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All of my life.
My dad went half in a IIe before I was born - I remember being 3 or 4 and picking up a second hand SE/30.
A looong time.

In 1980 or 1981, when I was in third grade, my classroom got a ][+

First saw a Mac in person in 93 when I was travelling in the US. I was at someone's home and he was showing me how it can do neat graphics stuff. Fast forward to senior high, about half my dorm were PowerBook users from 100's to Duos so I got to play a bit with those early PB's. When college began, I got into DTP for a student magazine and thought an iMac G3 would serve me well. It did for about 5 years. In the mean time, I got an iBook G3. My current config is as below but I still have those G3's.

Last edited by Thunderstruck (2005-10-27 9:34 pm)

Thinking back, when did Apple become part of your life?

When my wife tempted me to take a bite.
Then I saw that I was naked.

In 2001 I was a college sophomore and needed a new notebook computer for school.  I shopped around and a friend of mine who was running for Congress right about that time convinced me to get a Mac.  He'd run his unsuccessful campaign in 2000 using Macs and thought it was one of the few things his campaign did right.  He was correct.

I bought a 366 MHz iBook G3 clamshell (Indigo) and ran OS 9.1 on it.  I later upgraded to OS X.  It ran very well.  I liked it so much that after lightning hit my beloved iBook, I sold the damaged 'book on eBay and bought an eMac 1GHz.  I loved it, but it was just sucking to not have a notebook... so, I bought an old Wallstreet PowerBook.  It was nice, but only ran OS 9.  It just wasn't cutting it.  I sold both and bought a 667 MHz Ti PB.  That machine rocked!  When the new PowerBooks came out in 2003, I bought my Al 1GHz.  For a time I once again tried to switch to a desktop (eMac) but sold it again quickly, knowing I could never sell my beloved PB.  My wife now uses it as her primary computer.  It his my secondary computer, as I am a Windows Network Administrator (hey, there's plenty of job security!) and have a Dell D810 as my notebook.  I've also owned a PowerMac G4 (Sawtooth) that I used, as a time, for a print/file server in my home.

I think I'm going to purchase one of the new PowerBooks as soon as they start putting Intel chips in them. 

I'm now in the middle of a huge business deal and plan to use a PowerBook to make it all happen.

circa 1986 I was luddite.
got job in chain bookstore...last employee had been 'custodian' of computer book section. I was tasked with a rearrange/cleaning.
books on timex/sinclair, Commodore, TRS, IBM, Apple, etc.

and a copy of 'Whole Earth Software Catalog 2.0'
store had employee 2 week free lend policy, which I used on this work. Changed me. From luddite to wannabe geek.

saved (living under parent's roof made that easy).

got Apple IIc (while ignoring the Mac Plus sitting feet away)
tricked it out with almost everything you could.
Especially the 3.5 floppy w/Appleworks and Beagle Bros. WP module thingies....dictionary/thesaurus, word count...very sweet.
Also loved ImageWriter II (wish I still had it today.)

It would be about '89 before I walked into the local technical community college's Mac lab before I actually used a Plus, AppleTalked to 15 others and served by an SE/30 with 4 ImageWriter IIs.

Kindly professor provided a startup floppy w/Hal on boot; System 6.?, WriteNow 2.0 (?) and SuperPaint.


the word 'love does not do justice.

Later, student loan provided a 'Classic' 1meg. No System 7, but very nice.

(wanted a PowerBook, but no $)

Would take nearly 15 yrs to acquire this lowend model I'm using now. Hope to upgrade soon, but this one shows everything you expect to keep a love affair flame hot.

Ooh, background...got my first computer when I was 6, an Atari 400 for Xmas, then a ZX81, followed by a Spectrum and a C64, my dad was using Acad a lot so he got a pc for the house in 1987, command line heaven (?).  Then my best mates auntie got a Mac about 3 (1990ish) years later, we used to just go round to play with the audio recording function for hours.  It was an LC I think.

His granny lived with the aunt and she was quite senile at this stage so we used to record her ramblings, sample her I guess, frequent gems would emerge, like when she told us that she wouldn't go to bed because the 7 dancing gypsy jewesses in her bedroom were still making music.  Go figure.  She died not long afterwards.  Which was the occasion of some tomfoolery, as there was quite an archive of granny samples.  One day, when the auntie came home, my friend started playing one of the samples (the existence of which was still unknown to the aunt).  It was one of the granny calling the aunty from the sitting room, having a conversation with her.  She was in the kitchen and freaked out completely because she had no idea that it was just a sample, thought that the granny was talking to her from beyond the grave and she was losing her marbles. 

