It was quite a surprise to hear about the death of Steve Jobs today. It really is hard to imagine what life would be like today without Steve Jobs. A quick search turns out he has his name on over 300 patents. Unlike the Macbook and iPad users of today, I had an early introduction to Apple products.
In my high school days in 89 – 93, I had science class in a room of Mac Classics. I remember using the spreadsheet program to plot data, though I don’t remember the name of the software at the time.
When I was in grade 10 I took part in a summer programme working with our provincial park system (I was an Ontario Ranger at Potter’s Creek). I clearly remember playing a game called Shuffle Puck which was totally cool at the time. In the year before I went to university I worked a convenience store where we rented videos (VHS!) and we used a database on the Mac Classic to keep track of the rentals.
Fast forward to my second job out of university, and I was a support dude for a design department where the digital designers had PCs (Windows NT workstations) and the graphic designers used Macs. A number of them had grey, Mac 8500 towers which were out just before the Mac G3s were first released. I remember getting one of the designers the first G3 in the company, and I remember the excitement over upgrading to OS 9.0. I worked there for about a year and I became attached to using Macs and when I finally bought one it was an iMac DV (Graphite) running OS 9.1 and OS X (10.1). It is actually funny, because I used the computer for a long time. I still have it but it sat in my basement for the past 5 years, and now I want the files off the hard drive and it won’t boot, so I’m trying to reinstall OS 9.2 so I can get my files off. Otherwise I’ll have to try and extract the hard drive from the iMac.
There are few things Steve Jobs “got wrong” but maybe everyone else just didn’t get it. I would have loved to have a Mac Cube!
Now-a-days though, it seems like everyone has a Mac, or at least wants some sort of Apple product. Steve Jobs revolutionized the home computer industry in the 70′s, the personal music industry in the 90′s and now create a whole new world with the development of the iPad. In the first year university course I teach, 46% of the students have a Mac computer or laptop.
Thank you for everything Steve Jobs. I look forward to seeing the last products you had a hand in creating and how they will again change our world.
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Not a big fan of the subject but a good read none the less.