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When did you switch to Mac OS

When did switch?

  • 1980s

    Votes: 3 9.4%

  • 1990s

    Votes: 3 9.4%

  • 2000-2005

    Votes: 6 18.8%

  • 2005-2007

    Votes: 11 34.4%

  • This year

    Votes: 9 28.1%
  • Total voters
    32
  • Poll closed .
I started with Apple in 1981 with the Apple II and then to the Apple iiE, the II G model , then on to the Macintosh ever since. I have always used Apple products. My wife had a couple of WinTel machines but came over to the iMac G4. Presently, I have the Intel iMac and the new Mac Book. I have, never in all these years, had any trouble with any of these machines where they had to be repaired.:D
 
As far as home Apples, handed a Mac Plus for usage from early to mid '90s, but not as a primary desktop - first thing I used to make a PPP connection to the Internet and browse the web, on CompuServe; also played with Think C quite a bit, with its proto-C++.

Then, having loved the sweet taste of Nextstep's to-be-Cocoa, was eager to try Rhapsody on Intel. Did and enjoyed, thinking, "finally, a well-supported, neat UI, with a Unix foundation and a fine API". A while later (2002ish?), got a PowerMac 8600 s/hand with OS X 10.2 via XPostFacto. Learnt that in real world usage, OS X was still a bit messy, preferred Platinum to Aqua (still do) and was annoyed that remoting was lost in the move from DPS to Display PDF. Sold it after a few months.

More recently, got a s/h G3 Wallstreet. These things are rather sturdy :D part of case smashed in transit, taking out the drive, but vaguely reassembled with superglue - I don't see a Macbook surviving that. Also had quite a bit of vintage Apple kit back to the II series for a while following collector's clearout, nothing too valuable - most of that given away. Having said all this, only moved to OS X as a primary desktop with a refurb "Late 2006" iMac 2/3 months ago.

I avoid the premium of buying new, especially given the bathtub curve of hardware failure and teething problems. The majority of the machines here are not Macs, although I intend to do a big clearout over the next few weeks which will increase the proportion of Macs significantly without increasing the number ;).
 
I switched a month and a half ago after I bought Vista. They pushed their luck too far, let me tell ya...
I bought a used iBook with 10.4.10 on the cheap, as an experiment to see if I liked/could live with Mac OS.
I realized I couldn't live with Windows at that point, sold the iBook (unrelated) and got an intel mini with 10.5.
 
I started using apples back in about 1991-1992. The first computer I ever used was an Apple, though I forget what model. It was one of the old 5" floppy style systems. I learned to type on an Apple IIe. I used Macs when I was on my yearbook team in 8th grade in 1994. We used Adobe Pagemaker for doing layouts, and this must have been on like OS 7 or something. It's been so long I can't remember the specifics. Somewhere around this time my parents bought our first computer - a 75mhz Windows 3.1 PC. It was like learning everything I already knew all over again. I also learned Microsoft Office on a Mac when I had a business class in high school. But after this point I used PC pretty much through the rest of my high school years, until my senior year where I spent a lot of time doing research on RISC vs. CISC processors. I did my benchmarking on one of the old Turquoise G3 Powermacs. I used PCs all throughout college, and then for a few years after that too. I recently switched to Mac officially this past April and haven't looked back :)
 
Switched to Mac in 2000 with a Clamshell iBook SE, OS9, ever since I've lived computer virus free !! :cool: :apple:
 
I have never switched to Apple since I have ALWAYS been surrounded by Apple products...since the Apple Lisa my father had(I think that was the model)to my iMac G5..passing through PowerMacintosh 6100,PowerBook G4,an iBook G3...(And well there will be a MacBook proximately in mi family appart from the MacBook Pro there is already)
 
Played around with them in College around 2003, then when I went to uni last year, doing a design course I only really used the Macs at uni, so I blew my second Student Loan Payment in January this year on a 24inch iMac, I always preferred the Mac UI, but was always suckered in by PCs being 'cheaper' but hey, I lived and certainly learned.

I now love my Macs, and have converted my dad who simply could not part with his MacBook now.
 
Never really switched, we've had Apple computers in our house since 1986. Started out on a classic, then got a Mac plus (which lasted me till around 1996). Bought a Performa 6320CD, then a Sawtooth G4, then a TiBook, and my latest baby is the 8-core Mac Pro... over the years it's quite an improvement in power!
 
