I was reading one of several articles that have appeared recently on the subject of the 25th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh when Sarah came in and looked over my shoulder. I started telling her about the Macs I've previously owned (and how my first had just a nine-inch black-and-white screen!) and came to realize it was more than I suspected.
I first met and fell deep for the Macs in computer labs at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I got a Mac of my own as my first computer in my senior year: a Macintosh Plus. Not having a hard drive, I would boot from one of a collection of 3.5" floppy disks (even though they'd long since ceased to be floppy), and sometimes swap it out for an application disk. I had MacWrite, MacPaint, and even SuperPaint, which could switch between painting and drawing. I'd save files to disk and print using LaserWriters at the labs. My papers looked very nice.
The Plus followed me to Seattle, but in a few years I switched up to the Classic II. This had the same form factor as the Plus and the original Macintosh, but with faster and with an internal hard drive. It also had the Apple Desktop Bus for connecting the keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals together using the same connectors, instead of requiring separate ports for each - that was something I remember really wanting.
Some time in Olympia I changed to the Powerbook Duo 230, my first, and so far only, laptop. 16 shades of grey. Trackball. Quite lightweight. I remember carrying it slung over my shoulder while biking around town. I also got the Duo Dock and a Sony colour monitor. Ejecting the laptop from the dock was so satisfying that I found myself doing it just for fun. Having the larger monitor allowed me to move into more professional graphics and desktop publishing work.
Years later I traded up for a Macintosh clone. I can't even remember who made it except I seem to remember it being endorsed by Mac luminary Bob LeVitus. This had the PowerPC processor so I must have needed to replace lots of software for its completely different RISC architecture. I kept my colour monitor and peripherals. I'm sure by now I was also doing Internet publishing and programming via an external modem.
In Portland I traded up to an iMac G3. I was seduced to return to the all-in-one form factor, and was really attracted to a computer without fans - quiet. I was also impressed by the Harman Kardon-designed integrated stereo speakers. By that time, the original Bondi Blue colour was replaced by fruits; I picked Blueberry. It also had a CD/DVD drive, new to me, and it came with A Bug's Life. I was so impressed by the resolution of a DVD movie that TVs became instantly dingy-looking, and our young family watched many a movie with it at home. Our music collection also passed through its drive one disc at a time as we ripped to MP3 (and later MP4). It came with System 8 as an operating system, but it eventually cohoused the OS X beta, then 10, then 10.1 as I made the change to the redesigned Aqua interface, only switching back to OS 8/9 to do graphic design with older software. Purchased for about $1200, same as my Mac Plus, it was sold to a friend for $25 as we prepared to move overseas many years later.
Two short years ago I purchased my present iMac at the Apple Store on Regent Street in London, carrying it home to Ipswich via Tube and train. I was thrilled to have new goodies like an Intel dual-core processor, a letterboxed flat screen, and the little remote for the Front Row software to control movies, pictures and music. I intended to sell it before returning to North America and buy a newer one, but as the time approached I saw that the latest models had specs that weren't substantially higher, so it seemed cheaper to just ship it. I'm still running OS 10.4 (Tiger) and may upgrade to 10.5 (Leopard) soon, or just wait for the Intel-only Snow Leopard release, which will be even faster.
I wonder what my next Macs will be like.
No comments:
Post a Comment