[gsxrboy]

Went thru the vic20-64-amiga500 era.. friends had trs80 etc then xt computers.. I just couldnt understand why the graphics and sound etc were worse than a c64 !!, when I started to do cad work in 1988 it was on a se30 with awesome graphiocs etc .. amiga to mac seemed to make sense.. Mac since 1988

[molala]

The bio laboratory I was working/doing my thesis in was all Mac, this was 1997, so I bought a Mac too.

Performa 6400 180MHz 603e had a 1.6GB hard drive and I upped the RAM to 80MB (base was 16) and bought a SCSI zip drive and a 15" NEC monitor. I think the base CPU was $1699 (which was a great price, otherwise I would've gotten a Umax or PowerComputing machine). OS 7.5.3.

I crashed that thing daily for a week disabling different sets of extensions and control panels until I knew what they all did. It was fun. I could not believe I could boot from a zip disk (at 100MB, was huge).

First laptop (still use it) was a Lombard 333MHz in 1999. I've wanted an Apple portable since the 2400c.

[Finrock]

I emulated the Mac OS on my Amiga 1200 '030. I realized then that once Commodore went under I'd have to switch platforms. I bough my first Mac in 1998: a G3/266.

[historylme]

OOHF, where to start.
My teacher in 5th grade had one of the first computers in school... and it happened to be a mac. I like how it was and compared to other IBM clones, the mac graphical interface ROCKED!

Fast foward to 1994, when it was time for me to buy the first computer for college... I either could buy a PC or a MAC... (my parents had bought a pac bell pc house) and out of liking the graphical interface and to be different, I got it.

I guess I have always been a mac at heart.

[mbryda]

Originally posted by 3gg3:
I'm REALLY OLD!! I bought my kids a TI99 for Christmas!

Me too. Grew up with a '99/4A and used that thing through my softmore year of High School when we got a '386. Had the whole thing decked out - PE Box, 2 360k floppies, Epson MX80 printer, 2400 baud Modem, 32k expanasion, etc. Still have it in the basement somewhere.

But, here's my Mac story....

Never really liked Macs - the OS always seemed weird and half-put-together. In HS they had a Mac and it looked neat, but didn't light my fire. In college the guy across the hall had a SE (All in one) that was just not my cup of tea. Especially to me, who was using OS/2 at the time (and later '95). Then, being in IT, the Mac never really fit in (and I didn't like the OS). Forgot about them altogether (although did sort of like the iMac, but the OS...).

Then in '02 I started getting back into digital photography and my PC's wern't cutting it (and for video editing which I built 2 PCs for and never worked right) and someone suggested a Mac. I looked and fell in love with OSX and was thinking G3 iMac or G4 tower. Then the G4 iMac came out and it was love at fitst sight. Bought in March '02 and have been using it ever since. It's been the morst reliable and longest lasting computer (besides the TI) that I've ever owned or built.

Bought the wife an iBook in Nov '02 and she loves it as well, even though it's been back to Apple for 2 motherboards....

[MARINEOSX]

Thank you it's great to hear all of the great comments. It makes me want to get a new Mac. But my wife says NO! I hope to hear more stories.

[fhoubi]

iMac Rev. 1. And I started to hate Microsoft quite badly... Windows 95 was the last I ever used at home before OS/8/9/X.

[brettcamp]

Direct your wife to http://www.apple.com/switch/. Plenty of stories there from switchers who've found Macs to make them more productive, not to mention being a lot more pleasant to use.

[Dr.Michael]

My first Mac was an iBook blueberry with a 300 MHz G3 and a 6GB HD. At that time I was working in a consulting company and since I knew my way around computers I was the one to fix the many problems we had with Windows 95/98/NT4 in a Network. Silly - these MS things don't even understand themselves ;o).

My own 486 Notebook was old at that time and it sounded like a vacuum cleaner which made it impossible for me to concentrate. Since I did not want to get the same crab that I was dealing with at my company I bought the iBook. A great decision, mainly because it did not make any noise (except the CD) and was fast (it even blew away my Pentium 3 700 MHz Fujitsu Notebook that I bought for my business a little later).

But why a Mac? There was also Linux around and for a physicist this would have been a more convenient choice.

This has a story too. In our university lab, where I and a few other guys were working for our PHD, we used an OS called OS 9 that was not Mac OS but a unix flavour that ran on lab computers from a company called eltec. These things looked like ibm blade servers (19 inch rack systems) and had no Monitor and no keyboard. So we used old Atari ST computer with a terminal emulation to serve as monitor and keyboard for the eltecs (an Atari 260 ST was my first computer, with 2,5 MB RAM and no hd :o) ).

One of my colleages did not like the eltecs and he wrote the program that ran his experiment on his Atari. 35.000 lines of code finally when his atari died. Ataris had disappeared from the market long before and so there was no way to get a new one. But Richard found out that on Macs an Atari emulator was available (NoSTalgia). So he bought a brand new Performa (don't remember which one, Performa 6200 maybe) which ran his GFA Basic program more than 10 times faster than the Mega ST that he used before. This is what gave me the perception that Macs are fast machines. Looking at the GUI I felt at home immediately. It looked like a more developed version of the Atari GUI (which it indeed was).

