[MacOldHand]

My experience is similar to mjtomlin's. An SE was my first Mac purchase in 1987, having worked with all of the previous models for a few years. My first hard disk for it was a 40MB Jasmine "DirectDrive" with a price tag of about $750. Oh, how I lusted for a Jasmine BackPack (hope I have the name right), a hard disk in a case that would hang out of sight on the back of the SE with its angled design made to flow stylishly with the lines of the SE. The computer got all of the upgrades over time, though instead of an SE/30 motherboard, it received a 30Mhz Gemini 68030 processor card. Many early Mac memories came from that machine.



Of course, each following Mac (PB 160, 165c, PM 7500, PB G4/500, MBP 17") upped the ante and contributed significantly to my personal Mac history. They were all my favorites, especially during their first year of use.



I have similarly fond memories of various other models I used often but never owned. The IIci always stood out for me.

[Verner]

I have to favourites I´ve owned ;
-My first Mac,the Macintosh Classic. I loved that mac, used it for DTP and made a lot of presenations in Litterature in the lovely app Hypercard.
This Mac is still with me and boots like a charm .
- The MacBook Pro 17" . Lovely. This is my primary mac now ( I am holding off buying a Mac Pro until they´re with Nehalem...)
The MBP has been such a workhorse for me. It´s fast, has a locely screen and is very sturdy.
A full list of all my Macs : (bear with me)
Macintosh Classic
Macintosh Classic II
Macintosh LC II
Macintosh Performa 6300 AV ( The only Mac I´ve had that sucked)
iMac Bondiblue
PowerMac G4 400mhz
iMac G4 17"
iBook 14" (wifes)
iBook 12"(sons)
iMac G5 20"
Mac mini
MacBook Pro 17" + Apple Cinema Display 23"
iMac 24" 3.06

[dolphinbuddy]

My first computer was an SE30. It was used and several years old, and I LOVED that thing. I would've never gotten geeky without it. I cannot believe I ran illustrator on that thing.

[JoeC]

For me it's a toss up between my first Mac (the original SE), and my first Mac Laptop, the WallStreet PowerBook G3. (Funny, I just realized I skipped over the entire non-Jobs era of Apple.) The SE got me through high school and most of college. The PowerBook got me through my first five years of professional life. I haven't since kept any computer as my main machine for nearly that long. I still have the PowerBook, and it still works. A friend found me an SE to replace my original one a few years back. It makes for a great conversation piece, and it runs Photoshop 1.0 great.

[soulbarn]

The SE30 was great. But hard to believe that nobody has mentioned a more recent model as a candidate - the PowerBook 12" G4 (the 2005 edition, with the 1.33 CPU, 166 MHz bus, and the SuperDrive, especially - as well as the later 1.5 CPU version.) FireWire, DVI out, 64MB VRAM, 2048 x 1536 external display support - the list goes on.
The hard drive size was 60GB, and replacing it is a bear, but you can easily bump the RAM up to 1.25GB, and it will run Leopard beautifully, I assure you. (Snow Leopard? Who knows.)
As a compact machine, for me, it opens a can of whup on the Macbook Air. Yes, it is heavier, but the form factor makes it more portable - it fits better in smaller bags, and on airplane trays. And since I can use extra batteries, I can actually bring it on those long flights from the west coast of the USA to Asia and be productive. Add the firewire and Ethernet port, two USBs...
You can get a used one on eBay for about $400-$600 (or track prices on lowendmac.com.) I have a Macbook Pro that I love, and use as my primary around-town and short-hop laptop, but the G4 remains my rugged conditions machine.
Pure quality, workmanship, pragmatic, gorgeous design.

[Grapho]

leicaman said:

My best Mac? Well, my first was a Quadra 950 at work with 256 meg of RAM. Got it the first week they were out. $10,000 and glad work paid for it and not me.

But the best Mac? My current Mac Pro Harpertown 8 core monster. This is by far the best Mac I've ever used or owned.

Can't wait for the bug fixes in OS X, though, 10.5.6 has a few bugs I can't wait to get squashed.

Message was edited by: leicaman

I am not a very nostalgic kind of guy, but I have to agree with you on this one. The best Mac ever is my 8 core Mac Pro running 10.5.6. I really don't miss the crashing and rebooting of the old 9.2.2 days.

[Philistine]

I'm especially fond of several of the Macs I've owned. My first was the SE with the 20MB hard drive. I added memory (from 1MB to 4MB - yee-hah!), installed a 68030 processor card (itself with 8MB RAM), a larger hard drive and attached oh so many SCSI devices. It was my SE30-wannabe. I eventually gave it to my Dad for his office. He unceremoniously gave it to a friend. Bummer.
My second was the IIci. I still own it, and it still works. I added all kinds of stuff to it, including a 68040 processor upgrade card, 10Base-T card, and a RasterOPS video card I was given when NuBus cards became obsolete with the advent of the PCI Macs.
Third, my G3 All-In-One. I liked the form factor a lot. It was like an expandable iMac; but it seemed to require a lot of tinkering to keep running. Eventually, the analog board blew, then blew again - and I used the external video port to run my old Apple RGB monitor from my IIci. I installed Jaguar on it and ran it for awhile, but it finally became too much trouble and I got rid of it. Pity; it had a lot going for it, but failed in the execution.
4. iMac DVD SE. Nice, but not world-beating to someone who likes to add stuff. I still have it, and it still works, running Tiger.
5. Titanium PowerBook. My first laptop, which I loved and quit using only after my son broke the hinges trying to open it flat (that hurt).
6. My Blue/white G3, which I bought second-hand on ebay. I tricked it out with 1000Base-T, SCSI and SATA cards, and It's still in use as my server, although it's on its last legs since I can't run Leopard on it without buying a fast G4 processor upgrade, which won't be supported by Leopard Server. Pity. It's the most expandable Mac I've owned.
7. My MacBook Pro. A nice, solid laptop, although it doesn't have quite the tight feel of the T-book.
All in all, I liked the IIci, SE and T-book best, and the G3 AIO least (although I loved all the ports and the expandability - just not the unreliability). I wish Apple would make a mini-tower model, which would be my next purchase in a heartbeat; otherwise I'll probably get a second-hand Mac Pro, which is overkill for my current needs.
Cheers!

