Re: What sort of Apple user are you?

[Linards Ticmanis <ticmanis@gmx.de>]

On 04/29/2011 07:39 PM, D Finnigan wrote:

> What type would you say that you are? Or even better, can you come up with
> more? (Humorous stereotypes, anyone?)

I used Apple II+ computers (they might have been clones, can't tell from
memory) equipped with green-screen monitors for a one-week Apple LOGO
project in 7th grade, which was in 1986. At that point our school only
offered real CS classes to 11th graders and above, and no computers were
used in any other classes. Being the proud owner (thanks to daddy) of a
TI-66 programmable calculator since 1983 or so, and of a Commodore 64
since 1985, I have to say I was less than awed by the Apples at that
point, especially as regards gaming. I remember that they ran with the
top cover removed to prevent overheating, so probably they were in fact
clones since I don't think that would've been necessary on real Apples.

I got back into Apples in connection with collecting Ultima series RPGs.
As the first five of them were originally written on the Apple, I
thought I should have one and so got a very dusty Apple II clone via a
small ad in a local free-ads paper - at a time when eBay still required
a credit card in Germany and college students couldn't easily get one.
And of course there was no Craigslist. Most people who called wanted to
know why in the world I wanted a Mac II (never having heard of anything
older than that), or if I was out of my mind (this was about 1998 if I
remember correctly, and Apples had gone from "minor craze" to "useful"
to "unremarkable" to "old junk", but not yet to "collectible").

Later I also bought a real Apple II Europlus and two IIe computers. One
of the IIes got a NTSC mainboard, and I also modded the Europlus for
NTSC - the picture is so much better than on PAL that I think it's no
miracle that Apples sold so poorly over here, compared to the US. I
already had a couple of Commodores at that point (the three breadbox
computers and a C128 D), and I'm now the proud owner of a couple more
machines from the heyday of home computing -- TI-99, Sinclair ZX81 and
ZX Spectrum, Atari 800XL, Amiga 500 and a Mac SE/30. So you could call
me a collector, but not really of "rare" stuff or Apple-specific, more
of mainstream early 1980s machines and accessories.

-- 
Linards Ticmanis