how long has everyone been using Macs? (tell your story)

I started around 1990. 27 years ago. I was new to computers and I started using a mac in the public library. They had an SE30, black and white. 10 inch screen I think?. that is what got me hooked on computers and macs in general. Never heard of a mac before that.

that same year I bought my first mac, a color classic running system 7.1. floppy drive, no CD drive, 4 MB of RAM if memory serves me right. lol

Its been about 12 yrs. A friend bought me an iPod and I needed a computer to load some music so I bought an I Mac.

Pat

I bought my first iMac in 2007. I'd used my sister's when I'd been visiting and just had to have one.

I then got a new one in 2013 (I think), and my first iMac was given to my sister. It's still going strong 10 years on.

2011, when I fell out with Windows. Had friends who were Mac devotees.

I started using Mac in school (New England Tech) in 2002, but I didn't own one. I received my first Mac in 2006. A friend had a Mac PowerBook and a Dell laptop. Told me he would give me the Mac if I could get the Dell running. I did, it ended up costing me about out $75 (internal drive and disc set) to get it working. When I got the PowerBook, I had to get an OS for it, I ended up getting Mac OS X Tiger for it, found out the PB was a 667GHz DVI 15" model, I loved it.

Started in microcomputers in the 1970's building one from scratch using an 8080 cpu chip and having 8K of memory, a tape recorder input and black and white monitor. Wrote programs in hex for it. Output was one row of hex nixie tubes. Moved to a TRS-80 Model 1, Z80 CPU at 1mHz speed, 64K of memory, two 5.25 floppy disk drives with 128K of storage on a disk, still black and white, running TRS-DOS. Then a Heathkit H-100 kit running MSDOS, then a series of PCs starting with DOS, eventually windows. Moved to Mac's about 10 years ago with an iMac, then a MacBook Pro. Now we (my wife and I) have two MBPs, two Mac Minis, an iMac, three Apple TVs, three iPhones and an Airport WiFi router. Oh, and I have an Apple Watch. Yes, we bought into the system, but it all does play pretty well together for us.

Right now the watch on my wrist has more computer power than the mainframe computers I managed in a data center in the '70's.

Output was one row of hex nixie tubes.

Click to expand...

Hey Jake.... how come you keep reminding me how old I am? I have a Heathkit clock that I built back in 1972 (uses 6 nixie tubes) still going strong. Although I did replace the original set of nixie tubes with some later model tubes back in 1984. Doesn't have a battery backup but keeps great time as long as the power is on.

Charlie, those of us who are "vintage" remember the "good ol' days" that these young'uns have no clue about. When the earth's crust was still warm and computing was new!

My first computer was a TI-99/4A in 1982 when I was in junior high. I switched over to PC's around 1990-ish and stuck with them having built my first computer in 1991. I dabbled a little with various Mac machines starting around 1994 working at a repair shop, did a couple of small "fixes" for Macs that were networked on customer networks as a consultant in the mid 90's. Didn't really touch them again until 2011 when I took a new job and was offered the opportunity to take one of the company MacBook Pro's as my sole machine. I've been a Mac owner since now having my own MBA and iMac 5K Retina.

Be an active user since 2016

I've had a Mac since Christmas 2015 - a MacBook Air. It was the last present I opened, and apparently it cost a lot, but it has served me well for over a year with almost no issues. I remember first setting it up and customising everything, it felt so natural compared to Windows.

My first Apple device, however, was an iPad Mini which I had from Christmas 2013 to early 2015, and I've owned three iPhones (4, 5c and 4S).

In 1985 the education department at my college got 2 Macs to add to the 32 Apple IIe computers in the computing lab. In 1986 we upgraded the RAM to an entire MEGABYTE! WOW! I could run MacWrite, MacDraw, and Ready Set Go 3.0 all at the same time using a new system 6.4 feature called "Multifinder". Saved a whole bunch of time not having to quit and restart applications - especially compared the the IIe's which required a reboot every time I wanted to change applications. Took me a few years before I could afford my own, but been a Mac user since.

I started with Apple II's in high school until about 1982, There was a brief period where I wasn't using any computer other than a DEC word processing system occasionally. Beginning in early 1988 I used a combination of an Apple IIGS (my machine) and a series of Macs (512, SE 30s, Mac II, etc). My wife and I purchased our first Mac (an LC II) about the time the LC III came out. I haven't looked back since.

I've used Windows boxes at work with everything from DOS / Windows 3.1 (with the exception of Vista). I can use them and do the things I need to pretty well but don't enjoy them. When Apple appeared to be on the verge of becoming extinct I half jokingly said I'd buy the best Mac I could afford at that time and repair it till I absolutely could go no further.

I had been with a PC since Windows 3.0 and up to XP, which finally was ok. All the others Windows prior to XP were terrible. I decided to graduate to a Mac in 2003. I'll never go back.

