When did you see the light? And how?

[TDM21]

My story is a little bit backwards to most people. When I was about 3 my mom was the director of a preschool and they had nothing but macs. All were LCII, except fot the office computer which was an LCIII. I was so excited when I was 11 because the office got a PowerPC, although I do not remember what version it was. I instantly went out to the local Babbages (now GameStop) and bought a bunch of games that were on cds. The cd-rom drive was so cool. All this time, the computers in my schools were all IBM, or Accent. I hated using those computers. They all had Windows 3.1 or 95 (this was the mid to late 90s). When my mom lost her job as director, we were forced to buy a PC. This was in early 2000. We bought a Compaq. It had a 556mHz celreon processor, 30Gb hardrive, 128mb ram, cd burner, and Windows 98. I spent months learning 98 and hated it. Later I upgraded to XP and then the motherboard so I could have a 1800+ Athalon.
Finally, I was ready to graduate from highschool last spring and was debating on what computer to take with me to college. I made my mind up that I would go back to Apple. I had not used a Mac since the time of OS 8 so it was time to change. All I can say is I could not be happier with the switch back. I love my 12"pb. I really enjoy OSX since I have a great interface and still have the ability to dab around with unix. I tried using Red Hat on my computer at home, but found the learning curve to be, too, steep.

 

[JeDiBoYTJ]

10th grade, TV Production class, editing on G3 iMacs with iMovie, loved how simple it was. Then, the next year, our class recieved 2 brand new G4 800mhz iMacs... I swear I then fell in love with Mac. I loved just sitting in front of the machine. I then started using Final Cut Pro 3, and within in a week I was set... I HAD to have one.... It got to the point where I didnt even want to touch my Windoze machine at home... sadly, it took 2 years before I could gather enough funds to purchase a mac.... but its been well worth the wait... and I love my new PB

 

[Jovian9]

January 2002.....when the first G4 iMac 15" with SuperDrive came out. My wife and I have had both Macs and PC's over the years and never really had a preference one way or the other. But when we saw the G4 iMac we fell in love with it....ordered it.....waited 2 months for it to be delivered......sold our PC.....and haven't had a PC since. Since then we've bought several used iBooks......one G4 iBook and now have a 17" PowerBook........also we sold our 15" G4 iMac and bought a 17" when they were introduced........sold it and bought a G5 iMac recently. We've also (between us) have had every gen of iPod (now the 4G 40GB and Blue mini). Kind of obsessed with Apple nowadays and I know the G4 iMac started it.

 

[mms]

I was born into a family with Macs, so I grew up playing KidPix on a Mac SE. I've been all-Mac ever since, to the point that I encounter problems on the rare occasion that I try to use a PC. Fortunately my school is all Mac (classic MacOS, but still better than Windows). My dad got into it because he was a scientist and his lab was using Macs.

 

[Mechcozmo]

When I was 6 I had a Macintosh Classic in my room. I knew what a hard disk was before I was seven years old, not that I knew much beyond "your stuff is stored there even after you shut down."



I have always used a Mac, but I am "trilingual." Pre-OS X, OS X, and Windoze 98-XP. No Linux but I have played with it. I just like OS X too much.

 

[Inspector Lee]

It was December 2002. I'd been a PC user all my life and never had problems with any of them. My only experience with Macs was seeing them in the computer labs during undergrad and in a genetics lab at work. In fact, I had never touched the keyboard or mouse on one. Never saw an ad, never fiddled with one in a store - nothing. But I decided to give them a shot because I could always go back.

The experience reminds me of what Twain said when asked why he went out on a limb - "because that's where the fruit is."

 

[SiliconAddict]

I didn't and don't. I still have reservations about Mac and OS X. Those reservations will be lessened with a better line of PowerBooks which will hopefully be out in Spring with Tiger. I'm not overly impressed with the speed of OS X right now on anything other then a G5. Even my 850Mhz Toshiba laptop feels faster then OS X on a 17" PowerBook which should NOT be the case.

