Comments on: Mac at 25: Send us insanely great stories

We're looking for reader stories and photos from the past 25 years of Apple's Macintosh as part of a package we're putting together for next week.

[harrismc]

I was working for a retail Apple dealer at the time the original Macintosh was released. I was pretty much an Apple devotee working 1/2 time as college student both selling and repairing Apple IIe and IIc machines. We received one of the first 128k Macs with a single 400k drive. You could barely boot the OS and get much of an application on a single disk. An exteral second disk drive was pretty much required. Hard disks were largely unheard of at the time a 5mb apple profile was a two thousand dollar device (for the IIe not Mac) and the SCSI based drives for a Mac were painfully expensive. Even with the limitations of the first release machines, I was enamored with the Mac. The first day we unboxed a demo unit I stayed at work till three or four in the morning messing with it. As a tech I was astounded by the signatures of the original team molded into the inside of the case and how it basically flipped apart and unfolded to open the case. I still have the original extra long torx screwdriver and case-spreader opening tool from service training. I was even able to keep the original 6 foot by 4 foot sales banner from the original release and it hung in my garage until the mid '90s when finally someone stole it. It was a good start to my IT career at a pivital time in computing history.

[Jack Gratteau]

In 1984, I was an engineering student at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. I used my Mac and it's MacPaint program to prepare my homework assignments for my Linear Algebra class. The WYSIWYG typesetting of the Mac made for text perfect presentations of the matrix equations involved. Each week, I'd turn in my assignments, but it would take an extra week before my homework was returned to me. My professor asked for the delay because he was part of the team working on the IBM PC, and they were amazed at what I was able to accomplish with my Mac.

[pavlat]

I see I'm not the only one who started with an Apple IIc. I have had no formal training, It''s been a lot of trial and error. I wouldn't buy a mac til they came out with one that would work on both the IIc and the mac (Classic ) I think. (I was like the third person in dAustin, TX to get one). I have an old turquoise Imac, If I can find it, I'll take a picture an sent it to you. I am currently using my Imac with a 17" screen. I think I bought it in 03. It is a 1 Ghz PowerPC G4, I have updated the software. I have been doing my husband's bookeeping for his dental office since way back with the IIc. I do our payroll with AAtrix and Quickbooks. I want to continue with Mac, cuz I'd sure hate to have to reenter everything onto a PC. I'm a Mac person forever!!!!!!!!!!!! Mary Pavlat

[samcn]

I am not a "power" hunger user for any high-end video stuffs. My favorite Mac is MINI all the way. I have the early G4 version, then C2D version. It's small. portable and consumes less energy. But it is also powerful enough for average user as day-to-day managing photos, music and e-mail, word processing.

I really hate to turn on my Mac Pro just for e-mail and office document - the room's light will dim for a moment when that sucker boot up..

Sam

[OJB]

I worked for an Apple dealer in New Zealand when the Mac was released. The demo models all run on 110V so we had to use a step down transformer to make them run in New Zealand (we use 220V). The only other dealer in town forgot to use his transformer and fried his Mac, so we had the only one which still worked in the area!

I used Mac Paint to draw a picture and it was so good that no one else believed I had done it. That's how far ahead the graphics on the Mac was.

And I was so inspired by the new user interface that I wrote a windowing environment for the Apple III which copied the look and feel of the Mac and Lisa (using custom character sets on the text screen to draw windows).

Ah yes. Those were the days!

[sting7k]

Is Steve wearing a suit in that picture? lol. He looks so good there.

[macwebdiva]

My first was a Centris 650 CD ROM. Which, I had no idea what use a CD would give me. I'd been using Macs since 1987 in school, but that was my first purchase. 230Mb hard drive and 4Mb RAM. The first RAM I bought for it was another 4 Mb and that was $400. With the computer and software (graphic student) I took out a loan on my car. Over $4000 total. Wow, those were the days. Then several Powerbooks, (Lombard, etc) Titanium, Aluminum and various colorful iMacs later, I now have a 24" iMac and a MacBook.

