OPML HowTo's - Latest Comments in HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

GregLatsch — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:51:40 -0000

I remember seeing the commercial during the Superbowl. We'd been using an Apple ][e for about a year. It wasn't until some time in '87 that we bought a Mac SE after seeing a demo at work. Since then we've used a Quadra, a Power Computing clone, a couple of iMacs, a couple of iBooks, and a MacBook.

Happy anniversary, Mac!

Greg
Wisconsin

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

DigitalDoyle — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:45:53 -0000

I got the very first Macworld, unbidden, in the mail in early 1984 and had to have the Macintosh. I still have that inaugural issue and my original 128K Mac.

Here's my story and some photos of my Mac then and now and a scan of the cover of the first Macworld magazine: http://www.digitaldoyle.com...

Thanks for the opportunity to share.

Enjoy!

DigitalDoyle

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Glenn_in_Vancouver — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:00:24 -0000

1983... I got a chance to briefly play with a Lisa and knew it represented the future.

1984... with a few dollars in my pocket, I saw the 128k Macintosh as an obtainable Lisa and, when the Canadian prices came down to $2900+, I purchased one in the summer of 1984 and never looked back. I added a dot-matrix ImageWriter for output, then an external 400k floppy (so the system + application could reside on the internal 400k disc and files could go on the external). Pure bliss!

In spring 1985 my local (Kelowna) Apple dealer was going-out-of-business and most of my friends felt I had made a big mistake (they were using Atari 400 & 800s), and I bought a few items at the bankruptcy sale including the etched glass "Picasso" sign (with the light in the base) which I still have stored in my crawlspace.

Upgraded the 128k Mac to a Mac Plus while a grad student in North Carolina in 1986, and kept that configuration until 1992, when I upgraded to a Centris 650 with 14-inch colour monitor.

Added a PowerBook 1400c for portable computing in 1997, and upgraded my desktop to the 600 MHz G3 iMac in 2002 (and then a 1.8 GHz G5 iMac in 2004).

Now I run a 3.06 GHz 24-inch Intel iMac & use a 1.8 GHz MacBook Air for my portable needs... and am looking forward to the next 25 years.

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Erik Anderson — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 22:20:18 -0000

I've shared my first Mac story on my weekly Mac Podcast, The Mac Minute. Check it out at www.themacminute.net.

Here's to another 25 years of Macintosh!

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

jpkang — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 02:13:19 -0000

My memories: http://tinyurl.com/cl4orx

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Steve Still — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:10:18 -0000

My first mac was my parent's IIsi. That baby rocked! My friend had one as well and bought a "CD burner" for over $1500, in 1992. He had a small cottage business of burning CD's for people at $50 a pop.

My actual first Mac was a 7200, in 1996. I upgraded to a 512k cache card and was the envy of all my friends.

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Robert Overholt — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:49:17 -0000

I first saw the 128k Mac in a store in Grand Rapids, MI in the early 1980's I was really intrigued by it and then discovered a friend in my home town who had purchased one. Before I purchased the 128k Mac, the 512k Mac was out. I bought one in Muskegon and shortly after that I purchased a Mac Plus to use in my dental office and was able to use the Dental Mac program, which was in use at that time. I used the Dental Mac program for over 20 years and had updated the computer many times to the final iMac at the time of retirement. I have since purchased a 17 in Mac Book pro and a new iMac for home use. They are great computers! Congratulations to the Mac Team for their continued success. P.S. I also have a Windows machine, but rarely use it.