Unlike most people who switch I really don't have that terrible a time with Windows esp since I stopped using the craptastic 9x back in 98 with NT4, then 2K, then XP. I'm a geek. So I know how to handle Windows since it is my job. I've never gotten a virus. I've never had a worm, or adware, or any other type of malware. *shrugs* Believe it or not for me at least Windows works but like I said I'm a tech geek so take what you will out of it.

The reason I'm looking at Mac and OS X is two fold.
First, and foremost I want to learn *nix. I hate Linux. Its butt ugly and it doesn’t have a learning curve. It has a straight drop-off with death on impact unless you are cushioned by a mound of Linux books. OS X is a solid GUI built on BSD. So I get the best of both worlds.
Second. I go to work I deal with Windows and its interesting *coughs* nuances. (Or was that nuisances?) When I come home from work I don’t want to deal with Windows and its *coughs* nuances. Just because I can doesn’t mean I should. So I’d like to try something else.
Finally. *shrugs* I’m in the market for a new laptop and want to try something different.

At any rate if Apple does what I hope tomorrow I will be purchasing my first Apple product since my Newton. Bring on the 60GB iPod. Color screen or no color screen.

 

[Koodauw]

its amazing what college can teach you.

The first time I really spent time on an Apple was when I went to college. My roommate had a 15'' Tibook, and I had a nice Dell laptop. From time to time I would use his computer, just for a change of pace, and really began to like the looks and easy of use of OSX. (at this point jaguar had just come out)

Well later that summer I ended up spilling some water on my notebook, and was in the market for a new one. I shopped around a bit, and went with what I knew, another Dell, the 600m. I was unimpressed by the screen resolution on it though, and sent it back.

I began to think about what I really wanted in a notebook this time. I wanted something very portable, rather good looking, wireless and bluetooth, and a good battery life. And I had only about 1500 to spend total.

I talked to another friend of mine, and he encouraged me to look at a Macintosh, and help to explain to me how OSX was very different from OS9 (which I never really knew how to use.)

After much though it came down to either a 12'' PB, (the ibook was still G3 back then) and a Sony Vaio 12''. The Vaio had a P4 at the time, and If I was going intel, I really wanted to get a Pentium-M/ Centrino for the battery life. it also was a out of my price range. 1700 before rebates I think.

Then I found out about Cram & Jam. $200 dollars off an iPod. I had wanted an iPod for sooooooooooooo long, I just cound't resist any more. The deal was too sweet to pass up, and I took advantage right then and there.

kinda wish I had known about the Rev. B PB's comin about 1.5 months later. As I find the lack of DVI on this thing rather bothersome. This was all before I knew about macruomrs.

Its amazing how just having a roommate with an Apple planted the seed for me, and got me thinking. He never once touted it over Windows, or anything like that, he just explained how he liked it and that was that. I have since tried to do the same, and I think it is a great way to encourage open minded people to consider the Macintosh platform.

 

[Diatribe]

One of my best friends has had a mac forever and always told me that he liked it very much. He had a G4 500Mhz Powermac and OS9.
I never liked the look of the OS and therefore didn't bother to explore it, but after he bought a shiny iBook last November I was interested. So I started reading this forum at the beginning of this year and two months later I got myself a shiny iBook too. (Damn you people )

Two months afterwards this went to my Mum who loves it passionately and I got myself a nice 12" PB. Now my Dad will get himself a 15" PB after seeing mine a couple of times.

This has been a domino effect and I have to say it has been an awesome time. I never thought I could be so productive on a computer. Nice experience.

 

[AmigoMac]

Some years ago I worked with a mac for the first time, not mine, it was an epic, cool experience, then I went to lab where the main network was linux based and forgot a bit about the mac experience, nonetheless, I was reading news about the mac evolution and how it developed, sure I had to touch windows, and still do at work, but I remember the day as if it was yesterday, I saw a man in the mail office picking his cube up... ... God I had to get a mac, but the "I will wait a bit" was too long and I came back to linux without forgetting the mac side I found in me , at the end of 2002 I was reading about Macs, Apple, iPods, and in Jan. 03 when Steve came with the new Alu. 12" PB I took my laptop to ebay and got the mac, then the iPod, the iSight, .Mac account, PB sold, a second iPod, eMac, iBook in may, and now, let's see what Santa Jobs brings today and in MWSF 05.

