Your first Apple, or how it all began...

First Apple: IIGS
First Mac: PM 6100
First Kiss: Love robot designed on first Mac and constructed with parts from first Apple. (jk, I'm not that cool)

My first Mac was the LC476. In hindsight I probably should have bought a Powerpc Mac then, but what did I know? My decision to go with Apple came about that the Commodore Amiga was going out of business at the time, and plus the Amiga 4000 was about $1000 higher than the Mac. This new computer was replacing a Commodore 128D, which I think my mom still has.

The main reason why I didn't go with a PC because I've used my uncle's with Win3.1 and it was a bitch to use. Damn thing would never work right, and adding anything to it required voodoo to get the IRQ switches to play nice. I certainly didn't want to spend my money on a piece of crap!

First mac at age 33, in 1986:
MacPlus. 1 mb of RAM. No internal HD. $1700. Also purchased a 20 mb HD for $700. Have never looked back...

Lineup of Macs:
Performa 630, B&W G3 400mHz PowerMac, Lombard G3 Powerbook, Titanium 15" 500 mHz PowerBook, G4 15" 1.25GHz PowerBook, 12" 1GHz G4 Powerbook, Dual 2.7GHz G5 PowerMac, 2.4 GHz Core2Duo MBP.

Presently Own:
MacBook Air 1.86 GHz Core2Duo with 2Gb RAM
13" MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz Core2Duo with 4Gb RAM
27" i7 2.8 GHz Quad Core iMac with 8 Gb RAM and 2TB HD.

My first encounter with an Apple computer was in late 1979 when I used my whole live savings (at age 14 :-) ) for buying an Apple ][ europlus with 48KB RAM and a green monitor for a cool $2500. I immediately commandeered my parent's tape deck as my private mass storage, until I invested another $1500 in a floppy drive that offered a huge 128KB mass storage with incredibly fast access times and unbelievable reliability (compared to tape). That's when my future as a software engineer began...

Years later my father told me that at that time I was quite the talk of the town, because neither the local government nor any company but a 14 year old boy had actually bought the first computer in the whole town (pop. 3500). :-)

I got quite some mileage out of this Apple ][ until 1986 when I switched to a Mac Plus. Actually I've never ever owned a non-Apple computer, although I'm forced to work with all kinds of kit.

Right now I'm waiting for the iPad to be released to complement my MacBook, iPhones and iPods. Well, you might call me a died-in-the-wool Mac- and Apple-addict, and I probably won't call you a liar...

For me it started when Apple first launched their Macintosh. My aunt had a 128k Mac. That was enough to start the fever spreading through the family. I ended up getting a Mac 512Ke as a gift when I turned 13. I even upgraded the machine with more memory. So for me it has been a love affair with their products for 26 years.

I was one of those dreaded schoolkids aged 13 who scummed every shop selling computers to play games but far more often: to do some basic programming, literally BASIC. This was the time of the Sinclair ZX-80, TI-99/4a, VIC-20. At the Commodore distributor they spotted me and invited me for "something special", they were to present the computer that would change homecomputing forever and I was one of the rare kids who could put his hands onto one before release. Yes, we're talking the Commodore-64. They asked me to be present at the press-conference, as I did. But no, this kid didn't receive a C-64 for free - I just got a 50% discount. Major bummer.

I also happened to visit an older visual artist Jan Gladdines. He was playing with an Apple ][, hooked up to all kinds of hardware. He did have the ideas, but didn't have the real skills to dive into software. I did and soon I was digging assembly, walking around with oscilloscopes to check why that stupid laserbeam wasn't working and so on. A neighborhood kid did accompany us sometimes. This Jan suggested me to buy the Che-1b, he'd buy one. This Che-1b was a Apple ][ clone, to be bought in parts: yes, I've soldered my first Apple as a 15 year old. Of course, it didn't go right - heck, it was my first soldering project anyway. But in the end I did have a perfectly working Apple ][ clone, with a Z80 CP/M card and an amazing 2 MB extended memory card (64 KB was the max at that time). I've written quite some software for that Apple, including some games. And I did have my first article in one of the early Apple magazines: a small utility to switch video pages very quickly - something like Spaces avant la lettre - yes, the Apple ][ could do that easily with 2 spaces, back then!
I did write a couple of books on my Che-1b but got it replaced by an IBM PC clone in 1989 and I stayed on DOS / Windows until about 6 years ago - then I jumped to Linux and 3 years ago I bought my first MacBook Pro. It's combining everything to the almost perfect solution. Of course, a lot can still be approved but as for now, I'll stay on the Apple platform to do network maintenance at customer sites, to do writing and to program in several languages.

I had my first real experience with an Apple II back in 1978 at Syracuse University while I was in grad school. I was a research assistant for a cryptology professor in the Computer and Information Sciences Department charged with building a two machine setup to do Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) research.

The first machine was a DEC LSI 11 minicomputer I built from off-brand components, wire-wrapped boards and duct tape. It had a special board I also constructed that contained a circuit which generated random numbers -- real ones. This was done by back-biasing a diode to cause an unpredictable avalanche of electrons that could be counted (the details and physics of which I've long since forgotten). Take it from me, we built a true random number generator -- the best that quantum mechanics uncertainties could provide. It took weeks to run the complex statistics programs necessary to prove it.

