[Albertr]

I posted that my favorite was the SE/30. It lived with me for a log time even out of the USA and back. But the one that was the best ergonomically designed was the iMac G4 that some derisibly called "the light shade." I still use a iMac now, the 20" aluminum. Great computer but it doesn't have the adjustments for the optimum viewing the iMac G4 had. It is too bad Apple dropped this wonder technology. My neck can testify that something is not as good now.

[ckilner]

All these posts are great...and there seems to be a common theme: despite a few "road apples," just about every Mac remained useful (and loved) for many years. I'll be the one to argue that Apple makes such consistently good computers that they'd put themselves out of business if they didn't make compelling new models that some just had to have.
My family of four has 6 Macs in daily use...and the newest is from 2003!
# 1999 - Tangerine iBook - 10.4.11 (9 year old daughter's bedroom computer)
# 1999 - Sawtooth G4 - 10.5.6 (9 year old daughter's computer, w/ HDD, USB 2.0, and video upgrades)
# 2000 - G4 Cube - 10.5.6 (My primary computer w/ cpu, HDD, and video upgrades)
# 2001 - Quicksilver G4 - 10.5.6 (12 year old son's computer, w/ HDD, USB 2.0, and video upgrades)
# 2003 - eMac 1GHz - 10.5.6 (wife's computer, w/ HDD upgrade)
# 2003 - iBook G3 800 - 10.4.11 (My travel computer)
We have computers that are 6-10 years old, yet they are all running a modern OS for which Apple still provides security updates... when Apple drops PPC support, we'll need some newer gear...

[bfwebster]

As the author of Macworld's official review of the Mac SE/30 ("The Mac SE Turns 030", March, 1989, p. 112), I disagree, slightly. I think the best Mac ever was the Mac IIcx, which was basically the SE/30 in a compact box with three expansion slots. The hardware design was clean, reliable, and expandable.
Things started going downhill with the IIci and IIfx, both in terms of hardware reliability (those power supplies!) and various software incompatibilities. ..bruce..

[Terrin]

The best Mac I have ever owned (and I have owned quite a few) is the new Macbook I just bought. I, however, like the Macbook Pro better. The second best Mac I ever owed was a Cube. I loved that computer.

[Podesta]

I'm with Andy, too. The Macintosh 512Ke was my first Mac. Even today, with a MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, I remember my 512Ke as one of my best purchases ever. That computer was the beginning of something significant.

[leamanc]

Add my vote for the SE/30. Definitely the greatest Mac ever, if you consider its time and place in Mac history. At the time, you had all the advantages of a compact Mac (looks, portability, great design), and all the power of the Mac II desktop machines. Its good specs and expandability meant that it could adapt to future uses long after it stopped being people's main desktop machine. Like a lot of people, I added an Ethernet card and was still using the thing as a server well into this century.
Plus, if you want to see what a FAST computer looks like, load up a fresh install of System 6.0.8 and watch this thing fly. And with the right software, you can still get a lot of good use out of System 6 (search for the System 6 Heaven website). And you could also, with the right hacks, get the SE/30 up to OS 8.1, which is not OS X, but is a pretty darn modern OS. Before Web 2.0, an SE/30 with OS 7.5 through 8.1, was just a good an Internet machine as many newer Macs.

[danmusician]

My first Mac was an SE/30. Got it with 4 Megs RAM and an 80 Meg HD. The salesman had the nerve to tell me that I would NEVER run out of room on that machine. I added the video card for an external monitor and upgraded to 8 MB RAM. Felt like I was performing open heart surgery using the case spreader to get the thing open!

My other Macs were: Performa 636CD, PowerBook 165, PowerBook 190, SuperMac 240, 1999 PowerBook (Lombard), 2000 PowerBook (Pismo), 2002 iBook, 17 inch PowerBook G4 (last generation), 20 inch Aluminum iMac.

The Lombard died one month after the warranty ran out - logic board fried. That hurt! My favorite desktop is the iMac by far. I love my 17 in PBG4, still a great machine.

