Firsts...

With Apple celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of the first Macintosh computer earlier this week, it got me thinking about "firsts" in terms of technology. More specifically, when did you use or own your first of something?

I really want to know! So please answer the following either in the comments or in your own blog post. If you opt for the latter, I'd love it if you would link to your post in the comments. Be as specific with the make and model as you can.

Techie Firsts

First Computer: A TI-99/4A on which my dad taught me how to program in BASIC and save those little programs to what amounted to audio cassettes that I would have to playback into the computer and could take multiple hours to load. The system also had cartridge games that you could play, which made it doubly cool. Patience was a virtue with Texas Instruments, but I loved that computer.

Subsequent computers include a Tandy my dad bought when I was in high school running IBM OS/2. My introduction to Apple products was an Apple IIGS in my middle school computer lab in 1987 (which was awesome for its detached keyboard) and my first Mac was at Iowa State University in 1993. The first computer I owned personally was a Packard Bell with Windows 3.1 in about 1994 or 95 when I was at Northern Illinois. I actually customized/upgraded it a lot thanks to a computer store in DeKalb that I frequented. Even though it wasn't supposed to work, I made it run Windows 95. Couldn't tell you how, but I did. I was quite the little computer tinkerer back then. Not anymore. They scare me.


The Apple IIGS

First Laptop Computer: A Mac PowerBook G3 "Lombard" with a bronze keyboard exactly like the one Carrie Bradshaw used in the Sex and the City TV series. I got mine in 1999 with help from my parents for which I did eventually pay them back. It has a hot-swappable expansion port so I could switch out between a DVD-ROM and ZIP Drive while the machine was running. No need to reboot. So far as I know, it still works. Been a while since I booted it up, though. This became Katie's and my only computer until 2005 when we bought an iMac and then an aluminum MacBook in 2009 (I think).

First Video Game Console: My parents bought an Atari 2600 for themselves (it wasn't supposed to be for my brother and me, but that changed) that we played the heck out of for years. But the first we owned that was chosen by my brother and I was the old 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the first I owned personally was the TurboGrafx-16. Since then I've also owned a Super Nintendo, Sony PlayStation II, Nintendo GameCube (still own), and Nintendo Wii (still own).

First Portable Gaming System: Game Boy. The old gray brick, baby! Wasn't that everyone's first? Although I really wanted the TurboExpress since it used the same game cards as the full-size TurboGrafx-16 game console. That was unheard of back then and SOOOOOO cool. I never understood why it didn't catch on more for that fact alone. I have also owned and still own a Game Boy Color (first in blue and now in yellow) and a Nintendo DS.

First Home Video Recording/Playback Technology (VHS, Betamax, DVD, LD): VHS, although I have no idea what brand. We currently own DVD. And those are all I've ever owned. Never had Betamax or LD or Blu-Ray (not yet on that last one, anyway).

First Video Camera: Other than our iPhones and point-and-shoot cameras, we still don't own a dedicated video camera.

First PDA (Personal Digital Assistant, not Public Displays of Affection): Palm IIIc. I inherited several Palm devices from my dad and brother before my wife bought me my first only-owned-by-me Palm, the Tungsten E2, and I loved that thing.

First MP3 Player: The third generation iPod purchased in 2004 that is still very much alive and in use after almost a decade. Before this, I was rocking with a Sony MiniDisc player that, if I had waited another year and upgraded instead of buying an iPod, could have been my first MP3 playback technology of sorts since you could save the actual compressed MP3 files to a blank MD and the players would decompress and playback thus expanding their capacity to multiple hours on a single disc. Before that, MDs could only save uncompressed music at a rate equivalent to a blank CD.

First Smartphone: A Nokia E71, which was given to me as a tester device by some Nokia blog back in 2008 to try out. It was great. Fantastic design and, at the time, capability. But it just cost way too much money for me to ever want to buy one. After that, I owned a BlackBerry Bold. Funny thing reading the Wiki on this is that the earliest Bold is the 9650 but what I owned, despite being told it was the first generation of a BB Bold, was much more equivalent in appearance and feature set to the Tour or Tour 2 (rebranded as the Bold 9650 although the Bold shows a touchpad and I had a rollerball). Next was my iPhone 4 and currently the 5C.

