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What was your first Mac?

Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook with a terrible TN LCD and no keyboard backlight. The battery door was clever. I quickly upgraded to the much better 13-inch MacBook Pro that replaced this short-lived Aluminum MacBook.
 
A 2004 14" iBook G4 that I bought on eBay in the spring of 2007. I had started using cheese grater Mac Pros in grad school in the fall of 2006 and wanted a portable Mac.
 
I’m feeling old now… Intel and M series as your first Macs? Mine was a 16mhz 030 Classic II 4/40, then a IIci, PowerBook 100, Performa 5200, MacBook (white plastic), MacBook (unibody 13”) then MacBook (17”).

At work Centris 650, black Performa 5800(?), iMac G4 anglepoise, G5 tower (single then a quad processor I think), a few Intel 27” iMacs, Mac Studio M1 and current Mac Mini M4

I’ll always remember my Classic II fondly, purchased a beat up Mac SE for nostalgia but couldn’t get it working, think the RAM’s knackered.

Best Mac ever? G4 iMac was a lovely design, G5 was a beast, but silly big! Love a nice warm MacBook on my lap, especially in winter…
 
Performer 5200 (8MB RAM, 800MB Hard Drive and 75 MHz CPU). Was on MacOS 7.5.1 (NOT 10(X).7...) With 4x CD-ROM and 1.44 MB Floppy Drive. Looked like an iMac. Just in grey. (Switched over from Windows 3.11….
 
I was using a Macintosh SE, but that was more of a dabbling. My first real mac was a Bondie Blue iMac.
 
Apple IIE , it had 64kb of memory and twin 5.25" floppy drives. Green screen monitor and dot matrix printer
 
My Dad brought home the original Macintosh (128K) in 1984, but the first one that was 'mine' was a IIcx that was handed down to me in Jr. High. I had that until I got a 7500 for college.

Let me tell you - going from a 16MHz '030 to a 100MHz 601 was huuuuuuuuuge! :)
 
Mine was a 2011 aluminium MacBook Pro with disk drive (crikey). I upgraded the processor to the quad core and remember it being pretty powerful. Although I was at uni so wasn’t doing anything that would actually tax it.

Before that I wasn’t really interested in computers (Windows computer running visa - you can tell) but my best mate in uni was obsessed and indoctrinated me to Mac (still thank him to this day!).

my next was a 2013 retina base model. I still have it and it still runs! Which was the only Mac I had until the 2021 M1 Pro. Safe to say that was quite the upgrade!
 
I remember it well. Standing at the side of the store, waiting for my order, I watched this teenager tumble the potatoes to remove the skin, then cut and wash them, and always smelled the aroma of my Mac being prepared.

And then....it was ready. Nirvana.
 

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My first Mac was the M1 MacBook Air, and it served me perfectly for over 3 years without a single complaint.
 
eyoungren said:
I have a work-issued 2023 M2 that I sure would like to see 'actually perform as expected'. It tends to have a mind of its own.
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Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, but every bet it’s still better than my Intel Mac was. It still has network issue to this day that nobody could ever explain. It once slowly locked up, like less and less things worked until eventually I couldn’t even log in and only the 50 pixels in the middle of the TB displayed anything. In total that thing was a **** show but yeah, even Apple Silicon Macs will have problems. Just less, I guess?
 
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In the autumn of 2005, my very first Mac: the G5 rev B iMac, which I bought at a reduced price when Apple released the rev C version with the newly built-in onboard iSight camera. I had been toying with the idea of buying a Mac for a while and was disgusted with Windows and more than ready to try something new and different. Fell in love immediately with that G5 iMac and the ease of setting up and using it. Didn't take long until I was hooked on Apple products, especially Macs.... and still am, 20 years later!
 
512k "Fat Mac" which I ordered through the university purchase program when I was on the faculty at SUNY Oswego in 1985. Also ordered the hard disk 20, which wasn't shipping yet but needed to be ordered together for the discount. I had to send the Mac back in for an upgrade for a 512Ke (e = enhanced) before I could use it with the disk however.

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Hard to believe, but these prices were a big discount. Most people just thought I was crazy to spend this much on a computer! 🤣

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No stranger to Apple products however, got an 16mb Apple ][ in 1978 and also had an Apple //e and even an Apple /// at work!

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It amazes me how cheap, in relative terms, tech has become compared to 40 years ago, when I had just started playing with computers.

Later in life, when bought my first PPC Mac desktop system, it was a choice between that or a second-hand car. I bought the Mac (but I also took out a small business loan to finance it).

Now you could have enough money to buy a modest Apple setup by skipping eating out / having nights out for a short number of months. A car? Forget it.
 
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Parowdy said:
Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, but every bet it’s still better than my Intel Mac was. It still has network issue to this day that nobody could ever explain. It once slowly locked up, like less and less things worked until eventually I couldn’t even log in and only the 50 pixels in the middle of the TB displayed anything. In total that thing was a **** show but yeah, even Apple Silicon Macs will have problems. Just less, I guess?
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LOL! Network issues are one of the problems. If I'm real, then the blame lies on the VPN I use to connect to the NAS at work, but the IT people that my company uses either refuse to look into it or don't know.

Once I am on the VPN, if I connect via SMB I can copy and move files to and from the work Mac and the NAS. But. Periodically, the entire thing will stall. Most of the time the copy or move won't even start. Then the connection drops and the operation fails.

I have to disconnect from the VPN, reconnect and then try again. On particularly bad days this can happen 3 or 4 times in a row. Once I can get it to work the first time, I'm more or less good for the day. But basically, the Mac has a snit about copying/moving files before it will start actually doing what I'm telling it to do.

So what about connecting via AFP? Well, one that's deprecated now. But hey it works and is highly stable, except for one thing. When connected via AFP, I can only copy or move ONE file at a time. If I try to do more that one at a time it will copy/move the first file, then fail on every additional file. Since AFP is deprecated, I've not had a lot of motivation to figure this one out when I can fight with the Mac to get SMB connections to work.

And this is all after I have done things I've found online to improve the situation. It was much worse before. But it is a problem if you have graphic design files (QuarkXPress, InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator) open and the connection drops when you're saving a file!

That's my big issue. The other issues are apps (including Finder) ignoring keyboard commands. Particularly prevalent in the morning. It's almost like this Mac just doesn't want to work. But I have to work, so the Mac should be working too.
 
Glacier1 said:
Black MacBook, ran Tiger. It was great.
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I remember speaking to a member of staff in the Regent’s Street Apple Store, and he told me that the black unibody was the highest specced one.

We laughed about how we loathed when people put fingerprints on your screen 😀.

That’s what I love about Apple Stores: You can literally just pop in there, play around with the products, and have an intriguing conversation with the staff.
 
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