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

Around 1986, my wife (then my girlfriend) was doing her medical training at Stanford and based on departmental advice she purchased a very early Macintosh. She went off to New Zealand for a number of months to do an externship and she left it with me to play with. I was very curious about it. The world's biggest Mac user group (BMUG) happened to be in Berkeley, where I was living, and they had an electronic bulletin board that I started calling into every day. (Back then everything was via a modem and dial-up. No Internet as we know it.) In a short time, from reading all of the posts, I knew all of the answers to all of the technical questions that everyone called-in and asked. Not long thereafter purchased my first Macintosh, a Mac Plus with a whopping 20MB external SCSI hard drive!

Soon I had my own questions that no one else could answer. So I researched them and wrote articles for my user group on what I found. In time I had a large portfolio of articles. I got a job with Computer Currents (a weekly computer newspaper) as their "Mac guy". My articles in CC were popular, and I started getting requests to write articles for just about every major Macintosh computer magazine in the world. Then a local publisher (Peachpit Press) had a well-known author not come through for them for the latest edition of their popular book The Macintosh Bible. They were in a bind, and I met them at a show and they asked me if I could write a chapter for them about hard drives. I told them "yes" and that I had even built my own external hard drive (no one did that themselves back then), which impressed them, and that I could get them a chapter in a week. (They didn't believe me. None of their authors wrote that fast.) I got them their chapter by the end of the week, and they were impressed, so I went on to write a bunch of chapters for The Macintosh Bible. The book became a worldwide best-seller (at least while I was writing for them) and I was surprised that I actually met random people who could quote things that I had written in TMB. At the time I was a young attorney, and I was actually doing about as well from writing as I was from lawyering.

Around this time I was using my own Mac in my practice, but I was only using it as sort of a glorified word processor. (Very few attorneys were using computers on their own desks at this time. Even most secretaries weren't using computers back then.) But my bio in The Macintosh Bible said that I was a practicing attorney. So I started receiving a ton of letters from attorneys asking me what software they should use. I researched that, and in time I became the world's foremost authority on using a Macintosh to practice law. I now am the head of what I believe is the world's largest Macintosh user's group (with close to 10,000 members). It is only for Mac-using attorneys, and it is called MacAttorney. I publish an electronic newsletter called The MacAttorney Newsletter.

Very cool Randy. At the beginning I had to build my own external drives also. Was a lot cheaper overall that way.

Great story Randy. And to think you got started because your girlfriend/wife went off to New Zealand, left you to your own devices with her Macintosh, and an additional career was born.

When I was teaching high school I use to find it so amusing when young people would tell me how they had planned out their life and just knew that was the way it would be and what they would be doing for the rest of their lives. I encouraged them to set goals, as they are essential, but always be flexible. You never know what doors will be opened and a rigid inflexible view might prevent them from seeing an amazing opportunity. Looks like you walked through some open doors!

Lisa

Oh wow, such awesome stories... Makes me feel like a mere youngster when reading them... Respect to you people...
And I really agree with Lise regarding planning career for the rest of your life -- that just sounds naive and funny now )) I remember, when I was in my 16-18, I was pretty sure I have absolutely no idea what I want (or even can) do with my life. I actually even considered being a woodsman/forester since I like forests so much... :-D In fact, I was totally afraid of computers up until around age of 16 -- that is when my parents bought me my first PC (on a lease, since we were not particularly rich family, if you know what I mean). And then it all started... It came with Windows 98 pre-installed, and in following few years I broke and fixed it more times than I can count, messed with software, OSes and even BIOS to the point of bricking it (CMOS reset was needed to bring it back to life). My first attempt to re-install OS on my own took me a little more than 3 full days (I did not have access to internet back then). I even experimented with BeOS at one point.
But all that paid of. I now have a career in IT (10 years and counting), and right at this moment it feels like I am at the a pinnacle of it (just took upon new job).
But the funny thing is... I wasn't really sure what I want to do with my life as recently as 3 years ago... Even switching to military crossed my mind briefly at one point.
So I can say with confidence that I too want to laugh when people in their year 18-20 say that they "have a plan"... :-D

lclev said:

I encouraged them to set goals, as they are essential, but always be flexible. You never know what doors will be opened...

Click to expand...

