Apple Macintoshes I Have Known

Macintosh PowerBook G3 292Mhz 64MB 4GB + CD ROM, Floppy disk drive + Zip drive + Internal 57.6K modem.

The earliest Apple Macintosh computers look primitive but these were the foundation on which all personal computing was built!

The first personal computer I ever used was the Mac Plus, in 1987, when experimenting with the idea of using it in page make-up for World Magazine which I was then editing. It was clear that the technology didn't yet satisfy our DTP demands but we anticipated that within two or three years we would have to move in that direction (in fact by 1991). However, from 1988 to 1991 I was also using a Mac Classic for word processing.

The big change occurred in 1991 when two miracle machines appeared. The first was the Mac llsi, which was soon followed by the Mac Quadra which I used in newspaper offices in Zagreb during the first few months of the Serbo-Croat wars. This was my first experience of utterly reliable DTP using QuarkXpress (involving direct-input of text and images) where all aspects of page make-up was digital. This made it far easier to keep news pages abreast of rapidly moving events and allowed reporters like myself to adjust and update stories right up to the last minute. Previously, few of us had ever been able to check or alter anything after our type-written copy had been submitted to sub-editors.

But the real revolution was the emergence, in 1991/92 of the first true portable, the PowerBook 100, which gave reporters the freedom to roam and then to download their work directly into the news-room systems where one could continue to work on it.

Later in 1992 I bought a PowerBook Duo 210, which despite its 16 shades of grey, remained the mainstay of my professional work – nearly all of it living out suitcases – until 1996. I then up-graded to a Duo 2300c – the first colour lap-top with enough speed to make full use of web access.

This page has been produced (in 1997) with my current PowerBook G3 – the first portable to offer all the power and speed of the best desk-tops.