In 1978 I had a choice between getting an Exidy Sorcerer or an Apple II. I got the Apple. In 1983 (yes, three) I was doing WYSIWYG GUI development on Lisa. I had the first Mac in my city. Today I’m typing this on a 17″ C2D MBP, and trying to figure out the best place to be on the morning of the 29th.

Been a long ride, and it’s not over yet.

hmmm, i just got hold of a macbook. I was so excited before i got it, but now, no so much.

maybe it’s because I’m so used to my pc….

At one point, just about everyone I knew was getting an iPod. Now, those same people and more are all getting MacBooks. Apple has clearly captivated people the world over with its products and for that I applaud them!

My first experience with a Mac and it crashed, no joke! It really did!

Then again so did the PC, so maybe it’s just me.

I used my first Mac at school when I was about 14, an 630 in the design department. It was awful, but still better than the crummy RM Nimbus machines in the computing department or the BBC Micros I’d used until then typing away in Basic.

At 19 I got my first Mac - a 5200. It too was fairly awful but it was mine and I loved it. A year later I spent about £4000 on an 8500 AV with Applevision 17″ AV monitor. That thing could power NASA. I’ve been hooked since. Since then I’ve had a Classic, Wall Street Powerbook, tray loading blueberry iMac, blueberry iBook, slot loading blueberry iMac, and an eMac. I currently have a G4 12″ Powerbook and an Intel Core Solo Mac mini. At work I use a quicksilver G4 PowerMac. I also have an iSight, 1 gen 3 iPod, 1 gen 5 iPod, 1 gen 1 id shuffle, every book on Apple, Steve Jobs, Gil Amelio, John Sculley and Steve Wozniak including the ultra rare Apple Design book.

Here’s to another 30 years of leading the computer industry and whatever other markets Apple decides to conquer.

My first exposure to a computer was an Apple IIe in 1983 (ish). From there it was a Mac in 1988, then nothing until the iPod revolution.

In 2004 I was reminded what ‘form over function’ was all about with my first iPod. This thing actually worked and was easy to use. I handed it to a friend’s 10 year old and he figured it all out in about 2 minutes!

Next was a MacBook pro and I don’t hate using a computer any more.

All credit to a company prepared to take a risk and innovate, rather than focus on driving up revenue.

I Apple is the bridge between web2.0 and the world of digital media, and now the iphone will change everything as the first multi devices bringing togather Ipod, Phone, GPS, Internet, WiFi, Video Cam, in the palm of your hand. The iPhone is set to change the world.

I can remember playing “EZ Logo” on the Apple II E in the 2nd grade. I thought drawing a house or a triangle were the coolest thigns ever.

For me, almost all computers/OS are equivalent. Apple is as innovative as its competitor, not more, not less.

I’ve never actually owned a Mac, or even used them beyond playing Oregon Trail in elementary school. The missus has one, that I’ve played with a bit, and I’m not actually crazy about OS X, but there’s a lifetime of Windows use playing into my bias.

I kind of want a MacBook (I’m willing to pay the “black tax”) or MacBook Pro, though, even though I’d be dual-booting it and probably using Windows most of the time. I just absolutely adore Apple’s industrial design. The case isn’t covered in OEM logo stickers, there’s just the Apple logo on top, and smooth roundness all around. Really slick, beautiful products.

I bought a apple IIe at a garage sale; for $!5 .. in probably 94 …

- Took it home / popped in the 5.25” inch floppy and played the 3 games till my heart content;

- games included oregon trail / and other “educational” titles

- RB

I’m in my 30’s and I’ve only owned Macs in my lifetime. I used PC’s in my college computer labs for awhile when forced to. I’ve watched my friends and family struggle with their PC’s and not really like using them, but simply tolerate them. I’ve always loved my Macs, and they just keep getting better. Almost every day I discover some new, cool way to use it. Can’t wait to see what the future holds.

College, 1987. A friend had the nice white box, worked with a floppy and would say “Hello” everytime.

Stuck with Macs through the hard times, even luckily bought and held stock.

@2 - wait until you continue to use your macbook, especially Apple software, and combine it with other Apple products.

I remember in both elementary and middle school using the new macs. Ah, the good old days of OS 6 & 7. I’ve reluctantly used a PC as my main compy ever since.

We had LC IIs at school for years, and then we got IMacs in middle school.
bubble trouble. man that was a great game.