But the real kick came from a talk about internet security that I heard a short time after I got my PHD. It was given by a guy from the chaos computer club who wore cool things, was exceptionally brilliant in his knowledge and in his way to present a talk and - used a Lombard Powerbook. It looked very cool with the glowing white apple on the back and the sexy curves. And thus I thought if real pros use macs, if these machines are fast and if they are that good looking, they must be worth a try. And since I like to have things that not everybody has... more than enought reasons.

The money for the Lombard was too much for a machine that you don't know at all. But the iBook was exactly what I could buy for the money I got for my over hours in my consulting company.

For a while I was using also a Fujitsu Notebook (that my brother uses now). A very good machine. But with the switch from my iBook to a TiBook I gave up MS/Intel and that was a great decision. Professional life is easier since then.

[notaclone]

In mid 1984 I met a guy, and he said:
"Come up and see my Macintosh"
I did, and I played on that thing for hours, pretty much ignoring him. But I ended up dating him, picked his brain (Mac Programmer), and I got a whole career out of it!

[Jasoco]

For me, it was also OS X.

In mid-2000, I was still using Windows 98 SE. ME had just come out, I was poor so I didn't rush out and buy it thankfully, and I was looking for a way to get away from Windows. For a few years, I had been trying to get into Linux, as it was the only viable solution I knew of. One day I came upon BeOS, but that didn't seem like it would be the successor I was looking for.

January of that year, I got on an eBay kick and got nostalgic and bought two old Macs. Just for fun. No biggie. It was something to throw my money at on a whim. I got so caught up in the elegance of the interface, it somehow implanted the Mac into my head as a viable replacement..

So when July/August came around, I happened upon a site called MacKido which had screenshots of portions of the upcoming OS X interface.

I frequently went back and forth between MacKido and a bunch of other sites with screenshots of both Whistler and the OS X internal beta's and such. (This was before the Public Beta)

That had done it. Seeing as Linux was too complicated, BeOS was too unsupported and Whistler was just going to be Windows again, I wanted something different. The only option? To order myself a beautiful Ruby red iMac DV+ 450. My grandmother helped me buy it and a week later, it arrived. It had OS 9 on it, which I STILL thought was nicer and more elegant than Windows.

Sadly, I didn't buy the Beta. Though I wish I could have had the pleasure at the time. But I did get 10.0 on March 25th of 2001. Been with it since.. Well, of course now I'm on 10.3 LOL, but you know what I mean.

Since then I've gone through 4 modern Macs and converted two former Windows souls who in turn converted their own share. I haven't looked back since.

I am currently addicted to my iBook G3 and am loving every minute. I plan on graduating to a PowerBook G4 next year. Portable to stay, baby!

[typoon]

For me it was Windows 3.1 <shudders> I had used Apple's before. I started out on an Apple IIE and then upgraded to a Performa 600CD. one of my friends had an orginal 128K mac. I used to sit on that thing for hours when I was at his house.

I've been on a Mac since then. WOW how fast 20 years fo by.

[jaimzedup]

I've been using a Mac at work for a while and I just ordered my first personal Mac.
I'm a neat freak and with a PC, I was always making sure it was clean. Cleaning out the registries and any useless files and folders. New useless files seemed to be coming out of nowhere! I hated all the maitenance that I had to keep up on my PC. The Mac interface is just very clean and simple. I've never had any problems with viruses or instability issues with my PC, I just hated keeping it up to date all the time. I got the mac just for conveneince. Plus macs are a hell of a lot more attractive than PCs.

[UnixMac]

The singular reason I came to mac is the stability of unix. Thus my screen name.

[sworthy]

Like others, I was first drawn in by both the sleek laptops and aqua. I still have seen very few laptops that even come close to the powerbook of 3 years ago. Also, iPhoto really appealed to me because I was just getting in to digital photography.

[heavyboots]

Started out playing with a Lisa and a 128k at a friends house in the early '80s. Convinced my dad to buy in at the 512k model. Got a job as a lab aide at the local community college when they bought some Mac Plus's. Jumped from there to tech support/Ragemaker 3 page setting in 1990. Convinced company to switch to Quark XPress at version 3.01 (mostly IIci's at the time). Writing this on a 2x2ghz G5. Still at the same company, doing all tech support now and sweeping the last of the OS 9 computers under the rug this quarter as we move to InDesign CS.

Hmmm... yeah, that about covers it!

[darcybaston]

Originally posted by Finrock:
I emulated the Mac OS on my Amiga 1200 '030. I realized then that once Commodore went under I'd have to switch platforms. I bough my first Mac in 1998: a G3/266.

Same story! Cool. I was on an A1200 (1993-1999), 32 MB FAST Ram, 030 accel card, and kept noticing how much better the web browsing experience was in the emulated 7.x Mac OS, than the native Amiga browser. I figured, if the emulation was so good, than the native would be much better.

BBedit also grew on me instantly and made it my primary text editor in no time.

