the 90’s and what I was also taught in that same era as compared to how some people/publications define it, today. So, in a way, both you and I are correct.

However, my initial point was that the world wide web does not equal the internet, it is merely one component of the internet. The internet is more than just the world wide web.
Click to expand...

You are correct here, but the big factor here is that the internet uses many a different protocol than http and https. Anything that uses any of the first four layers of the OSI model is basically on the internet. Dialing into a modem is not on the internet, especially if the destination has no further access to any other network. You are just using a modem to connect one computer to another. If it does not have any sort of socket being opened to acquire any connection in any protocol on those layers, then anything IP is not being used, which results in you not being on the internet.

Case in point. Disconnect your computer (read: pull the network cable from it). attach a modem to it. Now disconnect a second computer and attach a modem to it Use the modem to dial from your first computer to your second computer. Let us know which IP protocol is being used, and what addresses are obtained.

I'll guarantee you that you will have none, and that you are not on the internet. Like balamw said, you do not know what you are talking about.

BL.
 
Performa 5200 OS 8.1, iMac G3 with OS 8.6, and a Windows 98 Compaq laptop.

The Performa and iMac stuck around for a while, at least until 2002-2003ish.
 
bradl said:
You are correct here, but the big factor here is that the internet uses many a different protocol than http and https. Anything that uses any of the first four layers of the OSI model is basically on the internet. Dialing into a modem is not on the internet, especially if the destination has no further access to any other network. You are just using a modem to connect one computer to another. If it does not have any sort of socket being opened to acquire any connection in any protocol on those layers, then anything IP is not being used, which results in you not being on the internet.

Case in point. Disconnect your computer (read: pull the network cable from it). attach a modem to it. Now disconnect a second computer and attach a modem to it Use the modem to dial from your first computer to your second computer. Let us know which IP protocol is being used, and what addresses are obtained.
Click to expand...

Now this I do agree with. I wish I could revisit what the actual verbiage was of what I was taught...Because I remeber being taught something along the lines of what you just wrote. But I'm 99% certain BBS's in the 80's were considered part of the internet. I don't want to comment further until I can verify or change my position.
 
Did not grow up with Macs.

Switched to Mac from PC's during graduate school about 14 years ago.

Switched to PC back from Mac when I got into gaming about 4 years ago. Now I use a Asus gaming laptop.

No complaints. PC or Mac, they are all tools.
 
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