When and why did you switch to Apple? What were you using before?

21

First computer I ever used was an Apple II+ that my school had. We got a IIGS when it came out for home use, and used that until my teen years in the very early 90s when I got some free PC hardware (XT / 286 / PC Jr). I’d been PC-only, mostly working with castoffs / second-hand stuff - although the “second hand” got closer and closer to current as time went on.

Hackintoshed a Mac with a laptop in 2011. Used that until 2012, when I got sick of the instability and bought a Mac Mini. Probably the most expensive computer I’d ever purchased. I’ve been Mac for my primary computer ever since, although I still have Windows computers laying around - and my significant others have always been PC people.

I went to iPhone at least a year after I got the Mac, which I’ve been told makes me somewhat of an outlier among recent Mac converts.

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22

I starting with Apple IIs in 1984 or so in school. I think we had a computer lab in third grade around 1987. Then it was the Apple IIgs. At home it was always a PC of one flavor or another.

In the early 2000s I wanted to switch over to Apple. I had various iPods. Finally in 2012 I purchased my first iPad. In January 2013 my first iPhone. Which was an iPhone 5. Then in early 2014 my first iMac.

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23

We didn’t have a computer in the home, we couldn’t afford one. So, I was reared on the Apple computers that were in the Computer Lab in my school. My dad’s office then mandated PCs and so I became accustomed to DOS and then Windows there. When I went to college my uncle built me a computer from spare “throw-away” parts from his office where he was in tech support at the time. This ran Windows 98. I continued to use this PC (with modifications), switching to Debian Linux in about 2005 until 2007. At that time I entered my Religious Order and our computer lab had both Mac and PC. In 2009 I was made responsible for maintaining the tech of the community and I spent so much time on the phone with Dell Tech Support (with very little result) that when I had a need for my own computer I got permission to get a 2010 MBP and I’ve never looked back.

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24

That IBM PC was the first computer I used that was purchased with my own money. Replaced the second 5-1/4" floppy drive with an unbelievably large 20MB (sic) hard drive at a time when the IBM AT was shipping with only 10MB of storage. My followup computer was a Mac IIci with a portrait monitor.

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25

I immediately gravitated toward Apple and am/was a great supporter. They have rarely disappointed me.

I love Apple Care and these people can be a huge help. I am still so eager to learn.

Someone put an Apple computer in the back of my classroom. My fourth graders taught me as I did not even know how to turn it on.

I soon got a Performa 6200 for myself. Last I checked it was still working and I always fixed it myself, with the help of the guy working in an itty bitty room at MicroCenter, dedicated to Mac, who told me to zap the PRAM or something similar. But it never deterred me that software was hard to find. Or that many people actually looked down on Apple geeks. (Although I never studied a computer language, never even took a course, I still consider me to be geeks).

The computer teacher was awesome. He knew he had a big fan in me and taught me just about everything. The other teachers just were not interested! And I also taught myself by reading manuals etc. The computer teacher lent me a LOT of software which I took home and installed on my Mac.

I was hooked IMMEDIATELY and I loved Steve Job’s attitude, points of view although he could be a bit rough.

I use to be in the Writers Cafe all the time on AOL. They initially were charging by the hour! Egads, did I have some bills. That was the only group of educated people that I could fine.

There were a wide assortment of chatrooms like Submissive Men(LOL!, I was curious…) and one for fans of the Middle Ages!

My earlier experiences with computers had not been positive. I had never taken a typing class. Then they put in the Delete space and I was typing!

I am the fastest one handed typist you will ever see. And I look at the keyboard although I do really know the keys pretty well.

About 10 years ago, someone from AT&T from India worked nights for computer tech. I called one night and had deal with this cretin.

He gave me laptop a virus of some sort. All sorts of weird stuff was flying by my Internet. The next day I went to turn on my laptop and got no response. I was half devastated and could not afford another laptop.

So I have been using iPads instead which is endlessly fascinating.

AHHH, but they are not App computers. I recently bought myself a new MacBook Air M1 and I love it.

A lot of what I had learned on a Mac has been coming back to me. But it will take time. Apple Care is wonderful and I am indebted to you guys here especially that are so generous in helping out.

I could write a book but I’ll be kind not to!

