The first personal computer I ever owned was an Apple IIc.  This lovely transportable computer came with 128KBytes of RAM, the ability to do 80-columns of text,  Double  High Resolution Graphics (560x192), the ability to toggle between standarnd and Dvorak keyboard layouts and a Western Design Center 65C02 running at 1.0 MHz! This "Snow White" dream machine cost nearly $2000 when you included the RGB Color Monitor. From that day on, I was a confirmed Apple fan -- and I truly believed it would be Apple ][ Forever!

Unfortunately, at that point I didn't realize that there is a difference between marketing hype and product strategy.  Apple had invested a lot of money into a new way of interacting with the computer which wasn't fully realizable on the Apple ][ line -- Graphical User Interfaces.  After the Steve Job's Lisa line had failed to produce any substantial cost-recovery income, the future of Apple was riding on the newly released Macintosh line of computers.  However, there was a need to keep the substantial base of Apple ][ users from abandoning ship while the Macintosh was developing it's own user base -- hence the Apple ][ Forever lie.

When the Apple IIGS came out it was a completely awesome machine.  A 2.8 MHz 16-bit Western Design Center 65816 processor, 512KBytes of RAM and mind-blowing graphics and sound capabilities (for the time).  It even had a GUI interface for those who wanted it.  Clearly this was the answer that the Apple ][ folks had to the whole Macintosh phenomenon.   It was time to start saving for a real computer to replace my trusty IIc.

The excitement couldn't last long, though.  Even the dealers who were stocking the IIGS knew that Apple wasn't committed to the Apple II platform.  All Apple wanted to focus on was the Macintosh and its peripherals.  This was so disenchanting that I began to distance myself from Apple computers for the better part of the next 17 years.

My primary machine was still my trusty IIc.  However, I took a job working at Pan American University in Edinburg, TX in their computer labs.  This meant that I had to learn to work with MS-DOS for the AT-compatible systems.  I was also introduced to a DEC VAX running VMS (with BITNET access) and AT&T 3B1 terminal using UNIX.

Pan American takes delivery of their first Macintosh computers.  I borrowed one for a weekend and wrote my first Macintosh programs in Turbo Pascal!  Despite the fact that I was able to master the Mac programming model relatively quickly, I was still very unhappy with Apple and didn't particularly care for Macs.

In the Fall, I went to Carnegie Mellon (with my IIc in tow) and was introduced to UNIX systems in a big way.  I was a convert, despite not particularly caring for the AT&T UNIX I had worked with over the last year.  This is partly due, no doubt, to the incredible user community there at CMU.  However, I would also attribute some of it to the fact that CMU used BSD-derived UNIX systems, rather than System V.

Carnegie Mellon also had Macintosh computers and provided reasonable support for the users who wanted to use them.  To work at the Computer Clusters, I had to be able to work the Mac, so I learned everything I could about it, but I still preferred UNIX.

Folks from NeXT came to CMU to show off the bells and whistles that NEXTSTEP 1.0 was capable of.  One of the most attractive and important features was the Interface Builder tool for designing GUI interactions.  For the next 5 years or so, I flirted with the notion that owning a NeXTStation was worthwhile.

By now, my Apple IIc was back home in Houston, Texas.  I would only see it again briefly on visits home before I eventually lost track of it around 1995.

I took a job in October as a Systems Administrator for the CMU Statistics Department.  I had to support a lot of Unix machines, a few PCs running DOS and 1 Macintosh.  By this time, I was a hard-core UNIX fan and had no time for other operating systems.

On the evening of my one-month anniversary at Statistics, I asked Deborah Miller out to dinner.  Debbie was also in Alpha Phi Omega, a co-ed service fraternity, and happened to have (unbeknownst to me) a big crush on me.

Debbie purchased a Mac Classic and a Personal Laserwriter 610 so that she could work from her apartment and not have to go to campus to print things out.

I started maintaining the comp.os.mach FAQ.   I was excited about MACH because:

1. It was developed at CMU.
2. It had been picked as the kernel for OSF/1.
3. There was a system known as Mac MACH that allowed you to run OS 7.x applications under MACH on a Mac IIfx or Quadra.
4. It was the kernel of the NEXTSTEP OS.