It's nice to have a computer that will talk to you...

 

[Devie]

I actually havnt converted yet, but its on its way, and I misawell say how I got to the mind set of wanting a mac.

About a year a go, on the official playstation.au forums where I like to go to talk about all consoles (not just PS2), there was a post your desktop thread, I saw some dude posted a desktop of his OSX.2 system. I thought wtf is that (with being a beloved PC user because of the draw of games, and pretty much thought all OS's where the same with viruses, networking etc). So I asked him, he said it was Apple Mac blah blah, I said that I'd love to get one but I'm not a movie editor and I dont like the fact of one-button mouses (ignorence), he told me pretty much that I'm an idiot and I should go have a look at the computers.
So I took his advice and started to look at the computers and the OS, researched the hell out of the OSX to see if its right for me, got more advice from a PB user from the PS.au forums about networking etc. I started to look at getting a Dual 1.8GHz G5 REV A then realised I dont have enough money for it. So I looked really closely at the 12" PB... then the 15"... then the 12" iBook... then the 17" PB... then the 15" again... then realised I dont need a laptop, so looked at the Dual 1.8GHz Rev B. Then I saw the new iMac, fell in love with almost all of it a part from the AGP card, but I was opting for it because of price, then apple showed off the new SP 1.8GHz PM. I am now opting for that and I should have it and a 17" LCD monitor by January .

Prolly the weird thing is, I only used OSX.3 for the very first time about two weeks ago, on one of the new eMac's at school (one of two ), I only got to use it for about five minutes because the teacher who "ownes" them is a bit of a prick and has password protected them all... even though they are they SCHOOLS... ahwell

 

[cluthz]

My first mac experience was when my father bought a Mac SE (back in late 80s),
we had a ibm (2.77 mhz we replaced it with the se).
I got Epyx Wintergame and KidPix from my dad.

It was soo cool..

 

[MattG]

Got to play around with a Flat Panel G4 iMac at the Photo Marketing Association Convention a couple years ago and I was hooked!

 

[johnnyjibbs]

I feel a bit bad. Although I vaguely remember using the odd Macintosh Classic during early secondary school years in the early ninties, I have never really had any experience with Macs. We had an Amiga 500 as our first computer, which was only really used for games and a bit of Deluxe Paint and AMOS, and then we jumped into PCs with Windows 95.

Why do I feel bad? Well, a couple of years ago (Summer 2002), my younger sister was about to start uni and, being more organised, had the money to buy a laptop computer which she wanted to take to college with her. She was after the iBook (which would have been an iBook G3 700 with Mac OS 10.1 or even just Jaguar). Knowing very little about Macs at the time, but more than anyone else in my family, I advised against it, saying that it wouldn't be compatible (*cough cough* ). In the end she got an £800 P4 Windows laptop with no battery life, which was £300 cheaper than the iBook at the time anyway.

Fast forward to about May 2003 and I had heard about this music store opened by Apple. I decided to have a peek at apple.com and take a look at what they had on offer by then. I learnt about Mac OS X and remember playing with the dock magnification thing in the shop the summer previously. I suddenly got into it, reading all the Apple website propaganda ( ), and was looking at either the 12" PB (876Mhz rev A at the time) or the 12" iBook G3 900. I remember reading lots of horror stories about heat issues with the PB and it was a little more expensive than I could afford, especially as I really wanted a SuperDrive. I knew I'd be getting it around September time so I was hoping for an update before then. You can see why I wasn't very popular with my family when I said I wanted a Mac, and they went on about it being incompatible and stuff. I had learnt by now that all that talk was rubbish.

It was about this time that I got wind of MacRumors.com and lurked here for a while, gaining lots of handy information, although I didn't make my first post until September 2003. My main concern was the processor speeds, although my one and only Mac fanatic friend told me the general facts about that but he was still stuck in Mac OS 9 land, which did not look at all appealing to me. Everyone else joked at me when I said I was considering a Mac purchase.

