A 128k Mac with external 400k drive and ImageWriter printer bought in the US for $2189 delivered in January 1985 to my then-home in Alabama. Later upgraded through 512k to MacPlus standard and used with a 110v-230v transformer in the UK, it soldiered on into the early 90s. I’ve not fired it up for a few years but still have all of this kit tucked away as a souvenir of early Mac life…
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In 1995, a PPC 6100/PowerMac 6100/60 and then one with a DOS card/PowerMac 6100/66 Dos via some Apple credits. I had never used a computer before, at around 40 years old. My wife had used some type of Mac in her school maybe 5 years earlier. I’ve been a happy Mac user ever since, now with a M4 Mac Mini, an 1Phone 17 Pro Max, an Apple TV, 2 Mini speakers, and a recently purchased Apple Watch 11 just to see how it would work for me. I use mainly Apple apps, except for 1Password which I have been using for almost 20 years.
Mark Z: (I’ve got a whole garage of obsolete computers. Even a pizza-box NeXT! Sigh. I’m a pack rat.)
Same here!!! I need to find somewhere that I can donate them instead of recycling them!!
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I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before in TiBITS Talk, but to upgrade my original 128K Macintosh to 512K (so much memory!) took a lot of tools to open the computer case:
- #10 Torx screwdriver
- Sledgehammer
- Hacksaw
- Grinder
- Drill bit extension
- VISE-GRIP® pliers
- Putty knife
I have fond memories of the time that me and my Dad literally hacked a computer.
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My first personal Apple product (as opposed to those used at university and at work) was a 5th-generation iPad, later replaced with an iPod Classic. That was also my introduction to iTunes on Windows, and my Apple account dates back to that time in the mid-2000s. I got through a lot of headphones during that time, as the iPod was a regular companion on my daily commutes by train and bus.
Like some have mentioned, “my” first Apple computer was a family IIc, it was awesome, I recall Ultima IV but also writing papers in high school, we had a Scribe dot-matrix printer. For college mom bought me a Plus with an external (second) floppy, eventually I got an external 20MB hard drive (wow!) and upped the memory a little (I don’t recall the amounts, I’m sure some here can, but I had to physically clip a resistor or something on the motherboard and I was so nervous about making a mistake that would wreck the board–luckily, I did not!). It also had a 2400 baud modem and then I got a 14.4 when I did the memory upgrade and the hard drive. Good times.
In about 1995, an uncle who worked at NeXT gave me his NeXT cube which had a beta 040 expansion board, so cool, I used to run Pine on the terminal in grad school but also you could find a version of Doom since they had coded it on the NeXT (although with 2-bit greyscale, I used to joke you couldn’t really tell what things were).
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An original Apple II in 1978. (sorry that I don’t have a photo)
Working remotely from southern California for an entrepreneur in Los Altos Hills who had Apple connections I programmed a ridiculously awful demo of a game to be used kiosk-style at Six Flags Amusement Parks as a public relations tool for Apple on that Apple II.
We presented it to top Apple executives in Cupertino. The Steves were not present. It went horribly.
That leaves me with my preferred memory of the Apple II. The smell. It was amazing, like nothing I have ever smelled before or after. Wackily, if you said there was an Apple II fragrance available to purchase today, I would pay some big bucks for it.
I sold it to my best friend several years later and jumped on the Mac bandwagon. It ushered in the continuing era of people who don’t know the spelling my last name (McIntosh) as Macintosh. And kind of funny that the apple fruit cultivar is actually spelled McIntosh.
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A Performa. The next one was a UMAX.
;-)
An Apple IIGS, in 1987.
First Mac I bought was a IIvi, in 1992 or 1993. Iirc, it was sold with a guarantee that it could be upgraded via a motherboard swap to be a first-gen Power Mac (e.g. a 6100) the following year. When I got the authorization to bring it in to a local authorized Mac reseller, I was surprised to find that Apple had abandoned the motherboard swap idea (even though the enclosures were very similar, if not identical), and they handed me a new box with a 7100 in it.