My first exposure to a “pc” was the Apple ][+ playing a game like lode runner where you dig holes and trap apples

Shortly thereafter my grandparents got me an apple ][e and the rest was history. I loved that computer and in fact still have it. It won't boot up, I think the power supply is long dead.

Even though I am an avid PC fan.

My first computer I used was a Macintosh. Playing those simplistic games. Actually every computer in the school used by students was a Macintosh in those days.

Great work Mac, hang in there.

I got my first Mac at work in 1988. I’d been around computers (mainframes) since 1969, but this was an entirely different experience. I set it up, networked it, and connected it to the printer in about 15 minutes or so (with no prior experience).

The company I was working for at the time had just gotten a big project for IBM. We did it on the Mac, using several fonts (in different sizes), and creating graphics. At the time, font choices on IBM/DOS were extremely limited; graphics were practically non-existent. When the project was delivered, the IBMers gasped, and said to my boss, “Wow! How did you do this?!?!?”

I’ve been a Mac user ever since, and am now typing this on a 20″ Intel Core Duo Imac.

I switched to a Mac 4 months ago and I am feeling lucky. I see more and more switchers around and an Apple Store opened in my little hometown - thats a sign! Working with a Mac is more relaxing - don’t know why - but it definitly is. Even coding on a Mac is more fun. Perhaps I made bad exp. with my PC but all I can say about the Mac - It simply works. Looking forward too the iPhone - I am sure this thingy will be a burner!

I am fascinated by the ‘mac haters’ out there in the world. The angst of letting a lot of people thoroughly enjoy their purchase confounds me. The position that Apple fans are zombie like cult followers… being led around by an apple on a string seems to be the only defense. Sure, they appreciate cool - but it is also about convenience, efficiency and elegance.

I have always thought that if you don’t appreciate the added value that a 911 brings over a 350ZX, then save some money, purchase the Nissan and move on.

Innovation has been the key to Apple’s success.

Apple will have a bright future if they keep on
innovating . Competitive advantage dictates that to
stay ahead you have to keep on inventing.

I remember playing Lode Runner for hours on end at my friend’s house who had an Apple. Simply a green screen monitor, but we loved that game…

In the early 1980’s my dad bought an Apple all in one. I can’t remember what the model was called, but the computer and screen were all one unit. You could doodle and write on it.

I bought an Apple IIc in 1984 when I entered law school. I’ve always liked Apple products. I just wish I could justify Macs at my company today, but we wouldn’t get too far with our Fortune 100 customers if we did that.

The problem I see with the iPhone is that the hype is reaching unsustainable levels. The iPod was a surprise smash it. The iPhone cannot possibly live up the hype. Road warriors will quickly tire of the lack of a keyboard and terrible battery life. Most of the trendy types (college students) who made the iPod a smash will simply not be able to afford an iPhone.

I think the iPhone is headed for Newton territory (another Apple product which was excessively hyped). Other vendors (such as Samsung) will incorporate some of the iPhone features in a device that is actually useful.

My first days in college were in 1982 where we had Apple II’s, I spent the entire year in the computer lab, ended up repeating my first year and have remained fixed in the tech world ever since.

Happy Birthday to the Apple world.

Sadly, I am older than Apple Though, I’m a kid at heart

Only Apple ever used was a IIe

Love Hypercard always will. Thank you Apple.

“amongst the influencers of Web 2.0 there is no other choice” I think that’s over-stating it just a bit. Not to be a jackass about it, but unless you’ve surveyed the entire web 2.0 community, that’s a hard statement to back.
That said, an Apple II was my first machine as well and I will always remember the thrill I got everytime I booted it up and heard the crunch of the disk drive initializing

I collect old (’vintage’) computers….The jewel of my collection is an Apple Lisa-1. I kept it in my office for many years and used to give demos to the new software engineers - they were amazed at a machine from 1982 had features we take for granted to day: 32-bit processor, virtual memory, screen savers, multi-tasking, GUI, mouse, network…fewer realize the impact of this machine: The cut-and-paste we do on this machine appeared on the Lisa OS as a method of cutting between the 7 integrated applications. Thank you Apple!

The first time I’ve “used” an apple computer, I was about 2 years old, in 1983. I can’t remember this first experience
My father still use Apple computer, but i’m now on a PC (Please, God, save me, lol) for school reasons. It’s almost over now, and I’m really thinking of buying a iMac.