I moved from Statistics to the Pittsburgh Super Computing Center.  In the process, I lost track of the comp.os.mach FAQ.  :-(

I finally paid for a computer on my own - a used Amiga 3000 (IIRC).  I never did very much with this system before I sold it due to a cash shortage.

As part of my work setup, I was able to obtain a NeXT Cube to use as a workstation at home.  With the DOV 19.2 Kbps SLIP line I had, I was able to do some X-based interactive GUI sessions from machines at work.  Mostly, though, I used local windows.

By this time, I was doing a lot of the PREPNet related work that PSC was contracted to do, including going to various PREPNet meetings.

In April, I moved from PSC to working for PREPNet, which had decided to in-source some of the work that had previously been farmed out to PSC and PREPNet members.

At PREPNet, I had an SGI Indigo as my primary workstation (igi.prep.net) - and it hosted my first web site.  I also had a x86 laptop that I used for field work.  I ran Windows 3.3 for Microsoft Office, but otherwise, I ran Linux on it.

My PREPNet co-workers, however, were a strictly Macintosh setup.  :-)

I convinced Debbie that we had to purchase an x86 system so that I could run Linux.  To fund the nearly $3000 price-tag, Debbie had to sell her Mac Classic, although we kept the Laserwriter and continued to use it until early 2001.  Although I wasn't at all unhappy about it at the time, I later regretted this very, very much.

When I heard about Apple purchasing NeXT after Steve Jobs' return as CEO, I briefly thought that perhaps some day Apple would make a product that I would want to use again.  The closest that they came during this time was when I used a Newton for about 6 months.

My interest in Linux was so strong that I decided to make augmenting the security of Linux the topic of my M.S. thesis from the University of Pennsylvania.

Despite my strong interest, I struggled frequently with using Linux as my primary platform, while still needing to access Windows for some productivity software or work related programs.  I did an awful lot of dual-booting and generally hated things.

I had left PREPNet for the University of Pennsylvania in 1995.  I left UPenn for an ISP called AppliedTheory in 1999.  That lasted until ATHY went bankrupt and I began working for an ISP called FASTNET in May of 2002.

I had finally reached the end of my rope.  After working with Linux for the better part of 9 years, I was fed up with not being able to do some of the basic things that I could do under Windows without having to jump through several hoops, lighting my hair on fire, sacrificing a chicken under the full moon -- and still have things not work.

I had tried running nothing but Linux.  That didn't work for me.

I had tried running nothing but Windows XP with CYGWIN for a psuedo-UNIX interface.  That didn't work for me either.

In desperation, I turned to the only platform that I thought might solve my problems - Mac OS X.  It was based on UNIX (Perhaps NEXTSTEP?  I wasn't sure).  Yet it had the GUI look and feel that made Macs so much easier to use.  Plus, it had the productivity apps I needed to get most of my job done and still entertain myself at the same time -- without dual-booting.  It was the promise of realizing exactly what I wanted a computer system to be.  I had to try it.

I purchased my first Macintosh in January of 2003.  It was an eMac 700 MHz G4.  I fell in love with it right away.  It did so many things so much better and more reliably than either Linux or Windows.

By April, I had convinced Debbie that she needed a Mac too -- so we bought her an iMac 1.0GHz G4 with 17" flat-screen (the sunflower model).  At this point, I decided to erradicate as many traces of Windows as I could from my life.  Further, I would only use Linux as a server OS -- at least until I could afford an XServe.

In June, I got the opportunity to get a PowerMac Beige G3 desktop system for $25.00 for the girls to use for their educational games.

By November, I decided that I needed an Apple laptop as well - so I got myself an iBook 12" G4.  It didn't take me long to begin using the iBook exclusively, so I replaced my brother-in-law's failed Windows computer with my eMac - count another switcher!

Unfortunately, 2003 was not a good year for FASTNET - the bankruptcy resulted in another change of employer - this time to a CLEC called US LEC.

Finally, for Christmas, I bought a collection of kit pieces to build my own Pentium 4 server for home use.  The kit was nice - a small form factor that almost looks as nicely designed as the abundant Apple hardware that I have.