Which Macs have I owned?

Apple IIe—I was born in 1980, the computer was introduced in 1983; I’m not sure when my parents acquired the machine, but it was basically always around in my memory. I first cut my teeth on this machine playing Zork and programming in Basic—I was also quite proud the first time I won at Strip Poker.

Macintosh SE/30—Technically the SE/30 was a family machine as well, but it was also my first introduction to a Macintosh. I started using System 6, and remember hating multitasking when it was introduced in System 7. I learned to program with Hypercard and C, dial up with 1200 baud modems, connect to BBSs and the VAX at the university using Red Ryder and later White Knight.

Macintosh Plus—This would seem out of order, but we were given a hand-me-down Macintosh Plus which I put in my room and basically still able to do many of the same tasks. 

Centris 660AV—First computer I ever purchased with my own money. It was November or December 1993. The video capabilities were amazing, and took nearly a decade to be surpassed in many ways. I played Myst and Bungie’s Marathon on this machine.

Beige G3—Bought this before heading off to college in 1998. Man was it a PITA to get Mac OS X running on it, but hey, I did it. And we ran watrailblazers.org on it out of the basement I was living in 2001-2002.

PowerBook G3 (Pismo)—best laptop ever, purchased in 2000 before living in Germany for a year. Went up in flames on Christmas day 2005. Yes, it literally started smoking and then died. This was the first time I started programming with Carbon APIs on the classic Mac. I also ran some linux distro while I was working in a biophysics lab in 2000 so I could use AFNI for MRI scans.

PowerMac G5—purchased in 2003 while in graduate school, it died in 2009 when it started frying sticks of RAM one-by-one. More importantly, this is the machine that I logged 30 hours on the phone with Apple Support shortly after I got it due to a video issue. They replaced parts one by one (literally had a guy drive to my house to do this) but they eventually gave up and replaced the whole machine.

MacPro (Early 2009)—purchased in 2009 after my G5 went under. This computer actually stayed functioning until I moved on…

iMac 27” Retina—purchased in 2015 after I reorganized my storage situation (moving all my hard drives to a NAS).

So, if you don’t count the laptop in there, my time with each machine is 5-6 years. The computer I get in 2020 is going to be awesome.