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I’ve had a few clones over the years, mostly through work. There was one Power Computing box I had that ran as if it were a much higher spec machine than it actually was.
In retrospect, I can’t fault Jobs for killing the clones, but in their time, they sure were nice to have available as options.
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Wow. If anyone needed confirmation that most of us are “of a certain vintage,” reading this thread would do it. 
(And y’alls memory seems to be much better than mine. My wife had to confirm what my first Mac was.)
My first Apple product was the 512K Mac. Then an SE/30 (loved that box), followed by a bunch of others over the years. It’s been quite a ride, eh?
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Mine was too. In fact I wrote my doctoral thesis on it - went to what was an Apple sales place where the manager was a friend of mine, and he had like an IBM selectric (sp?) printer that could be connected to my computer and he printed out the whole 60+ pages lol. Two copies, one for me and one for the seminary. Loved that machine. We bought one for the church I was serving and used it for years before upgrading to a Mac. Ah fond memories.
I was also an early buyer of the Newton. Loved that thing. I was an online consultant on AOL to help people work with theirs. I loved how it fit in a case and I used it with a keyboard to take notes at meetings which I could later print out. Ah Apple, the joy you have brought - and the tears you caused with some of your failures ;-)
You haven’t smelled my cooking! I’ve been banned in 3 states for the smell of it ;-)
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Since a number of people have added their first Mac to the first Apple purchase, my first Mac (that I owned rather than used at work) was a PowerBook 100 which I still have and occasionally boot up. I didn’t get it until about 1993 or 1994 – it had since been discontinued and replaced by newer models, but Citibank was selling them through the rewards program for $600. The PowerBook 100 was designed by Sony and was quite compact. I still have fondness for its design. It had a 20MB hard drive, 2MB of RAM, and an external floppy drive, running System 7.01.
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Twin floppy Mac SE. Upgraded it to 4MB memory and an external 40MB Microtech SCSI hard drive.
I was enamored of the MC68000 instruction set. I had a Motorola EXORcisor developer board with a 68000 that had a hand-etched serial number (609, IIRC) on it, and it came with a warning that the chip wasn’t completely debugged yet. I desperately wanted a 68k based machine, but the world was being taken over by the IBM PC and clones that used the abominable 8086 family. I decided that I really needed a PC compatible for my business (systems engineering). In early 1984 I was literally on my way to a computer store to buy one but a close friend had insisted that I come and look at his new Macintosh. Apple. Ugh. Toys. But… 68000. So I stopped by his house on the way and immediately knew I needed one.
As soon as the Fat Mac came out, I desoldered the RAM in the original 128k machine and put in 512k of RAM. I have a vivid memory of holding the old RAM chips in my hand; I’d had to jump through a lot of hoops to get such RAM chips in the past, but I decided that they weren’t worth salvaging and threw them in the trash.
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Since a few people have mentioned that they still have some machines that are 30-40 years old, a quick note: if you have a such a device, consider opening the case, inspecting for bad capacitors, and replacing the PRAM battery and any bad capacitors, even if you don’t plan on using the machine.
If you’re not comfortable with a soldering iron or mucking around near a cathode ray tube, you should be able to find a computer/electronics shop that will do it for around $100-150, possibly more if the power supply needs to be repaired.
Old capacitors and batteries can leak, sometimes destroying the circuit board. It’s much easier to make a repair before a part leaks or burns out than after. Especially for an early Mac, the repair can be worthwhile.
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I was thinking the same thing reading these posts =:0
I have my old machines too. Have not tried to start anything in years though. Some day I’d like to at last pull the hard drives and check then for data.
The first Apple product I bought was a Centris 650 when I was in grad school.
Check to see the type of drives that are in your old machines. If they’re from Macs that used SCSI hard drives, it can be surprisingly difficult to find a recent machine that can read them. Mac formatted IDE/PATA drives also can be a challenge in 2026. Your best bet may be to get one of your old machines running and then copy any important files over your local network to another computer.
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