So I began buying Macworld just to see what the Mac world (rim shot) was like. I also started reading the MacNN and Macfixit forums to see what kind of community existed, and fix-it skills I'd have to have. I loved what I read. There were Mac stores around...whoah! I had used an Amiga for about 7 years without ever seeing a store. I was dependent on mail-order. Thankfully, the Amiga never suffered a single hiccup and never needed any service. I ended up throwing it away, flawless.

When it was time to buy a new computer, I chickened out and bought an IBM Aptiva. I had fun with it for a month or two, before I saw a strawberry iMac at a reseller. I recalled how slow the IBM was playing Quicktime trailers, and tried it on the iMac. OMG! The iMac was SO FAST and could play QT content full screen without a stutter. The speed of Bugdom also blew me away. I felt cheated right away, and began an iMac lust.

Long story short, I sold the IBM to a co-worker, ordered an iMac DV SE 400MHz and was in bliss. I had a fantastic 'out of box' experience (3 minutes to boot, type personal details, Inet settings, and started watching a DVD) that I wrote to Apple Canada about it. They liked my feedback so much, they sent me a t-shirt. WOW!

3 years later, I sold my iMac to my brother for real cheap, and got an iBook 14" 933Mhz. That iMac is his first computer and it still runs like a champ. He's now enjoying digital photography, scanning and all that good stuff which he knew nothing about before. He took to it all in a week or two.

I'm looking forward to a G5 tower next year. I miss the performance oomph and ease of part swapping of a desktop. The build quality of this iBook has been discouraging and if I ever go laptop again, it will be a metal Powerbook. You see, with this iBook, the ink on more than 5 keys disappeared, the bottom case cracked without every being dropped or impacted, and the battery lost all its usefulness . All those problems happened in less than a year. Ouch! A buddy of mine's old clamshell iBook fared better than this iBook in those areas.

[AlaskaBoy]

I fell in love with Macs because of the System Restore disk in Syustem 7 on an LC II back in 1993.

After using Apple II's thru college in the late 80's & not using 'puters till 1993 I was totally amazed that no matter what I did to my little LCII the System Restore dick would let me start the computer & repair or restore the computer to new. (I had moved the Finder file into the System suitcase & it failed to restart... but the miracle of the System disk saved me!)

Just my 2�
Thanks,
John Boyarsky
RSMS ISS Guy, Tutor & Dirt Burner
Fairbanks, AK

[alwar]

In a family of nothing but Macs, my sister was the only one in the house to have a PC. Two years ago at my house warming, my sister came in and I had my G4 in the living room connected to a set of Monsoon speakers. Remember when one of the coolest ways to show off your Mac was when you played the Visualizer, full-screen in iTunes? You know; before iTunes came out for Windows? Man when she saw that and I showed her how iTunes worked she was hooked. Two weeks later she had me on the Apple web site ordering her a G4. She absolutely hates Windows now.

[ZOM 77]

inspiring,
i hope apple's reading these . . .

[Cincojoe]

I have been using macs for about 3 years. I finally got my sister to change from her PC to a brand new G5 imac. So far she loves the stability of the OSX system, but she is not happy with the minor quirks and details. Like the fact that she is a HUGE Quicken user. When she was in the Apple store, she asked the sales guys about Quicken and they quicky assured her that the windows version of Quiken was cross compatible with the mac version. Well that turned out to be a load of crap. Yes, some items transfer over, but not a lot of the important ones like memorized transactions.

Anohter little item thats bothering her is the simple fact that her high dollor HP printer that worked fine in Windows, will not give her the option to print pages in only black and white. I know it seems minor, but the point is that while many people are now considering moving to macs, they might be a little suprised at the minor things they were used to no longer work.

Just venting on behalf of my sisters....

[gurman]

.... was a Mac II at work, which we upgraded in '90 or so to be a IIfx by swapping the motherboard and adding a second (wait for it) floppy drive, 800 Kbyte vs. the 400 Kbyte original. Had a four-bit NuBus color card. Honest.

Now I run a shop with 4 x dual Xserve G5's, 3 Xserve G4's, 3 Xserve RAIDs, six desktop G5's, six desktop G4's, a few iMacs, and a bunch of PowerBooks and iBooks. Life is good.

About the same time we got that Mac II at work, we got an Apple II GS at home, that I customized with a 1 MHz (yes, MHz) CPU upgrade, SCSI card, and 20 Mbyte external hard drive. Where it sat is now home to a dual 1.0 GHz G4, and dreaming of a G5. My wife uses a 15-inch Powerbook G4, and my kids have a G4 iBook and a G4 iMac.

Am I an addict, or what?

[beverson]

Our first computer when I was a kid was an Apple //c. It had a handle! We never took it anywhere, but just thinking that we could was cool. Then Dad bought a Packard Bell replacement running Windows 3.1 right about when I started high school. My brother and I had lots of fun breaking DOS every few weeks and fixing it again, but my high school was all Mac Pluses and SEs, so I started getting into them. I still remember an article in some computing magazine about "Chicago," which would become Windows 95. "It'll be like a Mac!" I told my brother (hah! yeah, well, so we thought). By senior year I was co-editor of our school newspaper and using Aldus PageMaker on various Macs in the lab. Next year when home from my first year at college for Thanksgiving, my dad said he'd buy me a computer. I was now working at the college paper, we had all new PowerMac 7200s, and I said I wanted a Performa. He really tried to talk me out of it (I think he had just bought a new Gateway for the fam) -- he was convinced that Apple was going bankrupt any day now. But I won in the end. By senior year I bought an iMac G3 233mhz. Then it was an iBook G3 500 mhz 3 years ago. Last year I finally sold the bondi iMac (still chugging along great after 5 years) and got a 17" iMac G4 1 ghz. Whenever the G5 PowerBooks finally come out, I'll probably sell the iMac and iBook and go only portable (plus a Cinema Display, wireless keyboard and mouse, etc. for at home).

