I grew up in a low-tech household. My dad only replaced something if it caught fire. We owned about 15 cars (mostly Humber 80s), and 13 of them were used to keep the other two running. Same story for tractors and any other farm equipment you care to name. Dad’s basic rule was that if he couldn't repair it, we didn't need it. We weren't anti-technology, but technology had to serve a purpose. It had to work reliably or at least be fun to repair.

Then I decided I wanted a computer. Much saving ensued, and after a while I was the proud owner of a secondhand Commodore VIC-20, with an expanded memory system, advanced BASIC, and a wonky tape drive... and no TV to plug it into. After begging an old black-and-white television from family friends, I was set for my computing adventures. But they didn't turn out as planned.

Yes, I loved the games, and I tried programming. I even enjoyed attempting to make games involving weird lumpy things colliding with other weird lumpy things. But I never really understood how to program. I could do simple things, but I didn't have the dedication or background to go further. There was no one around to guide me into programming, and, even worse, I couldn't imagine doing anything useful with my VIC-20. After a couple of years, the VIC-20 got packed away and forgotten.

When I moved on to high school, I was reintroduced to computers. We had a mixture of Apple II and IIe computers, and I vaguely remember a few Acorn Archimedes machines. Programming them was fun, but, just like with the VIC-20, ultimately pretty useless. Sure, we learned all about computer-controled robots and SCADA systems, but those are all very abstract, particularly to a teenager who spent part of every day doing farm work. Students were not really encouraged to hand in type-written reports. Even if we could, the stuff that takes time—graphing, diagrams, etc.—still had to be done by hand.

So I entered my last year of high school with knowledge of the potential of computers but no real appreciation for them. That’s when I slowly began to see the light.

The physics teacher (we only had one) brought a Mac to school. I can't remember if it was a Mac Plus or an original 128K Mac. That wasn't what impressed me anyway. The GUI didn't blow me away either. Neither did the form factor or anything else about the actual computer. What impressed me was my first introduction to a combination of software and hardware called Macquisition and Cricketgraph (I’m shocked to discover that the name “Macquisition” is still in use all these years later, but I can't tell if it’s the same company).

Macquisition was a box that converted your computer into an oscilloscope. Anything you could measure in the lab with a voltmeter, ammeter, or oscilloscope could also be measured with Macquisition. And then you could graph it in Cricketgraph. Amazingly, the graph didn't look like it was put together by a preschooler high on edible paint. You could even do regression analysis on the data.

I got to see Macquisition put to use only once. Considering what was to follow, it’s amazing that it stuck with me. My classmates might have seen and used Macquisition more often, but I was off on an adventure. A month into my senior year, I went to Thailand for a year as part of an exchange program. I completed high school in a village where, at the time, no computers were to be found (interestingly, when I went back five years later, they had an entire lab full of them). Computers fell out of my consciousness again while I learned the vagaries of life in Thailand.

When I returned home to New Zealand, it was time to go to university, where I settled on science for my degree. Upon entering the physics lab, I saw something I never even dreamed might exist: every table had a Mac Plus running an external hard drive, and attached to every Mac was a Macquisition box. Every Mac had Cricketgraph. My memory of that moment in high school returned, and I suddenly found myself able to touch, use, and play with computers in a way that was actually useful. During my first year, I spent three hours a week seeing just how good computers were. The contrast was made all the greater in my second year, when the physics labs didn't have Macquisition (or even computers for the most part). That’s when I realized just how valuable a tool a computer was.

Even now, it’s striking how reliable and useful the setup in that lab was. It just worked. Sure, every now and again a Mac showed the dreaded bomb, but those bombs stand out for how rare they were. These computers were set up in such a way that they only did a few tasks. They did them well and rarely caused problems. When I became a lab instructor in the first-year labs, I discovered the power of the GUI. Students came in with either no knowledge of computers or totally ready for a PC (maybe running Windows 3.1). Within an hour they would be pretty much operating independently. Even then I appreciated the simplicity. With the benefit of hindsight, I think that simplicity allowed us to focus on teaching physics rather than on the details of how to use a computer.

Usefulness was the key. My friends and even my parents all had computers by the time I was at university, and almost all of them had PCs. I spent hours playing Civilization, Wolfenstein, Doom, Dune, and many other games. But that was the problem. I could play games on them and saw no other point to them. Yes, you could produce nice reports or write letters. But that made the computer a glorified typewriter.

My master’s degree involved not just writing a thesis but also programming a microprocessor and controlling an experiment with a computer. I did it all on a Mac. I didn't see any of my friends doing similar things on other computers. By accident, my experience was divided between the Mac as a useful tool and the PC as a gaming machine and typewriter.

By then it was time for our own computer. When my girlfriend (she's my wife now) and I decided to purchase a computer, we got a Mac. Even though it was a much more expensive option, I could not imagine making another choice. PCs were for games, and I had mostly used computers for work.

I laid my thesis out using Pagemaker on a Performa 580CD. I wrote unformatted text in Claris Works while dynamically linking it to chapters in Pagemaker. It was so simple that I couldn't imagine anyone having trouble with formatting. Then I watched my friends struggle to write long(ish) documents in Word for Windows 95 and gave thanks. Yes, looking back now, the same thing could have been done on a PC. And, indeed, the microprocessor programming might even have been easier on a PC. But that’s not how it happened. That smooth experience left an indelible mark on me.

I still see computers as tools. Linking computers to hardware in the lab still gives me a thrill. My computer of choice is still a Mac, not just because it’s an amazing tool with a smooth user interface. I choose the Mac out of a combination of being an experienced user and because it has a workflow that I would struggle to abandon for something different.