I was in fourth grade when my family got our first Macintosh computer, the LC iii. It was a boring beige box that contained within it vibrant color and unimagined possibilities. It ran the program Kidpix, which is what I used it for 99% of the time. It also had the capability to let you create your own icons, or change the desktop background, by making small pictures based on moving colored pixels around to create a larger pattern. When I showed this trick to my fourth grade class, which had just gotten the same computer, their minds were collectively blown.
A year or two later my parents bought a laptop, a clunky black Powerbook, with the idea that it could be portable and we’d take it on family vacations so they could get work done at the same time (my mom is forever writing books and articles in her free time). It had an analog track ball, which I loved to play with, probably even more than I liked working on the computer itself. People gasp and laugh in amazement when I tell them that my dad still has that computer, sitting in his office, and he still uses documents off of it. About ten years ago he bought a compatible color printer off eBay for 50 cents, although he says he had to pay about 20 bucks for shipping. There’s no other way for him to get information off the computer and on to another more modern one, so when he wants to use a test or quiz stored on there he prints if off on the matching printer and then makes copies off that printout.
A few years after that we bought a candy-colored iMac, bright blue, and my parents actually also still have that computer. When I went away to college I took with me a refurbished blue clamshell laptop, just like the one Elle Woods buys in Legally Blond. It was replaced in two years by an eMac, which was heavy as hell but beautiful, pristine, and crisply white. My mom got a Powerbook and convinced her school to go all digital and buy Apple products for her video editing lab, which now uses Garage Band and Final Cut Pro. When I moved to Chicago for grad school I gave my parents the eMac and took with me a MacBook, which is what I’m writing this on.
When I started running in earnest, my sophomore year of high school, I would carry with me a discman, with a burned cd that held about 15 carefully cultivated running songs. For years I ran while carrying that bulky piece of plastic, an exercise that these days I cannot even imagine. I was a sophomore in college when the iPod came out and I lusted after it for a full year before managing to scrape together the money to buy one. Suddenly my running music, ALL my music, fit onto this one small, lightweight device that never skipped or stopped. A few years after that all the music that I bought to put on that device came exclusively from iTunes. To say it transformed my running would be an understatement. In the seven or so years since I got my first iPod, I have literally never been on a run without bringing my latest iteration along with me.
I spend more time in the collective company of my laptop, work computer, and iPod than I do with any one person. Even if you're not an Apple afficionado, don't have an iPad or the latest iPhone, to say that the technology and design created by Steve Jobs has not touched your life is like saying that you’re not really affected by oxygen. You might not realize the impact it has...until it’s gone.
A year or two later my parents bought a laptop, a clunky black Powerbook, with the idea that it could be portable and we’d take it on family vacations so they could get work done at the same time (my mom is forever writing books and articles in her free time). It had an analog track ball, which I loved to play with, probably even more than I liked working on the computer itself. People gasp and laugh in amazement when I tell them that my dad still has that computer, sitting in his office, and he still uses documents off of it. About ten years ago he bought a compatible color printer off eBay for 50 cents, although he says he had to pay about 20 bucks for shipping. There’s no other way for him to get information off the computer and on to another more modern one, so when he wants to use a test or quiz stored on there he prints if off on the matching printer and then makes copies off that printout.
A few years after that we bought a candy-colored iMac, bright blue, and my parents actually also still have that computer. When I went away to college I took with me a refurbished blue clamshell laptop, just like the one Elle Woods buys in Legally Blond. It was replaced in two years by an eMac, which was heavy as hell but beautiful, pristine, and crisply white. My mom got a Powerbook and convinced her school to go all digital and buy Apple products for her video editing lab, which now uses Garage Band and Final Cut Pro. When I moved to Chicago for grad school I gave my parents the eMac and took with me a MacBook, which is what I’m writing this on.
When I started running in earnest, my sophomore year of high school, I would carry with me a discman, with a burned cd that held about 15 carefully cultivated running songs. For years I ran while carrying that bulky piece of plastic, an exercise that these days I cannot even imagine. I was a sophomore in college when the iPod came out and I lusted after it for a full year before managing to scrape together the money to buy one. Suddenly my running music, ALL my music, fit onto this one small, lightweight device that never skipped or stopped. A few years after that all the music that I bought to put on that device came exclusively from iTunes. To say it transformed my running would be an understatement. In the seven or so years since I got my first iPod, I have literally never been on a run without bringing my latest iteration along with me.
I spend more time in the collective company of my laptop, work computer, and iPod than I do with any one person. Even if you're not an Apple afficionado, don't have an iPad or the latest iPhone, to say that the technology and design created by Steve Jobs has not touched your life is like saying that you’re not really affected by oxygen. You might not realize the impact it has...until it’s gone.
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