I love, love, love Apple computers, iPads , iPhones, the Mac, Apple Care, the Dummy Series and especially this website of MacSparky’s and Steve’s. I listened to the very first podcast! I love Katie yet always tended to agree with David.

How amazing these people are! And I include the kind, funny, brilliant members right here.

Thanks, everybody!

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26
  1. My first Apple product (and first ever computer) was the Apple II GS. A few years later my first Mac was the IIsi to replace the GS. System 5 was on it, or maybe System 6
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27

I used a Mac for the first time when I went to Kinko’s sometime in the early 90s to do my cover letter and resume for a job I wanted, and that experience alone was enough to convince me to buy one — a Performa 200 in 1993.

That wasn’t technically a switch to Apple, though. I had used various PCs at school and at work for years before that, and I once purchased a cheap TI-99/4A to play games and learn some BASIC. But I never had a computer at home that I used as a permanent workstation until I got that Mac.

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28

Working on a job I found myself supporting some Macs in late 2001 or so. I’d been checking out Linux and when I learned the new Mac OS was Unix based that got my attention big time! I’d had enough of Windows, lol. Well the iPod was out and I knew I was getting one. I saw how well it paired with iTunes on the Macs and my employer offered interest free loans with payroll deduction for computer purchases. So I bought a used OG iPod in early 2003 and a PowerBook G4. Never looked back!! What a ride.

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29

Please expand further on your usage of:

Did you purchase the Mac Pro and send it to them or did you rent it from them? Also, what’s your use case? I’ve always wanted to use MacStadium but could never justify the need for their service.

30

I started using Macs, in 2007 with the white MacBook. Before that MacBook, I exclusively used a Dell Dimension 4550. To this day, I prefer desktops over laptops. Even now I’m on a late 2009 iMac, Some of you may have even read my “Was ready to buy an iMac until” thread.

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31

My first Mac was THE first Mac (128k in1984), which was also my first computer so I never ‘switched’ to Apple. I almost bought a Lisa in 1983 (10k), as it turns out I did buy one in 1985 (Macintosh XL) for a considerable savings! I ran Lisa OS on it for about a year before installing macOS.

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32

i shipped my MacPro to MacStadium using their colocation option.

I have had it running at home for almost 6 straight years and its resale value came down when in 2019 the new Mac Pro was announced.

As MacStadium only allows 2013 Mac Pro, iMac Pro and Mac Mini’s I decided to send it there and host it.

I have many different use cases in a different thread on this forum here

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33

Yes, I spent at least another year with it after SP2 was released. Then I worked with a 5 year old Mac with half the specs that handled large files faster than my new PC.

34

Did you not consider “downgrading” to Windows XP? Just curious…

35

I cut my teeth on an Apple ][+ – all tricked out with that card that gave you lowercase letters to go along with the uppercase ones. Messed around with basic (10 GOTO 100 …) and PEEKed and POKEd whatever I could figure out. We also got a Commodore 64 somewhere in there, with the cassette drive and later even a ginormous floppy drive. The C64 was chiefly superior for its color capabilities iirc.

The first computer that was fully mine was an Apple IIc that I used in college – it was more or less luggable, not exactly a laptop. I had the weird little monitor that you could kind of slide it under. Then I graduated to an Apple IIgs, which I still think was the apotheosis of the Apple II line. I had a mouse, but there wasn’t much use for it. I have vivid memories of doing actual research online – Gopher was revelatory, and a taste of the Web to come. I used Macs in the computer labs – including this crazy thing called Netscape Navigator, which came out just before I graduated. There wasn’t much to see on the World Wide Web (I remember some movie reviews at CERN, for some reason), but you could feel the potential.

Then came my first Mac – a PowerBook Duo (230 I think). That’s probably my all-time favorite machine, partly for sentimental reasons. It was tiny by the standards of the day. The mini-dock was a thing of practical beauty. I used it for years, in at least six states. Pretty sure I read the Starr Report on it, which took for. ever. to download. I can still see that precursor to the Dock – the Control Strip? – in all its grayscale glory at the bottom of the built-in screen.

Then came the blue and white Mac G3 – I managed to skip all the beige PC-looking Macs in that era when they were all named like unremarkable family sedans (Performa, Centris, Quadra, Cilantro … the profusion of models and features confused the heck out of me, despite reading the Mac magazines religiously). The G3 was like a grownup version of the Duo, and lasted me for years; at one point I added an Iomega Zip drive and felt so cool – and then failed to add a second internal hard drive because it turned out I had the first version of the Blue and White G3 and it could only take one drive. Pretty sure I went through OS 8 and 9 and finally several flavors of X on that beauty – maybe even 6 and 7, I forget.