That's really true. I've changed careers several times in my life. You never know what life is going to present to you.

I probably never would have gotten so involved with the Macintosh, but just by happenstance Berkeley, where I went to undergrad, was the center of the universe for both people who used the Macintosh, and publishing houses for computer publications. If both hadn't been so accessible, I might not even be a Macintosh user today.

There are some superb stories in there folks!

My first brush with any computers was when I came in to contact with the analog conputers that controlled the engines on the Bristol Britannia and as an aircraft electrician they were part of my remit. That was in 1961. I was in the R.A.F. for 12 years working on large transport aircraft. Comet 2 & 4C, Britannias, then Shorts Belfast and VC10s and loved it.

When I left the R.A.F. I jioned Nexdoor Confusion, more commonly known as Nixdorf Computers and 2 years with them on their small machines running off of 2k 'bombs' Books of toroidal core storage. Repairing the dammed things to with yards of VERY fine wire! I got sick of the way the company worked and got a job with that small US company some of you may have heard of, IBM? And spent 18 years employed as a Customer Service Engineer on mainframes. Some of the first disks were hydraulic controlled and at one customer I was repairing an 80 coloumn card punch/verifier and was told that the guy who had just come in to see the DP manager was from the Liverpool Computer museum and wanted to know if the maching I was working on was for sale for his museum! That was in one of the JMB, Joint Matriculation Board offices, they do the selection for the English universities.

First PC, in about 1971, was an IBM, at staff prices. It was less than the reseller could get them from and he wanted to know how I'd swung the price like that. I don't remember much about that one. It was upgraded a couple of times until I could afford a newer model, still don't remember much, but the both had the little floppy disk drive, not much memory and a small HDD!

Stumbled from PC to PC until March 2010, bit the bullet and got an iMac 21 1/2 with 2 gig of memory and a 250 gig HDD. Then 10.10.2010 we lashed out and bought this MacBook Pro 13 that we have now with 4 gig mempory and a 250 gig HDD.

Now the iMac has 8 gig of memory and a 2 tb hybrid SHDD and the MBP has 8 gig and a 500 gig SDD and a 1 tb SHDD internally. They both started out on Snow Leopard and have graduated up to Yosemite on the iMac and El Cap on the MBP. I am reluctant to go to Siera at the moment because I also have a Wacoms graphics pad with both a mouse and a stylus and I don't know of any drivers for Siera??

Would I go back to Windoze? No chance!

I was a Windows guy from my first computer until Microsoft started pushing Windows 10. Didn't like their business tactics. I'm still running two Window 7 computers, but hardly use them. On April 3, 2016 I put my order in for my first Mac the 27 inch. It was delivered on April 12, 2016 and set up a few says later. It took awhile to get use to where everything was on the Mac. I try to learn a little more on the Mac every day. Later this year my Wife will be getting her first Mac. Eventually we will be unpluging the Windows Computers for good.

I started out with a Commodore 64c and eventually graduated to the Commodore Amiga. I was an Amiga devotee for many years and scoffed at what was then the laughably inferior Mac. By the mid to late 90's, I finally gave up on any hope that the Amiga would be ever be resuscitated by any of its new corporate suitors and started using Windows full-time and eventually landed a job in IT during the "dot com boom", mostly working with Windows 95/98 and NT 4. As my career grew, I didn't really give much thought to Apple or the Mac, up until they finally (blessedly?) moved it over to x86 and started to make some really nice hardware that was worth the premium price. When Microsoft released the disaster that was Windows Vista, I bought my first Mac and that graduated into an obsession for Apple hardware. That lasted well up until Tim Cook's Apple started dumbing down the entire Mac line, while simultaneously jacking the prices up into ludicrous territory. Now I wonder what my next machine will be.

My brother still has his Commodore Amiga. He swore it was the best computer he ever had. He use to tweak the heck out of it. Memories......

Lisa

How did this thread go from a "how we got into Apple computers" to being frustrated by how Apple builds their computers? lol

Kind of a 180 there...

Thread cleaned up a bit. Tangential discussion moved to its own thread.

- Nick

Pray tell which thread please Nick? But it is a bit like a conversation where it wanders and returns I suppose?

Your post concerned the possible upcoming purchase of a MacBook. It and all replies were moved to it's own thread in the notebook area.

Thanks,

- Nick