First Tablet: iPad 2 for both Katie (white) and me (black).

Any other firsts I forgot to include?

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Comments

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Kevin Spencer

Heh, awesome post sir.

My first computer was a Commodore 64. Loved that thing. Remember back in those days waiting 15 mins for a game to load from tape?

My first personal laptop was a MacBook Pro in 2008, my first Mac ever actually. Sure I'd had a couple of work laptops before that but this was the first one of my own.

First video game console was a SNES. Loved that thing to death. I owned two of them actually. A European PAL version, and the NTSC American version. The American version was all square and boxy, the European one was curved and aerodynamic ;-) I was also a bit of a Nintendo console guy. After the SNES I had a N64, a GameCube, then a Wii.

As far as portables go, I also owned a Gameboy but I can't say it was my first. My Sister and I had these Game & Watch portable LCD games when we were kids. Those were awesome.

And yeah, VHS for me too. Two of my friends' parents jumped on the ill fated Betamax train and I was always fascinated with the different size tapes when I'd go over to their house.

Never owned a video camera, nor PDA of any kind.

First MP3 player, one of the first generations of iPod with the black & white screen.

First smartphone was an iPhone 3Gs.

First tablet, does a Kindle count? If so, then it was a Kindle.

kapgar


I meant to mention those handheld games. I had some I those too. Football and the like. I'm a Nintendo guy, too, despite owning a Playstation. I never enjoyed that as much as the Nintendo consoles. 

Ren

First computer: Dad's Apple ][+, followed by my own Amiga 1000, which was also my first loan, while still in high school. A Packard Bell and a few Dell towers occupied the time between 1993 and 2008, when I switched to the laptop below as my primary system until 2011's 27" iMac.

First (personal) laptop: 2008 17" MacBook Pro that I know use as my primary work laptop, with Synergy (or RDP when working from home) to my much newer work ThinkPad

First video game console: Pong, followed by Atari 2600, ColecoVision, SNES, N64, PS2 & Wii, plus daughter's XBOX 360

First portable gaming system: None other than those old LED games and PDAs & smartphones

First video recording/playback: VHS. DVD in 1999 at which point I watched The Matrix about 10 times over Christmas break. Got Blu-Ray at some point. Also, ReplayTV, cable DVR, then Tivo.

First video camera: VHS-C in 1992, I think. HDD HD camcorders in the last few years (two, because I lost one)

First PDA: Some Sharp device, IIRC. Then Palm III, Palm IIIc, Sony Clié 710C, NR70 & TH55

First MP3 player: All of the Clié devices above were also audio players. After that, a 3rd gen. iPod Nano, then phones. Plus, a pair of SwiMP3 swimming headphones with 1GB of MP3 storage.

First smartphone: Treo 755p -> iPhone 3G -> iPhone 4 -> iPhone 5

First tablet: iPad: 1 -> 3 -> Retina Mini

First digital camera: Olympus D400Z -> C2100UZ -> Canon Rebel -> Rebel XT -> 40D -> Panasonic Lumix GX7. Also, added compact versions along the way: Sony DSC-P32 -> Canon SX200 IS -> SX230 HS. The Lumix is probably a better video recorder than my camcorder.

kapgar

Ohhh... first digital camera! Good addition but it'll take some research on my part. I've had a few and am not sure of all the models.

Marty Mankins

Doing my own Firsts post, but wanted to comment here.

I had a Game&Watch Nintendo handheld. It was pretty cool. I still have it (not sure if it works, but there will be a photo of it in my Firsts post)

My first MP3 player was a Rio with 64mb of space. Which held an album of music at 128bit. I doubt I still have that one (I used to leave batteries in it and they would explode, making it hard to clean the contacts to put new ones back in).

kapgar


Exploding batteries? No wonder Rio never survived. 

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