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Christoph — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 08:45:35 -0000

I misspelled the link for the german site:
http://www.mac-history.de is right

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Christoph — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 08:44:07 -0000

As a student in the 80s in Germany I could not afford a Mac. So I bought an Atari ST and used the Mac emulator Spectre GCR. Does anybody rember? In the early 90s I bought my first Mac (LC). And I using Macs ever since.
I wrote some facts and tales about the Mac on
http://www.mac-history.net (in English) and
http://www.mac-histroy.de (in German)

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Michael Ehrman — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:15:42 -0000

I was there before the Mac was there. Let me explain. As an Apple developer since 1977 I was invited to develop software for the Macintosh. Requirement was to purchase a Lisa. While normally I would not have spent $10K for a computer, the fact that the Mac was to originally sell for under $2K and the graphical interface seemed so intuitive and simple, with my developer discount I purchased the Lisa in preparation for writing software for the Mac. In late 1983, under non disclosure, I was introduced to the Macintosh computer in the Apple western regional offices in Newport Beach. From what I saw and played with I felt this would be the future of computers and Apple would have a winner. No more command line typing or using menu launch programs.

Personally 400K floppies with usually under 100-180K of available space seemed small and I was hoping that Apple would use hard drives like the IBM XT/286 had and the Lisa Profile which offered 5MB to 10MB of storage. I also noted that 128K of RAM was almost no RAM when PCs offered 256K to as much as 640K. These issues would need to be addressed and I contacted Jean Louis Gasse about these observed shortcomings as he was head of product development. It had been years since I dealt directly with Steve Jobs on Apple hardware. As we all know, over the next year Apple and third party companies dealt with these shortcomings.

I have enjoyed Apple and the Macintosh and never looked back.

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Michael Ehrman — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:15:21 -0000

I have enjoyed Apple and the Macintosh and never looked back.

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

gbailey — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:25:55 -0000

Funny, kept planning to do the same... Finally just tossed it...

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

gbailey — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:23:59 -0000

I was there, working at an Apple dealership as a service tech, repairing Apple II's, IIe's and the Lisa while occasionally doing sales too. I continued on in the "Apple Way" handling Apple's K-12 business in the public schools and also became an Apple student rep on campus at NMSU. I eventually ended up managing an Apple dealership back in New Mexico and now I am the founder and president of SnakeHead Software, LLC where we build fun games for the iPhone and IPod touch. At SnakeHead, "It's all fun and games!". I still have a bunch of original "hat pins" for Macintosh, IIe, etc as well as one of the original nylon type banners we used to hang up in the store that simply reads "Macintosh" with the Apple logo. Hmmm, I wonder if any of that stuff is worth anything these days????

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Daniel Lodewyk — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:27:56 -0000

My family got our first Mac in 1993 (when I was five years old). My father used a Macintosh Classic while he worked on his graduate degree at the University of Alberta. When Apple Computers Inc. introduced the Color Classic he bought one along with a Apple Printer.

I remember going to Westworld Computers and being so excited to pick up our new mac. We bought the Mac Arcade Pack and Skyshadow games. I always wanted to play Duke Nukem on it so I lost interest pretty quick, except for school work. I loved handing in printed documents to my teachers. It lasted a long time and we recycled it just last year. It was a great machine.

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

DougRivers — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:09:30 -0000

I missed seeing the 1984 commercial during the Super Bowl that year, but one couldn't miss seeing it on the morning news shows the following morning. I had been working with various mainframe computers for about 10 years by then and my personal computer at that time was a Timex-Sinclair Z80 that was very frustrating to use (and I was used to convoluted, 45-minute boot-up times on mainframes) and I was intrigued by the promise of a computer that would be simple to use.

It would be several months (and a lot of overtime pay) before I was finally able to visit the local computer boutique shop (The Computer Emporium in Louisville, KY) which was the only place in town where you could get your hands on a Macintosh. Using the mouse to move folders and documents around was a revelation and I was hooked, so Halloween afternoon 1984, I plunked down $2500 (almost 3 months pay at the time) for an original Macintosh 128k and an ImageWriter printer (thankfully, it was a sale bundle deal) and have never looked back.

I have owned about a dozen Macs since then, and have been very happy with my relationship (except for one unremarkable LC model back in the 90s) and have never allowed a PC into my house.