Thanks to the local Mac user group, as it totally changed my life. Made contacts with people I never would have otherwise, got jobs I never would have otherwise. I see more and more developers get one every day. I have all the old rainbow stickers still, have some of the Think Different Posters, Apple pens and cups and bags, and hats and shirts and 3 watches from eons ago.

My favorite Seybold poster was the one that was like a 50's cartoon and said, You can have my Mac when you pry it out of my cold dead hands. Love it!

I do own an iPhone and don't know what the heck I did before it. I produced a Mac lover, who is now 20 and she was just 3 when I bought my first one. Thanks goodness for the software available back then. Kid Pix was a godsend.

I've carved pumpkins in the shape of an old iMac, and will have to find those pictures.

[ppalynchuk]

I havn't had a mac that long, only at work for the last year, but I have come to love many things about it. The first and formost is when adding a new user account, OSX decides to lock all users out of all hard drives, forcing me to reinstall the operating system and then STILL locking me out of my auxiliary drives. I also love how I can stump the mac store and apple support with my problems, and how apple support doesn't call me back. I also love the fact that I feel like a little kid being guided by my grandmother when I use the mac. Sure wish i loved Vista this much. I mean its not much but at least I can change the color of stuff in Vista. And it just generally works. And programs don't crash as much. But I guess thats the price I have to pay to have a cut and paste copy function in explorer.

[PunkToad]

Don't forget the 1983 $10,000 Lisa which was really the prototype Mac XL. It was the first GUI and mouse I had ever seen and I was devastated that I couldn't afford it.

[gombach]

I first sat down in front of a computer (IBM 1130) in 1969. In 1987, shortly after moving, we went to a local Computer store to get a IIgs for the kids, as that's what their new school computer lab was using. The store was busy, and we had to queue-up to get a sales person. While waiting, I stumbled on a Mac SE and Hypercard. I played with Hypercard for about 20 minutes. I was hooked. We went home with the IIgs and Apple color printer for the kids, plus a Mac SE and Apple Laserprinter for Dad. We haven't moved since. And Apple products have been the only ones to cross our threshhold ... both incoming, and retiring ... more times and models than I want to remember ... sometimes 2 at a time.

[rbortiz]

In 1984, in Brazil, I started to work in a company that actually did a clone of Mac512, which actually was a "Mac1024" instead. They did a "reverse engineering" on the Motorola chip, sent the layout to Motorola as well. The company started producing, advertising the computers and actually sold a few when Apple came down and demanded to stop selling it. I was in charge of doing the reverse engineering on the power supply and video part of the computer. I guess the first mistake was that they copied even the case design. Then in a move trying to disguise they separeted the 9" monitor from the CPU, where it started to look more like the first Apple II PC...

[rnaoncfixd]

've been a mac user since 2003. Before then I had been a hardcore PC gamer and all I knew was the Windows 95, 2000, and XP architectures and before that, DOS. I always used to look down on Macs and Apple thinking that they were the weaker computer all around.

And then I got really heavy into graphic design and video production in college. I really tried avoiding using Macs at my school until I finally had to take editing classes. From there on out, I learned how to do everything. I became part of the top of my class. I was in the mac editing labs pretty much 24/7, not only working on stuff, but helping people out for fun because I loved working on the system.

I bought my first macbook pro to edit on and it was one of the best purchases I ever made. It had become crowded in the school where you could barely find room in any of the labs. I used to sit out in the hallway with my MB Pro, camera for a tape deck, and an external hard drive to make my own portable editing suite. It was lightning quick compared to the older mac pro's the school had. I beat my friend in a speed test of burning our demo reel DVDs. I won by an hour and a half.

While interning for other production companies, the only machines that really seemed to work when I plugged in various equipment were the Mac computers. This solidified my loyalty to the Mac platform. After college I finally got my dream 17 inch Macbook pro and haven't looked back since.

