This is a list of every Mac I've ever owned and a few random notes about each. Though I may have forgotten 1 or 2 (or 5 or 10) minor ones.
(Last updated 2026-10-10)
1998 or 1999, maybe - PowerMac 7100/80 A/V - In the old-style desktop case. This was the first Mac I ever bought. I got it used from a friend for $200. It had 56 MB RAM, which was a lot at the time. Maybe a 500MB Hard drive, also a 2 GB external SCSI drive. It could drive 2 monitors. It came with a 15" CRT and could drive 2 monitors: one with the onboard video (high-density port, with an 15-pin adapter so it could work with a regular Mac monitor) and one with an add-on video card (which had a Mac 15-pin connector, which I then used another to convert to VGA for another monitor I had.)
1999 or 2000, maybe - PowerMac 7600/132 A/V. In the new-style desktop case. 132 MHz, and 176MB RAM — an odd amount, but a lot at the time. Oh yeah, this came with a nice NEC 17" CRT. Bought used from the same friend, I forget the price. Was an "A/V" but it lacked 1 port, like it had all the ins but no composite video out.
2000 or so - I paid $1,000 (which was a great price at the time) for a 300 MHz beige G3, with the "A/V personality card", so it was basically like the old "A/V" Macs, but it was not named as such. Minitower case. I later bought an external 4x SCSI CD burner to go along with it.
January 2003 - I bought my first new (almost) Mac - a refurbished white 800 MHz G3 iBook. I used some rubbing alcohol to make the bottom of the case clear. I gave it to my dad in 2007, reclaimed it in 2011, and sold it in 2012. Wish I still had it.
At some point, I bought my friend's old 733 MHz single G4 with a SuperDrive. It was never my main Mac, but I burned many DVDs with it.
In 2004, I bought a used G5, with a single 1.6GHz CPU, for $600. I used it for about a year sold it about a year later for $650 and replaced it with my first G4 Mac Mini. The G4 was a bit slower, but way smaller, cooler, and quieter.
January 2005 - I bought two of the original G4 Mac Minis, as soon as I could. One was a base model, 1.25 GHz G4, 256MB RAM, 40GB hard drive. The other also had the base CPU but upgraded to 512MB RAM (for $75; jumping to 1 GB was a $425 option) and an 80GB hard drive (probably $50 or $100 more.) These were 2 of the very few Macs that I ever bought that were totally new — not used, not refurbished. (Apple has always officially referred to these as the "Mac mini", but I love them too much and I refuse to use a lowercase "m" in "Mini".) I used the main (better) mini as my primary Mac for years, and after I got a new primary Mac, I continued to use it to host personal sites at home... for over 20 years. I finally retired it from that duty in early 2025, but I still have it, and it still works.
I bought an original white MacBook shortly after it was introduced — but long enough after that I could get a refurbished one. (Naturally.) 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo, 1 GB RAM, 60 GB hard drive, combo optical drive. (RDV-ROM/CD-RW.) One of my favorite Macs ever. It could rip DVDs faster than the dual-2.0 GHz G5 that I had at work and it could play back HD video better. The receipt is dated 6/27/2006.
I've bought a bunch of used Mac Minis along the way for various reasons, usually for like $150 to $250. They're very handy. I currently own a total of 10 Mac Minis, from G4 to M2. I use 2 daily, and my kid has 1 he uses as a Minecraft server and a few other things, and a couple others I use here and there, and some are just spares.
I bought a refurbished original-style Mac Mini Server with two 500 GB hard drives for $849.
I later bought a refurbished "unibody" Mac Mini Server with two 1 TB hard drives, again for $850.
Apple downgraded the Mini in 2014, going from 4-core CPUs to dual cores. WTF? It sucked. I didn't buy any more MInis for a long time.
In 2018, Apple did a nice update to the Mini, but my Mini Server was still doing fine, so I stuck with it. I kinda wanted a faster one, but it was OK, so I figured I'd stick with it for a little longer. Then, rumors started that Apple would switch from Intel CPUs to their own chips.
I ordered an M1 Mac Mini the day it was announced, in November 2020. 16 GB RAM, 1 TB storage.
Along the way, I bought an M2 Mini because Apple had a good (EDU) sale on them. It was a base model (8 GB RAM/256 GB storage) but it was a great secondary machine. (Instead of using a Mac with 2 displays, I've used 2 whole Macs, with 1 disaply each, and Synergy to share a keyboard and mouse, since the early 2000s. I've never liked using one Mac with 2 displays.) The M2 has hardware support for encoding H.264 and H.265 video, which is something I do a decent amount of, and it's quite a bit faster at it than my M1.
Apple did a big update to the Mac Mini when they introduced the M4 model... and it sucked, so I quickly bought a refurbished M2 while I could still get one. I was hoping for better specs, but supplies were limited so I settled for 16 GB and 1 TB again. The new M2 is now my main Mac, my old M2 went to my kid, and my old M1 is now my secondary Mac.
I've had many Mac laptops issued to be from various jobs (going back to 2007) but I was getting tired of carrying around my current 16" MacBook Pro, so I spent a few months trying to decided if I wanted to spend my own money on a 15" Air or not. Shortly after prices were raised in mid 2026, I went ahead and bought a refurbished 15" Air, and I'm glad I did, though I wish I had made up my mind a week and $180 sooner.
(First posted 12/2022)