Happy Anniversary Mac!

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

rickw — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:57:04 -0000

I was watching the superbowl and saw this incredible commercial. I was blown away. I already owned an Apple II+, which was dated. What I saw, blew my mind! This is one of the greatest companies ever.

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

gregreher — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:56:54 -0000

My first programming experience came on various models of the the Apple II series. I even recall an attempt by a teacher of mine at running a CADD program on a IIe (this would have to have been sometime between '84 and '85). I think I had graduated by the time he finally got it up and running.

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Jonathan Marks — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:58:24 -0000

I was involved with a early computer show on Dutch radio called Hobbyscoop in 1984, as well as presenting a show on Radio Netherlands called Media Network. We did everything on the Apple II and later the IIe. There was a scheme to buy one of the first Mac's but it was slow to take off because of the Lisa fiasco prior to the Mac. I ended up waiting for the Mac II, later upgrading to the Mac IIx. I also bought one of the early Laserprinters for 6000 dollars. That was a huge investment in those days, but it all lasted 8 years with no problems. By the early 90's, the whole PowerMac range was very confusing and I had problems with poor foreign language support from Apple in the Netherlands. Apple was one of the vendors we considered for a newsroom project at the TV station I was working out - with hindsight I am glad they didn't get the contract. Today would be different. Happy Birthday Mac.

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Aubrey Semple — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:35:15 -0000

It was 1998 when I first experienced Apple, besides the fact that I used Apple machines at school (elementary) It was the the Strawberry iMac... my first love. It was that machine that made me love computing in general. from there came the iMac G4 flat-panel, PowerBook G4 (Ti), iBook G4, Power Mac G5, iMac G5, iMac Intel and Mac Book Pro (15-inch). Yes, I guess I am a Mac Addict. And it all started over a decade ago. Happy b-day Macintosh, I LOVE YOU!!!

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Bernard W — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:28:27 -0000

My first mac was an Apple IIe given to me by my uncle back in 1992. With a colour screen, mouse and a science kit that took temperature and light readings I thought this was amazing piece of machinery. I was 5 at the time. That Apple IIe lives at my parents house and still works as well today as it did the day I received it.

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Cody — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:40:26 -0000

I was talking to my friend, and his father was giving a blueberry iMac G3 away to anyone who wanted it. I gladly took it off his hands and had the adventure of getting the password. I was up for a whole night trying to get into the administrators account and got into it from the Mac equivalent of the bios. I used that iMac for a couple months and my father decided to buy me a Mac mini, which I am still using today. :)

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

sttevo — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:58:05 -0000

I've been using IBM PC's since the mid-80's and always kept my distance from the Apple world. Until about 2 years ago. I thought I'd buy an iMac desktop for home since I really loved my iPod. Never looked back. Now have 2 iMac's, a Macbook Pro and a MacBook Air and love all of them.

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

MacSmiley — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:15:20 -0000

It took over 18 years for me to get my first Mac. Story at 11.

Well... um... actually, the full story is on my website... It's best read in it's native environment:

http://homepage.mac.com/mac...

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Doug I — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:52:41 -0000

Bought our first Mac as the first major purchase of our marriage(1988). We were both going to university. She needed it for her masters and I just wanted to play. Had to order without a hard drive. Got a Mac SE and an Imagewriter. Lasted a long time and added an extra drive from Jasmine just before it went under. Luckily we never got billed for the drive ($400 for 40 MB drive). Passed it on to my dad and he used it and we still have it. Retired on a shelf until I change it into a Macquarium.

Re: HowTo: The Macintosh will be 25 on 1/24/09

Thad — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:39:09 -0000

Back in '84 I was still using an Apple II at school running *gasp* DOS. and learned Basic, Fortran, COBOL and Pascal. Every new semester I needed to learn the program before I could write letters or anything else. It would be another two years before I used a real computer( Mac 512). I am still showing other people how to use and upgrade their Macs.