After years of working mainly on Mac computers, my brain had adapted to the OS X platform so much, that when I was forced back on to a PC at work, I had no idea where anything was anymore... it also did not help that they were using Windows Vista (which is also keeping me a loyal mac user). I was able to convince my boss to get me an iMac. It's interesting when something doesn't work on most people's PC's they come over to me almost as a joke to see if it will work on the iMac. To their surprise, it does.

My older brother retains being the PC guy of the family while I'm the Mac guy. It makes for interesting thanksgivings.

[GALLERY84]

IDK LADIES AND GENTELMAN I HAVE A MAC BOOK AIR I GOT ALL COUGHT UP IN THE HOOPLAY OF MAC ASIDE FROM THE FACT THAT ITS PAPER THING ID LIKE TO SAY THIS

1. THE OS , IS NOT NEARLY AS GOOD AND AS EASY TO USE AS WINDOWS , ESP WHEN YOU HAVE MULTIPLE CHAT WINDOWS AND WORK WINDOWS OPEN , MAC IS VERY CONFUSING
2. IT STILL CRASHS LIKE WINDOWS OS , DEF A HYPED UP FALS FACT
3.THE PRICE IS NOT EVEN CLOSE TO WORTH IT THEY GIVE YOU 0 AND CHARGE YOU DOUBLE FOR THE 1700.00 I PAID FOR MY AIR I COULD HAVE GOTTEN A TOP OF THE LINE STACKED WINDOWS LAP TOP
4. AIR IS COOL ITS THING AND LIGHT I CAN USE ONE HAND AND THAT COMES IN HANDY BUT THATS IT FOR 1700 ILL PAY A DAY WORKER TO HOLD IT FOR ME

[AppleSuxLeo]

The iPhone looks like a big , ugly slab compared to the Pre !
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2009/01/pre-deet-1234.jpg

[rid26678]

My youngest daughter is now a 25 year-old accountant in DC. I brought my first MAC home in 1986, when she was three. I knew the MAC was different from other computers, but not by how much until I walked in on the little one typing and drawing on the MAC with no instruction or introduction. I said to my wife, if three-year olds can get up and running on their own, then this is how it should be - and it was!

[AppleSuxLeo]

I remember when Jobs got applause when he announced iPhone runs OSX...and now it looks to be a foolish move since it won`t multi-task and is a resource hog. Palm`s Pre with WebOS which was designed from the ground up for a phone OS is a much better choice.
http://i.gizmodo.com/5130785/palm-os-x-is-too-fat-to-run-well-on-phones

[Mark Dubb]

I still like my Cube. It's still running my home network.

[tipoo_]

The only mac i ever owned was the best. the Bondi Blue Imac G3 (the exact model shown in the picture). good times, apart from when it blew up on me.

[The Cynton Corporation]

MAC AT 25:

I HAVE AN APPLE 11C WITH BOTH MONOCHROME AND COLOR MONITORS WITH IMAGEWRITER PRINTER COMPLETE WITH THE ORIGINAL PACKAGING. IT STILL WORKS !!

LOOKING TO PLACE IT WITH A COLLECTOR. CONTACT ME IF INTERESTED AT [e-mail].

NOW HAVE BOTH IMACS AND MACBOOKS. HAVE DUMPED ALL PC UNITS.

TONY

[DreamDoRepeat]

One of my favorite Mac memories was in the depths of apple's darkest days (1997/8-ish).....

I was at student at Northeastern University working on some horrendous Microsoft Access Database (aka, not on my MAC) in the finals-week chaos of the school's jam packed computer lab.

Computer's were crashing all around, the printers weren't working, the network was down, and the tech behind the desk was literally in tears with everyone screaming at her about the problems. She was on the phone with a more knowledgeable tech and the conversation went something like.... "No, tried that, doesn't connect, all down, safe-mode too, BIOS what?, etc, etc." Then there was a pause and she responds.... "No no all the macs are working fine, yeah the LaserWriters too."

It was that moment I knew Apple (and my Macs) would be around for a long time to come!