In retrospect, it’s the only non-laptop Mac I ever owned, and it’s also the last computer I had that really stands out in my memory. Since then there was a white clamshell laptop, and several aluminum unibodies. They all blur together – after the G3, it was the OSes that stole the show. The hardware was just there to keep up, or maybe add an onboard CF card reader to make photography easier or whatever. They’ve all been great machines (butterfly keyboards aside), but fairly impersonal.

The one exception might be the MPB (with touchbar, but also a physical escape key) I use now – it has personality again, thanks to touchId (game-changing!), unlocking with my watch and the touchbar itself. It turns out I enjoy it. It isn’t revolutionary, but it’s interesting and fun, and one of these days I’ll put it to work on automations. I actually wish they’d keep it around (I know, I know…).

What a trip down memory lane. Thanks for starting the thread, @MitchWagner. Great topic. I’ve enjoyed reading everyone else’s journeys too.

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36

I grew up using Zenith Z-100 computers running MS-DOS and Windows version 1.0. In high school, we used PS/2 machines running OS/2. Later we had some machines running windows 3.1. My college roommate introduced me to Debian Linux. I soon found FreeBSD and used that on my laptop from then. I was hooked on the *nix way of doing things. A couple years later, I needed a more powerful *nix laptop, and my buddy offered me a white MacBook for $500 because he needed cash quickly.

I started using it because it ran mostly BSD and kept with it because I found that Macs were first-class citizens on the internet, unlike Linux and FreeBSD at the time. Since then, I have come to appreciate the Apple way of doing things. I have had a Mac ever since then.

37

I started with the HP-85 in 1980 and then moved up to the HP-200. These machines had very little in the way of commercial software. BASIC was built in and you were expected to write your own applications.

I bought a Mac in 1984 when the memory got upgraded to 512 MB and fell in love with the mouse and GUI. I was teaching at a university at the time and got education prices but it was still expensive I have been an Apple loyalist since. I loved the Steve Jobs return era in particular.

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38
  1. I read loads of magazines (MacFormat, MacUser, Macworld, etc.). I was SO frustrated with Windows with their updates interrupting at the least convenient moment, the blue screens, having to update virus protection (and others), sluggish performance, etc. It was just a horrible experience and it did not suit me. I took the plunge one day and went to PC World. I bought a lovely 12 inch PowerBook. It took me a good six months to transition my Windows muscle memory over to Mac, but I had no regrets. When the first iMac G5 came out, I put my cash down for the 20 inch version and had four great years with that in my home office. I added a fax facility whereby faxes came to me as PDF via email and then later an early ScanSnap with an Acrobat Pro licence. By 2007 I was paperless for my job, which involves a lot of paper (lawyer, sorry!). It was a revelation. It just suited me. I have tried Windows since but it still just does not fit with me. The only app I have not shaken since my Windows days is Word. Whilst I know that all is not rosy in Apple-land, not a day goes by when I do not feel at home on my Mac. I can’t transition to iOS and iPadOS. Whilst they are no where near as bad as Windows (still is, and I have tried out Windows 11), macOS is where I am most productive and comfortable for work and personal. Now I am lucky to have a M1 MacBook Air plugged into a LG 5K and they just work and I cannot see me changing for another four years (actually, 3 years because I have had it for 1 year already).
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39

When I studied product design I was surrounded by MacBooks and I fell in love with the trackpad’s precision. Gone were the days of carrying a mouse around, because the Windows laptop’s trackpads (still) are not even comparable.

Yet, a lot of Windows PCs were and are used in those fields. A lot of tools still don’t exist for the Mac. So I’ve been living a double life all along.

Working on Windows has been my “Focus” mode for 15 years. :wink:

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40

I had some secondary drives with XP IIRC. But the difference wasn’t as shocking as vs that old Mac that made me switch. The Mac was severalfold faster. We’re talking Vista, one of Microsoft’s lowest points, vs Tiger, Apple’s absolute highest point. And, well, the outlook with Windows going forward didn’t seem great to me at the time given the data in front of me.