First day of Uni

23 September 1999. The very first day I started my degree, haven't looked back.
 
August 31st, 2006 is when I bought my first macbook. Though, I had been using a Mac at work since Nov '03. I still don't understand why it took me so long to switch my home computer, especially considering I had a dell previously...:(

Oh well, loving my :apple:
 
October 7th 2007

My first Mac! Bought a macbook, sort of spur of the moment buy. Went to but just a cheap windows laptop to use away from home. Nothing I liked, saw the macbook ( I had used a friends for about 10 mins previously) and bought it there and then!!

Haven't looked back! Still have a windows PC which I will always keep. Now talking my parents into getting a Mac! :D
 
Not actually a direct answer to the question in, ehh, question, this list takes me back to the times when owning a computer was still a little bit special.

October 1980, Sinclair ZX-80
April 1981, ‘upgraded’ the Sinclair with a ZX-81 ROM and stick-on new keyboard template
Mid 1981, attached a ‘real’, external keyboard to the Sinclair, added a RAM module (which became so hot you could fry an egg on it) and added a little switch so that you could reverse the image
End of 1981, sold the whole shebang and bought a Commodore VIC-20
Early 1982, added an external floppy drive an expansion chassis and an 80 column display card
End of 1982, sold the VIC and bought a second hand Apple ][ Europlus with two floppy disk drives and an ‘amber’ Wang monitor on a special stand
End of 1983, sold everything for the same price I bought it for and stopped with computers all together
End of 1989, was able to participate in a PC buying scheme with interest free loan and tax write-off (our government wanted to stimulate PC use among the ‘unwashed masses’). It became a Commodore PC40-III with VGA monitor and an OKI 24 pin matrix printer with sheetfeeder
After the PC40-III I owned a string of home grown PC’s until I participated in another PC buying scheme, this time an HP Pavilion with an HP DeskJet (don’t remember the type)
As you could buy a PC every 3 years, by this time from overtime hours and/or spare vacation days (we have a lot of those days here) I bought another PC, a Packard Bell iXtreme Duo 4 years ago and also bought a new HP PhotoSmart and a HP scanner.

And earlier this year I began contemplating in buying an iMac. I had literally seen it all and I needed a change. Besides that, my wild days of tuning and upgrading were over, I had become a middle aged man ;)

And so, on 23 October last, I took delivery of a 20”, 2.4 GHz. iMac with 4 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD, iWork ’08, wireless alu keyboard, wireless MM and APEB. Added two external 500 GB HDDs earlier this month.

Overall contentment on a 1 to 10 scale: 8.5
On whish list: iPhone and yet to be announced and already mythical Ultra Portable :D

Duff Man says: “Oh Yeah!” :cool:
 
Back in 1985 I was the Desktop Products Manager for Wang Australia. We used Intel machines running MS-DOS. One of the guys who worked for me had a Mac at home and when visiting him I'd experiment with it. Wang's Headquarters was in Lowell, Ma. When visiting Lowell I was always amazed at the number of Mac's being used in the marketing and admin teams - particularly their management.

In 1987, after Microsoft dropped the major development in DOS 4, I relocated to the UK for a year or so and ran a project for Wang Australia and Digital Research to make a true multi-tasking DOS - using Concurrent DOS 286 as the base source code. Our lead consultant at the time is the guy who now owns www.progent.com. A by product of this project was DR-DOS.

In 2000, living in Vanuatu (an island republic in the south pacific), I bought the biggest / fastest Compaq machine I could lay my hands on. XP and Office on this machine continually crashed.

After months of frustration with XP, and many years of distrust of Microsoft, in Jan 2001 I flew to Australia and picked up a Ti Notebook that came with OS X 10.1.

This is being typed on a 2007 24" iMac - which is my 5th Mac.
 
As soon as possible after the MB came out :)

I'm happy I waited the ~6months for the Intel switch on the notebook :)
 
Well I've always had my eye on a Mac but when I had the money for my first laptop I coldn't be assed to save for a MacBook any more and bought a XP laptop instead (which served me very well). That was January '07. In about the June I got an old eMac (well my fathers old work one) and loved the Mac OS. After some hard saving I finally got my SR MacBook on 5th Nov 07, happy days :)
So as of writing Ive been a full time Mac user for 30 days
 
never really switched as i just used windows xp on our home computer and at school as that was the norm. i tinkered around with OS 9 on my cousins black powerbook and jaguar on my auntie's powermac G4 not really knowing what it was or how to use it.

i then discovered tiger when i bought my macbook pro last year and have liked it much better than windows ever since. "once you go mac, you never go back"
 
Somewhere in September 2007. I'm still a newbie. lol
But I lurked this place for a long time.
 
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