What was your first Mac?

[arefbe]

My first Mac was a MacPlus, circa 1989. But I kept it only a few months before switching to a Mac SE, since it could house 2 floppy drives. In 1994 I had it converted into a Mac SE/30 at a local computer store, and lost one of the drives in the process.

 

[navaira]

This is the most wholesome thread I’ve ever seen on those forums. Thank you @The Cockney Rebel.

 

[Daveg6]

My first Apple computer was an Apple IIC, otherwise known as ET’s head! Then came an Apple IIGS, with Bose speakers. Translucent iMac was next, then blue and white Power Mac G3. 2009 Power Mac 350 which I used for 14 years and now a Mac Mini M2 Pro which is wonderful. I love the Apple ecosystem! 16 Pro phone, iPad Air, Apple Watch series 10.

 

[WriteNow]

few months of Windows 95 I was sick of having to fix and workaround bugs, defrag the drive, reinstall windows when things decided they no longer wanted to work for no reason etc

And I'm sure that Murphy's Law made sure that these problems would crop up the night when you needed the system 100% functional to get that important project done for the next day!

I'll never forget my first Windows 95 experience. I was given access to a PC system to use. Microsoft Publisher. (It's odd that it's odd that I was a long time Macintosh user, but my first experience using page layout software was Microsoft Publisher!) I found that the Windows 95 wasn't quite as awful as I had feared, but at the same time I found myself appreciating my Macintosh at home more. Sometimes I'd even do initial work on my Macintosh at home to bring in text files to import into Publisher. The odd thing in this was that I had an SE/30 running System 6, which means a monochrome screen and then long discontinued operating system.

A couple of years later I had a chance to play with both Windows 95 and Windows 98 on various old PCs. That experience gave me a full exposure to all the problems of Windows 95/98.

I was frankly always a little surprised whenever I would read commentary suggesting that Windows 95/98 was a step past System 7. That was never my experience. I'm sure there were ways Windows 95/98 was better, but the overall experience of the Mac of the Mac OS was better, and it caused me a lot less trouble than Windows--even though I had used some versions of System 6 and System 7 that were considered problematic.

 

[TumbleDryer]

And I'm sure that Murphy's Law made sure that these problems would crop up the night when you needed the system 100% functional to get that important project done for the next day!

Oh yes! I put my fist through my very expensive Epson printer (it was cheaper than taking a hammer to the PC) when I needed to print for a project deadline the next day. I'm the most chill person but Windows made me angry lol.

As we all know Windows and printers just don't work well together but it had been printing fine all week doing the mockups etc. Then when it came to me doing the final print Windows decided it no longer wanted to recognise the printer. Nothing at all had changed on the system, it just didn't want to work anymore. I lost my **** put my fist through the perspex lid of the giant A3 printer lid and threw it in the bin outside. I couldn't do it to the PC as it had my work on it lol so the poor printer took the heat. That was the day I made up my mind to drop £1800 on a brand new Mac set up. £1800 when I was a student in 1999. That's A LOT of money but I was determined to get away from Windows.

I didn't have a single problem with the G4 for the 5 years I had it!

 

[WriteNow]

As we all know Windows and printers just don't work well together

Now, as I think of it, I seem to recall having read somebody who worked in IT talking about the problems and hassles of dealing with printers.

I remember wondering about that at the time, thinking that printers had never been much of a problem for me. But now that you bring this up, it occurs to me that IT person probably was dealing with Windows and printers.

I fortunately never had printer problems with any of the Windows systems I had, but it probably helped that I didn't use a printer much.

And all the printers I used were so old that Windows included driver software on the Windows install disk, which could possibly have worked more reliably than driver software on a CD included with a new printer.

but it had been printing fine all week doing the mockups etc. Then when it came to me doing the final print Windows decided it no longer wanted to recognise the printer. Nothing at all had changed on the system, it just didn't want to work anymore.

It probably had lost interest in working earlier in the week, but it decided to wait for the most inconvenient possible moment to act up!

 

[IvyKing]

And all the printers I used were so old that Windows included driver software on the Windows install disk, which could possibly have worked more reliably than driver software on a CD included with a new printer.

As long as the printer is not too old, I have a Xerox Phaser 6180DN that is nicely supported by MacOS's generic Postscript driver but MS does not provide drivers with modern versions of Windows.

 

[Antares23]

Mine was an Early 2006 20" iMac with the 2.0GHz Core Duo, 2GB of RAM, and the Radeon X1600, got it back in 2015 when I was 14, Snow Leopard was still somewhat usable back in these days lol

 

[TumbleDryer]

It probably had lost interest in working earlier in the week, but it decided to wait for the most inconvenient possible moment to act up!

It's the thing I hate most about Windows. You can do the same thing over and over 100 times and then all of a sudden, for absolutely no reason at all, it does something different. You spend days finding a work around only for it to go back to normal in the future but because you've done the workaround it's now broken again. Now you have to create a workaround for the workaround even though things would be working fine without the initial workaround. Or just reinstall Windows again and hope that the bug that caused the initial workaround goes away.

