[thevibesman]

Age 2, Mac Plus. One of my earliest memories---possibly the earliest[1]---is the night my parents first set it up and had a box of disks they were using to install software on a 30MB external SCSI HD. I remember really wanting to use it, but I had to wait until the morning because they had to learn how to use it first.

I think we started with System Software 2.0(4.0), but it might have been an earlier version. Soon updated to System Software 5.0 and MultiFinder (and 4MB of RAM for multifinder). I remember the upgrade to System Software 6.0, because my copy of Dark Castle stopped working---eventually I figured out that there was a copy of System and Finder on Disk 1 and that I could boot from that instead of the external SCSI HD.

My parents bought the computer for office use in their jewelry design/manufacturing studio; so I could use it there when they were doing bring-kid-to-work-daycare, but they also often brought it home in the Mac Plus carrying case. I have fond memories of using the How to Use Your Mac tutorial: the mouse tutorial and the start was fun and something I could easily learn by watching; I remember the Finder tutorial that followed challenging as it had text instructions so at first I couldn't do it on my own and would need help---I think trying to do the Finder tutorial played a big part in learning how to read.

I remember using Mac Paint a lot, but also watching my mother work on the computer and wanting to learn what she was doing: Mac Draw (for jewelry design), Excel[2], and CAT IV (CRM). My pediatritian was also a Mac user and would go to Mac World and would give me disks with SWAG games he got.

Later when my parents got a Macintosh Performa 575[3] to replace the Mac Plus, they made the fatal mistake of setting it up at home---I wasn't going to let that multimedia machine go! Luckily they made a good parenting decision and decided it would be better for my sister and I to have access to the Performa since they could get by a little longer on the Mac Plus at their office. Eventually they brought the Performa to work and replaced that with a PowerMac 7200/75.

[1]: Side note: Around this time also saw 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time; my father got it for me as a 1st birthday present.

[2]: I liked using simple expressions for calculations, but mostly making graphs; lots of pet graphs (i.e. 1 cat, and various numbers of fish).

[3]: Might be mistaken on the specific model.