What was your first Mac?
By paul | April 1, 2006
With all the nostalgia flying around today for Apple’s birthday, I thought I would ask… What was your first Mac (or Apple)?
I’ve worked on many, many Macs over the years… starting with the IIci. But the first Mac I actually owned was a lime green iMac. I don’t still have it today, but at the time, I loved that little machine.
What was your first?
Oh, on a quick side-note… if you think Macs are expensive today… The IIci I started on, had a 25MHz processor, 1MB of RAM (yes, 1) and cost $8,800 in 1989. Of course, mine had been upgraded to a whopping 16MB of RAM.
13 Comments
Laurence Anderson on April 1, 2006 at 2:45 pm.
My first Mac, was bought in January 2004 – it was a 15″ PowerBook G4 1.25ghz with Superdrive, 512mb of RAM. It was great, but now I’ve downgraded to a 12″ PowerBook G4.
Marek on April 1, 2006 at 3:18 pm.
I got my first mac about 2 years ago and I still have it. It’s a 1.25 Ghz emac. It’s the best computer I’ve ever owned, I will probably get a new ibook after they switch them over to the intels.
Dale on April 1, 2006 at 4:04 pm.
The first Apple computer I ever personally owned was the “luggable” //c.
It was 1996, my buddy was moving out and he wanted to get rid of a bunch of stuff. He was just going to toss it out until I reminded him that I had no computer at all, so he gave it to me.
I thought this machine was pretty incredible, even in 1996. I mostly used it to play games but I got a kick out of programming in Apple Basic, making banners and graphics with the dot matrix printer… it was a lot of fun.
But, you asked about our first Mac… In 2003, I’d finally had enough of Windows. Mac OS X had caught my eye back when it first came out and I’d wanted one ever since. It took me a long time to save up the money but in October 2003, I purchased an eMac with a SuperDrive. I’d finally made the switch and never looked back. I honestly don’t remember the last time I turned on my PC… Currently, I’m eyeballing a 17″ Intel iMac, but that won’t be for quite a few months.
Eric on April 1, 2006 at 4:07 pm.
Cost of my 1st Mac: 1994 PowerPC 6100 …$1800
Cost of my 2nd Mac: 1999 iMac333 …$1200
Cost of my 3rd Mac: 2003 iMac800 …$1700
Peace of mind and keeping my sanity: priceless
Barbara on April 1, 2006 at 4:26 pm.
In 1993 I bought the first Mac under $1000., a Quadra 605. With the monitor, printer, and tax, the bill came to $2400. It had 4M of Ram and an 80M harddrive. I learned tons with Claris Works and Photoshop 2.0 on that thing. My husband bought me a 4M RAM upgrade for it $400. OUCH.
Melis on April 1, 2006 at 4:54 pm.
The first Mac I bought was back in 1995 and was a Macintosh Performa 5215CD all-in-one (iMac predicessor) with a giant 1GB HD and a lightning fast 75MHz PowerPC CPU. I really forget how much it cost.
After that I had a PowerBook G3 WallStreet 300MHz, Titanium PowerBook G4 667MHz DVI (which I still use), and now iMac G5 1.6GHz.
Allen on April 2, 2006 at 12:40 pm.
The first Mac I ever owned was a 512k Mac Plus, with a 20 MB (yes, megabyte) external SCSI hard drive. I still have it, and it still runs. :)
latisha on April 2, 2006 at 2:06 pm.
april 2005 powerbook g4
actually i bought a ipod mini december 04 (that was my first mac purchase)
growing up, i vaguely remember having a mac in the house, i couldn’t tell you what kind, and i’m sure my parents couldn’t either. but that was our very first computer purchase.
wheat on April 2, 2006 at 3:16 pm.
My first was a Mac Classic II (those were in production from 1991-1993. Here are some details from lowendmac.com). It was an all-in-one model with a 9-inch black and white screen (very much like the SE/30). It was powered by a 16Mhz 68030 processor and had 4MB of RAM and a 40MB hard drive. These listed for $1899 and I paid close to that much for one back in 1991. I loved it, though. It lasted forever.
jason on April 2, 2006 at 9:02 pm.
1988 – Mac II – the first color Mac, first 2-piece design.
1 MB RAM, 40MB HD, 18MHz 68020, 4-bit color video card (16 colors)
CPU: $4995
13″ 640×480 Monitor: $1500
Color Imagewriter dot-matrix printer with multicolor ink ribbon: $1200
the damn thing STILL runs – and it boots from chime to desktop in about 14 seconds.
since then (some purchased, some gifted):
SE/30, PB520, PPC7200, PPC7500, G3 PB (Wallstreet), Blueberry iMac 433 (?), G4/450 (Sawtooth)
G4 Cube – which is my main production machine to this day, at 6 years old
still have them all, they still ALL work
Roy on April 3, 2006 at 5:49 pm.
My first was an SE/30. I knew little about them at the time EXCEPT that they were easy to use and you could do cool things with graphics and fonts.
I remember during my studies, we were recommended to get a PC for our office. Not knowing a thing we went along to “The Computer Department” and they simply said, “OK, you’ll need an IBM and, oh yeah, you’d better get MS-DOS”. Some how the budget didn’t appear and we never got it so I like to think I got a lucky escape. I spent my postgrad years messing about on a terminal linked to an HP UNIX server, but a friend introduced me to Macs as they were the ONLY machines that could handle anything except English characters. This was back in 1988 and Macs could already run Japanese without a problem! Once I graduated, the SE/30 was the first purchase I made before starting my new job.
I can’t remember the specs of the SE/30, but 2-3 years later, around 1992, I got a IIvx and ran it as an IP router and print server until September last year. It had 100MB of harddisk and several MB of RAM! It never failed me.
Oh the memories!
Oh and PS: while on sabbatical in the US a few years ago, I picked up my own TAM. Still have it — even tho’ it sits in its original box and has hardly ever seen the light of day. I discovered the second-hand price for it is now $50. Still, while I’ve still got space, I’m keeping it, no matter how much my wife wants to reclaim the spare room.
Bryan on April 21, 2006 at 6:39 pm.
My first and only mac I owned was a Apple iBook G4 I paid $999 for it on May 21,2005. It was working great until three weeks ago it suddenly crashed and I’ve been anxiously waiting for my baby to return. Well now I’m just sitting here typing on a stupid Compaq Evo notebook I hate WINDOWS my, Internet Explor keeps on freezing not to mention, THE BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!
P.S. I love you APPLE, MAC, SAFARI, AND ALL YOUR BEAUTIFUL PROGRAMS!
Richard on August 3, 2006 at 6:25 pm.
iBook G4… white, mid-2005. I’m only 16, and only recently discovered Macs. But once you go Mac, you never go back. Or something like that.