History with Apple
- 1984 – 1986
- In 6th-8th grade I was introduced to the Apple IIc. I spent a lot of after-school hours in the school’s computer lab. We played Lemonade Stand and helped create some Zork-like text games based on our school. I continued outside school when my best friend got an Apple IIe; more game playing: Conan was my favorite.
- 1987 – 1990
- High school offered a few programming classes, all using Basic on Apple computers. I took all the classes, and was quite disappointed when the AP class was cancelled due to lack of enrollment.
- 1991 – 1997
- I all but lost contact with Apple during this bleak period. My only interaction was using the university Mac lab when the IBM PC lab was full. Towards the end I did become a campus computer consultant, which did let me learn some more about the Mac. It was here I first noticed that I never got questions about the Mac, only the PC and VAX/VMS users, other than the occasional person with a disk stuck in the drive.
- 1998 – 2000
- Here is where I returned to the Mac for good. I started a new job in the publishing industry, hence I was required to use a Mac. I supported a production department that had about 50 Macs, running 24-7 in 3 shifts. MacOS 8.6 had just been released, and in short order we had some of the new iMacs. When MacOS 9 was released, with multi-user support, it was a god-sent. This alone cut down on hours of wasted time dealing with users complaining about how the previous shift had changed their preferences around.
- 2001
- To this point I still had a Linux PC as my personal box. I had my eye on the Power Mac G4 Cube, and the day I was leaving town for vacation I learned it was going to be discontinued. I called around to several stores until I found one that still had a Cube in stock. I quickly drove over and bought the Cube. I then dropped the unopened Cube at my friend’s house, who lived near the airport, before jumping on my plane. It was a glorious return from vacation, having forgotten the frantic episode.
- 2006
- The Cube served me well, until I got married. My wife and I gave ourselves a wedding gift of new computers. I held out until the 1st generation Intel iMac was released. My Cube still worked well, though it was getting a little slow. When the new iMac arrived, I drove around to a few stores to find a Firewire cable to use with the transfer assistant.
- 2007
- The original iPhone became the first, and only, item I have dashed to get on opening day. My wife and I drove to the local Apple retail store. We walked in around 7PM, asked for two iPhone, and we were out in under 10 minutes. We spent several days after that playing with them.
- 2009
- My wife’s birthday is in May, and mine is in July, so every two years we split the difference and get new iPhones. So this time we upgraded to the iPhone 3Gs. I tried the Magic Mouse. It is OK, but there is not enough surface to make much use of gestures.
- 2010
- My 1st gen Intel iMac is still running great, other than some vertical lines appearing on the monitor in growing numbers due to the video card I am too lazy to replace. I finally have moved up to a laptop, the MacBook Pro, a month before the MacBook Air was released. After much waffling I placed the Magic Track Pad in my Amazon wish list, and shortly thereafter received it as a gift. I am growing to like it. My breakthrough moment was learning I could two-finger click to execute a right mouse click.
- 2011
- It has been two years, and we are awaiting the iPhone 5.
I have purchased several versions of iWork, iLife, and MacOS during the years. Never any regrets. I always keep the packaging of whatever Apple product I get. The packaging is part of the experience. I have never done this with any other product, other than a TV, which was merely so I could later safely move it.
