A GUI love story

Macintosh Stories  is one of those sites (like TV Tropes) that you can just get lost in, surfing from story to story, or section to section, randomly learning and/;or being entertained by practically everything you run into. Lots of great stories about the computer that changed everything.

BTW, speaking of insanely great Apple products, I really love my iPod Touch (with a 3G/WiFi hotspot as a holder), but if you ever decide to get around to reading “Infinite Jest,” I strongly recommend not reading it in the form of a pirated e-book translated via Calibre to Stanza so that you can’t access the endnotes and lots of words are misspelled or weirdly punctuated and you’re not quite sure if the weirdness is coming from Calibre/Stanza or from the author. I’m just sayin’ …

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Grieve for Steve

The first computer I ever used was the Apple IIe my parents bought for us (and for them). The first computers I ever used in a job were a Mac SE (for writing and editing) and a Mac IIci (for page layout). The first computer I ever bought was a Mac SE/30. The second computer I bought was another Mac, and the first 2 laptops I bought were PowerBooks. The first mp3 player I ever bought was an iPod (and so were the second, and third, as well as the fourth, an iPod touch that I don’t use for music but just carry with me as my “Internet in a pocket” device).

Steve Jobs influenced me without even knowing it — consider this quote from 1985, a good 7 or 8 years before I tumbled to the same realization: “The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people––as remarkable as the telephone.”

That’s the reality that changed my life, and changed my career, and even paved the way for the career change I was forced to make after I got thrown out of journalism nearly 3 years ago (arguably brought about by the same changes Jobs foresaw 26 years ago). (pic via Jonathan Mak)

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