Maccast Members 2014.01.23 - The Mac

• The Mac turns 30 tmorrow and I realized I’ve been a Mac Geek for 28 of those thirty years.
• Also, I have been hosting a Mac Apple podcast now for 10 years. To do that I think you can’t be considered anything other than a fanatic.
• But how did I get here? Today I’ll share my journey.

Not always a Mac Geek

• First exposure to a computer was with a Commodore, not an Apple.
• Slowly, most of my friends started getting them.
  • Apple IIe’s and Apple IIc’s
  • It was about cracked games.
• Choose your own adventures, BASIC, and Bard’s Tale.
  • We wanted to write our own games
  • Guess this was my into to programming.
• My dad was a Mac fan before me
  • The Apple IIGS, King Tut (EA Deluxe Paint II), and Tas Times in Town Town.
• Made fun of my friends 128k Mac
  • Slowly games like Dark Castle began to win us over
  • Also my friend’s dad wrote computer books and had early access to what would become AOL

We get a Mac

• Not sure the exact year, but maybe around 1987 or 88 my Dad’s work gave him a Mac Plus
• That was when I started to get interested in Graphic Design and art
  • I was lucky to have a print shop at my school and they had a Linotron 202 machine (1978 digital typesetter)
  • At home I had exposure to apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Page Maker
• The Mac had a 20MB Apple HDD and a 1-bit 8.5” x 11" vertical Radius Display.
• Took that Mac to collage in 1990 and it got me all the way through.
  • added a 14.4 modem and could access the school Network and BSD machines
• One thing that drew me to the collage was their Mac IIfx lab
• near the end of college the Power Mac 6100, 7100, and 8100 series came out and that changed everything

A career with Macs

• After college I took a sales job at a book printer
• It was the mid ’90s and i replaced my Mac Plus with a Performa 575
• I also bought an Newton 110, with a modem (28.8, I think), and a 4MB PCMCIA card.
• Eventually I ended up getting a job with an ad agency in Portland doing Page Layout work.
  • When I got there the writers, art directors and staff were using aging 6100, 7100, and 8100
  • I spent a lot of my time doing tech support and IT, not the job I was hired for
  • Remember SCSI terminators and Extension managers?
• I bought myself a PowerBook Duo 2300c
  • PowerPC 603e, 100MHz, 750MB HDD, came with 8MB of RAM, expandable up to 56MB
  • I also got a microdock and an external CD drive
  • 9.5" display and no optical drive, no ethernet, no ADB
  • 4.8 lbs
  • Was carrying around more weight in accessories and cables, it was crazy.
• Steve Jobs came back to Apple and introduced the Bondi Blue iMac
• The Power Mac B&W G3 series was introduced
  • I got to purchase eight of these systems for the ad agency
• It was while in Portland that I got involved with Mac User Groups
  • They had a great group there
  • Shareware CDs
• Began web development
• Back to San Diego and wound up as a Microsoft C#.net developer
  • Worked with Windows all day and played with Macs at home
  • Bought an 14" iBook G4 not long after moving back.
    • Loved that machine
    • Suffered the GPU solder failure
  • Started the Podcast in December of 2004
    • A lot of the rest you know

Mac to the Future

• My current mac is actually a 2010 15" Macbook Pro that morphed into an early 2011 Macbook Pro (Thunderbolt)
  • I had numerous GPU issues, and may have more
• But here’s the thing, Mac aren’t the big part of Apple’s business anymore.
  • I use my iPad and iPhone about as much as my Mac for my computing needs.
  • More casual computer users are migrating to tablets in droves
• I think wearables are a hot topic right now, because many people see a future beyond the mouse and keyboard and even touch.
• We are hearing terms like the “Internet of things”
  • Devices we never imagined being connected to the Internet are
  • Lights, thermostats, smoke detectors, fridges, crock pots, TVs, etc.
• So where is Apple’s place in the future beyond Post-PC?
• There are several things that I read or saw these past weeks that make me think that Apple is more primed for the next age of computing more than any other company
  • It’s because the next wave of computing has nothing to do with technology and almost everything to do eliminating technology.
  • It’s something that is engrained in Apple’s DNA, their culture, and what they been doing or striving to do for the past 30 plus years.
• In 1997 Steve Jobs said “You have got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology”.
• There was also a video I watched from frog, formerly frogdesign, where Harmut Esslinger said, “People want to be convinced by emotion, not by rationale.”
• Apple’s new “Your Verse” TV ads reinforce that focus. That it’s about what people can do with the technology that matters.
• I have always said I’m an Apple fan because their products have always done the best job getting out of the way. They let you create and do without the technology mucking things up and getting in the way.
  • When I worked with Windows for 5 years that was very often not the case.
• In the post Post PC world this is going to be even more important.
  • We will have products and devices that are working for us, helping us, but doing so in ways that are virtually invisible.
  • They will be much more personal and human interactions. Siri is an infantile example of that.
  • That’s why Tim Cook said sensors and sensor technology is going to be a big deal and why we see Apple investing heavily in those areas
• We will be the the interface, the world, life will be the interface and the technology will be invisible and ubiquitous when it’s done right.
• In that same speech I referenced earlier Steve jobs mentioned the original Laserwriter.
  • It had all kinds of amazing stuff in the box.
  • State of the art Canon imagine engines, custom Apple designed controllers, Adobe Postscript software, Appletalk.
  • But Steve saw the first printout and said, “I can sell this”. People just had to see the printout and they wanted it. How it did it didn’t matter, it only mattered that it did.