In the eighties when my children were small and I was a stay at home mom we bought our first personal computer. I remember strange things like the fact that it cost $3500 and didn't come with a printer. I think it was an HP. I started a novel on it (never finished) but beyond that it seemed to me it didn't do much. My friend and I argued with her husband about how personal computers were useless and certainly not user-friendly. He had one of the first Apples but it didn't impress us. We couldn't foresee the day when the personal computer would be easy to use and the invention of the internet that would put the world at our finger tips.
The first Apple computers I encountered were the ones at my kids' school and then the ones at my own school. We loaded floppy discs into them to enable kids to word process and learn how to keyboard. I had a couple of the beige boxes in my classroom for kids to use. What was impressive was that children couldn't break them. These early Apples were indestructible. In my own house however, we continued to buy PC's because of the price and the fact that they were everywhere. Apple was pretty small in those days and largely confined to the educational market as far as I knew. Obviously, I'm not a technological visionary.
We bought several PC's over the course of the next years. It took at least an hour of hooking up scores of cables to boot it up and then the tower was noisy and hot. They all died of virus contamination eventually. One that my son owned even caught fire! But viruses and the software required to keep them out slowed down the computer enough that when you turned it on it took 10 minutes to boot up. You could make and drink coffee in that time. Many times in the middle of a project the PC simply froze and you couldn't do anything about it. It wouldn't shut down, return to the program, nothing. Just that damned black screen. That was the worst thing about PC's, their unstable platforms. The toll the viruses and anti-virus software took on our checkbook was pretty irritating too.
Then one day a 17" iMac, still in the box, arrived in my classroom. It was a thing of beauty with all the software and hardware contained in the monitor. It had a keyboard and a mouse and a cord. Five minutes to plug it in and I was good to go. I was in computer heaven. Here was a device that did everything I wanted it to do. The internet was fast, the graphics outstanding, and it was QUIET and cool. I was hooked. Not too long after that I convinced my other half that we should have one. We still have it in the den where not a single virus has plagued us. Nor do we have any anti-virus software to corrupt our hardware. Yes it was more expensive than a PC which was one of the reasons we had purchased PC's in the past. But the higher price has translated into a longer lasting device that has paid for itself. We've added more RAM and for a mere $30 updated the operating system. I use a Mac internet service so I can work at home and access it at school on my idisk and vice versa. I was and am a convert.
Now I'm an Apple freak. I use my iPod everyday to listen to books and music while driving, exercising or just doing boring household chores. I hate to drive my husband's car because it lacks a dock for my iPod. It stores loads of books and music and is reliable with a long lasting battery and plenty of functions. I also have a MacBook so I can shop while watching TV or write while sitting on the couch or in the kitchen as I am now. The battery life on this is amazing. I even have an iPad that I took to Europe so I could keep in touch. As you might imagine, Apple products litter my family room.
True, every once in awhile I get what I call "the spinning wheel of death". That multi-colored wheel that tells the user the computer is working. That's when the computer is "stuck". On a Mac you just hold down the on and off button and it shuts down, ready to reboot in about 10 seconds. Pure genius.
I thank Apple for pulling me along with them into the computer age with aesthetically beautiful products designed for all kinds of users, even not so savvy ones like me.
Your vision will be missed.
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