Snippet: The Mac at 30: Tales from BMUG ☇

Chris Breen and Dan Miller:

And in that early Mac age, no user group was bigger or more important than the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, known to all as BMUG. Founded in 1986 and lasting for 14 contentious years, it at one point reportedly boasted more than 13,000 users, with satellite groups in Boston and Japan. While the original group formally dissolved in 2000, a smaller group (BMUGWest) still meets. And so, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Mac, Macworld joined the group for dinner after one of its meetings and asked a few of the more senior members to look back over their three decades with the Mac.

BMUG really was a huge deal, especially in the 1990s with plenty of books and CD-ROMs published. For a kid growing up in Indiana, materials from BMUG were one of the best ways to learn about all the things you could do with your Mac.