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

Low End Mac Reader Specials

Download Typestyler, still the Ultimate Styling Tool for Internet, Print and Video Graphics. Works great in Classic with a Native OS X Version on the way. Free Tryout: www.typestyler.com

LA Computer Company: LA Computer Company: Specials on AppleCare, Apple Displays, MacBooks, iMac's, MacBook Pros, Laptop and iPod accessories and more. Apple A/C Adapters for laptops starting at $25.00 Call 1-800-941-7654 or Click Here.

OWC: Juice up your iPod w/NewerTech High Capacity Battery from $19.99 Free Installation Videos for most models. Pro Installation Service w/FedEx Shipping From $57.95 (Battery Included). - www.MacSales.com

Mac users can finally play Party Poker for Mac. Not only that, they can also learn how to play PokerStars for Mac.

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

Compare products like desktop computers, laptops, and LCD TVs side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for a new cell phone GPS products or MP3 players. The Ciao network makes searching products easy for you.

New iMac 800Mhz Memory 4GB $98, 2GB $50. Click to Maximize your Macs...

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 .

- 2007.07.30

Bookmark in del.icio.us

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

Some 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

Upgrading a Digital Audio G4 to work better in Leopard, 06.02. In its original configuration, the dual 533 MHz Power Mac G4 was slow with Mac OS X 10.5, but add the right upgrades, and it runs Leopard quite nicely.
My 4 favorite PowerBooks, 05.28. The PowerBook 150 has a big screen for a vintage PowerBook, the 165c has color, the 100 is diminutive, and Lombard has USB and a great keyboard.
Upgraded Quadra a great server for vintage Mac networking, 05.21. The compact Quadra 610 runs quietly, and with a PowerPC upgrade, it rockets past regular 68040 Macs.
More in the My Turn index.

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Mac Pro overclocking, Windependence with Darwine, Blu-ray for Macs, and more, Mac News Review, 07.04. Also more on running Leopard on non-Apple hardware, Ubuntu on a Mac mini, the first autofocus webcam with Zeiss optics for Macs, and more.
Wouldn't life be great with an iSlate?, John Hatchett, Recycled Computing, 07.04. PDAs and smartphones are too small for some tasks, full-fledged Tablet PCs are overkill, and ebook readers are too limited. Apple has the tech to own this niche.
Mac of the Day: Original iMac G3/233, Aug. 98 - The Bondi blue wonder that bounced Apple back to profitability and into the public eye.
List of the Day: Mac Pro List is for those using a Mac Pro.
July 5 in LEM history: 98: The iMac: First of a family? - iMac Perfect for schools - 00: Apple is not your friend - 01: 75 Mac Advantages - Do you trust me? - 02: The joy of X with Classic - The good, the bad, and the intrusive - 05: No Quartz Extreme for Pismo - A brief history of NeXT - 06: Education iMac - iTunes and the French interoperability law - TopXNotes - Apple's secret battery reset utility - Misleading hard drive capacity
The Macintosh Portable started a notebook revolution, Carl Nygren, Classic Macs in the Intel Age, 07.03. Before Apple introduced the Mac Portable, notebook computers were text-based and ran MS-DOS. Ever since, graphical interfaces have been the norm for laptops.
More links in our archive.

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2008 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, PowerBook, MacBook, 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.