It's no better on Windows 11 25 years later. I had to use it at work for a time and the printers would be all good for a month then all of a sudden nothing.

Anyhoo... im getting off topic.

 

[aakshey]

MBA 11" 2014 4gb 128gb, base model.

 

[nickdalzell1]

It's the thing I hate most about Windows. You can do the same thing over and over 100 times and then all of a sudden, for absolutely no reason at all, it does something different. You spend days finding a work around only for it to go back to normal in the future but because you've done the workaround it's now broken again. Now you have to create a workaround for the workaround even though things would be working fine without the initial workaround. Or just reinstall Windows again and hope that the bug that caused the initial workaround goes away.

It's no better on Windows 11 25 years later. I had to use it at work for a time and the printers would be all good for a month then all of a sudden nothing.

Anyhoo... im getting off topic.

Windows 11 ultimately drove me back to Mac. The damned thing updates itself whether you like it or not (and you can only delay it a few weeks) and when it does you end up spending more hours fixing what the update broke, rearranging stuff and getting all of those 18 tabs at work back, because even to this day, Windows still cannot remember the state of apps like macOS can today. I mean if a Mac updates it's always YOUR choice, and when it reboots, it brings back every browser tab, every app and every last state it was in before the restart so it's like it never even happened. Why can't Windows do this?


The work PC (not the one in my station)runs Win11 and each time it's frustrating to deal with, not just because the boss is one of those older 'i hate the start menu since Win95 so i'll clutter the entire desktop across two monitors with hundreds of icons along with 'new folder (1)' and so on, and somehow I can remember where everything is!' types, but she keeps light mode on so I get a guaranteed migraine each time I spend more than an hour on it, most often troubleshooting the last update that forced itself. The printer also is bugged. it works, but shows an error each time you print saying 'OfficeJet isn't responding' a few times and 5 minutes later it pops up 'Error, The Operation Completed Successfully' and goes ahead and prints. Why that's an 'error' has been an enigma since my Win3.1 days.

Seriously why is this an error?!

There isn't a moment I don't tell her 'This kinda crap drove me to a Mac'.

 

[kschendel]

LOL that's the exact opposite of a message that caused a lot of hilarity years ago, when I was with a group who were doing stuff on an Apple Lisa. If you tried to format a blank floppy from the command line, the drive would chug for a moment or two, and then it would report "Floppy format failed." Which meant it worked.

 

[nickdalzell1]

What's more funny is that it requires you to dismiss it by clicking 'OK'. If something is actually working, I neither expect a notification about it nor one I must dismiss.

Intel graphics driver installers often have this bug as well, you start the install and it errors out saying 'Your PC does not meet the minimum requirements to run this software' and when you click 'OK' the installer continues to install anyway, and the drivers work. Again, this kinda nutso stuff got me back on Mac after years of Windows experience (Like one of my older posts said, my first experience with Mac was with a Classic in 2001, which wasn't a good one BTW, so I went back to Windows later). Apple has come a long way since the OS 7 days, and I'm lovin' every minute of it.

 

[phrehdd]

I recall at work we had just put Microsoft "Vista" on the bench for testing and deciding if we should upgrade to it companywide. I mention this as my first day of working with it in lab, I went that weekend to an Apple Store and purchased one of the earliest Mac Pro models. The deciding point was how ...well <insert very unkind words here> Vista was and the direction Microsoft was taking and the fact that Apple allowed for dual boot, took some unix commands and besides, back then, the Mac Pro was a sexy looking beast. Bt the time I sold it, I had further upgraded it. It remains one of my fondest memories with computers. Back then, I had lost count of all the PC clones I had built for friends and family and haven't looked back since. No regrets. No buyers remorse. Just loved that cheese grater.

 

[eskr]

MacBook Pro 15" in 2006, the first one on Intel (because I needed Windows for some of tricky things). Still carrying around my old one from 2017 exactly for the same reason while the main one is M2 Air

 

[basdeninard]

Mac mini 1.5 GHz Intel Core Solo with Mac OS X Tiger.

 

[PandaPunch]

My first Mac is the one I'm using now to post this message, the M1 Mac Mini. I mostly didn't want to deal with Windows 11 and I wanted to use an ARM based computer. Ended up working extremely well and I might end up buying a new Mac Mini next year so my mom can see if she would like to start using macOS instead of Windows 11 since it's been giving her problems (but it might also be her hardware too) and she's been interested getting a smaller desktop too.

Then after she gets her own Mac or if she doesn't borrow it to test drive macOS, I'll turn this Mac Mini into a home lab server for my Jellyfin media collection, LAN multiplayer games like Luanti and other free games, and other self hosted tools. It'll be a lot nicer compared to the large tower I'm currently using.