I have been using, building and administering Windows computers since Windows 98. My favourite version to this day is Windows 2000, since it was a perfect balance of stability, usability, performance and friendliness. All other versions have been either terrible "crash and burn" experiments (Win9x based) or Teletubies edition of same Win2000 (looking at you, Windows XP). I don't count WindowsNT editions, since those were not really intended for consumer market up until Windows 2000. Well, then we also had shiny-glassy-and-fat behemoth called Vista, it's refined and optimised version called Windows 7, and finally "back to Windows 2.0" a.k.a. Windows 8, followed by "Windows 3.11 reborn" Windows 10 (where did the "9" go?).
I have had 1-2 years using Slackware Linux as my main OS some 12-14 years ago... Which was quite fine, actually.
To be frank, I was always a big skeptic towards Apple and Apple fans. Mainly because of those douchebaggings fanboys who would consider themselves messiahs of the One True Faith called "All things Apple" and would not shut up about it. And also because prices of anything Apple were always absurdly big in my country.
But then, just few months back I bought a 2013 MacBook Pro 13" with Retina display for my girlfriend, and as I was preparing and testing it, I could not help but "feel the magic" in the MacOS and the synergy between OS+hardware. And of course aesthetics of it all... I got so curious, I decided to buy 2014 MacBook Pro 13" with Retina display for myself (same as GFs, just one year newer). After a month or so of using it, my experience was still the same pleasant feeling of things just working as they should, the way consumer computers should have been all along. It's just that 13" display and dual-core CPU proved to be insufficient while working with hi-res photos and for spinning virtual machines. So just few days ago I upgraded to 2015 MacBook Pro 15.4" with Retina display. Very pleased with it so far.

swerfot said:

But then, just few months back I bought a 2013 MacBook Pro 13" with Retina display for my girlfriend, and as I was preparing and testing it, I could not help but "feel the magic" in the MacOS and the synergy between OS+hardware. And of course aesthetics of it all... I got so curious, I decided to buy 2014 MacBook Pro 13" with Retina display for myself (same as GFs, just one year newer). After a month or so of using it, my experience was still the same pleasant feeling of things just working as they should, the way consumer computers should have been all along. It's just that 13" display and dual-core CPU proved to be insufficient while working with hi-res photos and for spinning virtual machines. So just few days ago I upgraded to 2015 MacBook Pro 15.4" with Retina display. Very pleased with it so far.

Click to expand...

Awesome story swerfot. Great to hear that even after all that experience with Windows...and possibily some skepticism regarding Apple users & Apple products. That you were still open-minded to trying out Apple products...and sounds like it's been a positive experience!

- Nick

Yes, it definitely is a positive experience Although a move from huge stationary PC powerhouse to a compact 13"-15.4" laptop does not yet feel perfectly comfortable, but I figure I can get used to this. Especially since with each passing year I have less and less time and energy left for tinkering with my computer internals and OS'es... A move to ever so less upgradeable Mac might even eliminate those distractions, allowing me to concentrate on my main hobbies and using computer just as a tool

I started computing with a commodore 64 then Atari 130 that I modded. At the time could not afford a Mac so bought an Atari ST which was similar in the way the GUI worked. Got an Amiga when I moved here and had many PCs starting with a 286 and later 386 and 486. A friend had a Mac Plus he was not using so just gave it to me. Loved it and found an SE for cheap then got a Color PPC Mac (Forget the Model) then used Powerbook 170. When I moved again to my own place bought a few Power Macs from thrift stores, one was a 7600 with Sonnet G3 card at 400Mhz. I got a hold of OSX 10.2 Jaguar and fell in love so bought a G4 Sawtooth tower from a friend and have been using Macs at my main computers ever since trying OSX.

I use PC's for games and helping others with their Windows, but for any work or most fun it's Macs all the way.

My first encounter with a computer was in 1974 at Ohio State. I was dating a computer science major and I would help him type punch cards for his Fortran class. I knew then computers were nothing I ever wanted to mess with. Too much work! ;D

Then in 1979, my daughter brought home a TI 99 and stuck it under the tv to play games on. At first I truly believed I could safely make it to retirement without having to deal with computers in my classroom. But then I got curious about the cursor thingy that came up before starting the gaming feature. I started playing with it and found myself programming simple stuff in BASIC. The school I was teaching at bought several TRS-80 Model 1s. I attempted to expand my programming skills using the Trash80s as they were affectionally called, saving all work on a cassette recorder. I decided to take three classes as a local university to expand my teaching areas. They had some DECs with 64K of memory, two 8-1/2" floppies running CP/M 80. We also had some Apple II's with the 5-1/2" single sided disk readers and you could turn the disks over. I moved through the MS-DOS family from 1.0 to 5.0 until Microsoft sent our school a copy of Windows 3.0. I was not really impressed and thought that mouse thing would never catch on. Oh, and the three classes I took - ten hours - was all that was required to become licensed to teach computer science in Ohio. I was an instant expert only because education was scrambling in the early 1980's to meet the demand for computer classes and teachers who had paper saying they were qualified.

I continued moving up the Windows ladder purchasing various PCs until 2013. I finally got so fed up with Windows, viruses, and constant intrusive updates that I purchased a 2011 MBPro. I joined this forum shortly after that because I realized I had a bit of a learning curve. The hardest thing for me was getting past the need for anti-virus. I will admit to trying all the free ones at least once. It took many months of detox and forum therapy to get me to just let it go.....

So, I have been a Mac convert since 2013. I am still just a hair above a newbie and am constantly learning.

Lisa

lclev said:

My first encounter with a computer was in 1974 at Ohio State. I was dating a computer science major and I would help him type punch cards for his Fortran class. I knew then computers were nothing I ever wanted to mess with. Too much work! ;D

Lisa

Click to expand...

Some time around 1987 a friend at the local university was taking a computer science class and had to take a programming course. I think Fortran though not on punch cards at the time. I was in the lab one day doing some word processing on a DEC Mate machine when they entered the room ready to scream. There were 30 something errors in the programming assignment they were coding at the time. Most of the errors were misplaced commas. Made me glad I hadn't studied computer science.