I’ve used Apple computers since 1982.*
Before my family got one, my computer experience was limited to the one at school. It was at a desk in the center area, and we’d all wait for our turn to sit and use it. It had glowing green type on a dark greenish screen, and the coolest thing anyone knew how to do with it was program a word to repeat all the way down the screen in the shape of a Christmas tree. I only remember the last command: “RUN.”
Then, some family friends got an Apple. We got to try it out at their Chanukah party. No one cared about potato latkes or dreidels or even Smurfs, which we all got as Chanukah presents. It was all about the Apple.
It was so much cooler than the one in school, if only for two reasons:
1) the rainbow apple logo
2) video games
On the Apple, Asteroids looked just like in the real arcade game! It blew my Atari out of the water.
I begged my parents to get one, and they did. It came with a bunch of floppy disks – a word processing program, some other stuff I didn’t care about, and an awesome video game.
Actually, it wasn’t really a “video” game, because there were no graphics. It was all text-based, but I played it for hours and hours. It was essentially a choose-your-own-adventure game, just like the books, except on computer and pornographic.
It took you through whore houses, porn shoots, and other nasty places. If you did well, you got to screw another hooker. If you messed up, you got syphilis. Those are the only details I remember.
We had that Apple through my high school years, by which time I’d outgrown porno video games. Or just that one game, which was all I had. You could only get to a certain level whore house, and then it got frustrating. So I stopped using the computer so much, which gave my mother more time on it — to type my term papers.
Freshman year of college, since my mom and the Apple weren’t in my dorm, I typed my own papers — torturously, on an electric typewriter. It was a very technologically advanced typewriter, though, because it had a correction feature. One which didn’t work so well, so I had to use White Out anyway.
By Sophomore year, the Mac had come out.
I got one, with a dot matrix printer that took about 2 hours to print a page and chugged like an old-timey train. That computer was a revelation. Being able to correct your mistakes right on the screen? Not having to write every paper in longhand and then copy it on the typewriter? Awesome.
The not awesome thing was when you’d stay up all night writing the best paper of your life, like the one I wrote on Candide, only to have it disappear completely. I’m sick just thinking about it. I had to reconstruct that whole Candide paper. The original was so much better.
Later, I learned the mantra “Apple-S is your friend.” That’s the Save command, if you’re not a Mac person.
Since the 90s, I’ve had a bunch of Macbooks. Probably every version except the translucent clamshell one.
I’ve cursed them all and their taunting, spinning pinwheels (“I hate you, you slow motherfucker!”) but I’ve always loved them. And I love my iphone, and my ipad, and the ipods of different sizes and generations scattered throughout different junk drawers.
I like to think some of them have found each other. They’re Apple diaspora.
Thanks, Steve Jobs.
Hastily dashed off on my beloved MacBook Pro. Please excuse typos.
*Exact year not yet fact-checked with my mother.
Laura, you’re one great comedian. You caused me to laugh repeatedly, especially while reading of your tussles with the computer. I didn’t realize you curse more than I do.
As for Steve Jobs’ genius, part of it was that he got others to do much of the work. The person who developed the Mac was actually Jef Raskin (husband of your cousin Linda Blum) who left Steve Jobs afterward. No kidding.
Steve Jobs knew a lot, but he didn’t know that you are the 16th generation granddaughter of Rabbi Loew of Prague (the Golem). Also no kidding.
Love,
Dad
Did I already mention this here?
1982-83 I went with my (now ex) to a photo shoot in Cupertino,CA.
Anyone guessing the rest of the story?
Well, ex says, go sight seeing come back by end of day and he would be finished shooting. I spent an hour looking around at the people, the machines, the folders, the pamphlets, manuals you name it.. it was BORING..met a few people-instantly forgot their names-and finally scooted off. Came back several times over the next 2 days-same people-one looked a lot like my husband.
This photo shoot was so long and boring.
Fast forward.. dang, I sure wish I had paid attention AND bought some shares then.
Yessiree- it was WOZniak, Steve Jobs and all their computer stuff that are VERY expensive on ebay these days. I know that too because friend of mine sold all of his IIe stuff-manuals and so forth.
The person who looked like my ex husband-I thought was an ad director-was Steve.
I didn’t know I was surrounded by genius and the future.
WOW.
#! Lesson -Look around, talk to people, pay attention, you never know if one day the person you are getting to know will be a major influence on your life.
Steve Jobs has influenced billions of people.
Didn’t we get the Apple IIe? That might have been our first. Apparently (says Wiki) it was Apple’s longest running computer. Mom probably did her Consumer Reports homework (so she could more easily type up our homework).
We probably thought we’d have that computer for life. Who knew they were meant to be replaced every two years?
I took “computer science” in Mr. Byrns’s Physics class. GOTO 10
Ironically, I just bought my first Mac (MacAir 13) two weeks ago. Yes, Steve was a huge part of that buying decision, as my need is for my presentations to model his style – visual, slick, and focus on the speaker (me).
His legacy is huge.
I don’t know who created that line, ‘once you go MAC, you don’t go back’, but it’s one of the few techie things I can say.
My first foray into Apple was maybe 5 years ago with an ipod that was gifted to me. It was pure joy. Being able to carry all my beloved music with me in this tiny little compact thingy was a revolution…clearly, one that I was slow to jump on board with. I oozed gratitude.
Yesterday, I was picking up my Macbook that had needed a minor repair. I arrived at the MAC store in the Eaton Centre, the busiest mall of downtown Toronto at 10:10 am, 10 minutes after the mall and the store had opened. The usually busy mall was essentially desolate – but not the MAC store. It was buzzing with hundreds of enthusiastic MAC’ers and earnest Geniuses.
It’s a brilliant legacy that Steve Jobs has left behind…one that I know millions of us hope has been left with a solid foundation to continue to create on.
I resisted purchasing any Apple product until 2003 when I purchased a second generation iPod at the jam packed Soho Apple Store on the evening of its release. I started computing in the mid 1980s with the Wang, which was used in almost every company where I temped as word processor. When Wang was being phased out, the replacement were PCs, with such softwares at Multimate, Word Perfect, Word Star and the seldom encountered Microsoft Word. I struggled to memorize the idiosyncracies of all these and the different applications of the function keys in order to maximize my employment opportunities. When I made my first computer purchase, a PC was less than half the price of an Apple and with a bigger screen. But this was before plug and play, and a software installation had to be performed by the store before I could pick up the computer. It was also before “wysiwyg” (what you see is what you get) was available on computer screens. And in those days there was only one font. It was a 286 processor, and I got it just as the newer and much more expensive 386’s were becoming available. I recall a computing and mathematical genius friend of my brother’s telling me that he could never envision there being anything like a 486 chip because it would have way too much power than any home computer user would ever require. A couple years later the Pentium chip (or a 586) was introduced. It’s been ages since I uttered the phrase “Pentium chip.” Anyway, I’m still pissed that 8 or 9 years ago I followed the advice James Cramer wrote in a New York Magazine article and purchased some Microsoft at $25 and ignored my instinct three years ago to buy Apple at $85.
Thanks, Laura. My first real exposure to Apple was also in 1982 — in the technology tents at the Us Festival concerts, hosted by Jobs’ co-founding partner Steve Wozniak. I managed to get through college without really using a computer. But I’ve been a Mac fan since the Classic. Give your iPhone a squeeze and your MacBook a hug.
What a man. And what a company. He will be missed; by his fans and by the industry itself.