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news of 2004-06-05

Thank you, Apple.

This is going to sound corny, but I want it to, so that's fine. It's seventeen years this Summer that I have put my hand on a computer mouse for the first time. It was at school. I was thirteen and was fascinated with computers. I had used a C64 at a friend's house. I actually wrote BASIC programs on paper at home that I would then go hack into that C64's command line prompt - to see whether they worked as I expected them to. When they didn't - which often was the case - I corrected them both on the computer and on paper. This was fantastic and terrible at the same time. It meant that I loved computers - and that I didn't have one.

Then, as I said, I went to that school and first laid my hand on that computer mouse. Someone gave me a 800K disk with System, Finder, MacPaint and MacWrite. I looked at that little beige box, at the rainbow Apple logo and the type that read 'Macintosh Plus'. The screen showed the symbol of a disk with a blinking question symbol. It couldn't possibly be any clearer about what I had to do. I put the disk into the drive and that disk symbol was replaced with the symbol looking like that Mac Plus itself, only that it had a smiley face. And it winked at me. All is well in this best of all worlds, it seemed to say, and that it would now let me into its world, which would be good. And it was good. It was so good, in fact, that it hasn't let me go ever since.

And I want to thank Apple for so many things... I don't know where to start, although I know where to end. But let me start first, anyway. Thank you Apple for MacWrite. It made me the writer that I am today, for which I'm more than grateful. Thank you Apple for MacPaint, as it taught me more about how symmetry works than any other thing or person in the world. Thank you Apple for making it difficult for me to get my own Mac, because it made my very first own Mac so much more of an experience (Macintosh PowerBook 150, more than six years after my first experience with that Mac Plus). Thank you Apple for creating machines that actually helped me writing what I wanted to write, because they were made for me, it seems (PowerBook 150, PowerBook 180c, PowerBook 520c, PowerBook 190, PowerBook 5300ce, eMate 300, iBook 300, PowerBook 15" G4/500, iBook 12" 800, PowerBook 15" G4/1.33...). Thank you Apple for bringing WYSIWYG and DTP to my life, as it helped me create books instead of just letting me write stories. Thank you Apple for the iPod, which enables me to spend more time actually creating something instead of switching CDs every hour or so. Thank you Apple for iSync, which made me keep appointments that I would otherwise have forgotten (I was a wreck with PIM stuff before iCal/Mail/AddressBook and a Series 60 phone made it possible to easily keep an overview...). Thank you Apple, and this is now the end of my list, although I'm sure I have forgotten a thousand things and more, for that smiling face on the symbol of a Mac on that screen of that Macintosh Plus at that school in 1987.

[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-05 at 12:10 CET ]
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"Mac users don't tolerate shit."

Or: Read about 'broken windows'. Or why the Mac is a good neighbourhood, and Windows is the place you just don't want to stay.

[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-05 at 09:08 CET ]
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