I’m reaching the end of my computer science study, thanks to Apple, which give me the willing of being a computer scientist.

Apple still make me dream, thanks for that.

—

La première fois que j’ai utilisé un ordinateur de chez Apple, je devais avoir à peut près 2 ans, en 1983. Je ne peux malheureusement pas me rappeler de cette expérience.
Mon père est toujours client de la firme à la pomme, mais j’ai pour ma part du me résoudre à utiliser un PC pour des raisons purement scolaire. Mes études touchant très prochainement à leur fin, j’envisage grandement de revenir chez Apple. Pourquoi pas un petit iMac ?

Si j’ai fait des études d’informatique, c’est principalement grâce à Apple et à ses ordinateurs qui m’ont donnés une véritable envie de créer des applications, et de devenir développeur.

Merci Apple de toujours me faire rêver.

I’m not as wayback as many of you, but the first mac I owned was a Centris 650 in 1993. 25 MHz, upgraded to 24 megs RAM. $3,300 bucks. Ahhh, dreams of scuzzy cables and beige putty goodness.

I preferred macs during the awkward times, so it’s easy to just straight up love them now. “fanboy?” guess so, whatever that means.

In 1979, I was a senior in high school and the science teacher received a grant for Apple II computers. They were a lot of fun to program. It was always fun trying to fit as much as possible under the memory (64KB at that time). When I went off to college, I graduated to a mainframe for programming. Didn’t realize how many steps that I had taken backwards at the time.

I used to play Oregon Trail on the Mac IIe and for that I thank you Steve.

Oregon Trail is what used to get me to wake up for school in the morning ;).

I’m not as wayback as many of you, but the first mac I owned was a Centris 650 in 1993. 25 MHz, upgraded to 24 megs RAM. $3,300 bucks. Ahhh, dreams of scuzzy cables and beige putty goodness.

I preferred macs during the awkward times, so it’s easy to just straight up love them now. “fanboy?” guess so, whatever that means.

My first introduction to computers was Mac in 1996 where i started my Multimedia course.

In 2003 I got my first iPod and in 2005 my MacMini and in 2006 my 13″ MacBook. No going back to PC after the launch of Parellels and BootCamp. Mac is a pleasure to work with and its an experience never to miss out.

I had the fortune of meeting Woz (Steve Wozniak) at the 30th anniversary of the Homebrew Computer Club a few years back at the museum in Mountain View. Someone brought over an old floppy drive controller for him to autograph (it was a computer nerd event, what can you say), and Woz recalled how he had found a way to get more done with less chips on this particular layout. It was totally clear this was a guy who loved his job and was still passionate about it, years later. He also showed a great sense of humour.

I highly recommend the book “Revolution in the valley” (the insanely great story of how the mac was made). Lots of the stories are on the site http://folklore.org/ , but the book has lots of neat photos, notes and technical diagrams from the time showing some of the incredible accomplishes and sacrifices made by the team.

Most interestingly, some of stories from then (1984) seem really relevant to the whole web 2.0 thing these days - “rounded rects”, doing UI design, making interaction decisions and so on; it just happens to be on the web this time around. Definitely worth checking out.

Bought a Mac + with a external 2nd 800 floppy drive in college in 1987. Could run the OS and MS word, excell and powerpoint all from the two drives! Spent hours playing Dark Castle. And best of all, my papers looked so much better than the guys who used the IBM’s with WordPerfect

Well, speaking of the iPhone, the China pirates have already come up with a knock-off.

http://blog.equinux.com/2007/0.....knockoffs/

Whats funny is that with all that has happened over the past 5 or so years, I think all of us still have iPod holdouts for friends - definitely room for more growth!

That’s “Apple ][”, young man

I started my career at Apple, when SIMM modules were the breaking technology. Some years later I switched to Windows due to peer pressure, and then rebelled to Linux. Now I’m all Debian on the server, and all Apple on the desktop.

Finally. Now can everyone quit releasing stuff for a bit so I can get some work done? hehe

pure fud.

“amongst the influencers” that is bs. most of the web 2.0 hackers use linux, ever heard of it moron…probably not…forced to use a mac in engineering school in the early 90s…so glad I got away from that pos…again you are pumping pure fud arrington…you should rename your blog “i don’t know shit, but i suck up to whatever is cool for the moment, except real compilers and real technology, that is , unless its web 2.0, because I am the biggest web 2.0 fanboy around, infact, I invented and co developed web2.0 with al gore”

But what does this have to do with the iPhone…. best line ever

Oregon Trail…..