The subject (ESP adept) was supposed to sit in a room and stare at a screen connected to the second machine, an Apple II, and "try" to make the screen turn either red or green. The red/green pixel decision was made by measuring the lowest bit on random numbers generated by the LSI 11 circuit in another room. With thousands of pixels being generated, it was possible to determine if there was a significant bias either way.

At least that was the theory... I graduated just as I finished getting the hardware and software working. Unfortunately, the setup was never used beyond some preliminary testing. No conclusions were ever drawn to my knowledge and the project was abandoned after the professor moved on to other things. I always wondered what would've happened if...

It wasn't all in vain though. Because of the project, I fell in love with Apple and purchased an Apple II with my first paycheck after I got a job. I've been an Apple fanboy ever since.

BTW: The LSI 11 had its fun use too. After it was built, I got a floppy (they were huge at that time -- about 7" in diameter) from a friend in the military who worked on the DARPAnet (the internet precursor) which contained a text adventure game called DUNGEO. It was incredible and I played it all summer long. A few years later it was released on the Apple II under the name Zork!

I was first introduced to a computer in Year 5 at primary school in 1985 when I was 10 years old - it was a //c and it was playing Karateka (written by Prince of Persia developer Jordan Mechner). I was amazed by it.

I found a few books in our library on BASIC programming, and when I entered my first programme (a simple jumping man stick figure ASCII animation) it just blew me away that you could control these devices, make them do a million different things in a million different ways, interact with people and solve problems, just with code.

I pestered Dad until he bought me one. When visiting relatives I'd pack the //c and monitor in my suitcase and forget spare underwear. I played Taipan for days on end, I learnt assembly, I never went out, I started to see the world in shades of green and black.

Three years later my high school got Macs, and I didn't like the mouse, and I didn't like that I couldn't break into a CLI using Apple-reset. After a bit of use I started to like the mouse. I still mourned the lack of BASIC but at least it prompted me to learn C.

Sometime in '94 I bought my first Mac, the wonderful LC475. That kept me going all the way to '04 when I bought an eMac. Still using that, still loving it. I will probably upgrade to an Intel Mac sometime this year, as usual, a few generations behind the current one.

Don't ever die, Apple - I couldn't live without you.

Hi.

Here's my story published on Mac|Life.com titled: "My Switcher Manifesto: Why switching to the Mac was the right move for me."

http://www.maclife.com/article/feature/my_switcher_manifesto_why_switching_mac_was_right_move_me



Regards,

David Martin

Sites I contribute to:

CNET's iPhone Atlas http://www.iphoneatlas.com

and

Future's Mac|Life http://www.maclife.com

Well, I've always been an Apple user, since Christmas 1978. My dad had built an Apple II+ clone out of a kit of parts. I was 10 years old - one of the lucky ones to be introduced early. It had a 12 or 13 inch green-on-black monitor, a single external 5 1/4 inch floppy drive and a game controller (which I used to draw with). I had used VisiCalc, and an early word processor on the Bell & Howell "Darth Vader" Apple II+'s at school, but who cared? I was using mine as a digital Etch-a-Sketch, programming in BASIC and playing games. Anyone remember the following: Colossal Cave Adventure, Spy's Demise, Pole Position, Sargon, Castle Wolfenstien, Choplifter, Canyon Climber, Sneakers, Raster Blaster, Zaxxon, Ultima, Transylvania, Apple Panic, Sabotage and Aztec. I longed for a printer, second floppy-drive and a copy of Leisure Suit Larry. They never materialized.

5 years later, I remember watching my first Super Bowl. I wasn't a big football fan but an older brother had given me two little plastic helmets out of a cereal box – the Bengals and the Raiders. I liked the little silver helmet the best and decided to watch the game! Then this commercial comes on, and it struck me right away because I was getting interested in set design and special effects at the time. When I saw that Apple logo, man... tears of joy!

Though at the time I really wanted an Apple IIc, I first got my mitts on a Mac when my dad borrowed a 128k model from work, complete with an ImageWriter and carry bag. I remember learning to use the mouse, listening to that audio cassette, and looking at the cool pictures of a Geisha and a running shoe in Scrapbook. There was just something magical about the whole thing. I was in heaven with MacPaint (Fat Bits was the best!), and used that machine on weekends to do my first graphic project - a programme for my high-school's art show. My dad, in his infinite wisdom, took me to work to print it out on this new thing called a LaserWriter. I was hooked.

My eldest brother, who had moved across the country, was a big-time early adopter of new tech and had purchased a 128k. He gave it to me along with an ImageWriter II to use at University in 1988. My parents upgraded it to 512k and I actually made money with the thing typing people's essays with custom graphic report covers! I'd also seen the Mac IIx with an Apple portrait monitor and I knew from that day on I'd be a graphic designer.

Though I've used many Mac models, an aging Lisa, and a few PCs since, I still used my baby 512k at home until my first computer purchase in 1998! I used that G3 Mini Tower, with a slew of hardware upgrades, for the first 6 years running my own graphic design business, until I bought my current computer -- a PowerMac Dual 2Gig G5. Time for another upgrade I think!