The Mac is 30 years old. Apple has a great retrospective. 5 years ago, I documented all the Macs I had owned up until that point. I have added to it today for the next five years as an indulgence. Turns out there are quite a few a owned. And we won’t mention the period 1999 to 2006 where I owned some PCs. All the time I never experienced a major computer failure or even one that required me to visit a professional in a store.
- Technically, my parents owned this one: an original Mac with 128k memory and a floppy disk drive. Best moment: only 100 paragraphs allowed in each MacWrite document.
- Mac SE/30 that I bought at graduate school at Stanford. Notable for its 30MB (yes really) hard drive.
- Upgraded to the Centris 650 which had a colour screen.
- My first lap top: a PowerBook 520c. Had a touch pad controller.
- My first computer out of graduate school: A PowerMac 8100 with what seemed enormous then, a 20 inch monitor. Had more depth than breadth
- This was my first home computer. Horrible thing really.
- My first “ARC grant” meant a new computer in 1997 with a PowerMac 9500. This one had an Intel processor in it and you could switch to Windows running Windows ’95. That never really worked.
- Got a 2nd Gen iMac for home. Best thing ever.
- So when the new one came out I instantly upgraded.
- And again in 2007.
- With this MacMini still plugged into the TV.
- Later on, the laptop was back with a new MacBook Pro 15″
- Another successful grant meant 8 cores of MacPro in the office.
- And, finally, this MacBook for good measure.
- Followed by this MacBook Pro
And then to my first MacBook Air
Then to a new iMac when I moved to Canada.
Alongside a Mac Mini for the TV
And later a new iMac for the Kitchen
Finally, I have ordered but am yet to receive …
Digitopoly 
My favourite story, which I often tell, about you and Macs was when in 1998/99 I got a paper referee report from the ARC and figured that it must be you because the scalable fonts that were used where only available on Word for Mac, and you were the only one I knew in Australia who would use some fancy font on Word for Mac.
A fun post. I still have many fond memories working on one of the first, “periscope” Macs. It was a fun computer, but the work I did was so much less important and lower stress, so it’s limitations didn’t aggravate me like they would today. It also reminds me of the little screen phones and tablets of today. When you have fantastic young eyes tiny screens are so much less of an issue. Just goes to show, the most beneficial innovations are to our bodies and their care, and hopefully rejuvenation in the not too far future.