Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

OWC: Get the Right Memory for Your Mac Top Quality, Competitive Price, Lifetime Backed Free Expert Support + Installation Videos too! MacBook & mini 8GB, iMac 16GB, Mac Pro up to 32GB. Click here

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

My Turn

Old Macs and New Can Be Great Tools in the Creative Process

- 2007.07.30

del.icio.us Bookmark in del.icio.us

My Turn is Low End Mac's column for reader-submitted articles. It's your turn to share your thoughts on all things Mac (or iPhone, iPod, etc.) and write for the Mac web. Email your submission to Dan Knight .

My relationship with computers began in the early-to-mid 80s with my grandfather's TRS-80 and the Atari 400 at school. Computers fascinated me, but everything changed when I was shown a Mac (I think it might be a 512K or Plus) in a demo in a mall in 1986.

That was a revelation.

I was eight years old, and I found it playful and inspiring. I remember that I told the guys in the booth that one could videotape the movement of the squares and ovals and make computer animation. After half-an-hour,å my dad had to remove me from the mouse.

We ate pizza, and I only spoke about the moused wonder. I haven't stop since then.

Early in 1987, my uncle, a graphic designer, got himself a Mac Plus, and I spent a lot of time in his office and later got vacation jobs there so I could have some time to experiment with the Macs, Aldus PageMaker, KidPix, HyperCard, and, most importantly, SoundEdit. Oh yes, the games were also important: Lode Runner, Billiards (I remember it was made in Pascal), and my favourite: Social Climber. My first experiments in electronic art were made with these Macs and these apps.

I needed a computer and was 14 (with all the annoyance and noise that a teenager can make), Macs were expensive, and my mom couldn't afford one, so my first computer was a 486DX IBM clone (the term PC then applied for all PCs) with a VGA monitor and a CD-ROM that I wasn't able to configure at all in almost three years. It ran DOS 6 and Windows 3.1. I used it at holiday work. Micrografx Designer was the tool of choice - the only thing that made the IBM an acceptable environment.

Time passed, and I and the Mac family grew. My dad - an architect and industrial designer - got an LC III and used a powerful app that could run well even in an SE called DesignCAD. He still misses it and sobs in front of Rhino.

Finally, My Own Mac!

My sad and clumsy IBM clone began to look boring, and it gradually went out of favour. Eventually the Plus wasn't used anymore at the office, so I decided to borrow it and gave away the IBM clone in favour of a 9-year-old Mac.

That was the first Mac that lived with me.

In 1996, I graduated from high school, and I began my music studies the next year. Soon, there was a big surprise: My mom got me a Performa 6400 as a birthday present, my uncle owed some money to her and also gave her a PowerPC upgraded Quadra 610. That was the first Mac I owned. It made everything I wanted and had tremendous sound capabilities, and it ran SoundEdit 16, my editing tool which got me into the field of electroacoustic music. I designed my own CD covers, made numeric and graphic experiments with the golden mean, made graphic scores for improvisation, and made a CD database in AppleWorks (man, that was an office suite!).

My First PowerBook

PowerBook 100Some years later, I felt the need for mobility, and the Blueberry iMac I got later was too big to carry around (I actually did sometimes), so I got a PowerBook 100 for US$10 in eBay (the shipping to Colombia was absolutely expensive relative to the price, US$30, but still cheaper than anything else). The 12-year-old laptop ran realtime algorithmic composition software called M2, a very good MIDI sequencer called Master Tracks (which isn't too different than current MIDI sequencers), and Encore, the music notation software, along with some other apps. I impressed everyone with this old grey machine, controlling and automating the devices at the electroacoustic studio in the University. They couldn't do that much in their brand-new PC laptops. (They won in one thing: they could run Minesweeper, but I had Spectre!)

Macs came and went, some died, and some were given away, but they always were and still are important in my formative and creative processes. I'm writing this in my MacBook Pro, which I think is a superb machine with a superb OS, but I still find the first Macs more elegant and charming than OS X.

It may sound strange, but Macs are more likely to develop an emotional link with you than any other computer.

Daniel Andrés Prieto García
Departamentos de Artes y Música
Universidad de los Andes

Daniel's Blogspot

Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.

Recent My Turn articles

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.