My 25 years with the Macintosh is, maybe, a different experience than others you’ve read online. If you’ve seen Apple’s “1984″ commercial, you’ll know that the original Macintosh computer was introduced on January 24, 1984. When the commercial aired at that year’s Super Bowl, I was still over 3 months away from my second birthday, and almost a decade away from my first in-depth experience with the Macintosh.
It was late 1993, probably November or December, that I convinced my parents to buy me a two-pack of 3.5-inch floppy disks at Sav-On so I could move information between the Mac we had at home and the Macs I used at school. Early versions of System 7 were what I first got accustomed to, and the Apple hardware varied quite a bit.
Earlier in elementary school, my 4th grade class participated in a program sponsored by National Geographic, where students would dial into a service over a POTS modem and communicate with other students across the country, and if I remember correctly, across the world. That would have placed my first REAL computing experience in 1991 or 1992, dialing into an internet gateway at 2400bps using an Apple IIgs. I recall having a binder of information about the program, but it has long since been discarded. It would be another 2 years before I had another revolutionary computing experience.
When I got my two floppy disks (one of which I threw away because I wasn’t using it at the time) I realized that I could copy software from the school computer to my home computer. Now, the SE/30 I had at home wasn’t nearly as pretty and colorful as the LC520 I was using at school, but it got the job done. I spent most of my days of 6th grade in front of the computer, playing with the software and figuring out how to take games my friends brought to school back home with me. I wasn’t able to get my hands on any printed information about the Mac, so everything I learned was from trial and error.
In junior high, I was involved in the video production class, and the infant non-linear editing systems that were sprouting up. Most of what we did, though, was deck-to-deck on SVHS, but I remember the PowerPC LC series opening up the door to the Gryphon Morph program, which was used to consistently embarass students at school my turning them into animals on the video magazine program aired each week. By the end of 8th grade, I’d developed enough skills in troubleshooting the Macs that I was frequently called out of class to fix other teachers’ machines since the school district’s technical support was (and to this day is) terribly lacking.
At the beginning of my freshman year, I got the first Mac I called my own: a used PowerBook Duo 270c. 240MB internal hard disk, 12MB of RAM, and a 14.4 modem (which could be software-upgraded to 19.2!) For a month or two, I was diong well, moving files between machines through LocalTalk or modem-to-modem with Zterm, until one day I screwed the OS. I had to get disks and a Duo Dock, or I was done. I learned my lesson, and try to keep myself prepared at all times.
About a year and a half later, I upgraded to a PowerBook 3400c/180 with a CD-ROM built in (!) and a spiffy PowerPC processor. It allowed me to do much better web design with its 800×600 screen and it ran software so much better than the good, but tiring 33 MHz Duo. I ran that machine into the ground, until OS 9 and its 1.3GB hard disk and 144MB of RAM was no longer adequate.
My freshman year of college, my parents helped me buy a PowerBook G3 with FireWire which was quite possibly my favorite portable of all time. It was relatively easy to upgrade, and by the time I got rid of it, I had installed 1GB of RAM and an 80GB hard disk. Its specs were far beyond what I had envisioned when I bought the machine.
My current computer is a 2.6 GHz MacBook Pro with a 15-inch screen, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard disk and faster “legacy” ports than the fastest cutting edge technologies from only a few years ago. The amount of power WASTED on single processes on this computer is probably more than the maximum speed of my PowerBook G3. There is only one feature lacking on this MacBook Pro that would make it better than the old Pismo: swappable optical drive. Road warriors demand battery life, and I always had two batteries in my G3. I have a spare battery, of course, but not having to worry about a switchout was a marvelous experience.
In late 2002, I began employment in an industry close to the Macintosh, and have remained with the company until the present day. Everything that I’ve experienced and learned since then has made me realize how little I knew back in junior high and high school, and compared with the UNIX “real” sysadmins, and developers, how little I know now. Even in 6 years, I’ve seen the world of Apple and the Macintosh change more than I could have imagined.
The Macintosh has become more popular, in unit sales, than at any time in its history. The Macintosh operating system has morphed into a solid BSD UNIX based, but friendly for consumer use, platform for the most robust and capable end-user media experience on the market. The switch to Intel processors was always rumored from the earliest versions of OS X, but flatly denied until 2005. The “big switch” was executed as a brilliant marketing campaign by Steve Jobs and company. Apple has become a major, respected player in the mobile phone market in under 2 years. Apple has also become one of the fastest-growing consumer electronics retailers in the world.
What I see under my fingertips, and what I use this machine for, is an almost unimaginable progression from my own humble beginnings with the Macintosh 15 years ago. I consider the gift of computers a blessing and a curse. It has given me the opportunity for a career doing something I enjoy (most of the time) but it has proved to be an addictive experience, not unlike caffeine, nicotine, or opiates. When used properly, these tools are amazingly useful. When abused, they create havoc.
In another 15 (or 25) years, I don’t know if I’ll be working at the same company, or even in the same industry. I could never have predicted my current technological experiences with accuracy back in 1993, and I will not attempt to predict technology and its impact on our lives that far into the future. I’ve forgotten more about Apple and the Macintosh over the past 15 years than most people learn in their entire computing experience. I can only hope that I’ll be able to look back on this anniversary of computing technology and realize it’s only gotten better.