[wpwily]

I started with an SE, and it was a great machine. I still have it and it still works.

But for my favorite Mac I am torn between the IIci that replaced it, and the 7600 I was finally able to afford years later. Both of those machines were reliable workhorses for me. I upgraded both of them to faster processors (the 7600 twice). When I got the 7600 I switched my Internet experience from Windows to the Mac (Eudora and Netscape), and I've stayed there ever since.

Since then its been a G4 iMac, and a succession of Intel iMacs. My son had a G5 iMac at one point also (BTW, this machine never had a logic board, video, or power supply failure in 3 years, and is still being used by my in-laws. So they weren't all bad).

[ckilner]

The "best ever" is tough, but the SE/30 is definitely in the running due to its longevity.
The TiBook influenced every 'Book that followed... so it's iconic.
The PowerMac G4 (Sawtooth) was eminantly upgradable...
...yeah... give the "best" label to the SE/30.
I've owned dozens of Macs and have used the following as my primary computer (in approximately this order):
Macintosh IIci (given away to a school)
PowerBook 150 (still works)
PowerMac 6100, 7100 (given away to a school)
iBook 366 (Indigo) (given to neice)
PowerMac G3 (B&W) (traded for the iMac)
iMac SE (given to nephew)
iBook 800 (32 VRAM) (still use on road)
PowerMac G4 Cube (800MHz Sonnet/1.25GB RAM/160GB HD/AP/256MB Gf 6200/OS X 10.5.6/Dell 1904FP)
The Cube has a wonderful design, is easy to upgrade, and has many nice features - quiet, small, wireless, upgradable CPU, upgradable video, USB... it just lacked perceived value when introduced.
I picked mine (a 450MHz DVD model c. 2000 w/ speakers and kb/ms) up in 2007 for $100 and spent another $200 on RAM, HD, CPU (800MHz) and video (GeForce 6200) upgrades. It runs Leopard fine for browsing, email, iLife, Office v.X, TurboTax, etc. - and it just looks so cool.
My personal favorites are the Indigo iBook and the Cube... fun, stylish, and useful (and never mistaken for a PC!).

[barakthecat]

Well, my first Mac was the 512e, which eventually made way for an LC III (which was so backordered that Apple released its successor, an all-in-one LC that had a built in CD-ROM drive before mine even shipped). The LC III served me well until it was replaced by a PowerMac G3 (which served me the longest) which was then augmented by a Pismo PowerBook G3. The Pismo was replaced by the final model of the Titanium Powerbook (which I still have), which finally gave way to my current machine - the last revision of the plastic MacBook. Along the way I used the IIci, the maligned IIvx, the G3, G4, and G5 iMacs, and various others.
My favorite out of all of them? Definitely the Pismo. Two battery bays for flights to California, Zip drive for serious file storage, built-in firewire, PC card for USB when it because useful, Airport wireless. And it just looked cool.

[natinja]

My favourite Mac was an Amiga 3000 upgraded with a 68060 processor running the Shapeshifter Mac emulator.

[bgreinke]

My best Mac? My 250-MHz Wallstreet PowerBook, may it rest in peace (er, pieces).
When it first came out, the 13.3-inch 250-MHz G3 Wallstreet had an 83-MHz system bus, allowing it to outperform even the desktop machines of the day, making it the fastest Mac available, period. After some had overheating problems, later models were manufactured with only a 66-MHz bus, but not mine!
Built like a tank, the thing travelled with me across the country and across the globe on multiple occasions. Easy to pop open and work on, it had its RAM and hard drive upgraded more than once. At one point, I found a used 14" screen on eBay and even gave it a screen upgrade.
And let's not forget one of the Wallstreet's best features—drive/battery bays. With two bays that could be filled with either batteries, optical drives, floppy drives, Zip drives, or extra hard drives, you could tailor your Mac to your needs on a daily basis. (Are you listening, Apple?) Most days, I'd leave the CD-ROM at home and have double the battery life. And speaking of batteries, you could put the machine to sleep and swap batteries without having to shut down and reboot, something my later iBook and G4 PowerBook couldn't do (Hey, Apple, listen up!).
Born before USB and lacking FireWire (SCSI ruled the Earth at the time), it certainly had its limitations. But it did run OS X for a year or two before that fateful day I heard a tiny POP, smelled a minute amount of smoke, and knew it would never boot again. RIP, Wallstreet!

[MacOldHand]

ok, now it's all about geek factor!


[quote name='natinja']My favourite Mac was an Amiga 3000 upgraded with a 68060 processor running the Shapeshifter Mac emulator.

[tewha]

I could go through all the Macs I've used, but the bottom line is that my favorite is my unibody MacBook. Sure, it doesn't have Firewire, but I've only really missed it once. But the MacBook is reasonably fast, can run up-to-date software, and has withstood multiple attacks by a toddler that would have crippled my previous, non-unibody laptops.