A brief history.
2002. 13" G3 iBook.
At 18 I bought this laptop the summer before I started Cal State Long Beach. This was still back when no one bought Macs unless they were really into design - now every kid at Starbucks has one. With as sketchy as PC laptops are I'm not really surprised about the shift.
I started Gabe Yeh Design which later became 0484CREATIVE on this computer. I didn't even have a mouse for the first 6 months - I designed with the trackpad on this tiny little screen. I edited a short film called ROCKETCASH on this laptop - in what was the first edition of iMovie - which I used in my application to the Film program at CSULB. I drove cross country with this computer - twice. I ran Illustrator 10 and later CS1 on this thing. Sent it in sometime in '05 and Apple replaced the logic board at no cost.
2005. Dual G5 Power Mac.
When I got into the Film program I bought this to run Final Cut Pro on. So much faster than the iBook. I edited Eviction Notice on this machine. Sort of built Gabe Yeh Design on this computer - found a couple more clients, paid for school. Super solid computer - to this day, I can't remember this thing ever having any major problems. 2007. 15" MacBook Pro.
Bought this right as I graduated. Within 6 months, Matt, who had been doing some work with me in addition to his full time Engineering job, quit and we rented our first office in Long Beach. We renamed everything 0484CREATIVE. This was right around the time that everything started to become pretty legit. We took on a lot of new clients in a really short time and this became more like a real job for both of us. We designed our first national print ad campaign, the first iteration of Represent Kobe and started the blog on this computer.
Brought this thing all over the country and to China once. Used this computer almost all day, everyday for a few years and it held up ok all things considered. I've run through 2 batteries and 3 chargers. Sent it in to Apple once and got the hard drive replaced.
2009. 27" iMac.
You can't beat this computer. All in all, it's amazing. The display is huge but once you get used to it, it's hard to work on anything else. Matt and Ryan both have one as well. Most of everything we did last year started on this machine.
More than just how the hardware has changed, OS X has improved phenomenally. The whole user experience, at this point, is so intuitive that everything just goes way smoother and takes a lot less time than it used to.
2011. 15" MacBook Pro.
And here's the newest addition. Picked this up on Friday courtesy of Iron Horse Jeans. Just in time because that last MacBook Pro is really on it's last legs. Excited to see what we'll do with this thing.
We still run CS3 on everything at this point. CS4 was a joke and there's a lot of backward compatibility issues with CS5. CS3 is so solid I don't really have any complaints but maybe by the time CS6 comes around we'll take the plunge.
If there's one thing you learn in all of this it's that it doesn't matter what machine or software version someone's using. At the end of the day it's all just about getting the work done.
