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2002 - when I decided to learn more about OS 8 for work and purchased a black 5500/275. I liked it so much, that I got a 3 year old iMac DV to test out OS X! Liked that so much, I got a DP G5!

As a company Apple first came into my life in 1982. I tried to get a job there. It was while I was still in high school and I wanted a part time thing after classes. Didn't get the job

For a computer my first experience with Apple was with a clone. I bought a Daystar quad 180 in 1996.

I didn't start using Macs until 98-99, but i've been aware of Apple since it began, and i'm sure that's what influenced my first purchase.  I even almost went to work for them at one point.

1980 (Apple II line in schools)
1996 (Brother-in-Law bought himself a Mac (Performa 6200CD))
1997 (Received my first mac (Macintosh SE))

When I was in 2nd grade in 1995 I asked for a computer for christmas. I got at Performa 6200CD and have never owned a windows computer since.

Probably when I was 4 years old. Using the IIci playing with Kid Pix (the black and white version). And oregon trail and swamp gas, also in black and white.

No member of my family has ever owned a computer other than a Mac, and there are currently 6 active Apples in the house, plus 2 IIci's in the garage.

First Mac was at the library in Harlem NY.    I can't remember the model, I think it was II if I remember correctly.  Had the big floppy drive and you turned it on from the back.  I was there playing "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego"  I would play that game for about an hour or two if no one else was there to use it.  You had to like put your name on a list to get to use it.  Was great, even though I had no idea what Apple was or really even cared.  I was 6 or 7, I just wanted to play the game. 

I wouldn't see another Mac in use like that till college.  I actually was told a million times over that Mac's where not for everyone, and there was nothing much going for it, yada yada.   Everyone I knew was on Windows, DOS OS's.  So, I didn't get to actually use another Mac till I went away to school.  Audio Engineering was what I wanted to do.  So, my college did that, and they of course had Mac's.  By this time I was familiar enough with Windows and PC's that I could do any troubleshooting and what have you to keep it working right.  Till I used System 7 on a 9600 Mac.  Ran Pro Tools, Toast, Digital Performer, and my world was never the same.  Everything worked.  Worked great.  Other then learning how to use programs and stuff.  I picked it up really fast.   Ended up getting my own G3 300MHz tower via lease.  Had that for like 2 years or so.  Had a SCSI CD burner, 18GB of HD space WOW at the time.  Full A/V in and out on the computer, a real video card ATi Rage whatever with 6mb of ram.  I had 384MB of ram in the box, and I even overclocked the system to 375/80 I believe till it didn't run stable and downed it a bit from there and it worked great.  My system kicked ass.

Once I was done with the lease, I had to get another computer, and I only wanted a Mac.  OS 8.6 was great, and the stuff my and my other Mac using friend did was just blowing my mind.  So damn easy to do things, and it just all felt right.  PC's where great to build but, smurf to work on.  So, I got a G4 400 in the spring of 2000.  Should have waited till August and gotten a dual processor G4 but, whatever.    This thing was a rocket.  Everything was faster then the G3.  Once MP3's became all the rage, and converting music over to it was easy with that computer.  Sound Jam was cranking away, Napster was downloading away, and I was Toasting CD's left and right.  It was awesome.  I saw my PC using friends struggle with all that stuff.  Viruses, crashes, driver problems, conflicts with this and that.  My computer kicked ass.  And I could still do all the little tweaking here and there with this program or that to make things faster, make ram disks, upgraded my CPU's to Dual 500, and video card to the first Radeon card.  Then to the 8500 as soon as I came out.  I had 1.5GB of ram and like 4 HD in that case.  That computer got sold to a friend of mine for like $400. 

I then got my Ti PB 800MHz, that I am using to type this post on.  I love this thing.  So great to have.  Runs pretty well even though I want faster and bigger and better, it still serves me quiet well when I needed it to.  And in addition to this, when I sold my G4 I used that money to get the G5 Dual 1.8GHz.  Its got 2x 160GB HD, 4GB of ram, and the X800 XT ATi card.  It KICKS ASS!

I love Apples computers, and there OS.  I'll not spend money on getting a PC unless it is for gaming only. 

We had a mac of some sort before I was in preschool (late 80's) and I LOVED IT. Unfortunately, we went many more years without any sort of computer at all (my dad's kinda tight with spending money on tech since it outdates itself so fast). Finally, in middle school we convinced my dad that we absolutely NEEDED one, so my dad went out with his friend (who works for HP) and I. Came back with an ok computer (it was quite fast for its time clocking in at 300MHz on a Celeron) and used it for 3 solid blue years.

After our fourth HD swipe in 3 years (any many grey hairs for my dad) and a burst of creative energy, my dad looked into the Apple website. The iMac G4s were, arguably, the most creatively designed computers ever built, and my dad snapped up a 17" 1.25GHz one ASAP. Now our family is all Macced and Podded out. Me with a PowerBook for college, and my sister with a mini, which her friends all drool over.

(quote from my sister's friend on her mini: "Ok, Alice. Where's the real COMPUTER? That's just where you put the CD in, but where's the big box?")

First was exposed to Apple in high school. Didn't make much of an impression on me at the time. Owned a Commodore 64 and mainly played games on it.

Went to college in 1991 for Commercial Art and Design. Our classrooms had IIci's with Pagemaker, Freehand, and Photoshop on them. I took a 'printing communications' class with a lab. The lab was 4 hours, 3 times a week. 2 hours we would complete a project in Pagemaker on an IBM. The other 2 hours we would have to do the same project in Pagemaker on the Apple. It took me about 2 weeks to figure out that Apple computers were definitely for me!

My parents have had Macs since I was born, so I was raised on Apple.

2 years old, Apple ][.  My uncle has an old digital shot of it

1981 or 1982.  All the dept heads at my Dad's school got Apple II's for their classrooms.  He would bring it home on the weekends so that he could figure it out and I could use.  I was in 6th grade and taught myself how to program in BASIC using a series of 4 or 5 very well written manuals that his school got with the computer.  I was enthralled with programming, especially doing cool things with the high-res color graphics of the time.  We used to make programs of rockets launching, stars streaking across the sky and goofy text games.

Then came the commodore era (1983-1988), the computerless era near the end of high school and through college, then the PC era (the dark days 1992-2002) and then back to Mac in 2002 to build my digital hub.  I have 3 Macs now.  PowerMac at Home, Mac mini in the kids room and Powerbook at work.  I will never go back.