That’s my question for you today – which Mac was your first, or which one caught your attention to show an interest in Apple computers? For myself, the journey started in 2008-2009. I was a PC user then in 2008, was having issues with my old modified Gateway PC, and a friend of the family gave me a graphite iMac G3 to use.
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It was a Summer 2001 600 MHz model with 512 MB RAM, 16 MB of ATI Rage 128 Ultra on a 1024 x 768 glowing CRT display, and felt.. different.
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How it all started
I had an old Gateway ATX STFMNT PERFORMANCE 1400 modified enough to run Windows Vista Ultimate. It was the first ever computer I modified and upgraded with the intention of making it a daily usable machine.
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I spray-painted it, glued a touch-screen MP3 player to it, upgraded it to 2 GB 800 MHz RDRAM, and an Nvidia GeForce 6200 256 MB to get Windows Aero working on such non old Prescott Pentium 4 computer. It was fun getting that computer to work beyond what it was originally meant to do, I just wasn’t happy with boring ol’ Windows XP and simply went with Vista.
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After doing some digging in the archives, miraculously, some desktop screenshots survived from back when this was running Vista.
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Move over Windows, it’s time for Mac to run the show
The iMac G3 first came with Mac OS 9. Wanting to upgrade it as much as possible to get it on the internet, my first ever project to tackle was to get this thing going on Mac OS X Tiger. Problem was, I had absolutely no idea what a combo drive was, or that it didn’t work with DVDs.
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I wound up wiping the drive and re-installing Mac OS 9, after unsuccessfully trying to get it going with Jaguar. Then the same person lent me an OEM Tiger install box, I bought a USB DVD drive, and it worked!
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For a while up ’til December 2009, I had this iMac G3 side by side with the modified Gateway PC, before upgrading to a cheap Power Mac G4 Sawtooth 400 MHz model. I wanted something which could properly work online at the time and was serious about switching to the Mac, so I chose the next best thing – a G4. Afterwards the iMac G3 was still usable online to check emails and do web searches up until around Late 2010. I also modified a green LED fan into it in August 2010.
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First “Daily Driver” Mac
This is the Power Mac G4 which got me hooked on Macs, the one I modified very much over the years and kept around even to this day. It was exhilarating to finally be able to run Mac OS X Leopard with some Open Firmware tricks on this 400 MHz model, in December 2009.
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Centris 650 with Radius mono TPD. I come from a traditional typographic background, and really hated the early low-res DTP output. But one day I picked up a copy of The Node (a zine published by a polyamorist commume) and an article about MacCalligraphy made me reconsider DTP potential. Started reading MacWorld, considered the SE30, eventually got the 1993 Centris new (even got the PPC card upgrade off eBay). All my Macs since then has been used/refurbs: Q840AV, Q950, Duo 2300, iBook, G3 tower and DT, G4 Quicksilvers, G5, G4 PowerBook, several MacBook Pros and an Air. Every one worked until they were dead-ended by Apple’s favorite tech: cutting off the trailing end. And most still run their old software, just are not internet capable (or worse, internet capable but unsafe).
I also have my Dad’s PPC 5400, and the new hard drive has partitions for every OS from 7.5.3 through 9. I can still open any doc in any version of every program I’ve owned. Also upgraded a G3 DT to G4 for a super-Classic machine. And on them I can re-install Quark and Adobe programs as needed without web verification or a g$%#@&n subscription.
Best was Q840AV. I may yet have it recapped (another Apple shortcoming).
I started off with the Mac Classic 2MB/40MB in 1991. My computer labs at school consisted mostly of them and some older machines, like Pluses and even various Apple IIs. My Father also had access to early Macs at university so it made sense for us to get one for home, so we could all do our assignments at home. Fast forward to today and I am still a Mac guy, typing this on an iMac 2019.