And if people are curious about Luanti, think Minecraft but it's free and not attached to major companies like MS in case that's an issue for you. I like having a 24/7 private LAN server for me and my family to play in (even though, I'm really the only one playing, lol). When I get the time, I plan to see if I can make the Stardew Valley multiplayer server mod work since more of us actually play Stardew Valley.

Luanti | Open source voxel game engine - Luanti

An open source voxel game engine. Play one of our many games, mod a game to your liking, make your own game, or play on a multiplayer server.

www.luanti.org

 

[VulchR]

I recall at work we had just put Microsoft "Vista" on the bench for testing and deciding if we should upgrade to it companywide. I mention this as my first day of working with it in lab, I went that weekend to an Apple Store and purchased one of the earliest Mac Pro models. The deciding point was how ...well <insert very unkind words here> Vista was and the direction Microsoft was taking and the fact that Apple allowed for dual boot, took some unix commands and besides, back then, the Mac Pro was a sexy looking beast. Bt the time I sold it, I had further upgraded it. It remains one of my fondest memories with computers. Back then, I had lost count of all the PC clones I had built for friends and family and haven't looked back since. No regrets. No buyers remorse. Just loved that cheese grater.

I used to run a Windows virtual machine on a first-generation Mac Pro in our lab. By far it was the best Windows machine we ever had. Backup was a breeze because the whole Windows partition was one file. The dedicated Windows machines sucked and had a usable lifespan of about one-third of the lifespan of the Mac Pro.

FWIW it is interesting you brought up UNIX. I used C-shell and chains of small AWK programs to analyse much of our data. It was much more efficient than trying to code programs in C.

 

[eRondeau]

My first Mac was a 14.1” Late-2003 iBook G4 @ 1GHz. It had 256MB RAM and a 60GB HDD bought new on November 14, 2003. A few weeks before I’d visited a friend who had a “Sunflower” iMac G4. He was using iMovie to import/edit a Mini-DV video he’d shot and seeing that was life-changing for me. Not long after I bought the iBook I’d also bought a Canon Mini-DV video camera, a 2nd-Gen iPod, and a Bluetooth USB adapter with an Apple bluetooth keyboard & mouse. All of this set me back thousands of dollars but geez I could do some cool things with it! (And in case you’re wondering, yes I still have that iBook G4 and yes it still works perfectly, running Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger.) Great memories!

 

[iHorseHead]

MacBook 4,1 1GB of RAM. Went to Apple store, paid 200€ to upgrade to 4GB in 2011 because of Lion and support was dropped anyway with Mountain Lion xD. I was so disappointed-

 

[Mikey86uk]

My first Mac was a mid 2010 MacBook Pro 13"!

Loved it that much that I then decided to get a mid 2011 base spec 27" iMac!

Haven't looked back since!

 

[Alameda]

Using a Mac in 1987:
I was a university student, and had an assignment to analyze demographic data using a program called SPSS, which we configured using Fortran scripts. We could walk to the Math building and use a terminal to write run our batch jobs, which took about 15-20 minutes each time, then we’d collect the printouts.

But I had a Mac, and a modem! So I could dial in and run my batches from home using a terminal emulator.

The Mac OS didn’t have multitasking, but a beta program called Switcher was released which did let you load and switch between apps. If you didn’t save your work before switching, the computer would crash. And it crashed a lot! There was no memory protection, so apps could easily write into the memory of other apps.


So I’d start Switcher, load the terminal emulator, login and run a batch job. Then I’d start MS Word and a graphing program called Cricket Graph.

When the job finished, I printed the results to the screen, copied the table to the clipboard, and started a new batch. I pasted the table into Cricket, made a graph, and pasted the graph into Word.

Compared to today, it was very laborious. But at the time, it was very much state of the art, and I was able to write a paper with in-line graphs instead of an appendix full of tables. I don’t think I had a printer (they cost $500!!!) so I had to take the floppy disk to a lab to get a printout.

 

[phrehdd]

I used to run a Windows virtual machine on a first-generation Mac Pro in our lab. By far it was the best Windows machine we ever had. Backup was a breeze because the whole Windows partition was one file. The dedicated Windows machines sucked and had a usable lifespan of about one-third of the lifespan of the Mac Pro.

FWIW it is interesting you brought up UNIX. I used C-shell and chains of small AWK programs to analyse much of our data. It was much more efficient than trying to code programs in C.

I ran Windows as well that way for some personal use - mostly to 'archive' my movie disc collection. There were better tools at that time than for OSX. At times I would have new software product from work I could test/use over the weekend and was always happy the way the VMs worked on the MP.

 

[CoMoMacUser]

Mac Plus in spring 1990. Got it from the college tech store, along with a Rodime 20 MB HD and an ImageWriter. No more trips to the computer lab after that. Good times.

 

[Cheffy Dave]

Mine was a 24” 2008 iMac.

Top spec, at the time.

Such a lovely, lovely machine. It was actually this Mac that got me into photography.

What about you?

Mine was the 12” Black plastic Computer refurbished, my wife loved it so much,bought one for her.BEST computer we each ever had