30 Years of Inspiration
by DanThirty years ago today, the first Apple computer (the Apple II) went on sale. (Last week was also the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. Coincidence?)
My second computer was an Apple IIe, and I really used that machine to death. I bought it secondhand in about 1984. By 1986, equipped with a 2400 baud modem, a phone line, and two floppy disk drives, I was running my own online BBS/game on the system. On top of someone else’s software, I designed the game myself, modifying the code as necessary. It was my first taste of interaction design.
When I went to college, my Apple IIe and its dot-matrix printer went with me. I used it for about two years before it just became embarrassing, it was so outdated, surrounded as it was by all the Macs on campus. When I graduated college, I bought my own Mac and that was the end of my Apple IIe. The last I saw of it, a homeless man was wheeling it away in his shopping cart, having fished it out of the dumpster where I had unceremoniously trashed it. Just telling this now makes me a little sad.
But thank you, Steve and Steve. It’s been an amazing 30 years since then, and I’m glad you didn’t fall by the wayside like so many others did. I hope you are still inspiring me 30 years from now.
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June 5th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Dang… in 1986 I was just learning the alphabet.
I didn’t even realize they had modems back then. My first computer was a Tandy (radio shack brand) that had a GUI called DeskMate. I grew up on PCs.
June 6th, 2007 at 9:51 am
I also remember my IIe, and it fell a similar fate. After a few years at college, it was replaced with a State of the Art IIsi.
I have no words for Alexa. My walker and I will be over here cursing the whippersnappers. Where’s my dentures…
June 8th, 2007 at 8:41 am
My first computer was a Vic 20.
However, I still have my very first Mac (SE) in the office. I haven’t been able to part with it since Macintosh delivery day at the start of freshman year. Because I went to an all-Mac school, I thought that was just the natural next step after DOS, and was shocked shocked to learn upon graduation that 95% of the world was using Windows.