This post was published more than a few years ago (on 2004-02-08) and may contain inaccurate technical information, outmoded thoughts, or cringe takes. Proceed at your own risk.
Just for kicks, I put together a very crude timeline, showing what Macs I've owned and when. It's a hell of a lot more than I thought I had owned, now that I look back on it all.
For the curious, the items in question are:
- 1993, my first Mac-- a brand-spanking-new Color Classic.
- The Dark Ages, a time of using PCs again from 1993 to 1997, nameley because I was having financial troubles, and just couldn't afford the damn things.
- 1997, a Mac IIsi started me back on the path.
- 1998, a Power Mac 6100 pizza box that I bought from a researcher at NIH.
- 1999, a new PowerBook G3 Series, running at a whopping 233 MHz. 1999 also brought the purchase of my wife's Grape iMac DV (not shown here), which she clings to to this day. Late 1999 also saw a misguided foray into trying to build a new PC to run the BeOS on, but I spent way too much, there was no damn software for BeOS, and Be pretty much went under shortly after and became an embedded systems company. Oh well.
- 2000, an original iMac (probably Revision B, but I don't recall for certain, and which actually may have been late 1999), a Macintosh Plus given to me by Doug when I gave him the Rev. B iMac after buying the refurb Tangerine iMac DV, and a Performa 630 (I think) also gifted to me. I found good non-profit homes for the Plus and the Performa, and I loved that Tangerine iMac to death. The color just makes me happy.
- 2001, a PowerMac G3/450 was my workhorse for quite a while. Late in the year, AAl sold me his PowerMac G4/450 when he got a new Mac. We also got my son his first Mac, an Indigo iMac+.
- 2002, I bought myself a birthday present of a refurb iBook 600, and then in April I bought a new G4 Dual 1.0 GHz "QuickSilver" PowerMac and a 17" Studio display just in time for the 48 Hour Film Festival. Only the third new Mac I'd ever owned, it would put in nearly two good long years of service. 2002 also saw the purchase of a replacement Color Classic (not shown here) to be used not so much as a machine, but as art.
- 2003, later in the year I got a used G4/350 to be my web server and retired Ol' Blue IS. In October, I finally realised my dream of getting a PowerBook G4 17", and couldn't be happier with it.
- 2004, I made the 'Book my official desktop Mac and sold the QuickSilver G4 while I could still get something out of it. I'm looking forward to this summer when Steve Jobs promised we could expect G5s running at 3 GHz!