I digress.  Fast forward to 1995, first year of my design degree and I get thrown in the deepend with Quark and an 6100, a Performa I think.  By the time it came round to graduation, I'd a G3 all to myself in our computer lab, graduated and went straight to work on another old beige G3.  Then switched jobs until I ended up working with a Powermac G4 that put in lots of hardwork until I got a Powerbook last January and havent thought about a desktop since.

So, to answer the thread, Apple became a part of my life when we scared seven shades of urine out of my best mates aunt - first creative act with a mac.

Birth -> Present.

2000

1998, G3 tower (they called them Mini Tower). I still have it, collecting dust in my hallway.

I was too young to remember when I got it, but I think my first mac was a Macintosh IIsi.
My first memorys about it were sitting on my dads lap, before I could even walk, pushing the spacebar and shooting at zeros on the game Hellcats. That was where my Mac addiction started...

Tallgeese wrote:

1987. Six years old. Father bought a IIGS.
Apple ever since.

Holy crap - that's me except I was 5.

1995. 1st Grade. Our computer class had us learning how to use the mouse and keyboard. The computer? Performa 5200CD. I distinctly remember one of the mouse-training games they had us play was "Bonk! (256 Colors)"...and we used the ol' launcher. Most likely System 7 or thereabouts...

1997. It's announced our family was getting a computer!

Christmas, 1997. I spot an Acer Computer box in the garage. Dad says it's "just something from work", but I suspect something's up. Christmas Eve, an Acer magically appears in my room. w00t. I remember it had 75 MHz and a working copy of Descent, but not much else. It got replaced fairly soon, but I have no idea why. I kinda liked it. But Windows 95 was so clumsy, so rough around the edges compared to what I vaguely remembered from 1st grade...

2001. I spend 2 months away from home with nothing but my aunt's PowerMac 5300. All-in-one, 120 Mhz. My 1st grade training all came back to me. I was at home, finally. MacOS 8.6. After I got back home, the first thing I did was grab a 68k emulator and load up 7.5.3 with Kaleidoscope...

2002. I build my first PC. And it doesn't explode. I transfer said emulator and actually use MacOS as my primary OS on that PC for a while. I first hear about the new Mac OS X, and as I am experimenting with Linux on the PC anyway, this intrigued me. Could it be? UNIX with a user friendly desktop...I mean, god, it's Mac OS!

Summer 2002. My Aunt has upgraded...to a PowerBook G4. She's coming over and I can't wait to play with the damn thing. Would it have OS X? Would it even run it? Would the precious Genie effect work?? I was a raving fanboy.
She arrived, and pretty much said "it's yours for a month." I gently open the beautiful Titanium PowerBook and...OS 9.2 greets me.
wtf. ew. I ask her why she's not running OS X, and she said her "tech guys" said it wouldn't work. EVEN THOUGH IT CAME BUNDLED WITH 10.1. I say screw her tech guys, and do a backup and install of OS X on her PowerBook.

After the install was done, it rebooted, and generously put forth the classic Macintosh startup sound. For some reason, i've never heard such a pristine startup sound as the one that the TiBook emitted in its first boot into Mac OS X.

Christmas 2003. My dad hands me a quite a large box, but we're in a restaurant so I can't really open such a big box in there.  One curious aspect was that it had a white handle...Obviously I wasn't aware of the siginificance of it at the moment. I'm anxious to find out what it is, but it's the day before christmas. The suspense is killing me.
Christmas Eve. I'm beginning to peel the wrapping paper, when a specification caught my eye. I had undone no more than 2 inches of wrapping paper when I saw "800 Mhz Powe--"...I froze with shock. Could it really be? My own Mac? My cousin, unable to stand the suspense, grabs the paper and says "just rip the damn thing open already!" and tears half the paper off with one go. And sitting there, amidst the ripped paper, was a picture of an iBook G3.
I rip the rest of the paper off faster than a Quad G5, and in 5 minutes I was already running through the setup. I came to the Philippines toting a 266 MHz Pentium II laptop...and I left with an iceBook. At that moment, when I finally opened the iBook's box, I realized...damn...I'm in for a ride...

What a ride it was. Later I picked up an iPod 3rd Gen, an iBook G4, and an iPod 1st gen to replace my 3G that got lost on a bus.