Oh, and my dad and the brother who broke DOS repeatedly with me are both "back" on Macs now -- 12" and 15" PowerBooks respectively. For my brother, he got one look at my original 10 GB iPod and had to have one. Then he saw OS X and had to have a Mac. My dad just wanted a computer that worked. We just got my sister set up with a G4 iBook and an iPod for her first year of college, and Dad's looking to replace the Dell desktop at home with a G5 iMac pretty soon. My other brother's an accountant, though, so he's gonna take more work to convince. But since college, I've helped convince nearly every roommate I've had (6) to switch, or switch back, to Macs.

[ValVashon]

In 1997, our TV station moves into a new building and we are forced to try to use Windows NoT to control a bunch of new equipment, like spot servers and the like. Constant crashing and locking up, it's a wonder we stay on the air at all.

My wife uses Macs at work (small two person office) so we get a used LC 475 from their Mac guy as our first computer and I'm hooked. I had been using DOS to type a document at the public library whenever I needed something to look good. Even after paying way too much for that used LC 475 we stick with the platform and pick up a Bondi on closeout- now there's a zippy machine that you can actually do things on (like type this)! And it still looks so cool. I even bought a second, used one I'm going to sneak into work and set up on my desk until somebody says something.

One of the biggest assets about using the Mac platform is that I do not get the calls to fix other family members PC's. I don't know anything about them. For the longest time I really had no idea that sound cards, ethernet cards and modems weren't something that just came with a computer. The iMac had that stuff all built in- whaddya mean you have to get a sound card? And what is a WIN-INI file anyway? Ignorance is good sometimes.

Val

[troymurray]

I've been using a PC since DOS 5 on my first 386 computer. The only Mac computers I knew were ones at school with green monitors that played Oregon Trail.

I've been using a PC since and never had much of an interest in Macs until a brother-in-law of mine, who's a graphic designer, started telling me how good they were. I wasn't too interested in the Mac OS 8/9 that was around then, but when he showed me the Mac OS X beta I was really taken.

I ended up buying an iMac and installing Mac OS X 10.0 but was really disappointed by the performance. I ended up selling the Mac shortly after. I bought a second iMac in 2003 and ran 10.2 on it, which was much better, but I ended up having to sell it.

I tried my third Mac as a PowerBook in May of this year, but that lasted only about a month. I do network consulting and web programming in my own business and kept running into problems as I couldn't get network printing to work. I ended up selling my PowerBook and went back to Dell.

The build quality of the Dell vs. Apple is a no contest; the Dell build quality is SO POOR. I had wanted to buy an eMac to have still play with the Mac platform, I'm just so enthralled with it, but just couldn't completely make the switch.

With the $150 rebate from Amazon on the new iBook I took the plunge, for my fourth Mac, and love this iBook. I'd like to completely switch, but I run into network printing issues. I can't seem to print to a printer attached to a Windows workstation. I also can't find a good invoicing/billing program to run on the Mac. I tried QuickBooks for the Mac, but was really disappointed in it (I use the Windows version now) and I've tried the MYOB but didn't care for it.

In the past week that I've had the iBook I've used it at least twice as much as my Dell system. I hope to keep that trend...

[Xiaopangzi]

Wow, ya'll are so YOUNG! I would have loved to have had Macs available in high school, not to mention the Internet. It would have changed my life, dramatically.

I used various command-line computers during the mid-to-late 1970s and played around with the Apple ][ whenever I had a chance in high school. Although the Mac was released while I was still in university, I never really discovered it until after coming back from a two-year mission to Japan for my church in 1988, finding a Mac Plus (and later SE) in our university ward (congregation) building on campus. It was so cool to just double-click on icons and see everything graphically instead of seeing only glowing neon-like LED text that had little resemblance to English and required a lot of memorization. To be honest, I suppose the Commodore 64 probably did have a joystick or console with buttons to play Pong (Brickle) on your TV, but using a mouse did feel pretty awkward at first.

By 1990, I had moved to work at a printing company in Tokyo, and because the publishing industry was dominated by the Mac, I worked on a slightly old Mac SE for a year before affording the new $8,000 B&W (not even grayscale) PowerBook 170 (Macs were many times more expensive in Japan than in the U.S. at that time. Also, I had to pay for the enormous 8 MB RAM and 80 MB hard disk instead of the standard 2/20), which really did change my life forever. From that time on, I've been buying PowerBooks every few years but had to step down to an iBook when moving back to Canada, due to high living expenses.

