Yesterday we marked the passing of true visionary and marvel Steve Jobs. While it is true I’m a Windows PC guy and have been for a number of years I do appreciate what Jobs and Apple has done for the industry and for users in general. I’m not what I would call a rabid Windows user but I do sometimes feel the need to point out that Apple computers were not gifted to mankind through Divine intervention. Steve Jobs was smart and a very talented, forward thinker and businessman but he’s not God. (Collective Mac users gasp “Blasphemy!”) I do believe that God uses Macs in all his creative projects. It’s more intuitive and keeps the angels in the Creative Department happy. However God uses PCs and Microsoft Office when he has to do serious work since accounting is all Windows-based.
My first encounter with a PC was around 1978 with the Tandy (Radio Shack) TRS-80 Color Computer. Affectingly known as the “Trash 80” it attached to your TV through an RF switch, stored programs on cassette tapes and had a printer that used cash register thermal tape about 3” wide and silver in color. You had to start the tape player manually to record your data and push play to load simple programs. I learned BASIC and programmed my own games but in my isolated world of a tiny Texas suburb I had no idea I could make money designing games as was happening with kids my age at Atari and missed that bus. I don’t recall where I got the TRS-80 but I know I horse traded for it and later traded it for a Remington 870 12 gauge shotgun. I came out way ahead in the deal!
I moved on to the Atari 400 but only used it for games. The keypad was a sealed membrane that made any real typing almost impossible. It did have some awesome games like Asteroids, Pac-Man, Missile Command and Space Invaders. A friend had the Atari 800 that I coveted for its real and tactile click keyboard but it was out of my price range. I did learn a bit of Atari BASIC and did some simple game programs but was pursuing photography pretty heavily by then and lost interest.
In 1982 I went to work as an audio-visual manager for a big finance company called The Associates of North America (owned by conglomerate Gulf & Western). Although I spent most of my day in a photo darkroom I still had to wear a suit and tie every day. I ruined about 10 shirts and ties by photo chemical stains before I made them buy me a lab coat and apron. I still had to wear the tie but with the white lab coat I looked like a doctor roaming the halls. One of my staff even bought me a toy stethoscope that I wore when we were in our office hole. I forgot and wore it up to the “top floor” where the execs lived but heard feedback on that almost immediately! Corporate executives have little or no sense of humor.
When I came onboard we were still doing graphics slide shows and laid out everything by hand. I had a huge, heavy steel drafting table with tons of Chartpak tapes and Kroy machines and lettering wheels at my disposal. We’d layout a graphic on non-repro blue lined layout boards with X-Acto knives (I still have the battle scars), matte spray them to knock out any glare and shoot them on a copyboard with Kodachrome 64 slide film. I used a Wing-Lynch film processing machine then cut and hand-mounted every slide (sometimes as many as 300+) in PACO snap frames. Then we’d have to program slide presentations on a Dove or Coyote slide effects unit and work with up to six synchronized Kodak slide projectors for a presentation. We had to use so many projectors to provide smooth transitions and effects and some pretty cool stuff was possible for the technology. A big show like for the year-end shareholders meeting could take several months to prepare and of course the data was constantly changing so revisions were a daily requirement. I know all this seems foreign to you young whippersnappers out there but it has a special place in the hearts of us ol’ timers! To accomplish the same thing today in PowerPoint would probably take about a week.
While I was there I pushed for an upgrade to our slide production capabilities. A lot of specialized work was sent out to a service bureau and we had to deliver it by courier and have it returned the same way. Sometimes there were some pretty large express charges with the rush deliveries so I pushed to get an Apple IIc with proprietary slide graphics software and a modem. After it was approved our production soared and what used to take a day to produce a single slide now could be done in about 10 minutes! We’d modem them off the service bureau at a screaming 1200 baud and with rush could get them back the same day. You cannot imagine how appreciative I was to Apple for that little miracle!
My next computer came around 1988 and was another Apple, the IIgs (GS stood for Graphics and Sound). I had the special limited “Woz” edition with Steve Wozniak’s signature on the case but it was just a cosmetic upgrade. It was still light years beyond anything I’d used before then and I did my first real computer graphics with Apple’s Paintworks Plus and a dot matrix color printer. It was crude but it was cool and I still have photos of some of my art that I took shot directly off the monitor. My favorite IIgs game was called “Hacker II: The Doomsday Papers” where you remotely controlled a robot in an enemy’s facility to sneak past video surveillance and droid guards to steal important papers and ensure the safety of the United States. Ironically this type of scenario exists now with the remote piloting of drones and robots in the military, aerospace and emergency services fields. I was pretty good at it but alas, my experience didn’t transfer over to the real world, at least in the robot control arena. After moving to Minnesota I sold the IIgs for $1000 to a yuppie couple who wanted it for their “gifted” child. I even made a profit!
After that my love affair with Apple kind of died. I moved back into the field of criminal investigation where everything was Windows-based and I couldn’t afford a Mac so I went with Widows PC. I bought my own through an Employee purchase program and while working part-time for Best Buy used my employee discount to buy scads of software I could have never afforded without it. I had Aldus PageMaker desktop publishing software (later to become Adobe’s InDesign) and Adobe Photoshop – both on 5 ¼” floppy disks… a LOT of 5 ¼” floppy disks! This would have been around 1992 and I never looked back to Apple after that, especially when so many creative programs for graphics, photography, design and music became available for Windows PCs. I did play around with Macs at several design contracts but I was pretty ingrained in Windows by then.
My next encounter with Apple products came when I finally broke down and purchased an iPod. I waited for two years after they came out but Apple did it right and it was a beautifully designed and intuitive machine and I could not resist. I didn’t want to look like all the yuppies (I’m dating myself with that term, I know) so I used a black pair of earphones. The white were too conspicuous and Apple’s earphones are not that good and damned uncomfortable! I had the 60 gig video model and later upgraded to the super cool iPod touch when my wife bought me one for Christmas. I wouldn’t have upgraded otherwise but once she gave it to me I was in love. Again, super design, awesome functionality. I never went to the iPhone because I had a cell phone already and the iPhone wasn’t on my carrier. Mostly it was because I wasn’t going to pay that kind of money just for the convenience of having my cell and my iPod in one device.
This year I bought an iPad 2 telling myself it was the perfect device to store my digital portfolio on to show clients but that was just part of it. I knew I had to have one when they first came out but I always try to wait until the second version of a product like this so all the bugs are worked out. I haven’t been disappointed and it’s pretty much replaced my laptop as an “on-the-go” device for my portfolios and accessing the web and email. It’s a totally cool device and though Apple didn’t invent the tablet PC they sure as hell knew out to design one!
So, in honor of my homey Steve I will pour half a 40 of apple juice on the ground. I may not use your Macs but I love your products. (except for the Newton) May you rest in peace knowing your vision and intelligence made this world a little bit better place to play in and after all, isn’t that what we all should strive for?
