My first Macintosh was not the first model made in early 1984, but the second model – the 512K (if you can imagine an entire memory that small) in late 1984.
Since then, I have tended to insist on Apple computers – even, perhaps slightly insanely, while doing my six postgraduate exams, on a Macintosh SE brought in a very large case from home; I traveled through Germany and the Lowlands with that same computer, in that same now-unbelievable case, in 1994-5.
When I arrived here in Newcastle in September 2002, the department secretary told me I couldn't have a Macintosh in my office. I simply refused to accept this; and now our department, and much of our new music building, uses up-to-date Macs.
Some people are at times resentful about the recent size and power of Apple, but I would say that, whatever complications there may be to the story, the reason for their success over the past ten years (after many lean years of dubiety and Microsoft's quasi-illegal operations) is the astoundingly classy quality of their products, ever since they started out: the assumption that our computers reflect our minds and our work, and should therefore be beautiful and easy to manage, easy to use in order to create; so that we can invite them into our imaginations without feeling cheapened or shoddily treated.
I do sometimes feel that I spend too much time at the computer screen: but, at least, I have not been trapped for the past twenty-seven (!) years in front of a junky, ugly, badly constructed system, that resists me, or is undependable. And that is a very good thing.
Jobs died today – he was about a year and a half older than I am; and I know that pancreatic cancer is remarkably painful.
He did good things, he did them strongly; and it is sad to see him go.
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