“The Apple Mac may not hold a position of dominant market share today but amongst the influencers of Web 2.0 there is no other choice.”

Funny at the Web 2.0 Expo, I saw a lot of Macs but PC’s dominated the place.

I think its funny that its taken Apple 30 freaking years to finally figure it out and we’re celebrating that. Its like cheering on the retard that finally crosses the finish line long after everyone else has finished the race.

Nice work, Steve-o. Nice work.

Apple was not my first computer, that distinction goes to a Commodore 64, then to a Laser 128 and finally to an Apple II (the Laser as I recollect was a damn fine machine). However, I haven’t used a Apple computer since the Ronald Reagan was president, and the simple reason was that software was always easier to get for the PC. Cut it anyway you want, that was the truth until software lost its meaning (hmmm, wonder if Microsoft has figured this out yet…). I don’t think that we’ve seen the biggest news of Apple’s existence yet. No, the final battle in the war against Microsoft (such a strange war considering one makes hardware and the other software) will be when Google and Apple merge and we get Gapple. In five years we’ll probably be celebrating the 2 or 3 year anniversary of Gapple. Then hopefully Steve will take all of his ambition and drive and run the country or something.

Oh, also, does anyone know how much Forrest Gump’s share of Apple would be worth today?

I once had conceived an entire Kevin Bacon like web of how everything that meant anything to me was connected to a mac, and it was all less than three degrees. I told this to a girl friend once and she freaked out saying “Well I’m not connected to macs, I’ve never even used one! Does that mean I’m not important to you?” I then explained how she was connected to macs, she realized I was a total dork and dumped me.

Last time I heard from her she was working at an ad firm in LA… on Macs.

I remember attending the “Macintosh Professional Developer’s Program” at Harvard Summer School back in 1984. The “White Book” that described all the operating system managers (like QuickDraw) was mimeographed and full of penciled in notes and comments from the Apple operating system team. Back then, many of the controls (GUI elements) did not have their system support yet, so we had to create all the GUI elements ourselves via QuickDraw. No higher level languages, everything in assembly. No debugging, only the ability to look at the memory… It was exciting. The first graphical interface.
Being a developer, I gravitated to the PC over the years. It looks like the development environments on Macs are much better now, but I’m an old fart and don’t like relearning to do something I can do perfectly well on a PC.
For about 10 years I was a Mac developer…

I was never an Apple fan. Even though I’ve lived in Cupertino for most of my life, Apple just seemed like this obsolete thing that should have died away already but was being kept alive by some die hard fans with more guts than brains.

Then I got my first iPod and started using iTunes. The interface was magic! It was easy and intuitive and I started thinking “well, maybe there is something to this apple thing.” Even better, the look of the iPod was beautiful. Here was a device that finally realized then if I’m going to wear a piece of electronics, then I want it to look good as well as be functional.

Fast forward three years. I’m now waiting for my iPhone and seriously considering changing my home PC to a Mac. With the dual boot option and the superb customer service that apple offers, they’re really a more attractive option to me. So add me to the Macheads legions. I have been assimilated.

Gal

In 1983 I was raped by Lisa, so no I don’t have any fond memories of Apple

Wow, memories! In no particular order….

I worked at an Apple dealer in So California (Computer City) in 1981-1986, managed its San Diego store for a few months. We carried Osborne, Grid, Altos, Vector Graphic, IBM, Apple, Compaq… Remember when the Apple ][ became the //e.

Back when Apple had a rep firm instead of a sales force, we would get all excited on (i think it was Friday) when the rep would come in with a big wad of money and peel off hundred dollar bills for every Apple /// sold. A local accounting firm bought dozens of them, and I used the proceeds to put the earnest money on my first house and partially pay for my wedding reception! Those were the days when 23 point margins were the absolute floor for a sale, and you had to get permission from the owners to sell at lower margins. (”only if it’s more than 50 units..” - unheard of for a bunch of kids running a retail computer store! Heck, our technician was only 15 - we used to have to take turns giving him rides home because he was too young to drive)

Then Businessland came into our market and lured many of us to sell to corporate accounts. We did pretty well there - must businesses were buying their first computers. But Businessland was not an Apple dealer and it was like pulling teeth to get a Lisa for a guy who used to buy from me at my old dealership and absolutely wouldn’t buy from anyone else. But he had to have his Lisa. I can’t imagine any computer mfr bending their channel marketing rules like that today!

