I just read an email from Steven Levy about the 25th anniversary of the launch of the iMac. I never had one of the original iMacs and in 1998 I was on the side that thought Apple was a company that was done for but what a perfect occasion to share a few remembrances I have about Apple.
(1) the story about the newton
In 1995 I moved to San Francisco and began working in EggHead Software as a sales clerk. Of the 5 sales clerks that I remember, two were Macintosh fanatics and the other 3 were IBM Compatible PC fanatics. I had the pleasure of experiencing first hand the Windows 95 launch in August 1995 which was not too exciting for me as I was already really excited with Windows NT 3.51 and experimenting with Linux at the time, but the big thing for my two Macintosh fanatics coworkers was when we began to carry the Apple Newton. As EggHead Software, as implied in the name, was a pedler of software, the fore into hardware was a new thing. In this regard, I now in retrospect, assume this was a pivot on my employer’s part as Larry Elision had prophesied the end of their business:
For my Macintosh fanatics coworkers this pivot brought them the Newton and they were happy as clams getting to play with the revolutionary device. They would wax on poetically on and on and try and sell the device, but unfortunate without much success. I for my part did not find the Newton particularly interesting and did not spend much time testing it, something I now regret.
(2) the story about my girl friend’s roommate who’s boyfriend worked at Apple on the OS team
At around the same time I was working at EggHead my girlfriend had a roommate who’s boyfriend was working at Apple. I was impressed when I asked him what he did and he said he was on the OS team. I knew from my two Apple fanatic coworkers that Apple was long over due a true mutitasking OS such as Windows NT and OS/2 had delivered. What really surprised me, that despite Apple’s new OS Copland being years late he would commute from San Francisco to Cupertino every day (an hour each way in the best of conditions) and would be home by 19:00 almost every day. Fortunately Steve returned to Apple as intern CEO with his NextOS and finally the Macintosh (and later the iPhone) had a solid OS to stand on!
(2) the story about Spencer indicating he was going to buy Apple shares
After Egghead I began working at an Options Clearing firm and as we were integrally related to the stock market, we were all playing with stocks. One night after a couple of beers one our coworker Spencer indicated his intention to buy some Apple Stock. This was probably in around 1998 and more or less around when Steve Jobs returned but at that point Apple was such a lost cause, all of us laid into Spencer convincing him that would be throwing away his money. Oppps.
(3) the story about Chad and his iMac
From SF I moved to Spain and would only head back to SF every few years when we could. On one of the trips we visited a friend from junior high, Chad, and he was showing us his new iMac G4 and wanted to show me an email. He was scrolling and scrolling and could not find the email in question that was from another mutual friend. I recommended clicking on the “from” column to order the emails from the senders and he quickly found the email in question. Chad proceeded to claim I was a computer genius, which amazed me because he had just given my daughter a mixed CD of their daughter’s favorite songs. In 2004! On a PC I would not even know how to burn a music CD and did not even have any music on my PC!
(4) the story about my conversion
A few years later after trying unsuccessfully to get BSD or Linux to work on a laptop, and after having seen my neighbors Fernando’s love of his MacBook Pro, I realized the way to get to have unix under the hood was to go with OS X so in December 2004 I bought an iBook G4 for 1,579€. OMG at a time when un suspending a windows machine was a multi minute wait, this beast was awake, connected to wifi and usable by the time I had finished raising the lid! And it would work for hours and hours where a window equivalent would be happy to have a 2 hours of autonomy. An IBM PC baby was converted and I proceeded to praise the joys of Macintosh to any who would listen and even made a t-shirt with “I have seen the light” on the front and an Apple on the back. Fortunately I never ended up with any Apple tattoo but it was close because I was seriously fanatical. I had gone from spending my weekend fighting with my PC trying to get a driver or printer to work to actually having my computer help me to produce things and be more creative. Managing my growing digital image library of my growing family was not work, just plug the camera in, and iPhoto would sync the pictures to the Macintosh putting them nice and orderly in a year, month, day folder format, something I had been doing by hand on the PC. Making DVDs to share pictures of the grandchildren with my parents was fun and sooo easy! And to close, here is a stop motion video I made with my daughter’s one morning before lunch:
(5) the story about my iphone
In December of 2007 one of my wife’s coworkers was traveling to the States and she convinced him to pop into an Apple store in NY to buy an iPhone to bring back to Spain for my christmas gift. The way Apple launched the iPhone was with an agreement with AT&T in such a way that the actual purchase price was quite low (I remember a 150€ but have no record of the real price) but it required signing up for an AT&T mobile account once you had the device at home. Needless to say it was not possible to sign up for AT&T from Spain so the iPhone was pretty useless until I was able to jailbreak it. Remember that this was before there was a store for applications (an idea that Apple borrowed from the hackers that began making applications for jailbroken iPhones) so the only applications on the device were Safari, maps, a calculator, and a music player. From what I remember, I was able to jailbreak the device (getting root access) rather early, but unlocking it (allowing it to be used on other than AT&T networks) took a while longer. And the unlocking it I definitely remember it as it was a HARDWARE unlock that required opening the iphone (not easy, but with a guitar pick that Nacho provided was easier), making a bridge between two contacts (done with two needles passed through wine corks), and launching a hack to unlock it. Needless to say the operation had involved multiple people holding, typing, and witnessing what would be pure joy, or a bricked device. Fortunately it was successful, and I the joy I had getting my Movistar SIM to work in my iPhone was total. I am pretty sure I was one of the first iPhones on the Spanish local carrier’s network.
The last antidote about the iPhone was a conversation I had with some coworkers while we were walking for a morning coffee. As we were crossing the street Juan Pedro commented that Nokia had sold more phones in the last week than Apple had sold iPhone since it launch and the iPhone was a non event. A few years later Nokia had disappeared from the planet…
(6) the story about the end of my love for apple
Fortunately I never got an Apple tattoo, unfortunately Apple lost it’s Mojo. In the golden years I would read the release notes for new OS releases and every line was an improvement or a new cool feature. I would install them and everything would just work perfectly. But after a few years things stopped just working after updates. Little things like one new years day the photos I had synced to my iPad were no longer in order of when the photo was taken, but some other order that there was no way to know what it was or how to change it. Or when I started having problems of deleting emails on my iPhone, but finding the email still in the inbox on my Macintosh. How could IMAP, an email protocol invented 1983, just start being flakey? And problems connecting to the Wifi. And problems mapping SMB folders. And I found little by little I was spending my time trying to get things to work, and not enjoying and producing like I was previously. And so going full circle, I read an email that the new president of Microsoft had sent to his employees and realized that while Apple had lost it’s mojo, Microsoft had found a new CEO who I was sure could help them find it… and I switched back to Windows and I have not stopped being impressed with Microsoft since.
So that is my random collection of my stories of Apple. I think it is safe to say that the golden years I had with Apple were thanks to Steve Jobs and the amazing quality of innovative products produced under his guidance. Apple continues in its golden age in terms of profits, but I have not seen innovation nor quality since his passing.
Thanks for reading and feel free to give feedback or comments via email (andrew@jupiterstation.net).