I have to chuckle when I hear people talk about the lack of games for the Mac, because the chief criticism of the Macintosh in the 1980s was that it was a toy for games rather than a serious business tool like the IBMs and IBM-compatible PCs that ran WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. I'm sure Windows users would be shocked to hear that Microsoft was making Word and Excel for the Mac at least a decade before they even began to be adopted by Windows users. I was one of those rare kids who didn't play PacMan or Space Invaders, and I've never dabbled in computer games even since then.

Who would have thought that 39 would be considered an old-timer. Even the original Internet gurus are mostly still alive. It seems as though most computer users didn't start until after the World Wide Web was launched, only ten years ago.

[MacDan2004]

My very first computer was an Apple IIe. After that it was IBM compatible PCs, DOS, DR-DOS, GeoWorks, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, 98, 2000 and most recently Windows XP.

In August of this year I got a 40GB iPod for my birthday. Upon opening the packaging and seeing the shiny white iPod, I said to myself, "I gotta get a Mac!"

Now, I had been looking at the Macs for over a year and had always loved the OS X interface. But, with the iPod I was convinced Apple was on the right track and knew what they were doing.

Last month I could resist no longer. I was planning on paying for a new iMac G5 20" with our tax return in March of 2005. But, like I said, I could not resist. So, I just bought it on-line at Apple.com on credit and promised myself I would pay off the credit card in March with that tax return.

The Apple store said it would be 3-4 weeks before it came. Expected delivery was November 24th, but . . . I was pleasantly surprised one day when the shipping status of my order was changed to 'Shipped' and I received my first Mac on November 8th, 2004.

Let's just say I was very, very, very please with it and still am. I have successfully moved all our family data and my web design work over to the Mac. OS X is **incredible**.

One of the most pleasant surprises was my wife's experience with the Mac. She is in love with it because she can do things on her own, like attaching our digital camera, importing the pictures into iPhoto and emailing them to her friends. She has not ever been able to do that for herself. Now get this -- she wants her own iBook!

I LOVE THIS MACHINE! GOOOOO APPLE!!!!!

[KevinPrice]

WAY back in time...back when we used manilla-colored punch cards to represent lines of code (mid-70's), I learned all about computers. (I even taught Fortram programming as a TA in college.) I was fascinated by computers back then, but noticed it took up an extraordinary amount of my free time just dinking around with code. So when I got REAL jobs after graduation, I taught myself to stay completely AWAY from computers, for fear I'd get sucked into them spending all my time tinkering.

Fast forward to about 1990. The firm I was working for was purchasing computers for everyone...and thank goodness they chose to purchase Macs. I finally 'gave in' and figured I need to learn how to turn the damn thing on. Then, I decided I was going to go into business for myself...so I needed to REALLY learn how this thing worked.

Today, the computer sucks up a lot of time. But at least that time is reasonably productive...because I've used nothing but Macs ever since. Having a core, fundamental understanding of what makes computers tick has been helpful. But MORE helpful has been the experinece of using such an elegant operating system (relative to the alternatives). I use PCs regularly at my clients' place of work...but each time I do reminds me of how lucky I am to be able to make my own choice of computer (unlike most of my clients). I've purchased 15-20 Macs since the early 90's...and as long as Apple is there, I'll be right behind them.

[fulmerville]

I used to play games on an All-In-One Mac back when they were still green/black screens... can't remember if that was that the original Macintosh or not? My Mom was a school teacher and she'd bring one home for the weekends to play with. Once she brought home a color version and I thought it was the coolest thing!!

When I got into highschool, I slowly moved to the dark side... Windows. Now I work for a large company in the IT department supporting 1000's of Windows clients.

Around the Summer of 2000, I started hearing lots of things about the new iMac. I went and looked at them, but was not really interested in an All-In-One design. I'm a geek... I like to open things up and see how they work The PowerMacs were too expensive for me. OS X was neat when it came out... but I still wasn't convinced I should switch.

In the Summer of 2002, we had some major problems here at work (virus, security patches, updates, configuration problems, etc...). I started thinking more and more about getting a Mac. In November I decided to get an iBook (800MHz) because it was the cheapest (if I didn't like it, I wouldn't be out too much cash). I played with it for about 1 month and decided that I'd become a switcher!! I started looking at getting a new desktop Mac. The dual 1.25GHz G4 was nice, but I decided I should wait for the next release schedule. And I'm glad I did! I bought a dual 2.0GHz G5 with a 20" Cinema display.

Now I've got a 12" PB (1.33GHz), old iMac Slot-Loading (350MHz), old B&W (450MHz) and my PowerMac (dual 2.0GHz). I sold the iBook to a friend.

My next purchase is a iPod photo (60GB) and a used Cube. I've gotten rid of ALL the Windows stuff in my home. I'm trying to convince my parents and my in-laws to dump their Windows machines and get a Mac!!

In a nut shell... I decided to become a switcher because I have to put up with Windows crap at work all day long, I wanted to go home to a machine that "just works" !!

[John Dwight]

I got into computers to build museum kiosks at work. My boss was a PC fanatic. We got a tour of Voyager; the then cutting edge CD ROM developer. All Macs there.