In the mid-late ’80s, the phone companies all tried to sell computers. The thought process being that if some little upstart like Businessland could be so successful selling toy computers, imagine how successful the Telcos could be selling computers AND phone systems! PacTel InfoSystems was started by the West coast RBOC, and Will Luden, of the Luden’s Cough Drop fortune, was put in charge. They had absolutely NO CLUE about computers - in fact, they refused to do any tech support on a PC because it was “outside the demarc” - meaning that it was customer premises equipment, not part of their network, and therefore outside their domain. The “telcos in the computer business” phenomenon was short lived, and probably accelerated the demise of the full=service computer dealer (who was already being undermined by low-margin clones).

I was Northern Telecom’s (now Nortel Networks) alliance manager to Apple from 88 to 93, and wow we had fun. We had full access to Apple’s skunkworks (and I had a counterpart that had wide range in Northern Telecom and Bell Northern Research). One of our projects was “MacPhone” which was basically a Mac hooked up to the RS232 port on the back of a Meridian PBX telephone set. The Meridian PBX used an ISDN-like 2B plus 2D communications link, so it could send commands into the PBX. The Mac ran a software program (developed by a bunch of guys at BNR in Ottawa and Mt View Calif) that worked all the features on the phone that nobody would learn how to use, such as conferencing people together - but it was all point and click. A year later (’91), a developer was hired to add a video codec board to the Mac, which resulted in full duplex videoconferencing, Macphone and screensharing over circuit-switched data. We also got it to work over Switched-56. At one point, the product team had people in the US, Canada and Australia working on it. It sold a lot of Macs for Apple, into universities and businesses, and a lot of switching equipment for Northern Telecom (but very few customers actually bought and used the product - it was mostly used as sizzle to sell the steak). The Northern Telecom sales people totally didn’t get it!

But after about 1992, Apple lost interest in this kind of technology leadership, and Sculley left. The 90s were a dark time for Apple - it’s amazing that they survived.

Apple refused to go to the clone business (well, they did for awhile, and Jobs shut it down when he returned to Apple in the 90s. In retrospect, he did absolutely the right thing). Apple’s full control of everything from its OS to its industrial design and its sales outlets was something we would never have imagined back in the 80s but it’s certainly a major key to their success now. Good for them!

Cheers - Steve

I am constantly entertained when my 4 roommates and I sit in the living room of our house watching a movie, while the only other light source in the room is the dim backlit white apple on our five macbooks. Just over a year ago, I was still battling with my PC, constantly rebooting and reinstalling windows. I HATE IT. I don’t know why I resisted for so long. I’ve had three iPods and still talk about how great they are 4 years after purchasing my first.

All I can say to anyone still on the cusp of converting over to any mac product (with the singular exception being their keyboards and mice) is, DO IT IMMEDIATELY, and I personally guarantee that you will never look back, and will never regret it.

Unless you run very specific software at home (ie. SolidWorks, like I do), you have no reasons not to convert. Even these people can no longer complain.

Make the jump.

PS - “Somewhere” I have an old Macintosh illuminated glass plate lamp that Apple made for the Mac product launch. It was supposed to go into the window of your store. Also have a set of photocopied, hand-annotated Lisa beta documentation from pre-Lisa launch. Hmmm. If I put them on eBay, would anybody care?

PPS - does anyone remember Apple Panic? Sort of like Lode Runner but the little guys were Apples instead of Miners, in think. (c’mon, it’s been >20 years!). One time, the dealer I worked for had a party and brought home half their inventory of Apple ][ computers for games at the party. Hooked one of them up to a huge projection monitor and played Apple Panic on the wall of their home. Funnnn….

What about Creative? Everybody is too obsessed with Apple, and Creative gets overlook. Creative is a multimedia company that was founded on July 1, 1981. Historically, Creative was most famous for their Sound Blaster line of audio cards. Now they are known for their line of portable multimedia players - the Zen line, including the Zen Vision:M which kills the iPod. They’ve been making players as long as the iPod has been out.

Two memories:

(1) In the late 80’s on startup my Mac spoke these memorable words: “Welcome to Macintosh, This is Friday, the 5th of December”

(2) Two words: Oregon Trail

Not being a homeowner I can safely say that my first mac purchase (iBook G4) has had more of an influence on my life then any other purchase I’ve ever made.

