I've been using Macs since 1986, and bought myself a Macintosh SE when they first came out in 1987. Thus began my history of buying unupgradeable "dead-end" Macs: the SE, the LC, the PowerPC 7200, and finally the original iMac.
The only survivor of this dead-end trend is my original "Bondi Blue" iMac, which still works (runs OS X Jaguar... when I turn it on), but has been supplanted by a few newer toys:
- an iMac G5,
- a Mac Mini G4, and last but not least
- a black 13" MacBook
The iMac is the cornerstone of my home recording studio, with a TASCAM FW-1804 interface box serving as the input/output gateway for both audio and MIDI.
The Mac Mini recently became the cornerstone of my home network by becoming its main server machine, supplanting the Linux-based Martian NetDrive that one day just wouldn't boot back up... :-(
And the MacBook is... well, as I keep mentioning to people, the best computer I've ever owned. :-)
I recently got the chance to contribute material to the fourth edition of O'Reilly's book, Mac OS X for Unix Geeks. Previous editions of the book have been treasure troves of great information for Unix-savvy people who want to get their feet wet with Mac OS X. Thanks to everyone at O'Reilly—especially Brian Jepson and Ernest Rothman—for this opportunity. The book will be published in the fall of 2008.