Next, I went to a Thunder Lizard Photoshop conference, back when PS 2.5.1 was the next eagerly awaited upgrade. The speaker took an informal poll. I was one of three other folks using a PC in a crowd of several hundred.

My first Mac was a 9500/132. I told my boss I was swell enough to get my own computer at home, and that it would be a Mac. She had a consultant pal of hers call me in NYC all the way from Ottawa to dissuade me from going Mac.

My boss' last take was software. She always helped herself to all the software at work for her home, and told me I'd actually have to PAY for all my software at home!

I wasn't a hardware guy, and was so relieved at how easy it was to set up the Mac. I unpacked it, plugged everything in, and was using Photoshop within 15 minutes. PC set up at work could take forever.

I got a modem with my Mac and was checking out EWorld (remember that?) within a week. It blew my mind; I was always thinking up reasons to go online at EWorld. I downloaded the demo for Doom for Mac off EWorld, and that blew my mind; the whole experience, not just the game.

I've never looked back. In fact, I converted to Mac at work, and go my whole office interested enough in them for them to demand the switch. Ever since then my office had zero IT trouble tickets for years running now. Previously, with the PC, the annual number of trouble tickets ran to 25 to 30 visits.

[ism]

Windows and Unix.

I've always preffered Unix and just not got along with windows. So when the time came to get my own computer I looked at the alternatives. I liked BeOS, but it wasn't going anywhere anymore unfortunately, didn't feel clever enough to use Linux, couldn't afford a SUN workstation, etc and stumbled across OSX somewhere and that was it.

Got an imac DV, used OS9 til the public beta came out. Used it as much as possible, couldn't afford to upgrade to 10.0 and had to wait out Jaguars arrival using OS9. Which was alright, but not ace.

[Dr.Michael]

Originally posted by Xiaopangzi:
Wow, ya'll are so YOUNG!
...
Who would have thought that 39 would be considered an old-timer.

You are not alone. I am also 39.
But maybe its mostly the younger ones who need the help of such a forum - or have the time to browse.

[ghporter]

My first Apple experience was with an Apple II at a design firm I worked at. It ran a version of Basic, so I could get it to do things for me that were, in a word, useful. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford one.

Later, when the Lisa and the IIGS came out, I thought they were both great ideas, but again, I couldn't afford either.

Flash forward to 2003. I have a degree in Computer Science, I consult, build networks, etc., almost entirely with Windows. My wife, who's going back to school to top off her nursing degree, needs a laptop. Research, research, research... I learn that the lightest, most functional laptop around is the iBook 12" G4.

I start looking for the bad news, expecting that the price will be prohibitive. With the educational discount, the computer comes in under $1200 with AirPort Express and a 30GB drive. Cool and functionality were good selling points, and the fact that OS X had actually made the "issues" I'd heard about in earlier Mac OS versions go away was great too, but the iBook was the best value bar none. Now it costs even less and you get even more!

We're looking at a new iMac sometime shortly down the road...

Oh, and Dr. Michael and Xiaopangzi, 39 AIN'T old. I'm 45. My first direct computer experience was a high school science club visit to Eastern Michigan University. We went to the Chemistry department, and they demonstrated a "game" that had the student provide the proper formula given a compound's name. Yow! What fun! That must have been in 1974 or so. Man, that's a LONG time ago!

[Charles Bouldin]

What got me to get a Mac was the demo at the University of Washington (an Apple consortium school then) of MacPaint/MacWrite on a 128K Mac in 1984. That thing was later update with a second (external!) floppy drive, then hacked a al Dr. Dobbs to make it a "fat Mac", ie, with 512K of RAM. About that time "Switcher" came out and I was then sure that this was machine that was going to change the course of computing.

The thing that kept me on this platform is of course OS X. I had played with Suse Linux and MOL (mac on linux) emulator, which was sort of a pre-cursor to OSX/Classic. I was very dubious because of how --incredibly-- slow the OSX public beta was, but the OS has matured beautifully. One of Apple's many unsung achievements is to wrap up BSD so that my 8 year old uses it, and so does her grandmother. Neither of them have the least idea what's under the hood, and they don't need to!

I have to use Windows XP a little at work, so the final thing that keeps me on OSX is my daily observation of what everyone in the Windows world puts up with. Just not gonna go there....

[Bookie]

When I started graduate school in 1990, I needed to write a lot of papers, which had been typewritten up to that point in my life (remember typewriters?). I decided to learn how to use "word processing" software, and the 2 choices were clunky old PCs running DOS, or Macs. I started using Macs in the labs, then checking out Plusses to take home for the weekend, to finally buying a Classic in 1991. I've been a happy Mac user since the days of System 6.

[Hi I'm Ben]

I like computers.
I was peer pressured back around the time the G4 Cube came out into buying a mac. I didn't really know anything about macs but my friend assured me I'd love it more then anything. So I bought the G4 Cube because it was cool looking, and I liked the Studio display CRT. I wasn't the happiest guy in the world for awhile, i HATED OS 9 and OS 10 was pretty dissapointing too. I never really experienced many PC problems so to start having computer trouble was getting on my nerves, especially since I for once didn't know how to fix it myself.

