On April 1, 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne established Apple Computer. What followed was an amazing roller-coaster of an adventure that’s continued on to this day.
While we could go on and on about the history of Apple, it would just be a rehashing of everything that’s pretty much common knowledge, can be found on Wikipedia and/or was dramatized in Pirates of Silicon Valley.
We all know the wide-reaching parts of Apple’s story. But how about you, the readers? When did an Apple product first touch your life? How has the Macintosh affected your career, lifestyle, or way you do things?
We’d love to hear all your stories, just plug them into the comments below. I’ll share my story first, just to get you all started.
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Short version…
Crazy as it may sound, that 1984 Super Bowl commercial sparked my imagination (and opened my wallet). My wife gives me grief for hanging on to that original Mac (with all the floppies).
Today? I’m sitting in a room with 50 Macs. http://maclab.guhsd.net/skocko/media/mlm_640.mp4
The best part? I get paid to do it! :D
Mike Skocko
New Media Arts Teacher | Tech Coordinator | Adobe Education Leader
Valhalla High School Mac Lab | http://maclab.guhsd.net/blog/
619 593-5446
P.S. Lots of OWC product around the lab.
Wow Mike…that is a great “short” version. Yeah….1984 touched many of us in many ways. You should have heard my rant on the OWC Podcast about Motorola’s take on this iconic spot for this year’s SuperBowl!
Sounds like you would be an ideal subject for our Pro User page:
http://eshop.macsales.com/owcpages/procorner/
My introduction to Apple computing was from the recommendation of a former IBM employee who had advanced degrees in computer science and had obtained several patents for IBM in the field of laser printing. He and I flew AF transports on long missions across the Pacific in the mid 80’s. With nothing better to do, our talk turned to personal compters, and it turned out that he and his wife (also advanced CS degrees) both had Apple IIe’s, and he recommended I get an Apple IIc, that I still have and that still works with its external Chinook hard drive. He later turned down promotion to Major to go back to work with IBM, who had been paying him a yearly retainer. I became “devoted” to that IIc, programming in Applesoft Basic, and enhancing it with 3.5″ floppies, an 8mHz Zip chip and Applied Engineering extra RAM cards, etc. After I retired from the AF, I got certified as the repair tech at an Apple specialist where my expertise with Apple’s Macs & LaserWriters got pretty good, to the extent that I broke down & bought a Mac IIsi system (later enhanced with a Daystar 040 card & SuperMac 24bit video card), and Personal LaserWriter IInt. After spending 8 years in Apple-certified repair, and 4 years in weekly newspaper desktop publishing, I can say I’m a fully-committed Mac-o-phile. Today I have 7 Macs of recent vintage on my LAN, and even a token WinXP PC Pentium4 laptop just “for looks.”
Nice stories guys!
Mine actually starts with pc’s and only pc’s. While growing up my Dad taught me everything about the PC computer and Windows. I learned how they worked from the inside out and can remember taking a computer apart and putting it back together (just to see if I could) at 12 years old. Needless to say, I got grounded. ha
Anyways, my Dad’s a doctor and back in the 80’s there weren’t very many useful programs specifically geared towards doctor’s needs- as far as patient info: subscriber, co-pay, etc. Kinda like a propeitary piece of software that a health insurance company might use. Anyways, he wrote his own and sold it to all the doctors in the So Cal area. I think he STILL uses it today….it looks like a DOS screen w/ tabs and fields to enter info.
All of that said, he and I were COMPLETELY against anything that had to do w/ MAC. We hated them. I can’t really even remember why other than thinking not a lot of software was compatible at the time, etc. Anyways, when I went to college the first couple years I made some money on the side by fixing and repairing people’s PC’s. Then, in 2001, I started a band.
The music industry is all Mac. This triggered my first Mac purchase: a G5 Power PC, which is still kickin’ today and i use it as the main server for all of our media for the Apple TV. Since then, I’ve never looked back and haven’t touched a PC. In fact, I’m what they call an “Apple Fan Boy” AND an “OWC Fan Boy”!!!!
And guess what?
My Dad loves his Mac too and is also still wondering what the hell he was doing all that time…..
O-Dub Scott
So I talked my way into a role as the marcom director for a growing computer manufacturer early in my career (late 80’s) when I decided I needed more thrills than being a lead on burger and beer accounts at an ad/promo agency. I can remember sitting there my first week having only used self correcting typewriters and terminals saying to myself, “great, you don’t know the first thing about these things yet you have to talk about them.” But luckily, that manufacturer (Laser Computer) had the only Apple II compatible legally able to be marketed. So, I had the benefit of working with a product that was supposed to be simple…and as such, as a “new user” myself, I could relate to the product and explain it to others like I was talking to myself. Laser had a PC line…but back in those days before Windows, you needed to know DOS (yes…even with the “shells” at the time) and I just wasn’t interested in wrapping my mind around that.
While there, I graduated to a Mac SE and added an LC II (pizza box) for home use. Boy, did we feel like we were slick using that SE as a “portable” computer in its carrying case. And man, the day I took it to my parent’s home and tried to explain a mouse to my technology adverse dad…priceless.
