In the beginning. . .

You're reading a pro-Macintosh computer blog. I thought I'd clear that up right off the bat so you wouldn't be confused as we proceed. While we might make the occasional foray off into the Apple II realm and even less occasionally visit the macabre days of the Apple ///, this is a Mac blog. We're not going to discuss iphones or ipods or itunes, unless their connectivity to a Mac is involved.

The Mac I'm using to type this article in is my 54th personal Macintosh, so this isn't my first rodeo. I do have just a tad of experience with owning, using, repairing and upgrading Mac computers. But we're not going to begin this journey at the end. We're going to begin at the beginning.

In the beginning, I wanted a computer. This was in the dark ages, around 1981 or so. I would visit the local Radio Shack and drool over their offerings. But I had no justification for purchasing one. Finally, in 1984, I found a justification I could live with. . . I needed to handle a large mailing list for a business venture I had begun. By this time, computer stores were cropping up on every street corner. I visited them all. Several times. Amazingly, no matter which store I went in, they had exactly what I needed. And could give me a list of reasons why only their product would work for my particular need. I looked at the Radio Shack offerings, some Kaypro CP/M machines, an IBM PC, a TI 99/4a, a Commodore 64, an Apple IIe, an Apple /// and a LISA. The LISA had an incredible amount of RAM and storage space. While everything else out there had 64k to 128k of RAM (except the Apple /// which had a whopping 256k), the LISA had a meg. That's up to 16 times more than everything else I saw. Not only that, it came with great software and had a graphical user interface. Nothing else had that. On the downside, the LISA cost 4 times more than I was going to spend, which made it completely out of the question.

I had just about made up my mind to buy the Apple /// because of a particular piece of software that ran on it (/// Easy Pieces, the predecessor to Appleworks for the Apple II series), when that dealer received his first order of Macintoshes. Smaller, not nearly as powerful, but sporting the graphical interface, it was just tempting. Unfortunately, MacPaint and MacWrite, being the only software titles available, just wouldn't do the job for me, so I bought the Apple ///. Two years later (I'll tell my /// story later) I decided to upgrade, and this time, when I looked around, nothing was as powerful or as slick as the current Mac model, the Mac Plus. And that's what I bought.

This time, I had some money to spend so I bought the best Mac system I could afford. I bought the Mac Plus for $2200, a Laserwriter Plus printer for $4400, a whopping 80 meg external Jasmine brand hard drive for $1410 (delivered), and a MacScan sheetfeed black and white scanner for an additional $1800. I already owned a 1200 baud modem (about 70% of the online community of that day were still using 300 baud modems), so I had a hot Mac system. I joined the local Mac user group and was immediately treated like royalty, being the proud owner of such a powerful system.

(Note: check out our featured item for sale. That system is virtually identical to my first Mac, with the exception of this one not having a scanner and my original system not having the System Saver.)

Eight days later, the Mac SE and Laserwriter II were introduced. I now owned a dinosaur.

Actually, two. I hadn't sold my Apple /// yet.

After the shock wore off, and having a previous experience similar when the /// was discontinued, I began to just learn the Mac way of doing things. While those new Mac SE computers had internal hard drives, they were only 20 meggers. I still had 4 times that much in my 80 meg drive. The SE ran at basically the same clock speed my Plus did, so there wasn't a noticeable performance difference. And most importantly, my Plus ran the same software the SE could. Nothing else mattered.

I owned that Mac Plus for a couple years. It got me started in a desktop publishing/typesetting/graphic arts business. After a few months into that business, I bought a Mac II with a 19" grayscale monitor. I haven't used a monitor smaller than 19" since 1988. As the years passed, I owned another Plus, an SE, the Mac II, a IIx, a couple Centrises, several Quadras, several PowerMacs, a Starmax, a Mac Portable, several Powerbooks, an iMac, a couple G3's, a couple G4's and the G4 I'm using right now. We do have an Intel Mac Mini here, but i let my wife use it because of space constraints on her desktop. On my desk right now, I have a G3 and the G4, one running OS9, one running Tiger, respectively.

I worked myself out of the desktop publishing business as most of my customers were print shops who started buying their own systems. I decided that I'd sell them the systems and provide training and support. As they became more proficient with their systems, they needed me less and less, so I began to buy and sell Macs online. Between aol, usenet newsgroups and ebay, I became a player in the used Mac game. I'm sure I've owned at least a thousand Macs over the years. Throw in a few hundred Apple II's for good measure and you get the idea that I might be a bit partial to Apple products. You would be correct.

And now, here I am 21 years after buying my first Mac, hoping you enjoy the site I'm building. This initial article is dry, and fairly lifeless. I assure you, it will get better. But you need to know a little about me for credibility's sake. So now you know the basic story. In the next few days, I'm going to be adding Mac stories of my own and of other folks. I'm going to tell you about my conversation with a PC consultant letting him explain to me why I should not buy a Mac. I'm going to tell you about the 64 button mouse you could once get for a PC. I'm going to tell you the #1 reason to give to justify you buying a Mac and not buying a PC. A reason they don't have an answer for, I don't care how well versed they are.

Yeah, occasionally, I'm going to mention a Mac system I have for sale. Or some Mac peripheral. And yes, I hope you buy it. But I promise I won't call your mother and tell if you don't.

In the meantime, run a virus check on your Mac. And check for missing dll files. If you find a virus, let me know. I haven't seen one on a Mac since I found one back in '95. If you find a dll file, tell all your PC friends it is theirs and you're holding it for ransom.

More later.

Rod