Then OS 10.1 came out and I was a happy boy. Eventually I tried to upgrade the processor in my Cube and it failed. I'd probably still be running it today had it not. But in the end I sold the cube and built my PC, which I also like. I bought a 500 Mhz iBook and that kept me happy because I prefer the Mac OS to Windows in the respect that there is so much better free software and cleaner looking programs for mac then windows. I get so angry look for simple things for windows like a weather program or a third party AIM client.

I was working one day and stopped into a best buy. I found a Sony laptop I thought looked really nice. Those new screens they have are incredible. So I sold the G3 500. Big mistake. I hated the sony, it just didn't feel right. It was then I decided i'd stick to mac laptops pc desktops. As far as i'm concerned it's the best of both worlds. Yesterday I went and Bought the 1.2 ghz iBook 12" at the apple store. I'm happy again. Such a hassel-free notebook.

[irockdabari]

I first really started looking at Mac my junior year of high school (2 years ago). I would go into comp usa an get on one of the G4 iMacs. I loved everything about it, form the flat panel screen on it's arm, to the beautiful OS X. iTunes was a big thing for me - I had lots of music on my windows pc, and no good program to manage it. I also loved that OS X didn't crash, where my PC would crash every day. So eventually, i got a G4 iMac for Christmas, and I was so happy. Today i have a 40 GB 3rd gen. iPod, and a 1.0 Ghz iBook g4.
Once you go Mac you never go back.

[mbryda]

Originally posted by troymurray:

The build quality of the Dell vs. Apple is a no contest; the Dell build quality is SO POOR.

You don't buy a Dell if you want a good PC. You buy a Dell if you want a cheap POS....

I can't seem to print to a printer attached to a Windows workstation.

Should be real easy - Set up the printer as a LPD/UNIX printer on the Win box. Then set up the Mac as a LPR client to that printer. Used to work great for an old Epson ActionLaser 1500 on my XP box.

Or put the printer on the Mac and have Windows print to it. That also works well.

I also can't find a good invoicing/billing program to run on the Mac. I tried QuickBooks for the Mac, but was really disappointed in it (I use the Windows version now) and I've tried the MYOB but didn't care for it.

I do pretty much the same work (PC consulting, build systems, networks, etc) and I use MYOB - used to use Peachtree on the PC. It's not the prettiest thing, but it gets the job done.

I'm surprised you don't like QB on the Mac - I heard they really upgraded it in the last year or so.

[troymurray]

Originally posted by mbryda:
Should be real easy - Set up the printer as a LPD/UNIX printer on the Win box. Then set up the Mac as a LPR client to that printer. Used to work great for an old Epson ActionLaser 1500 on my XP box.

Acutally after I posted this, I did some Googling and found a way to get it to work. I opened the /Applications/Utilities/Print Setup Utility, Option + Clicked the Add button, selected Advanced, set the Device to Widnows Printer via SAMBA, gave the Device Name "My HP DJ 5150c" and entered the URI of "smb://usernameassword@workgroupName/computerName/printerName", set the Printer Model to HP DJ 550c and was able to print no problems!

Originally posted by mbryda:
I do pretty much the same work (PC consulting, build systems, networks, etc) and I use MYOB - used to use Peachtree on the PC. It's not the prettiest thing, but it gets the job done. I'm surprised you don't like QB on the Mac - I heard they really upgraded it in the last year or so.

I used the version that they had out in May of this year. I couldn't customize my invoices and they printed really poorly. I'd expect much more for the price they want for it. Not sure if MYOB is going to work out, I tried the FirstEdge as it seems to have only what I need, but I'm not too impressed with it yet. I need to play with it some more.

[nredman]

i got my first mac for school (web design) - Powerbook G3 266mhz - loved that machine, it is still one of my favorite macs i have owned. it was however a trying experience, i had to send it back to apple to get fixed because it kept overheating...not a good thing to have happen to a first time mac buyer. that is the only problem i have ever had with a mac.

[mbryda]

Glad oto hear you got your printing fixed!

Originally posted by troymurray:
I used the version that they had out in May of this year. I couldn't customize my invoices and they printed really poorly. I'd expect much more for the price they want for it. Not sure if MYOB is going to work out, I tried the FirstEdge as it seems to have only what I need, but I'm not too impressed with it yet. I need to play with it some more. [/B]

That's surprising - you would think they would allow you to modify the invoices - it's a common thing to do for all businesses.

FirstEdge is decent, but I still am not that impressed with it, and I've been using it for almost 2 years now. It works, but is still rough around the edges and not as good as it could be.

That being said, you can edit your invoices in it, although it's not as intuitive as I'd like. But it gets the job done and the printed invoices look good (as good as your printer).

Hope that helps!

[iluvmymactoo]

I just wanted to add Macs inspired me to become a digital artist, using a Wacom tablet and a blend of apps.

When I had a peecee all I really did with it was browse the web (a trial in itself), type word docs and a lot of time downloading updates, device drivers, patches, blah blah blah....

