… and some of them not so favorable. I remember fiddling with the volume control of the cassette tape recorder to make the output acceptable for the Apple ][ to read the analog input. There was a real feeling of accomplishment when the computer loaded my pong game on the first try!
My first Apple was an Apple II+. I actually had a job where I did some simple programming on the II+ for a business, and the money I earned bought my first microwave (back when they were really expensive) to warm frozen breast milk for my first child! I remember playing a game on the II+, don’t remember the name, but it was something like “Decathlon” where it involved a bunch of track events. Nothing like the old pixilated green screen!
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Wow, Decathlon. I haven’t thought of that game in years. I also played Choplifter, Loderunner, and Q’bert a lot on my Apple IIe.
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For those of you who are feeling nostalgic, there is a kickstarter project for some iconic Apple “hardware”.
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The iMac pillow…I MUST OWN IT!
First Mac was an SE that I bought second hand from a colleague at work. Upgraded to 1.5 Mb RAM with a 20 Mb drive. After that I went all-in with Apple and bought a PowerMac G4/350. 64 Mb RAM and 10 Gb drive (and Velocity engine!). I loved that machine, but eventually upgraded to an iMac G5 20". Currently running a Mac mini 2012 quad-core, although it doesn’t get much use at the moment as I have my work laptop (mid-2012 non-retina MBP upgraded to 16 Gb RAM, 1 x 1Tb SSD and 1 x 750 Gb fusion drive (replaced the CD drive)).
I have had the budget at work for an upgrade for two years but struggling to feel any love for the touch bar which is a useless gimmick in my opinion. Just holding out and hoping the 2012 MBP will hold on a while longer yet (though I don’t hold out any realistic hopes for the TB to be dropped). But maybe something will come along that I like the look of again. At the moment for the first time in 20 years I am considering a PC laptop - I use a Windows 10 machine at work and it’s not bad, certainly something that with the state of the Mac hardware I am seriously considering.
Coming to this late, and writing much for my own benefit! The first Mac I bought was the original 128K Mac, but I bought it for my two sons, who were just entering high school. Within a year I was so impressed with stuff they sent to me (MacDraw picture of my apartment, complete with cat sleeping on a shelf), I bought another for myself, with slightly more RAM I think, probably 1 or 2 MB. I remember being impressed that this thing on my desk had as much memory as the VAX computer I was using at work to produce a daily newspaper. Bread box vs refrigerator! I went on from there to an SE with dual floppy drives. I recall ordering a memory module to upgrade to 4 MB, and it cost about $100. I also remember installing Microsoft Office from 16 floppies!
I adored the SE. Used it to get online with various bulletin boards, wrote programs, loved using Red Ryder to connect online. Wrote and produced a newsletter and two 50-page booklets.
Eventually graduated to a Performa, which my son purchased for me at his college bookstore to get the discount. Since then, I’ve been through an original iMac; a clamshell iBook; an iMac with the base and an LCD screen suspended on a neck above it, moving into different heights and angles; a white iBook; and a MacBook Air 2012, where I’ve stopped for the time being. I need an upgrade soon, and I’m debating between another laptop plus a new external monitor, or an iMac with a giant screen. Since getting my iPad Pro 9/7", that has become my portable device of choice. I think I’ve only taken out my laptop once in the last year. But I run genealogy software (Roots Magic) whose only fully functional version (besides Windows, yuk) runs on the Mac; the iOS version is a viewer only. So if I go out to a repository somewhere, like Salt Lake City, I will need a laptop. Enough! I’m rambling.
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I remember the Vax well. A big step up from the 11/23’s, 11/34’s and 11/70’s I was programming on.
Seems like another lifetime ago now.
I will also be upgrading my Mac this year. Have a 2011 iMac 27” and a 2013 MacBook Air. Not sure if I will jump to a new iMac or laptop yet but most likely the iMac (or even possibly the rumoured new Mac Mini with a high quality screen)
Have a iPad Pro and iPhone 6s which I’m very happy with and don’t see any need to upgrade for a long time yet
My first Mac was a PowerBook G4, in 2004. I ran it in tandem with my last Windows based laptop, a Sony Vaio Z1. Funnily enough, it’s still on the shelf and still works, although it’s infernally slow.
Like everything else I am late to the party. I was wanting to go Mac since like 2004. It didn’t work out. My first Apple product was an iPad in 2012. Then I bought an iPhone 5 in January 2013 finally an iMac in 2014.
