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Mac360 Poll: How Long Have You Been A Mac User?

By Bambi Brannan - Thursday, May 1, 2008

Mac An Encore Poll: It’s hard for some of us to think about it. Macs have been around for over 20 years. When did you get your first Mac? 1984? 1994? 2004?

Was it a Performa, an iMac, a PowerBook (early 90s), or a PowerMac? Or a Mac before there was power?

That original Macintosh was something else. I saw a Lisa in 1983 but thought $10,000 was a steep price to pay for a computer of any kind, let alone one with an apple icon embedded in the body.

The next year, Apple launched the original Mac. It’s been history ever since. I had an original Mac SE, a few Mac IIs, a couple of Performas (575), a handful of early PowerMacs with the first PPC chips, more iMacs than I can remember, eMacs, a few iBooks, a PowerBook, and an office of PowerMacs—including a few G5s. Even a sunflower iMac (which continues life though doesn’t do much).

When did you get your first Mac? Take our reader poll and share a little of your history with other Mac readers.

It’s probably a good thing that we can’t (and don’t—it’s our choice) keep more information from our reader polls. Each year Apple sells between three and four million Macs and it’s been about that number for each of the past 10 years or so.

Surprisingly, many older Macs (even those running Mac OS 9, Mac OS 8 etc.) are still running. Even early iMacs will run Mac OS X provided there’s enough RAM.

So, let’s take this reader poll in two steps.

Step One will be simple. Click on the “Click Here” below to take the Mac360 reader poll. There’s a list of years from 2005 back to the Mac’s launch in 1984. Over 21 years. Included in most years are a couple of “hints” to jog your memory.

Step Two will be Comments. Don’t hesitate to click Comments below and share your first Mac experience with other readers.

Tera’s was an original 128k RAM Mac. I also forked over nearly half as much money as that for an original iMac—128 megs of RAM. It was a screamer at 233 mhz.

When did you get your first Mac? Take the poll. Alll you have to do is Click Here>.

To see the results on when other readers got their first Macs, just Click Here.

Jack D. Miller
My first Mac was recent; a PowerMac G5, dual CPU at 2ghz. I still have it and it runs great. Just add more RAM and as big a hard drive as you can afford.

Carol Mary Miller
I’ve been a Mac user longer than Jack; dating back about 10 years and early PowerBook days. I have an aluminum PowerBook now. The machine never gets turned off.

Alexis Kayhill
I have a PowerBook and plan to get a new iMac with 20-inch screen. After Macworld in January. There might be ‘one more thing’ to spend money on.

Tera Patricks
Bambi, what’s the deal about telling everyone my first Mac was a 128k. I feel old enough already. Regardless, what an underpowered toy that first Mac was; especially compared to Macs today, and what they may be in just a few years.

Better yet is the advancement in operating systems. That first System 1.0 crashed all the time. OS X, the latest version, hasn’t crashed yet.

Off Topic Note: I’ve updated the Mac360 Store with over 100 new categories—More Macs, more iPods, more Mac books, more software. Click Here and select any category for more detail, or use the handy search function. Whenever you buy from Amazon through the Mac360 Store you help support Mac360. Finally, here’s a few questions for Mac users: (1) What’s the world’s fastest browser? (2) What’s the best notebook for Mac users? (3) What’s a good back up strategy for your Mac?

• Article by Bambi Brannan • Published on Thursday, May 1, 2008
• Category: Polls • 96 Reader comment(s) • Email This • Digg This • Shop Now

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Readers Talk Back:

Michael Tomlin says:

My first Mac was a Mac SE which I’ve had for 20 years now. And, believe it or not, it still runs!

Since then, I’ve owned,

LC!!!
iMac (original)
iBook (white)
Cube
iMac G4
iMac Intel Core Duo

I’ve sold all of them except my current system (iMac, Intel Core Duo) and I can’t bring myself to part with the Mac SE.

