Happy birthday, Mac!

Sad Professor

The Macintosh is 30 years old today and Apple have a pretty cool page set up to celebrate:

http://www.apple.com/30-years/

Macworld also has an interesting interview with Cook and co in which among other things they discuss the possibility of iOS and OS X converging.

Feel free to share any other interesting links from around the web.

So anyone want to share memories of their first Mac?

Mine was a Performa 5200 that my mother got me as a birthday present in my early teens. I’m struggling to remember now, but I think it only came with 8MB of RAM and a 500MB hard drive. It was my first computer and I have fond memories of going through the various tutorials that taught you how to drag and drop, cut and paste, etc. It was a couple of years before I had access to dial-up, so I relied a lot on MacFormat CDs for software and games. Anyone remember Escape Velocity?

System 7 was prone to freezing and I quickly learned how to troubleshoot extension conflicts and other issues. This seemed very annoying at first until I got a taste of Windows 95 - what a piece a sh*t that was. Mac OS had a lot of issues in those days but it was still light years ahead of MS. To this day I don’t know how anyone used Windows 95 for actual work.

Sadly I don’t have the Performa anymore.

fergusb

My first mac was an LC II. Well was my dad's but didn't stop me from using it. Was too young to do much with it but have fond memories of 2 games for it "Armour Alley" and "Hellcats"
http://www.retrothing.com/2008/10/retrospective-a.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellcats_over_the_Pacific

My pride and joy was when I linked up 2 Macs using a serial cable (I think) and being able to play Armour Alley against a friend on a different computer.

Passenger

My first Mac was a PowerBook G4. Brilliant machine. Immensely reliable. Used it day in day out for years and never once did it give me any grief. Just fond memories. Typing this on a 2011 "17 MacBook Pro. When this packs in (many years from now no doubt) I'll be buying whatever generation Apple Laptop is out then.

banquo

Mac fan since before it was cool.

Then while it was cool.

And now, though it's not so cool anymore.

Though the first Mac I ever used was an AppleII. Though it was 1997 when I was using it, as that's what they bought for the school. Yes Sirs, two years after the release of Win95. AppleII for every child, a mere 20 years after its release.

But I first used OSX in '06 and was absolutely stunned. 75% "Oh my god, this is exactly how an OS should work" and 25% "So you're saying, I don't have to use windows?"

Not being able to afford one I was stuck with Windows for a while. Seeing OSX just made it worse.

"To turn off your computer, click 'Start'"

And "shutting down" the laptop. Like, you "shut down" a nuclear reactor, or a supercomputer, or a bomb. Not a laptop.

Simon201

'92 the sister brought a Mac Plus over to me from UK from her work. 40mb HD (external). 4mb ram. She said it cost the company a couple of grand sterling when they bought it!
Loved playing Tetris on it!

Idleater

We got a black and white mac plus in 86 I think. It had a separate 20 mb hard disk. I remember playing games like dark castle, continuum and a great favourite bash big blue, which was a Whack-a-mole style game where you had to chase/click an IBM logo that popped up randomly with an apple icon cursor. If you hit it, the IBM crumbled to a pile of rubble. Other treats were a Basic interpreter and IDE.

Zcott

Ashamed to say I'm one of those people who only converted to the Mac after having an iPod. My dad worked in a university filled with Mac Pluses and LC475s but they never did anything for me and I was a Windows man until I saw the light ;-)

ZENER

My first "Mac" was actually an Amiga ! Shapeshifter was a Mac emulator in the late 80's early 90's. Macs and Amigas shared the same CPU at the time - the Motorola 68000 - so emulation was as easy as finding the correct ROM.

From there is a story off the WEEE directive and recycling and now I have a collection of about 15 different Macs including the very special anniversary model with Bose speaker system and a G4 Cube, first version iBook and a host of other machines.

Here's to another 30 years !

Ken

banquo

Because of a Windows boot issue, and after tearing the house apart trying to find an old install disk, my working day is completely put on hold.

Oh OSX, I do hope you and I shall be reunited soon.

DubTony

Sad Professor wrote:

so I relied a lot on MacFormat CDs for software and games. Anyone remember Escape Velocity?

aah ... Escape Velocity. A great game. My computer was so full of sh*te from MacFormat that I had to delete everything and reinstall the system and start again ... Twice !!

My first Mac was a Performa 6320. A what? Nobody ever seemed to have heard of it. It was available for about 5 minutes ... well, April to September 1996 (almost as long as Gil Amelio).
120 MHz PowerPC 603e, 16 MB Ram and a 1.2 Gig hard drive.

It cost an arm and a leg back then. I paid for it over 3 years, and didn't change it until 2002, when it was replaced with an iMac.

MACHEAD

My first 'taste' of Macs was during a work placement in c. 1994/5 on a Macintosh Classic. Previous to this I only had experience on the old MS system. No mouse, command line only. Nowhere near a computer for a few years, then this dainty little machine, with a mouse and 'drag & drop'. Couldn't believe things had advanced in that time! Later about 3 years or so after this I started work in my current place and had access to around fifty 5200 Performas. Various upgrades arrived over the years, G3 PowerMacs, G4 PowerMacs, the 'coloured iMacs'.

I bought my own first Mac in 2003, a G4 PowerBook, brilliant little machine, gave years of flawless service, in fact only sold it on about 8 months ago. Currently using a 2010 C2D Mac Mini (as a media server). At work I now have a suite of 2010 iMacs, 2 Mac servers, 4 Mac Books, 3 MBP's and 30 iPads (and counting). Most fan-boys would probably give their eye teeth for my job, it's good, but not all the time.

Elessar

I'm fairly new to Mac going by this thread. I used my first in college in 2004 while editing videos with Final Cut (iMac). I was mesmerized by them. Everything was so different...and cool. As the months passed by I recall walking into the camera shop on Grafton street (where the CompuB is now) every couple of weeks and staring longingly at the iBooks and Powerbooks they had on display. They were gorgeous!

Eventually I convinced my mam to help me pay for an iBook and in 2005 I got an iBook G4 (1.33Ghz, HERE is the original product page for it!). I loved that machine and I even edited pro-level videos on it.

Then in 2006 I got the new Macbook Pro 2.16Ghz Core 2 Duo. This was my daily machine for 4 years. Loved it and still think the design is slightly better than todays machines. Sold it on adverts and bought my current 2010 Core i5 Macbook Pro which is sweet as a peach...SSD drive installed and I'm using it almost daily.

Although I use my PC a lot more now I still use the Macbook a huge amount and don't think I'll ever leave OSX.

DubDJ

I'm pretty new to Mac too, bought my first one in 2010, it was a Mac Mini which I bought as a tester to see if i'd take to OS X from using Windows all my life. I quickly sold the Mac Mini after a few months and bought a top spec'd MBP in 2011.

I'm currently loving Mac and can't see myself going back to Windows for the foreseeable future.