My regret was waiting as long as I did to make the transition. I had an opportunity to buy an Apple iiGS in late 1996. I regret letting that pass me by.
My first Mac, a Performa 6300 or 6400–I forget which–purchased in 1996 was a bit of a road apple but I loved it anyway. Updated it from System 7 all the way up to 9 then OSX 10 in 2000 or thereabouts. Kept it until a couple of years ago when I got rid of it cause I was moving. Replaced it as main computer in 2002 with an eMac which I got rid of at the same time as the Performa. My first laptop [which I still have] is a late 2007 15" MacBook Pro. A late 2014 Mac Mini took the stage in 2015 as my main and current Mac.
Had an eMac once too. Never liked it. Man, that thing made a lot of noise.
Righto! Noise and heat!
Performa 200 in 1993. I bought the display model off the shelf at some appliance store, and they didn’t have the box or the documentation. I had already used Macs a few times while working on my resume at Kinko’s, so I knew I wanted one, but it was my call to Apple support for the documentation that really sold me on the company.
The computer came with ClarisWorks 1.0 installed. I didn’t really know how to use it beyond the word processor. So I called Apple to ask for a copy of the ClarisWorks manual. The person who answered was impossibly pleasant and, without asking me to prove I bought anything, he took my name and address and said he’d send me what I needed.
A few days later, a package arrived containing the Performa 200 documentation and a new, shrink-wrapped copy of ClarisWorks 2.0 with, of course, a manual. Such a simple gesture, but what a great way to make a new customer a loyal customer.
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Mac Plus. Bought it used in 1986(?). When I decided to get a computer I asked people (I was living in the Boston area) about their computers and trying to decide between a PC or Mac. The PC people said, “I have a computer.” the Mac said “I have a COMPUTER!” definitely more excitement there. I’ve had an uninterrupted series of Macs ever since.
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First one was a Mac 128K, then had an SE-30, Performa something or other, a couple of LC’s not sure what though 8500, 7100, iMac G4, 2006 iMac and 2013 iMac.
I’m still amazed at both the power of the machines we can buy now and the inane uses to which most apps put all that raw computing power and memory. Part of the problem is I can remember when memory was bought by the bit and my first iPhone would have been a 3.2 billion dollar device!
Does anyone else remember the hand woven rope memory used on Apollo? 
or Bubble memory on the GriD laptop?
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My first Mac was a Mac Plus, in 1989, with only one floppy drive. I quickly learned about floppy swapping, and bought an external HD – 30 or 40 whole megs! I also purchased enough additional RAM to max it out at 4 megs, for running things from a RAM disk. A techie friend came over to help me. He insisted that I do the work. He was merely there to stop me if I was about to do irreparable damage. I’d ordered the long torx wrench and the “cracker” to get the case open. Easily done.
Took it when we moved to France the next year. The flyback transformer (?) blew, and the local Mac dealer replaced it with one for 220V. It ran great when I sold it to a couple when I was upgrading to the LC…
My first Mac was actually a CustoMac;
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I bought an Asus motherboard with an upgradeable BIOS & flashed it with a modified BIOS to run a Linux bootloader upon boot
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The CPU was the same Intel as used in the Mac Pro 3.1
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GFX was an Nvidia card - I can’t seem to remember which one, but it was one with native kext support, though
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16Gb of Corsair RAM
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2x 512Gb Spinning drives
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Specific Sony DVD drive that read the original SL install disc
It ran perfect for a couple of years, even chunking OS updates without any problems (due to native support for hardware - so no hacked kernels or kexts - I wanted a clean install), when Lion was launched I bought the upgrade USB which worked perfectly.
I was really pleased with that rig, and Geekbench even gave better results than the “true” Mac Pro 3.1
But then I went back to study at the university and needed something mobile, so my first true bred Mac was the late 2013 MacBook Air 128Gb SSD 4Gb RAM, which ran like a dream through Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, and just about anything else I threw at it, up until I traded it in for an
iPad Pro 10.5" last November.
But sometimes I do miss that old CustoMac rig😎
Original “Skinny Mac” (128K Macintosh), with external floppy drive and ImageWriter dot-matrix printer, back in July, 1984. Getting it, seeing what I could do with it and its successors, and all the career choices that became available as a result changed — and greatly enhanced — the lives of my family and me.
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My first Mac was a 2009 MacBook Pro. It was the first year with an aluminum body. I had it for about a year and a half before someone stole it in a home robbery. I am still using the late 2011 MacBook Pro that the insurance bought to replace the stolen one.