Those days at Laser were priceless too….we truly took the K-12 education market away from Apple, had what many considered the first Apple portable (Laser PC3 and PC4…yeah…bad name), and even introed a very Mac like all in one system called the Pal….which ran Geoworks Ensemble OS…that in some ways was the best OS on the market at the time.
Really, those years ingrained in me what Steve has always championed…form and function. We wanted to “change the world” and had aspirations of being bigger than Apple…because we admired how they did things and what they created.
In writing this, I realize those earliest days of being very entrenched in the Apple industry instilled in me a level of business competitiveness that exists today. I want the products I represent to be the best and the company I work for to be admired for how it conducts itself. To me, that’s first place and the only thing to play for…and perhaps one reason why I work at OWC.
When I first went to college at SIU, all the computer labs were MacClassics, Classic II’s and SE’s. The dual floppy drives!
I still have my “system disk’s” and “data disk’s” on floppy at home.
Mac2FX sold by the local independent computer store was going for a cool $5k
Upon graduation, I convinced my parents to continue my education and get a Centris 650 in 1994.
Since then I have had a PowerPC 6500 (with an internal zip drive that i installed my self). Original iPod, iMac G4 lampdahde (still running) Powerbook G4 and MacBook Pro. Two iPhone 4’s and a couple newer iPod nano’s.
It’s amazing how far they have come in such a short time. It’s great to see the brand expanding and being embraced by so many more people.
Like many in their mid 30s my first Apple experience was in a grade school computer lab playing Oregon Trail and printing long banners on the printers.
In Jr High I used by first Mac in a art class, it was more about experimentation than actual production at that point as Mac Paint was extremely limiting.
High School brought more Mac experience albeit lightly with Aldus PageMaker and TypeStyler. Senior Year brought about my first PowerPC experience. On that I devoted 3-5 periods a day (using study halls, lunch, and free periods) to do 3D computer animation on a Power PC Mac and Win 3.1 PC with Animation Master. I made 3D models of the popular wooden human manequin (http://www.amazon.com/Wooden-Human-Mannequin-Unisex-Inches/dp/B001DKHN56), a too abstract gargoyle, and pretty darn accurate killer whale. Animation was limited to drive size, but there were a few overnight and over the weekend render fests. (This was pre Toy Story)
After that I was pretty much a PC person for all design as the Mac was in it’s severe decline. I bought an iMac that ran Mac OS 8.6 to test web creations on and darn it if that trusty iMac wasn’t more reliable and better than my HP PC which clocked over 100Mhz faster processor speed to boot.
The was no looking back after that, and I’ve purchased and worked on a lot of Macs/Apple products since including: iMac Rev C, Blue & White Power Mac, iBook Clamshell Orange, iBook Clamshell Graphite, Titanium PowerBook, 3 Power Mac G5 Dual, Aluminum PowerBook, iMac 2008, MacBook Pro 13, QuickSilver PowerMac, Mirror Drive Door PowerMac, 2007 MacBook Pro, 3 2008 Mac Pros, 2009 Mac Pro, 2010 Mac Pro, 2010 iMac, 2009 iMac, 3rd Gen iPod, iPod mini, iPod Click Wheel, 1st and 3rd Gen iPod Nano, Original iPhone, 2nd Gen iPod Touch, iPad, iPhone 4, Original Apple Airport, 2003 Airport Extreme, current Airport Extreme, Airport Express, and a current Apple TV.
Ok I admit, that list is ridiculous… especially when more of the list is mine versus worked on.
My first run-in with Apple computers was in the early 80’s—probably around 3rd grade— where we had an Apple II+ in the classroom. After getting bored with the few programs they had, I started learning rudimentary BASIC. by the time I was in 5th grade, I’d breezed through the drawing aspect of LOGO and had moved on to word processing and games.
My first Mac experience was in high school, in our lab of SE30s. My continuing love of type and layout really started to flourish there, as well as my penchant for causing trouble. I spent several weeks programming – note by note – the computers to play The Liberty Bell in 4-part harmony with its Basic shell. Fun, but set it up so that to test each measure, I had to play through the WHOLE thing. I think the lab aide wanted to strangle me by the end of the month.
My first personal Mac was a PowerMac 7200/90, which got me through college, where I interned in radio station production department. My Mac experience helped there, especially when I was able to resolve problems that the head engineer couldn’t (he was more PC oriented). Unfortunately, budget cuts meant the couldn’t afford me, and I went off to work for my family until OWC welcomed me in.
In the mean time, I’d gone from the 7200 to a 500MHz AGP PowerMac G4 and from a PowerBook 520 to my now infamous Wallstreet PowerBook. Working here at OWC, I was able to see and then purchase upgrades that kept both those machines running until a couple of years ago, when I replaced both of them with my MacBook Pro.
To be honest, I don’t know where I’d be if it wasn’t for Apple. Their hardware and software have had a significant impact on my life – one that probably wouldn’t have happened in a PC-only world.