Recently I noticed that the Dell laptop I have from work is getting less and less use. Once I am home, I almost completely use my MacPro and MacBook Pro to perform any work — personal or professional. When did this happen? When did I become an Apple Fan Boy?

I found this timeline of the personal computer online and this post about being an Apple Fanboy, and decided to track my conversion into an Apple Fanboy:

1973 - My mom and I move from Fort Collins, CO to East Palo Alto, CA. Up the road at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), the Alto workstation was developed. Coincidence? I dont think so.

1977 - Radio Shack introduces the TRS-80 / Apple introduces the Apple II computer. My dad brings home a TRS-80. The diversion begins. I begin to learn to program in BASIC and LOGO.

1982 - Commodore introduces the Commodore 64. I never owned one, but my friends did. My dad brings home an Osborne I a year after its introduction. In the fifth and sixth grade, we have Apple IIc (I think that was the letter). We use them only for playing Oregon Trail and Lemonade Stand.

1985 - High School introduces girls and sports. My interest in computers wanes. I stop programming anything, and use my PC clone at home for BBSs, MUDs and other geekdom activities. Oh and home work. Pretty far away from becoming an Apple Fan Boy at this point.

1993 - I graduate college. Through out my time at University of California, Davis, I use a computer my dad built. Green screen, barely ran anything but WordStar, and it was used only to write papers and print them out on my dot matrix printer. Interesting note: I was the only person outside of the computer science department to get an email address at UC Davis.

1994 - 2000 - For the next ten years, I work either at a non-profit or an university as a fund raiser, using a PC and Outlook mostly. Interesting note: I was one of the first people in the country to use email to invite alumni to events. It was amazingly effective.

2000 - I leave higher education to join a small startup called Kozmo.com as a marketing manager in San Diego. We were in charge of making sure that Kozmo San Diego had a huge launch both through guerrilla marketing and business relationships. I was assigned a Thinkpad and a Nextel phone. Still no reason to become an Apple Fan Boy. We had more drop boxes (places to return delivered videos) in place than any other city prior to launch, and collected 5,000 email addresses by traveling to different areas of the city and asking folks for their email addresses. We had the largest launch of any city, and then Kozmo died.

mid 2000 - 2003 - I moved to Oakland and started working for a small startup called MyPersonal, it merged with another company near the middle of 2001 and was renamed Synacor. It recently had an IPO. I was laid off soon after the merger (they decided to move operations to Buffalo, NY). I went back to consulting with Current Wisdom, and had one real client, and a PC at home. Apple was still seen as a high end machine for graphic designers, so I didnt even consider becoming an Apple Fan Boy.

Once I lost that client, I decided to take a summer off and get to know my father back in Boulder, CO. So, I moved to Boulder in 2001, and applied to business schools. Didnt get into any. Didnt even use a computer for the summer. Got a job offer in Denver, so I took it. January 2002, I began with ServiceMagic focusing on business development and search engine marketing.
1999 - 2006 - Current Wisdom was a consultancy that I ran on and off for seven years until I sold it in the beginning of 2007.

2003 - 2006 - I left ServiceMagic to start Current Wisdom, a full service search engine marketing agency. Finally, making decent revenue, I decided to buy my first Apple product, a ibook. It was at that point I became an Apple Fanboy.

2007 - I now own a MacPro, a MacBook Pro, an iPhone, an iPod Nano, an iPod Classic, an iPod Touch, a Mac mini(currently broken) and an Apple TV.

I find myself hitting ALT instead of CTRL on my PC keyboards now. I am officially an Apple Fanboy. How did it happen? I just started using Macs, and found that they were much more enjoyable to use. When I use a PC, it feels like work. (And, to be honest, when I have to do a bunch of work in Excel or write a long document, I tend to still use my PC laptop.) So, call me an Apple Fanboy. I know you want to…