Favorite Mac of all time?

I've got a soft spot for the Mac Plus as it was the first computer I ever used, but the powerbook duo 280 is probably my favourite Mac. Having a thin laptop when you wanted it and then being able to put it in the dock like a vhs tape and get an FPU, more storage, ports, and power was way ahead of its time.



It's a shame that this concept was abandoned for so long until now, with TB3 making the concept more attainable for everyone (but also somehow less elegant).

 

All the early Mac's were my favorites.

I had the dock / laptop you show, as well as all the laptops before and after, until Apple stopped making the 17" Mac Pro.

I still dip into their new offerings to see how they are improving.

 

The mac plus is so nostalgic for me -- I played wizardry, mactrek, brickles, and lemmings on it when I was a kid. I miss that DING sound when you turned it on!

 

I was fortunate enough to have projects using the Lisa and the first Macintosh. And, the Apple II/III.

It was a great time for all computing, large and small

 

Apple IIGS, with such classics such as Oregon Trail, Word Muncher, Number Muncher, and Odell Lake!! How could it not be the Apple IIGS?

 

The IIGS was an odd duck, it was "better" than the IIe, but slower than everything else newer and the IIGS was way expensive, as all Apple products were.

Having lived with the Apple II from about 1977 on, involved in software and hardware development, I got a IIGS for "fun", it was cool.

The Apple IIe was the mainstay of the Apple II for the longest time 1983-1993, outliving the end of the IIGS if only by a few months in 1993. I recall both lines ending.



I had a LC IIe - the hardware IIe in a Macintosh, it was fun too. Lots of Apple II software would run fine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe_Card

No IIGS "16 bit color" hardware or IIGS emulation on Macintosh was ever released.

If you started with the IIGS, it was out for a long time too 1986-1993, it would seem like the best Apple II.

For me the II / II Plus / IIe / LC IIe were the long time embodiment of Apple.

 

First Macintosh circa 1984 or so were my favorite too. I remember as a young teenager going to the Everett Mall in Washington state and seeing a computer store (one of the first computer retails stores that I can remember) that sold Apple computers exclusively. I don't remember what the store was called back then. But their presentation of the computers were many office desks and on each desk was a Macintosh computer in demo mode. Was quite exciting as a 15 yr old to play on one. The sales people were friendly but I remember them always watching me because I was just a "kid" (or maybe I was paranoid and them knowing I could not afford one).

My freshman year in high school 1984 I took a computer class where we each had a IIe or II (can't remember exact) and we were taught how to use spreadsheets, simple programming, and such. What a time to be alive! The classroom had a single Macintosh in the back that we were not allowed to touch.