Deutsche Version30 years of Mac
When I bought my first Mac in 2002 (an eMac with 700 MHz G4), I considered myself a late-comer to the party. Today, in most groups of Mac users, I am among the one who has been using one the longest.
Unlike the many people who are now posting about how they saw their first Mac and were instantly hooked, I sort of slid into the whole thing. The first Mac I ever saw was a PowerMac G4, still with pinstripes, owned by my father for layout work. It ran Mac OS 9, which was certainly different but didn’t seem in any way interesting. That changed considerably with the second Mac I ever saw: An iBook G3, the white edition, running OS X 10.1. It was rather slow, there was barely any software, but I really liked it. I’d like to say that this was because I saw the great vision and the things to come, but in reality, pretty graphics were probably the real factor. A big part of that were the free development tools: Project Builder and Interface Builder, these days both known as Xcode. Finally, I wanted iTunes and an iPod. Both were really, really impressive to someone who was used to the horrors of Winamp and burning CDs for portable CD players.
It’s been an odd ride since then. When I started, the transition from OS 9 to OS X was still in full swing. Then Apple switched to Intel, then iOS (or rather the iPhone OS as it was known back then) became a huge thing. Apple rumors used to be an important and often accurate source of information, but that scene has almost completely died. Perhaps because all the rumors that ran forever (Apple will switch to Intel! Apple will release a successor to the Newton! Apple is building a phone! Apple will make a mouse with a second button! Apple will make a tablet!) have ultimately proven true, but usually not in the way anyone expected.
Important for me: I learned basically everything I know about programming and software development on my various Macs. It’s still my biggest hobby, and its how I make money these days, and while I have no idea whether I’d be elsewhere without a Mac, I know that without it, it would have been a lot less fun.
Written on January 24th, 2014 at 11:36 pm