But my choice for the best Mac: I also choose the SE/30. For the best portable, I go with the Pismo. The great look, the sturdy construction, the expandability options, and beautiful display all made it a great machine. My only complaint at the time was that it dropped SCSI and I had a lot of peripherals. I still have my Pismo, but it needs a new powercard or It would still be in use

[darcyb]

My first Mac experience was an unknown machine from 1993 that had an external monitor and external hard drive the same shape as the computer. It had a B&W display and I used it for MIDI sequencing.
My first virtual-owned Mac was emulating system 7 on an Amiga 1200 with 68030 expansion card at 25MHz. Disatisfied with the web browsing expeirence on the Amiga (IBrowse, AWeb, Voyager), I kept booting up the Mac meulator to use Netscape. BBEdit was my favourite text editor too. I'd actually go through the hassle of booting up the emulated environment just to use it. Having spent so much time in there, I became really cozy, and kept buying Macworld magazines. One day, the bondi iMac came out, and I fell in love. In 2000 I bought a graphite iMac DV SE @ 400mhz. It cost $2400 CDN.

My first open-box expeirence made me giddy. Within minutes I had it out and playing the Bug's Life DVD that came with it. I was amazed. The same day I wrote Apple Canada saying thanks for such an amazing computer and "getting the computer experience right". They replied saying that they enjoyed my message, had shown it around the office, and in reciprocation sent me a Think Different t-shirt. :) Oh man. Such personable treatment. I'm a happy customer.

So the graphite iMac is my most memorable Mac. It was future thinking (USB/FW), looking, and had a handle. I carried it around to so many peoples' houses. It was the wireless internet server for the building I was living in (landlord traded that service by paying my utilities). I then bought a tarnslucent Agfa scanner and 120MB floppy drive (forget the name) and began a long journey of high creativity and production of web sites, music, art and PHP/MySQL software. What a great computer! It's still in use 8 years later as my brothers' kids computer.

After that (2003) I had an iBook G4 933MHz 14". I was even MORE productive on that one. It's still in use by my brother as his main computer. It's gone through 3 keyboards thanks to the crummy ink system Apple put in use (letters keep rubbing off), but it empowers my brother's iPod, music writing in GarageBand, and forays into graphic design. Besides the keyboard, it's a stellar laptop.

After that I got a dual core 2GHz G5 tower in late 2005, the last model before Apple went intel. Although I deeply enjoyed the machine, it didn't have the speed I had hoped for media conversion. iDVD was horribly slow. The graphics cards upgrades seemed too pricey too, so gaming plans were eliminated. An itch for something faster began.

And that leads me to my 2007 intel dual core 2.16GHz Macbook 13". Now THIS is a workhorse, and is my all-time favourite Mac. It crunches video much better than the DC G5 did, runs Parallels/Bootcamp like a champ, and does much better Amiga emulation (Amiga Forever software -- you'll never pull the Amigan out of me). There's just nothing I can throw at it that doesn't feel comfortable and productive. Love it!

Having missed the other older cool Macs, I've used eBay to satisfy. I have a Mac SE FDHD in fantastic condition and I use it as often as possible. It's a brilliant machine. The hard drive is dying so I'm using an external SCSI Zip drive as its boot/storage volume and that makes it run even faster than with its original hard drive. Love it. It also lets me easily swap between different versions of the Mac OS, which I thoroughly enjoy. I get to catch-up with history this way! I had a performa 6xx or something I rescued from a friend's garage for a while, and although it was speedy, had colour, and was a great mp3 player for home fitness, it just didn't have any personality. So I gave it to a collector.

I also lusted for a Tangerine iBook when I had the iMac, and finally got one last year. It's in great condition thanks to a caring previous owner from Portland OR. It runs like a champ and I bring it out to coffee shops every now and then and have great conversations with people about it. The previous owners were so thoughtful, that when they sent it after the auction, they included a tangerine colored "enjoy the mac" card in a tangerine envelope. God, I love the Mac community.