And so over the summer, I got a summer job that would pay enough for the 12" PB SuperDrive (what I wanted) and Office student edition and Photoshop Elements. At this point all the rumors were about G5 15" AlBooks but I was hoping for an update before I left.

That update came in September 2003 and so I picked up a 12" PB SuperDrive 1GHz machine, which has served me very well over the year I've had it, and will continue to do so for many more years to come. I have no intention of upgrading any time soon.

As you can see, now I'm a Mac fanatic and am "in with the times" regarding computers. I would hardly have been able to tell you what a graphics card was 2 years ago! Now I even know the ins and outs of a FSB Total Mac geek

Of course, our home computer needed upgrading and, despite loving my PB, my parents went for a Dell Dimension desktop, which I don't blame them for, but now my dad wants a Mac because of Spyware, etc!

The story ends on a high note since my younger brother, who has just started uni, has ordered one of the new iBooks. He's currently up there without his own computer, but it should arrive next week along with the iPod I've been wanting this year. My sister continues on with her laptop (now a Sony becuase the other one got nicked - unfortunately she couldn't specifiy to replace it with an iBook) but I've just got the strangest feeling that my parents' next computer, may well be Mac.

*
Funnily enough I hadn't really heard about the iPod until iTMS opened in the US in April 2003 but it wasn't popular until the following Christmas (last xmas).

Oh yeah, and at some point (I think January 2002) when the new iMac G4 was released, I remember getting some email advert from Apple about it, and me thinking it looked cool, but way out of my price range and of course I thought it was incompatible


Sorry for the long post, got a bit emotional there

 

[MacSA]

We had an Amiga 500 as our first computer, which was only really used for games and a bit of Deluxe Paint and AMOS, and then we jumped into PCs with Windows 95.

Up until January 2001 I was using an Amiga 1200 for all my word processing, it has 2MB RAM, Motorola 68020 processor at 14.1mhz and a 20 MB (yes MB lol) hard drive, Workbench 3.0. Im still on my PC for now, saving for a Mac


I switched it on yesteraday and hooked it up to the TV and it still worked fine.

 

[johnnyjibbs]

Up until January 2001 I was using an Amiga 1200 for all my word processing, it has 2Mb RAM, Motorola 68020 processor at 14.1mhz and a 20 MB (yes MB lol) hard drive. Im still on my PC for now, saving for a Mac

The funny thing is, that Amigas were much closer to Macs than Windows PCs were. I never knew what the processor was inside my Amiga, nor what speed it ran at. I know it must have been a Motorola 68xxx one but it had 512k RAM (upgraded to 1MB) and NO hard drive! I remember stuggling to make any of my AMOS games fit on a floppy disk!

 

[MacSA]

The funny thing is, that Amigas were much closer to Macs than Windows PCs were. I never knew what the processor was inside my Amiga, nor what speed it ran at. I know it must have been a Motorola 68xxx one but it had 512k RAM (upgraded to 1MB) and NO hard drive! I remember stuggling to make any of my AMOS games fit on a floppy disk!

You're right about that, the menu bar is at the top of the screen for instance, also when you put a floppy disk in the drive a disc icon comes up on the screen. There were also onscreen icons for each partition of the hard drive.

The A500 had a Motorola 68000 chip running at 7.14 mhz.

I

 

[johnnyjibbs]

You're right about that, the menu bar is at the top of the screen for instance, also when you put a floppy disk in the drive a disc icon comes up on the screen. There were also onscreen icons for each partition of the hard drive.

The A500 had a Motorola 68000 chip running at 7.14 mhz.

I

7 MHz - cool! And I think I'll be changing to a MacRumors 68000 soon

Anyway, we'd better get back on topic - the original poster didn't want this thread to go off at a tangent..

But I guess being an Amiga owner was almost like starting off with a Mac, it's just Macs were SO expensive if I remember rightly

 

[wordmunger]

My high school debate partner had an original Mac 128 in 1984. I knew I wanted a Mac at that moment, but I didn't scrape up the money to buy a used Mac 512 until 1987. Haven't looked back since.

