You’re going to be stunned that my first computer wasn’t an Apple product.

While I’ve used Apple computers since 4th grade (83-84 year), I never owned a computer of my own until my senior year of college.

I was a first generation college student from a working class background, working (and borrowing) my way through college. Finally, I moved off campus and no longer had easy access to the computer labs in the dorms.

So I bought a Commodore 64 and used it to connect to the campus Unix network for email, web browsing (how about a shout out for those of you who used Lynx?), IRC, etc.

This was late ’96 / early ’96.

It sounds ridiculous, but it was certainly better than running back to campus to check email … and my I certainly couldn’t afford anything more expensive. I was subsisting on Ramen noodles and 80% lean hamburger as it was …

About a year later, I bought my first “modern” computer, a Mac 6500.