My First Mac

Nine Years on Macs

Michael Taylor

I started on an SE with a Dove 68020 accelerator in 1990, running Freehand 3.0 and PageMaker 4. My friend Aubrey taught me graphic design, and he used the SE in his business. Aubrey splashed out on a IIcx with a (at the time) massive apple 14" colour monitor that lasted 9 years!

The business, Artcell Graphics, grew and grew, and we invested vast amounts of money in many, many Macs. In 1994 I got an LC II for home and used a Quadra 700 with 20 megs of RAM and two monitors at work. I used Freehand 3.11 most of the time, and grew to love that programme as it was so fast (for the time) and easy to use. Freehand remains my favourite programme of all time.

The Power Mac came along, and our office (10 staff now) got batches of 7100/80s and 8100 machines. We had acres of 21" monitors to connect them up to, so for little of Christchurch, New Zealand, we were a very well equipped agency. At home, I struggled on with a faithful LC 475, which I used to write a book on.

We got more toys for work, including ISDN lines, but things started going downhill. Aubrey started The Graphiteers, a digital colour printing business that never really took off. The Power Macs were brilliant, the Fuji-Xerox equipment we had was not. Xerox provided terrible service, and by 1998 both businesses had closed. By that time I had a Power Mac 7220/200 at home (still have), and so I started my own business. I bought some equipment from the old business and started afresh, very successfully. I have a 7220/200 and 7100/80 for the business, 20,000 or so SCSI devices, a PowerBook 5300, and a strawberry iMac for my wife. We have a 10Base-T network at home, and 2 colour laser printers. I am now selling my business, so the PowerBook and 1 Mac will stay.

What can I say? I have used every type of Mac, and as systems manager of these companies I looked after them all, not that they needed much looking after. Steve Jobs is a genius. I salute him.

Michael Taylor
New Zealand