[megasad]

The machine (an original Dual USB iBook in September 2001) looked pretty on the shelf and I wanted a laptop. So I took �1300 in cash out of my bank, my life savings, and bought it. Disliked OS 9, have liked OS X since 10.1. Use an eMac as my main machine at the moment, but recently fixed up my iBook to go good again. As long as I have a computer it will be a Mac, but I'm leaning towards not having computers anymore.

[Mr. Worm]

School.

Last year, I was accepted to public boarding school. They got grants to give all of us 900 mHz G3 iBooks.

I fell in love with it. It runs so much better than my eMachines computer at home.

The only problem: I've had 7 logic board failures. That really hurts when this is the only computer I have at my disposal. I got to use a G4 loaner for a few weeks, but I got the old G3 back.

Hopefully I wouldn't have any more LB failures.

[Gamoe]

molala wrote:
"I've wanted an Apple portable since the 2400c."

Never got one, but still one of my favorite models. :-)

megasad wrote:
..."but I'm leaning towards not having computers anymore."

But why, megasad? ?!##^(@!!)*(^$#!!

Mr. Worm wrote:
"I've had 7 logic board failures."

Sound like there's something else wrong there.


I've noticed a lot of people here didn't like the post Mac OS X Mac OS, which I think is a little sad, because it was that which, before, set Apple apart and made the Mac what it is. Mac OS X owes a lot to the Classic Mac OS in terms of user interface. But I guess it also means Apple won a lot more people over with the switch, which is also a testament to the advantages of its UNIX based underpinnings and Apple's ability to change and evolve.

[megasad]

Originally posted by Gabriel Morales:
megasad wrote:
..."but I'm leaning towards not having computers anymore."

But why, megasad? ?!##^(@!!)*(^$#!!

I last felt like this when the hard drive in my iBook, my sole machine at the time (November last year), and also my external FireWire hard drive, which was my backup, both exploded on me on the same day. Just pissed me off so much, I'd lost everything, that I felt like not using another computer ever again. After a few weeks, that faded, I borrowed a friend's iMac DV, all was well.

Nothing as bad has happened since, but I'm just hideously tired of computers.

I read about how people have become more productive since switching from Windows to using a Mac. It's the precise opposite for me; I used to create and write far more on my old PII 300MHz Windows 98 PC than I have since switching to the Mac in 2001. I prefer the machines, I prefer the operating system, I prefer the whole shebang, and I never want have to use a PC again... I have the same software, or even better (Photoshop and BBEdit now, versus Paint Shop Pro and Notepad before (I used to make a lot of websites))... But I just don't create anywhere near as much now, on a Mac, as I used to on a PC.

Hell, part of it was never knowing when my machine would crap out on me. After a few hours, that thing used to crash an unbelievable amount. Clean install, no viruses, but I think there was something wrong with the hardware, because after it warmed up, down it went, up came a pretty blue screen. Some of what I created, it was actually the machine crashing, corrupting graphics files, that was the agent of creation. An example is here. See how the background image is all messed up? Result of a crash.

Anyway, probably won't do anything about it, just tired of computers, that's all.

Originally posted by Gabriel Morales:
I've noticed a lot of people here didn't like the post Mac OS X Mac OS, which I think is a little sad, because it was that which, before, set Apple apart and made the Mac what it is. Mac OS X owes a lot to the Classic Mac OS in terms of user interface. But I guess it also means Apple won a lot more people over with the switch, which is also a testament to the advantages of its UNIX based underpinnings and Apple's ability to change and evolve.

Coming from Windows 98, what I disliked about OS 9 was that it was no better in terms multitasking or mysterious hangs; I'd click a menu, a dialogue box would appear, and I could do nothing else. I'm sure I would have got used to it, but because 10.1 came out so soon after I got the iBook, I never had to.

[Jasoco]

I fell in love with OS 9 over Windows 98SE because it looked cleaner, worked better and overall had a much cooler feel. Actually, I fell in love with the cleanliness of System 6 and 7 before that. I still like the OS 9 interface, but wouldn't trade OS X for the world.

I'll just say the combination of an Apple Infomercial from the early 90's with video of the UI and the nice amount of old Macs in the school that helped perpetuate my switching. When it came time to decide which lifeboat to jump ship into, it was these things that implanted the idea of a Mac as one of the choices. Had I not been so in love with the UI, I probably would have forced myself to use Linux, or more likely, stayed with Windows. I probably would have some really crappy no-name PC with XP on it, my friend would still be using XP (Even after losing everything to virii a few times.), and I would only be able to look at the Mac UI from a distance. I hate to think what my life would be like now. Well, I have an idea.. something like this.. And I already had enough of that in the 90's.

[barang]

Originally posted by Lee33:
Mac design. PC's have always been (until recently) beige boxes.

Now PC are (ugly) colored boxes.

[Jasoco]

No PC has the elegance and simplicity that Apples designs have. Even the blatant rip-offs. They usually end up looking cose, but horrible because they try to cram open boxy slots for CD/DVD drives and floppies, then holes for fans, extra ports on the back. It's a big mess!

[legacyb4]

Flight simulator back on the original Mac (dual floppy drives); had a break of about a year and a half of no computer use, then the original SimCity came out which I bought to play on my roommate's SE; 2 months later, I ended up getting my own...