 

[MacRy]

When I saw the 17" flat panel iMac I knew that I had to have one because it just looked so cool and futuristic. Sad, I know, that I went on aesthetics first but there you go. After using it for a month and boring my friends and family to death with how great it was it then became my mission to convert as many 'lost souls' as possible.

 

[russed]

i cant remember what drew me to an apple last summer but i was in leeds and went to a shop selling apples just after beign to the sony shop to look at vaios. after about 3 mins of plaing on it i knew i had to get one so i ordered one there and then and havent looked back. im just saving up for my next one.

i think the reason why i went to apple though was because i was p***ed off with windoze etc and just wanted something a bit cooler!

 

[bousozoku]

I certainly didn't see any light when I tried the original Macintosh. The owner of the company bought one and rather than leave it in his office, he let our intern use it for drawing some marketing materials. It looked okay, a descendent of the Lisa. After the intern went back to univ., the Macintosh ended up in an open area, available for anyone to try. I sat down, without reading anything and started to use it. Within 15 minutes, I had decided that it was a good idea gone bad and that it needed a lot of work.

Three years later in late 1987, I found myself buying an Atari 1040ST and 12 inch monochrome/paper white monitor for roughly $750. It was 80 percent of the Macintosh at 25 percent of the price and only 10 percent of the difficulty to programme.

Zoom forward to 1991, my mum calls and says that there is an IBM L40SX laptop computer on Home Shopping Network for $1595, 25 percent of the price one year earlier. I buy it since I'm working with other x86 machines constantly. I also buy the $99 service agreement. After $800 in software and spending 99 percent of my time trying to get things to work together, the mouse port dies. I'm told that it would cost more to replace the motherboard than the machine is worth. They ask me if I would accept $998 in exchange and I agree. $250 a year depreciation for each of the two years I had it isn't too bad, especially for the biggest headache of a computer I'd ever had.

I started shopping again. Atari didn't seem to be doing well, even though my ST was still going strong. I didn't want another x86 machine simply because they were a pain with all the different kinds of memory (extended, expanded, low, high, conventional...) so that limited me to Amiga and Macintosh. Commodore's finances were in the toilet and they would be out of business within the year, so I went to explore Apple's machines.

The golden point still seemed to be $2495 and that was way beyond what I was going to do. I happened across an office store exclusive Performa 476, which was the Quadra 605 without the floating point hardware, an added keyboard and monitor, and a larger, 120MB hard drive and a decent price--$1495. I checked two other stores and bought it that day.

I can't say that it was a life-changing experience. I think the Atari ST should get credit for that. The Performa, and the others which followed it, have given me an unusually stable platform on which to keep track of things and to create. I've had plenty of bumps and bruises with them and I still don't like Apple's choices but looking at the alternatives, there are no alternatives for me.

 

[aussie_geek]

Year 7 at high school (1st year). We had a room of Mac Plus's networked for computer studies. They then upgraded them to Mac Classics and then I realised what a great platform Mac OS is. There was a room full of PC's but I rarely went in there as there were too many other's in there fighting over a terminal. The Mac Lab always had a spare Mac Available (we had 30 of them), as opposed to the PC lab - 10 or so computers.

When I started University I needed a computer for essays etc. Money was a little tight but I forked out the cash for a Colour Classic (which still works today mind you!!). It cost a bit more than a PC but it served me faithfully for the next 4 years.


So, I have apple a day for over 10 years now. And have only touched a PC for about 2 hours of that time over 10 years.

aussie_geek

 

[ghostboy]

I was brainwashed at art college. But I'm a willing convert. For the most part, I love Apple.

 

[risc]

*NIX

I'd been using Linux/BSD since 1994 and late in 2003 I became very depressed with where Linux wasn't going on the desktop. I spoke to a friend who had just bought a PowerBook and was amazed by it. The next day I purchased a iBook G4, and I've never looked back. I'm still using the iBook, and I've replaced my Linux desktop box with a Power Mac G5. OS X is the best desktop UNIX type OS I've ever used. I'll keep using Linux/BSD but never again on my desktop.