— Posted on Tue May 06 at 3:19 pm by Michael Tomlin

Wahiawa786 says:

Y2K: Saw a classic Mac for sale at a hospital thrift shop for $40. I looked at it, but thought the price was high. After a week, the price dropped to $25, and a Mac SE 4/40 joined a previously IBM/Wintel-only home. I contacted a college friend who’d been using Macs since the IIe days and he walked me through the basics. Bit by bit, the unit was upgraded from Mac OS 6.x to 7.5.3, along with a 32MB motherboard and 540MB HDD. It left for someone afflicted with a Packard Bell computer. 2001: Bought a PowerBook 1400 from eBay and considered a Kanga to surf the Internet. Late 2001: Bought a Rev. 2 Wallstreet (266) from a Canadian eBay seller. Software and hardware arrived from time to time, from FileMaker Pro 3.x and OS 8.1-9.x. The PB 1400 left for a computerless family then next year, along with a Canon inkjet printer. A Sonnet G3 500MHz upgrade for the Wallstreet was added to use a 16X CD burner. The Wallstreet went to a across-the-street neighbor a couple of years later. A “400MHz Pismo” turned out to be a Lombard, but it was OK, nevertheless. HDD and RAM upgrades from 40-60GB and 512MB made the units OSX 10.2 capable. A 500MHz Pismo joined the Lombard, as DVD burning dropped into the sorta-afforadable range. The Lombard left for a computerless former co-worker. A 667MHz TiBook didn’t quiet make the cut for DVD burning, but was interesting. In late 2003, a 1.25GHz G4 AlBook arrived which could “do DVDs.“ The TiBook left for the Lombard owner, and the “PowerPC vs. Intel” question popped up. Ye Olde Pismo continues with OSX 10.4.11, along with a 1.5GHz G4 unit that “doesn’t do DVD+R DLs or home made DVDs.“ The 3GHz P4 tower (Windows XP and Nero) has been fitted with TWO DVD+R DL-capable burners and burns DVDs, unlike the AlBook under Toast 8!

— Posted on Mon May 05 at 3:07 am by Wahiawa786

Grumpy says:

I got my first Mac, a Mac II, in 1986. Since then, Powerbook 140, Power Mac 9500 (horrible case design), Powerbook 2400, Dual USB iBook, Mac Mini (early G4), and a Mac Pro (early 2008).

— Posted on Sun May 04 at 6:33 pm by Grumpy

Karl Cook says:

The first Mac I bought was a Classic II 4/80- that’s 4 megs of RAM and an 80 megabyte HD. My how times have changed! I replaced that with a IIvx bought at auction that was upgraded with a 68040/30MHz card and 16MB of RAM. That one later got donated to a good friend going off to university and was replaced with a Mac clone- a PowerComputing PowerCenter 150 Desktop model running a PPC604. That one was replaced by another PPC 150 Tower that’s been upgraded with a G3/275 card and a USB Card- I still use that one for old games under OS 9. The machines I work on now are a MacBook Pro Core Duo 1.83 and a Mac Pro 2.8GHz Dual Core Xeon. There’s also an Onyx TiBook/550 and an AlBook/1.6 for streaming music and internet radio. I’ve worked in IT departments for the last 12 years and picked up a fair amount of “retired” Macs as well- a Duo 280 with dock, PB5300, PB1400, Quadra 6100, all now unsued or unusable.

— Posted on Sun May 04 at 12:35 am by Karl Cook

C.Simmons says:

1. PowerMac 6100
2. PowerMac 7600
3. PowerMac G4 400
4. PowerBook G4 Titanium
5. PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0
6. MacBook Dual 2.0 (black)

— Posted on Sat May 03 at 7:33 am by C.Simmons

jobaron says:

After a number of deaths in my immediate family, I found myself on the verge of severe depression. A friend suggested that I get a computer, as a means of taking my mind off the tragedies. I bought a used Fat Mac, together with an ImageWriter printer. All worked beautifully, as well as doing the trick of saving me from depression!

This was back in 1986 and I’ve been a Mac user (addict?) all these years. Macs are not just computers, they are therapeutic as well…

— Posted on Sat May 03 at 2:09 am by jobaron

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