Like others, I thought it will be fitting for me to recount some simple milestones in how I got started in Macs and Apple.

This is my very first Mac – the iBook G4 12-inch.

I could not remember exactly which generation it was, except for the fact that I took ownership of it in December 2004. It was the very last one made in Taiwan before the production was shifted to China.

It was the cheapest computer (even among the PCs!) at the time that my university offered, and I got one partly for that reason (also receiving the news around the same time that my cousin ordered the almost 4000 dollar 12-inch Powerbook).

I did not like Mac OS X at the start, and it took me a while before I grew to like it, and then love it. Mingling among other Apple users (there were very very few of them in school then) helped, and I eventually got involved in MacNUS.

This was me during one of the Matriculation Notebook Fairs held at the Yusof Ishak Hall, I was tending the Apple (Diversitec) booth of course. I spend most of my time drinking iced tea since there were not many customers on most days then.

Eventually this became my official room setup, after finding out the wonders of screen spanning on Mac OS X. I purchased a Apple Pro Keyboard (the white one) and paired it with probably the Razer Pro mouse for the setup.

Then my very first desktop Mac appeared in my life – the 2007 Aluminium iMac 24-inch. This was the very first of the aluminium iMacs that will span all the time until today.

The iBook got relegated to being the “side desk computer”. For the first time there was not a single Windows computer in my room.

By the way, in case you are wondering, all my Macs are still working fine today. The 2007 iMac is still in regular use on my desk, especially for podcast production, and my iBook is still running fine as well.

This eventually became the setup (before I started buying other newer Macs) involving my first Mac notebook and Mac desktop. Can you spot the iPods?

I also got to know some of my longest friends since getting involved with the local Mac User Group. The group is largely dead, but three of the friends I got to know then I still talk to on a very regular basis.

What is your Apple story?