Apple celebrates 30 years of the Mac

 

 

30 years ago, the original 128k Apple Macintosh debuted, and in celebration, Apple has festooned its website with a tribute to the Mac. Since at least the release of Photoshop 1.0 in 1990, Apple has had a close relationship with photographers, and there's many a shutterbug that have long, and fond memories of using a Mac.

There's a long-running association between Apple and photographers: who can forget that Apple pioneered the world of consumer oriented digital cameras with Kodak with the QuickTake, not to mention Aperture. But it was probably the explosion of widespread digital photography in the 2000s where Apple gained its real foothold with photographers, building off the company's already stellar reputation for image editing.

In Apple's 30 year timeline, the company points to 2002 as the year of "mobilizing the photo studio" thanks to the PowerBook, which photographer John Stanmeyer took with him to Afghanistan. It's a tradition that continues to this day, with many a shooter relying on a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro to edit images while in the field.

For a slightly more granular look at photography on the Mac, have a look at some of the data on Apple's "Your First Mac" page. Here you can answer some info about the first Macintosh you used, and scroll through the way others have answered similar questions. Photography first seems to pop into the scene in 2000, and in 2002 explodes in popularity, peaking in 2005 and 2009. Now, this is based on what people used their first Mac for, but it does show a little about how uses have changed over the years.

While there are most certainly photographers using every type of camera under the sun, there are still a great number who rely on their Mac every day—be it an 11-inch MacBook Air for quick and light work, a new Mac Pro for high-end editing, or even an iPad for showing images to clients.

So we'd like to know: what was your first Mac that you used for digital photography, and what was the camera that you paired along with it?