With recent blog posts on people’s early experience with the early Macintosh, I thought I would add my story as well. When the Mac was rolled out in 1984, I was still in college. I did not have the money to buy one even at student discounts, but several people in my dorm did, and I was JEALOUS! I first used a Mac in 1985 to type the one typed paper I ever typed in college (I always used a typing service or hand-printed papers). It was in a grad student’s office, and my brother and I stayed up all night typing and editing the paper using MacWrite (a final report on a research project), then took it to Kinko’s in the morning to make bound copies and turned it in at noon – whew! I was able to get a Mac for business use (mostly using it for word processing and logging into mainframes), and finally got my own personal Mac in the early 90’s (a Performa, I think).

I used to get into discussions/arguments with my dad about Macs, he was a PC guy. He would point to the expense, and I would point out that Porsches were expensive, but nothing was stopping people from buying one. Eventually, I converted to PCs/Windows laptops at home (funny how lack of funds due to raising children brings clarity to life…), but I enjoyed Macs while I had them.