Happy Birthday Mac

BBC News: Apple's first Macintosh turns 25

The Macintosh - the first Apple computer to bear the name - turns 25 on 24 January.  The machine debuted in 1984 and kicked off a product line that were Apple's flagship computers for many years.  The Macintosh helped popularise the combination of graphical interface and mouse that is ubiquitous today.  The machine was unveiled using a hugely expensive TV advert, directed by film maker Ridley Scott and shown during the US Superbowl on 22 January 1984.

We got our first MacBook Pro laptop in late 2005.  Since then we've got a Mac Mini that's acting as print and file server, upgraded the MacBook Pro, and got a MacBook for Hubby.  We stood in line for the release of Leopard, MacOS 10.5, and have the t-shirts they were handing out that day.

The first computer I ever had was a Commodore VIC-20, some time after 1981.  I think we got it through the classified ads in the East Anglian Daily Times newspaper.  It connected to a small TV, and a tape drive, and you could slot a memory expansion pack into the back of it.  It was replaced with an Acorn Electron with only a few games.  I programmed a little on the Vic, more on the Electron.  When I went to university there were X Terminals, Windows machines, and the Mac Lab.  I couldn't ever log on to a machine in the Mac lab and I preferred the XTerms.