These days, it’s hard to imagine (at least in the United States) a household without some kind of computing device. Most people, even those who are severely economically-challenged, have a smart phone at the very least. And as you move up the economic scale, at a certain point, most households have at least one personal computer. But when I was a kid, personal computers were just being developed. My parents bought me saxophones instead of computers, which was reasonable. When I finally became a computer science major in college, all of my course work was on UNIX-based machines, such as the VAX machines and the then-ancient PDP-11 44 (boy, that course sucked!)
However, the Mac was introduced my first year at Rice, and I fell in love with it. I wanted to program for it, but I could not afford to buy one. My first job out of college was a startup called StyleWare. It did software for the Apple IIGS. Programming for it was a lot like programming for the Mac, but it was all in assembly language. And it was slower. And had less memory. And had terrible color…
Claris, Apple’s spunout software company, bought StyleWare in 1988, and I moved to California. I ended up on the FileMaker team, programming the Mac, like I had wanted to since it was introduced. Apple bought out all Claris shares in 1990, turning it into a wholly-owned subsidiary, and suddenly, I had Apple benefits, since I was officially an Apple employee now.
Apple has always had a discount program for employees. As far as I know, each employee can still buy one computer/device with a 20-25% discount per year, and two computers/devices with a 15% discount. However, up until the mid-to-late 90s, Apple also had a program called Loan-to-Own.
Once in each employee’s tenure at Apple, they could purchase a computer basically at cost. However, there were some restrictions for the first year after the purchase. If the employee left Apple, they had to pay the difference between the purchase price and the retail price, or give the machine back. And the employee was specifically forbidden from reselling the machine during that year (I know somebody who was fired for doing that).
But this was my opportunity. I finally had enough income, and I had the basics of what I needed to live (sharing rent on a house, car, etc). So I took the plunge.
I bought my self a Macintosh IIci, with 8MB RAM, a 80 MB internal hard drive, and a NuBus video card. I also bought an Apple Color Display, and an Apple Portrait Display, and a bunch of software, including Finale.
This machine, according to everymac.com, retailed for $8798 when it was new. The loan-to-own price was something like $1400. I got the 15% discount on the monitors, and had to pay full retail for the NuBus card. I think I spent about $3500 for the entire package.
I loved this computer. With it, I used Finale to write and arrange music. I used MacDraw II and ClarisDraw, mostly to do diagrams for games. I used ClarisWorks, but after that went into support purgatory, I switched to Microsoft Word and Excel. I did my taxes with MacInTax. I played SimCity, SimEarth, Spaceward Ho!, and Marathon. I built FileMaker databases. I had some kind of terminal that could use a modem to connect to things, and connected to my ISP to use the Internet to get to usenet news groups. I had Claris Emailer, and later Eudora. And I used MPW for personal development. It was my workhorse for personal projects.
I replaced it with a PowerBook Duo 250 with a Duo Dock. The next desktop computer I had was a PowerMac 8100/100 AV, but for its time, I liked the IIci better. It was more compact, and its performance remained relevant for years. Plus, I sold it to a Stanford student for $800!