It’s changed everything about how I work, play and communicate. It’s sounds corny but that iBook literally changed my life.

But then, I do spend about 10-12 hours a day working on computers. Your mileage may vary.

Oh One more: Dark Castle

I am waiting for iPhone, but not a fan of apple.

In the mid 90’s I knew a guy who swore by Apple, and one day I asked him to show me this computer he was raving about. He had a Macintosh. and I sat and played around for a couple of hours, and I decided that it was actually more user-friendly than Windows 95. Yes, it was 10 years old, and it had no real graphics to speak of, but from that moment on I was a convert. I bought my first computer four years later - a red iMac.

I’m one of the ones old enough to remember the “1984″ add. Time flies… but that is another story.

Man - ask people to reminisce and what do you get? A bunch of retards on comments. Apple fanboys sure are a bunch of flammers.

@ 62

and you’re? lol… on this beautiful occasion, we’ll forgive u generously

From about 1999 to 2002 I recorded pro music and audio with a Mac and Digidesign Pro Tools. Even running on Mac OS 9 and recording full-time, not once did the box crash while recording, we never, ever lost a take. That is more reliable than many tape machines and to have that kind of stability in those years was very appreciated.

Today, making Web content with Photoshop, BBEdit, QuickTime, Safari, Apache, and PHP on a stock Mac with almost no set up is completely awesome. That is the world’s greatest word processor right there, except it processes everything.

Started with an Apple IIe - Mac 512K - Mac LC - Powerbook 145 - Mac Performa 6800 - Powebook “Lombard” - Powerbook 15″ - IMac 20″ - and finally a MacBook 13″.

Its been a long ride and…they only get better!

It continues to boggle my mind that people even consider apple when buying a computer. Paying 2-3 times the price for a computer that has probably 1/1000 the amount of available programs, and the programs it has being an after-thought of the developer. Given, the newer apple products look nice, but people love to ignore the fact that PC laptops are looking better and better everyday. Personally I like the of the newer HP’s over Macbooks.

How can you not feel like a loser when every program on your computer stats with a lower-case “i”. I feel stupid even refering to most apple programs.

Anyone who has used a PC made in the last year knows that PC’s just don’t have the problems that they used to. I literally cant remember the last time my computer “crashed” or “froze”. Honestly the last major technology problem I had was a SAD-FACE on my friends iPod that he wanted me to fix. I told him the apple products cant actually be fixed.

2-3 times the price
Less available programs
Lower-Quality Programs
iStuff
Nice design, but a few PC companies can easily compete
PCs crashing is a hugley overblown problem

I am on my second PowerBook and fourth iPod. Apple makes the world a more elegant place. Everything designed by Apple is beautiful and easy to use. I appreciate all the little details of the design, especially how my PowerBook pulses when it’s in sleep mode — the rate of the pulse is just a little slower than my heartbeat and it calms me down…

Some people like their kids, some people like their pets, and I love my Apple products!

I don’t own a Mac at the moment (want one though). But this post got me remembering being upgraded at work from a Mac Plus to a Mac Classic complete with a 2400 baud modem, and someone showing me Mosaic. Who knew where that would lead?

While my mom happily banged on the space bar and arrows playing “Rogue” on her black and green PC screen, I was always at my friend’s apartment typing on a nice white screen in Helvetica. This same friend didn’t ever get cable and the only junk food in the house was nuts and Annie’s Cheese and Shells.

I don’t think Macs are quite so granola anymore though. I’m on a Mac for work… and I can barely remember the meaning of “anti-virus software”. Magical.

Congratulations, Apple, on 30 years! I cannot believe I still remember those days when I was typing away on my new Apple IIe computer…and got a kick out of playing around with Eliza, that program that had an answer for just about everything you typed.

I’m going to dig up a picture of me with my first computer, an Apple II+

@ Jay #66

Listen to what Jay says about Apple products, and then look at Jay’s site - http://vkowebs.com/ That really sums it up right there. It is a world view, an inability to understand *Design* and aesthetic. It is not a argument that can ever be productive though. It is like debating the truths of evolution with a creationist

Jay is not wired to understand design, as many people aren’t. It’s not his fault.

Luckily for Apple, enough people *are* wired to understand design. These are the drivers that then bring an ever increasing number of people that “don’t quite” understand design, but understand enough to know that macs are just plain better. The combination is finally giving Apple the market share it deserves.

“Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.”

What I don’t get is why the ‘I love my PC - Mac users are retards’ brigade have to hijack a post like this. Who are they trying to convince?

Grow up, say.

My Dad got me my first computer, an Apple IIc, when I was 7 years-old. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. I learned everything from math to typing to basic programming on that machine. My favorite thing to do was to use one of the first editions of Print Shop to create birthday cards on my dot-matrix printer. It took forever, but, to me, it was the best thing ever!

First owned an Apple IIc in ‘85. Loved it! Then got a Macintosh SE in ‘87. Probably one of the best computers Apple has ever made. The thing still boots and runs! From there … An LCIII, original iMac, Cube, White iBook, and my most recent mac is the a 20″ iMacIntel. Owned the original iPod, but someone dropped it into a bucket of water - the hard drive is dead now. So I bought a white iPod nano.

change of subject…

What’s up with some of the immature comments!? Maybe just dumb kids? It’s like turning the channel on TV to a baseball game and making fun of all those “fan boys” sitting in the stadium watching the game, wasting a perfectly good afternoon. Should grow up some and realize that people have different interests and tastes.

@75: I guess they just feel left out of the party? Hardcore zealotry knows no propriety? I don’t know. I’m a huge PC fanboy, and I think they’re being petty doing it.

Not only are OS wars retarded, but this is really not a good place for them.

Will you stop at last?

One thing PC users can do that Mac users can’t
http://www.thebestpageintheuni.....=macs_cant

I didn’t know one single thing about computers when I enrolled at Drexel University in the fall of 1985. We were the 2nd year students in a prgressive program where Drexel required every student to buy a Macintosh. 256K of RAM, 400K Single-Sided floppy and copies of MacWrite were what we started doing our first papers on. My second year, I downloaded the “build your own Fat Mac” instructions and soldered in a whopping 512K of Ram. By the 4th year, we all had a really big lesson on the price/performance curve. Incoming students were getting Macintosh Pluses with a 20Mb hard drive for less than half of the $4K or so that we had to pony up. No booting the Apple OS with floppies for them. I had a 1200baud apple modem and an imagewriter printer and still used it a bit post-college. This was also the modern-era of software piracy and kids up and down the hall shared games that had no copy protection. I had hundreds of disks then.
This simple exposure to the Mac got me into the computer industry where I exchanged my Mac knowledge for training on DOS and IBM pc’s. That industry has been good to me over the past 20 years. Thanks Apple (even though I still don’t own an Ipod).

My first brand new and sealed Apple computer arrived just 3 weeks ago - Thanks’ Apple for the new macBook Pro’s launched today.

My first computer was actually an Amiga, the prefect compromise between the mac and pc, if only commodore hadn’t completely messed up.

And my first apple/mac was bought 3rd-hand via ebay a few years ago, an ibook that I instantly adored even though the dodgy seller ripped me off.
There’s little to worry about using apple’s, it’s how cars will be in the future, but it means that you forget all the “technical” skillls you need to learn when living on Windows, but with steve jobs having had the forsight to have kept an eye on x86 and now the possibility of dual-booting, there is no reason (subject to money) to not get a mac.

If Apple decided to guarantee Rolls-Royce-type service out of the box at a fairer retail price, or got price-competetive with the PC world, they’d easily get 30-60% world pc market-share. They’re just not as different as Dyson’s are in the vacuum-cleaner world, to justify the price-difference to normal people who don’t read-up on the goings-on in the computing/tech world.

Yours kindly,

Shakir razak

First, congrats to Apple on 30 years! Personally, I’ve had both PC’s and Mac’s and don’t have much of a preference for either.

However, I do want to ask Mike how he can make a statement like the one below without backing it up with some facts.

“The Apple Mac may not hold a position of dominant market share today but amongst the technology influencers there is no other choice.”

Well? C’mon, sure there are people out there that prefer Macs, but can you truly say among technology influencers there is no other choice? I didn’t think so… You’re better than a statement like that Mike.

The true strength of the Applet Mac/IPod is the extremely thought of “User Experience”….which goes on to create the cult that is true hard-core apple cult.

The extreme weakness of Apple as a company is trying to keep the platform close through proprietary things like the Mac OS, or ITunes.The Mac OS would have beaten windows to death if Apple could have kept it open in the initial years.

Similarly what was the need to have DRM in ITunes.

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