[mrlynn]

Banging on the side of the compact Macs was the standard fix for an HD 'stiction' problem (as the techies called it); I remember whacking my SEs many times.

I still have two functioning SEs, though I don't use them for much. Ran a business on one with an 80MB GCC hard drive, and a 20 mHz accelerator; I bought it used, of course; they were too expensive new. The savior of the 9" screen was a wonderful utility called Stepping Out II, which enabled you to 'fly' over a virtual monitor of any size--giant spreadsheets? No problem!

/Mr Lynn

[darcyb]

+"Banging on the side of
the compact Macs was the standard fix for an HD 'stiction' problem (as
the techies called it); I remember whacking my SEs many times."+

Mine doesn't need wacking, but it does need to "warm up". If I try to use the HD, I have to boot it up to get it spinning, ignore the boot failure message, let it warm up for 5min or so, power off, power on, and then then it boots and works generally. But it has bad sectors on it too which I've tried to get OS 6 and 7 to flag as bad and ignore, but it just keeps saving to the bad sectors or keeps using sectors it thinks are good but aren't. I had it going reliably for a couple weeks by letting what was saved on bad sectors sit where it is, make duplicates which it will have saved elsewhere, and use those reliably. Too much hassle in the end. :) The Zip solution works great.

[Albertr]

I missed the SE/30 all in one wonder. So when the first iMac came out I bought the graphite iMac. I was so happy to have again a all in one Mac that I got each of my daughters other color iMac's.
The iMac became fantastic with the adjustable arm, a technical achievement of ergonomics since abandoned by Apple for the sake of looks preferred by designers. Today's designers have long forgotten Raymond Loewy's dictum: Good design follows function. They prefer looks even if it makes it worst to use now a days. The same happens in kitchens designers had anything to do with it. They do not cook and yet design kitchens.... for the looks. Idiots!

[paulmerrill]

The best Mac ever? It would have to be a new one. Anything else would be only best for nostalgia or historical reasons.
My choice? A new MacBook Pro, 15" with the fastest processor you can buy.
Can't afford one, though. Sigh.

[Wirkman]

I started out with a Mac Plus, moved on (for one year) to an LC 5x0 series all-in-one, then to a 6100 DOS compatible.

None of these were "the best Mac ever."

I've owned scads of Macs since, from Classics and SEs through a multitude of laptops. I own several G4 towers. I still cherish my 9650 Workgroup Server. I've been a "low-end Mac guy" from the beginning, not able to afford the new stuff, usually buying older models as new ones came out, or simply buying or picking up discarded oldies.

The best Mac I've regularly used is my current iMac. With a second monitor attached, it is a great desktop. I love it. It does everything I need and want, and does it without the frequent crashes I became accustomed to in the days before OS X.

Still, there's something to this idea that "the greatest Mac is your first Mac." But I have a revision of the notion. The greatest Mac is the first one you modified and upgraded and "took charge of." For me, that was a PowerMac 7100. I ran it with three monitors and loved it! I learned Photoshop on it. I hooked up to my first broadband Internet account with it. And I fiddled with it constantly, adding video cards, maxing out the memory, replacing CD drives, etc. It was with this computer that I dared, finally, to tinker.

Undoubtedly many other computers I've owned since were faster, and for that reason, better. But the 7100's three monitor capability -- all of which I got second- or third-hand, and for next to nothing, nine years ago, was very pleasing.

I was early to the Mac, but late to tinkering. But I've made up for that tardiness by investing in a great quantity of used Macs since that 7100. And quality, too, since I use my iMac the most.

I have never worked or played with a current Mac tower, so the high end of the Mac universe still eludes me.

But with multiple iPods, an Apple TV, and a hoard of networked Macs in my office and at home, I have reached a kind of technical nirvana. I bought a very nice digital piano, recently, and hooked up the audio outs to my MBox attached to my iMac. But the next connection will be a serial connection (for MIDI) to my Power Macintosh 5500/225. Yes, there are still uses for these old Macs.

[SkateNewYork]

Great post, Wirkman. Most thoughts that come from the heart usually are.