Remembering My Story of Owning a PowerMac 7100 — 1995-1996

It was the only PowerPC Mac that I ever owned. I never liked the general design, which looked too much like a styled Windows PC. It was Apple at his worst from a design perspective. Personally, and professionally, it was a transition period in my life. I was working in IT in a consulting company after spending more than a year at an Apple Dealer. My technical world flipped into the Microsoft ecosystem and Windows world. It was a dark period where I was learning a lot. My Mac usage wasn’t that much and was generally uninspiring. I have very few souvenirs of that period.

The decade where I didn’t own or use an Apple computer is like a black hole in my ownership streak.

I remember the speed difference when using software optimized for the PowerPC, but in retrospect, it wasn’t as impressive as it is today with the M1 processor, compared to its Intel counterpart. Yet, it was a big move for Apple to leave the Motorola era and start the IBM PowerPC journey. Software like GraphicConverter (which still exists today at version 11) saw a big speed boost while converting JPEG images.

Again, I can’t remember how I got rid of this machine. But I do remember what came after the start of a ten-year hiatus of Windows PC ownership, away from the Apple universe. If the PowerMac 7100 represented a dark era, the following ten years were an even sombre era, starting with Windows 95.