My First Mac

Full Circle Mac Plus

Aaron Stillman - 2001.10.01

I remember the good old days. I believe the year was '91, so I would have been five years old. My dad worked at this cool place with all this cool stuff I had never seen before: fax machines, copiers, and even computers! There was a Wang (my sister has a rather sick mind, so I've heard all the jokes about this name that I need to hear) and a Mac Plus. A year later (in '92) the company moved to Vermont and had to clear out the place. My dad got to take all of the cool stuff: the fax machine, the copier, the Wang, and of course, the Mac Plus.

I used the Wang to type papers, but that Mac Plus was my hobby. I didn't play with Matchbox cars like all the other kids; I played with my Mac Plus - a lot. I would draw pictures with MacPaint for hours a day, and all of them would be complex, although I really have no drawing skill.

Well, times changed, and the Plus aged a lot. The mouse kicked the bucket, as did the 2 and K keys on the keyboard (talk about Y2K prevention!). After much coloring on it by my sister and a rather sizable scratch on the screen, the Mac Plus called it quits. A new PC rolled in, and the Plus got the boot out of the house in '97.

The PC won that battle. Sad ending for Mac-ers? You haven't let me finish yet!

The PC was a piece of crap from day one, and after just about a year, we were in the market for a new computer - amazing, considering our incredibly tight budget. Or so I thought. My parents never did buy a new one, so I took matters into my own hands. I worked up a bit of money here and there and bought myself an iMac DV in Feb. '99. About a year later, an LC 575 came in as a gift, so I was a serious Mac-head again.

But what about the Plus?

Luckily, the buyer of that Mac Plus was my neighbor, who fixed the mouse and got much of the coloring off it. When she got a PowerPC Performa, the Plus was put out of service, so when I saw her about two weeks ago, I asked about it. She just gave it back! Now it's so classic! It is the original case color and has a 20 MB serial hard drive like the 128K and 512K did. I got a whole mess of free games for it from a friend and got an AOL 2.7 disk from AOL, which will run as soon as I do that 4 MB RAM upgrade (I'm searching for the best price right now). I have a modem from the LC 575, which will get a faster modem soon.

What about the PC?

It's dead. It's in pieces on my floor right now. It will probably end up in my attic in pieces, and the monitor will go to mirror DVDs on my iMac. The PC may have won a short battle, but that Mac Plus sure kicked it's @$$ in the war! I still use it every day for the cool games I have on it, and soon for online, too.

See, I told you it wouldn't be a sad story!