My First Mac

Salute to a Classic II

Max Thom Stahl - 2000.07.31

With a nostalgic tear in my eye, I remember my first Mac. It was a little Macintosh Classic II that my father bought when I was just six or seven. I didn't really pay much attention Mac Classic to what he did with it; I gather mostly it was spreadsheets and junklets having to do with word processing and SPSS (a statistical analysis program that's older than the digital hills).

What I remember most was the games.

You may remember them: old school 68K games that weren't designed around good graphics or even good programming. They were just there, and if you liked them you could send a couple of dollars to whoever had made them. The 68K era was a time where programmers made games so that they could play them, and if anyone else wanted to join in on the fun, they could, and if they enjoyed themselves enough, they could show their appreciation however they saw fit. Of course, I didn't realize all that back then: I just played the games and marveled at how much nicer this "Macintosh" thingy was than the old IBM PC in the other room.

I picked up the nuances of the graphic user interface almost immediately, and, with the help of my father, learned the basics (and a bit more) of the operating system.

It was so much easier than DOS! And, at the same time, it was so much more stable than Windows 3.11, which I, being a seven-year-old, totally could not comprehend.

A year or so later, I wrote all my reports on the same Mac Classic, and I wrote some of my better works of fiction years later than that on the same machine. When I was eight, it had been augmented by an external hard drive and something new called a CD-ROM, which mystified me and gave me no end of amusement.

Right now, my old friend is still with me, in a way. It resides in an unused corner of my music studio, next to the right channel of my stereo system, just across the room from where I sit while typing this. Regretfully, time did take its toll on my oldest friend, and right now it has some monitor problems that I gave up on a few months ago. I have three SE/30s to make up for it, but it just isn't the same.

Many of my more enthusiastic compatriots out there in the Macintosh world will understand: you can never forget your first anything, but it's especially hard to forget your first Mac.

To my Mac Classic: I salute you.

Join us on Facebook!

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: Mac IIfx, introduced 1990.03.19. This 'wicked fast' 40 MHz Mac trumped the 33 MHz DOS world.
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

Go to the My First Mac index.

Custom Search

Follow Low End Mac on Twitter
Join Low End Mac on Facebook

Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler 11 is now in the Mac App Store!! -- Special Introductory Price of $59.95!! -- To Buy From The Mac App Store Click Here Now!! Or buy direct from Strider Software.

Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker and Mac Casino applications in minutes.

Affiliates

Amazon.com
The Apple Store
The iTunes Store
PC Connection Express
GainSaver
Parallels Desktop for Mac
eBay

Advertise

Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2012 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPad iPhone, iMac, iPod, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.
Advice is presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Email may be published at our discretion unless marked "not for publication"; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.